My girlfriend got a Leaf. It’s one of those things that makes me feel like I’m living in the future. I didn’t get my weekend trips to the moon, I didn’t get jetpacks, and I sure as heck didn’t get underwater cities, but at least the future has given us reasonable, electric cars. The Leaf [...]

Discussions of superluminal communication and the paradoxes raised therein always involved unsatisfying (to me) examples about space ships and Andromeda and impending doom, but it turns out that the (real) paradoxes raised by superluminal communication can be easily merged with the Barn Paradox. The Barn Paradox Assume an Olympic-level sprinter with a 20m pole that, [...]

I am proposing something that is both a cultural and a punctuation change. I do this not for the hopes of profit or fame, but instead, for the good of people everywhere. I think that instead of having people stressing over the exact wording of something, we instead allow: [[Statement of actual message]] Upon reading [...]

So, I’ve mentioned before that my old sports car is sitting in my driveway. It attracts a note or two each week from the teenage boys that lust after the car. Recently I got a note on the car: I was tempted to call him and complain about his punctuation, but I decided not to [...]

The alpha state is bliss. Do you know what I’m talking about? That time-is-meaningless, flowing state that you reach when your in the midst of a creative process: the one where the hours seem drift by you as insubstantially as a breeze, where you look outside and are astonished to realize that it’s dark, you [...]

Started noticing a lot of bees banging into my window late at night and a indistinct humming, but didn’t think about it, until I finally ventured into the backyard (don’t do that very much — not that it’s all horrible or anything, but I just don’t spend a lot of time in the backyard). Discovered [...]

Oddly enough, a significant percentage of my head space is being taken up by long term relationships… specifically, I’m trying to find a laptop with which to commit. I’ve just had a bad run of luck, and it makes me kind of shy about it all. I was walking through Fry’s, not particularly interested in [...]

It has long been a belief of mine that feedback is a very uplifting act (well, kind feedback, at any rate). We’re all basically operating blind here on Planet Earth, at least with respect to knowing how other people perceive us. It is the rare adult that doesn’t have at least three or four misconceptions [...]

Sometimes, I swear that I am going to help the cockroaches take over the world. I had lost the stylus that I had ordered for my incredibly obscure computer, an Intermec 6651 — incredibly hard to find, but the perfect writing machine. At any rate, I couldn’t find any styli locally, and it was getting [...]

I’m digging this online traffic safety stuff. I’m taking a traffic safety course in order to get rid of my horribly unjust ticket, and I decided to do it online. It rocks, at least in terms of getting-me-through-quickly, as opposed to making-me-learn-something. I whipped through the entire course in about two hours, the proctored exam [...]

A friend had asked me along to a beach party — her friend was having a birthday — so she came by my place at about 1pm and we did the drive down to Capitola. At any rate, we all played volleyball on the beach, and they were fanatical. In the interests of education and [...]

Perhaps appropriate for July 4th: Despite everything, despite the rampant commercialism and questionable policies and idiotic politicians, I still think that this country is one of the greatest in the world. Two hundred years ago, three great experiments were forged in the crucible of a single revolution: a Constitutional democracy, a capitalistic economic system, and [...]

From Paul Graham’s site, the coolest palindrome I’ve ever seen: A man, a plan, a canoe, pasta, heros, rajahs, a coloratura, maps, snipe, percale, macaroni, a gag, a banana bag, a tan, a tag, a banana bag again (or a camel), a crepe, pins, Spam, a rut, a Rolo, cash, a jar, sore hats, a [...]

I meet the strangest people at Starbucks. Due to some confusion over whether a grande soy latte for “Tim” is the same as a grande mocha for “Julie,” (answer: they are not) I ended up talking with a cute twenty-something year old. For some reason the conversation fell into the topic of what she did [...]

I was standing in line today behind a lady that was buying an enormous coffee cup. Seriously, it was about three feet high and probably held 10 or 20 gallons of liquid. For what kind of person would this make a good present[1]? I mean, it’s not a practical cup, despite the fact that it [...]

Thoughts while standing in line at Whole Foods: (Pretty close to reality. Very scary). Card or cash? Do I have enough cash? Shoot, I forgot something. I wonder if I’m going to make it to the gym tonight? Wow, look at her. What kind eyes. And such a sweet face! I wonder what happen if [...]

Spent most of the weekend doing my taxes — or rather, preparing to do my taxes, or thinking about preparing to do my taxes, or walking around stressing about doing my taxes. It’s all the same, really. Experiments When I’m thinking, sometimes I’m not paying attention to the expression on my face. Bear along with [...]

The Beef Association has launched a web site to get young, teenage girls to eat more meat. I’m not kidding. It has fun activities like chat boards, party invitations, and such choice advice as: Busy “real girls” need smart food choices for nutrition-on-the-run. Here are a few quick, easy and tasty combos — guaranteed to [...]

Found in the electronic documentation for something: To view this document, which is in PDF format, you must have Acrobat Reader 4.0 or later installed on your system. Get it?

Went to a talk about Food today. Not my usual thing, maybe, but Wendy asked me along, and given the fact that I didn’t have anything else to do, I went. It is a decidedly… liberal crowd. I mean, I’m liberal, but these guys are on the far far left. Their basic premise was that [...]