Sun - May 4, 2008I, and I Alone, Shall Be OutIt takes me longer than it should to compose my “out of
office” email messages at work. The text of the message itself is quite
short; what’s hard is actually pressing the Send button. Intellectually, I
know perfectly well that I am allowed and even encouraged to use vacation days.
Emotionally, it feels like I’m playing hooky. A holiday, where
everyone is out of the office, is so much different than a day where I am
home and everyone else is laboring away under a fluorescent glare.
Posted at 05:33 PM Read More Thu - May 1, 2008Up to HereRight. Up. To. HERE. A phrase that goes with a brisk horizontal salute
where the speaker’s four fingers indicate the precise level up to which it
has been had by them. Bulging eyes and a slight quivering of the hand are
optional.
Posted at 07:30 AM Read More Sat - April 19, 2008Poem: The Tomb(Note: I worked on this poem a long time, trying to decide between free
verse and a much stronger structure. I like the balance of what I ended up with,
and what it forced me to omit.)
Posted at 04:37 PM Read More Sat - March 22, 2008RebuiltRebuilt, by Michael Chorost, is the story of the author’s
own experience with his bionic ear. The cover image is an x-ray of his head, the
cochlear implant showing up bright and geometric against the misty, swirling
bone of his skull. For someone who watched The Six Million Dollar Man and
The Bionic Woman with great attention and envy as a kid, this story was
irresistible. What made the book even more entertaining is that Chorost is only
three years older than me and was watching the same shows at about the same age,
with the same fascination. It’s like finding out that an old elementary
school friend had become bionic, both of us knowing its significance. He knows
what it is truly like to be Steve Austin, at least at this point in
history.
Posted at 09:57 AM Read More Book BingeOne thing the Kindle has helped me remember is how much I love to simply
sit and read. When I first bought the Kindle, part of my justification was that
it would be more portable than the couple of dozen tomes that would otherwise
litter the house and the car. The irony is that now I have the Kindle and
another couple of dozen physical books lying around.
Posted at 09:03 AM Read More Fri - March 21, 2008Top Ten Ways To Get a Good Grade on the Final Exam in ECE 340The eighth and final list.
Posted at 09:32 AM Read More Mon - March 17, 2008Soul Pollution and the Toxic Culture“That’s what parents are for!” This has become the
one-size-fits-all answer to any complaint about further erosion of public
standards of decency. The general tone behind it is, “We didn’t have
kids (or don’t care about them), so let us party like we want and you stay
home and protect them. If you didn’t want to do that then you
shouldn’t have had kids.” I’m getting tired of it and the
premise that somehow they are only my kids. They’re yours too. They
are members of the next generation and they will be in power when your power is
waning. Do you care yet?
Posted at 12:21 AM Read More Sun - March 16, 2008Emergency Room EmergencyA headline on the front page of today’s Arizona Daily Star caught
my attention: a man
died while waiting over 8 hours in the emergency room. It was shocking
but inevitable. Emergency room care is so bad here in Tucson that I can’t
believe it took this long for it to happen. At least now everyone is talking
about it, and that’s important.
Posted at 11:48 PM Read More Fri - March 14, 2008Wed - March 12, 2008The Geography of Bliss“Another book on happiness?” grumbled my wife.
“It’s kind of hard not to take it personally.” Well, yes, I
suppose technically it is, and it’s true that I read it right on
the heels of Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert. But neither of
them are self-help books for glee addicts looking for a fix. The first one, as
you remember, is about how the brain works, and this one is comparative cultural
anthropology, and entertaining coursework at that.
Posted at 08:13 PM Read More Fri - March 7, 2008The Destructive MemeRichard Dawkins, in his book The Selfish Gene, has popularized
the idea (the meme?) that “a human being is a gene’s way of making
copies of itself.” Cute, maybe, but inherently illogical and, if taken
seriously, harmful.
Posted at 08:47 PM Read More Wed - March 5, 2008The Best Little Text Editor EverIn an essay on my main web page some time ago, I ranted about trying to
find a text editor whose native format
was something I’d still be able to read in twenty years. Turns
out it’s been right under my nose: it’s the humble Mac OS X TextEdit
application.
Posted at 09:07 PM Read More Fri - February 29, 2008Thu - February 28, 2008Don’t Turn Your Back on Your BrainHere’s a great
link to go with my review of Stumbling on Happiness, by
Wired contributor Lore Sjöberg.
Posted at 12:53 AM Read More |
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Published On: May 04, 2008 05:46 PM |
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