The Next Normal
People love lists. With little effort, you can find the 10 best movies, TV shows, books, albums, songs, plays or cheeseburgers. The 10 best places to visit, live, retire, or attend college are only a few keystrokes away. And of course no list of lists would be complete without mentioning David Letterman’s Top 10 Lists […]
Chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino – Review
Upon reading the title of this book, you might be tempted to judge it as too technical or perhaps too arcane to be of interest. If so, you would be missing out on a compelling narrative about an exceptional man and his lifelong quest to do something great. Chasing the Ghost – Nobelist Fred Reines […]
It’s Just a Game
I have never been much of a gamer, at least not since PacMan and Space Invaders disappeared from the arcades (shortly before the arcades disappeared from shopping malls, which was not long before shopping malls went out of favor). I have played Call of Duty a few times, but without my son’s Med Kit to […]
The Highlighted Route
It is in our nature as humans to plan. Some of us do it formally, writing down step by step instructions with a well-defined goal in mind. Others plan at a smaller scale, often thinking about step 2 after step 1 is underway. If you are out doing errands, advanced planning can save time with […]
Our Curious Habits
As an engineer, I’m often accused by my non-engineer brethren of being overly analytical. I confess that I can’t help scrutinizing some things (well…most things) to try and figure out how they work. This can lead to satisfaction and a boost in self-assurance when things work as expected, and a compulsive drive for further analysis […]
Sentient Stuff
Those of us who have worked in the data storage industry often wonder how our computers match up to the processor we carry around in our own heads. Comparisons are difficult to come by – we can estimate the average number of neurons in a human brain (~ 86 billion), but they are quite different […]
Everything Else
Multi-Tasking is a fantasy. There are plenty of high-energy people out there who say they can Multi-Task, and many a job-seeker has laid claim to this skill in an interview. The truth is, they are lying. Humans can only do one thing at a time. Our modern tools have propagated the Multi-Tasking myth. Our Smart-TV’s […]
Common Sense
According to the Internet, the phrase “Common sense is not so common” originated with a Frenchman – Francois-Marie Arouet – who was a leading figure during the Age of Enlightenment. Francois, who had a knack for catchy phrases, began writing them at the age of 12. Eighteenth Century authorities were not always amused, and he […]
Empathy: A Requiem
It was the summer of 1977 when I drove with my fiancé’s younger brother to the Hollywood Boulevard Walk-of-Fame. Neither of us was that impressed with the famous names on the sidewalk; we were there to stand in line at Mann’s Chinese Theater for the very first Star Wars movie. These were the days when […]
One Thing Leads to Another
When I meet someone for the first time and tell them that I do research for a living, I know exactly what they are thinking – I don’t actually do anything, and I get paid for it. One of the most audacious research efforts in recent memory, NASA’s Space Program led to the now legendary […]
