One small step for a robot, one giant leap for…
From Marc Andreessen’s blog: robot self-reassembly:
Read More One small step for a robot, one giant leap for…April 2008
An atheist goes to church
One of my favourite bloggers, Greta Christina, attended a church service at which a friend of hers was being installed as a minister, and wrote up her reactions. She captures many of the feelings that I have had on similar occasions, although I don’t think I’ve ever experienced what she describes as “church envy”. There…
Read More An atheist goes to churchDerb on "Expelled" and the odious Ben Stein
And now here is Ben Stein, sneering and scoffing at Darwin, a man who spent decades observing and pondering the natural world — that world Stein glimpses through the window of his automobile now and then, when he’s not chattering into his cell phone. Stein claims to be doing it in the name of an…
Read More Derb on "Expelled" and the odious Ben SteinHay fever?!
According to the NW Asthma: News & Resources site, the current pollen count here in Seattle is really low (although it spiked up to “high” last Wednesday). Doesn’t matter. For the first time in years, I’ve got the classic symptoms of a rip-roaring hay fever. The 24 hour time release OTC Claritin tablets only seems to help…
Read More Hay fever?!WordPress 2.5 – one problem solved
This is a test post to check out the QuickPost WordPress Plugin which I’ve just installed.
Read More WordPress 2.5 – one problem solvedRules vs. Principles
There’s a fascinating piece in the latest New Yorker by James Surowiecki on the difference between rules-based and principle-based regulation: It’s something like the difference between football and soccer. Football, like most American sports, is heavily rule-bound. There’s an elaborate rulebook that sharply limits what players can and can’t do (down to where they have…
Read More Rules vs. PrinciplesSmoke ring over Seattle
As I was returning home this evening, I got off the bus and saw that everyone was gazing up into the sky. This is what they were looking at. (Click to see it in the Gallery.) I don’t know how it got there, nor exactly how big it was… it looks to be a couple…
Read More Smoke ring over SeattleBlaming one's tools
My blogging rate has dropped way off in the last few weeks, and I was wondering why. First, I’ve been pretty busy: not just with work (about which I rarely blog – Amazon is very different from Sun in this respect), but also on family stuff that has taken me back to the East Coast…
Read More Blaming one's toolsGlad
Rejecting cynicism
I don’t get to vote in the forthcoming elections, but I can’t avoid the zeitgeist. And I agree strongly with Robert Reich, who just endorsed Barack Obama. My emphasis: “I saw the ads” — the negative man-on-street commercials that the Clinton campaign put up in Pennsylvania in the wake of Obama’s bitter/cling comments a week…
Read More Rejecting cynicism