the smart prize

I was listening to the Skepticality podcast recently and the subject was what skeptics (or the skeptic movement, if there is such a thing) ought to be engaged in. Wasn’t it getting a little old–explaining for the 10,000th time that Bigfoot most likely doesn’t exist, or that the evidence for alien-piloted saucers is just about [...]

halloween horror in the usa

President Awful and VP Bloodstain–what they may do before leaving office is terrible to contemplate. Attacking Iran seems like a given, though I hope I’m wrong. What other hellish legacy might they have in mind? A glorious apocalypse? Equally scary is the helpless feeling that we can’t do anything about it. Congress and the Supreme [...]

this is me, sitting in my theater seat

Maggie’s birthday wish was granted and with teamwork we were able to get her to the Paramount to see “Spamalot.” It’s a good show. Any performance with catapulted cows is worth it. But we were wondering about the audience members who take photos of each other sitting in their seats. It was a widespread practice. [...]

evolution-like systems

This one of the most interesting articles I’ve come across in a while. I think the link was posted on Slashdot. The author says that a good way to get people to understand how evolution and natural selection work is to use examples such as Wikipedia, prediction markets, and online music and book recommendation systems. [...]

the dance of the undead at the fremont zombie walk

Go ahead, look at all the zombies. But don’t take a picture of them.

rotifer

I’m sorry I can’t remember where I found this rotifer photo and who made it. I’ve learned that our rotifer friends are microscopic animals made up of less than 1,000 cells. Maybe 15 of those comprise the brain and nerves. Notice the light-sensitive red spot “eyes.” Rotifers can exist in a state of suspension for [...]

current events that could have been in science fiction novels I read in high school

Four terabytes on a single hard-drive coming soon. That’s 4,000 gigabytes. This wouldn’t have meant anything to the younger me in pre-desktop computing days, but considered in terms of the current Library of Congress (70 terabytes of data), then 4TB is a lot of information. The entire Library of Congress in about 15 little disks–that [...]

a wink and a smile

Our friend Deirdre is directing a full-length feature film, A Wink and a Smile. It’s a documentary that follows ten women as they learn the art of burlesque at Seattle’s Academy of Burlesque. Check out the “teaser” for the film in progress at the link in the first sentence. This is a fantastic idea for [...]