Festo is so cool: A robot that flies like a bird [11/12/2011]

Jesse Schell's Visions of the Gamepocalypse [8/30/2010]

Finished Here Comes Everybody [5/18/2010]

The first part of the book is mostly anecdotes that are individually pretty interesting. But, I was left wondering about their relevance and whether or not anything could be extrapolated from them. In the last few chapters Shirky really puts it all together and makes several large scale conclusions about the role of the internet and social networking in our society and our future.

Finished What We Believe but Cannot Prove: Today's Leading Thinkers on Science in the Age of Certainty [8/10/2009]

This is the second John Brockman edited, Edge.org collection that I've read. It was much easier to get through than The Third Culture, because most of the essays are very short. The range of topics was also much broader, including psychology and sociology as well as physics and math. Two of the entries that most interested me were those by Alex Pentland and Robert R Provine. Alex Pentland believes, "A very large part of our behavior is determined by mainly unconscious social signaling, which sets the context, risk, and reward structure within which traditional cognitive processes proceed." [pg 156] Similarly, Robert Provine believes that "we overestimate the conscious control of behavior" and "we vastly overestimate the amount of time that we are aware of our actions, whatever their cause." [pg 145] Their essays were interesting enough that I might attempt to overcome my fear of psychology research and go out and read their recent books: Provine's Laughter: A Scientific Investigation and Pentland's Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World.

foobar [3/05/2009]

Nashville, TN

Subway in the Sky! a Conoco ad from February 28, 1953 [2/20/2009]

All this exciting talk lately about high speed rail lines has reminded me that I never posted this ad. It's framed and up on the wall in my study. I found it in one of the antique shops in Prescott.

The middle copy reads "Commuters in Los Angeles soon may rush to work by this monorail overhead transit system, unhampered by street level traffic. Super-streamlined 100-passenger cars can travel safely at speeds up to 100 miles an hour. The 44-mile run through metropolitan Los Angeles will cut the present commuting time in half." (Click to read the full text of the ad.)

playing with google maps [7/08/2008]

I spent perhaps a bit too much time a couple nights ago making this map of my travels. My ultimate plan is to scan all my photographs and have the points link to the galleries. If I actually get around to doing that, this will definitely be worth it.



Here's my current top places I want to visit. Of course, there are other places I'd like to go but I did this one a lot quicker.

my bookmarking obsession exposed [7/02/2008]