Getting Lost
Recently my wife and I drove 400 miles to attend a wedding. The festivities took place in a small northern California town where neither of us had ever been. Although some planning went into the trip, navigation was never much of a concern. With Siri calling out the turns, we drove confidently into hitherto unknown […]
The Barfomatic
Nausea. We all know the feeling. Sometimes it briefly grabs our attention, and then slips quietly away. Other times, it builds to an inescapable climax and then….. Friends and family all secretly hope it’s something you ate and they didn’t (So glad I passed on the oysters). Many times it’s due to a virus that […]
Darwin’s Business Plan
“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.” Charles Darwin Charles Darwin was not an atheist, and he started out studying medicine and theology before finally settling on natural history. Nearly everyone associates his […]
Searching Big Data for a Win
Experts tell us that there are nearly 8 zettabytes of data out there in the world, and the count is growing fast. Much like the stuff in your attic, a lot of it is redundant. There are things you might find really interesting or valuable, and others you would prefer to forget. On all-too-rare […]
Portrait of a Thumb Addict
Healthy people suck their thumbs. It’s a proven scientific fact. Thumb sucking benefits heart rhythm and breathing, while also regulating the muscles engaged in peristalsis of the digestive tract. Surprisingly, thumb suckers become emotionally independent at an earlier age. TS is definitely “nature” rather than “nurture”- many babies have been sucking for several months before […]
Missing Links
The Drake equation is not well known outside the world of astrophysics, but it has a lot in common with the ROI calculations that motivate venture capitalists. Dr. Drake figured that half a dozen statistical variables could be neatly crunched into the number of intelligent civilizations that could share the Milky Way with us. The […]
Who Wants to Know?
“Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” This oft-paraphrased line from Thomas Gray’s 1742 poem has certainly gathered a lot of cred over the past two hundred and seventy-some years. It is sacred tribal knowledge that what you don’t know won’t hurt you, absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that which is […]
Not So Super
For some, a flop is a Broadway play that didn’t do well at the box office. For others, the term conjures the vision of a high-jumper executing the ubiquitous Fosbury technique. For the scientific elite, it is an acronym for Floating Point Operation. The appeal of modern computers is basically two-fold; they can automate the […]
Selfie Reflection
Selfie Sticks in various forms have been around for a long time. Since the first caveman saw his reflection in a pool of water, we have been fascinated by our own image. In the first Century, the Romans invented hand-held glass mirrors, and all of us have been looking back ever since. Mirrors are everywhere. […]
Tools, Gadgets and Oreos
If you own some sort of exercise tracking device like a Fit Bit or a Fuelband, you are a ten-percenter. Market research shows that 1 out of every 10 Americans over the age of 18 has one of these high-tech wearables. That same research tells us that one third of those who got them have […]
