February 16, 2008 – 1:05 pm
School shootings (Again) offer no explanations.
Gun control lovers fill their tanks on this stuff (State lawmakers push, pull on gun control following NIU shootings).
This time, investigators find a link (Gunman, Virginia Tech shooter used same Web dealer) suggesting that the shootings might have had a third party in common.
Besides well-meaning but misguided Americans, who would [...]
January 31, 2008 – 12:56 pm
Politics always made me tune out. From my earliest memories of adult conversations at table, the pattern that emerges is a series of blanks. My parents and their friends spoke of far-away things and none of it had any bearing on my small world. Could I please be excused to play outside?
Later I made a [...]
January 15, 2008 – 9:31 pm
There are many places where you can listen to recorded books. When considering a potential listening location, a common concern is distraction: the world around you making it hard to follow the world in the book. Last weekend I discovered a complimentary combination: my physical environment augmented the reality of the book.
I listened to the [...]
December 6, 2007 – 2:15 am
I’ve been nibbling through Douglas R. Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Gödel, Escher, Bach. In Chapter XVII he mentions the mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920) who had a talent for extremely fast mathematical analysis. This class of mind (including so-called idiot savants) he called lightning calculators. In this passage he discusses the unlikelihood that such minds have [...]
September 5, 2007 – 10:10 am
I, as my present self with my present possessions and obligations, woke up in a hotel in my college town at the end of a spring semester. All my gear was gone. I was without clothes, wallet, keys, phone, briefcase, computer.
My house—it had ceased to be a hotel room—was full of excited people taking their [...]