I have a cool little I Ching Dashboard Widget on my PowerBook that casts hexagrams. I decided to give it a whirl and the first hexagram was “T’ai” (Peace), which I liked. The next I forgot, but its interpretation was “Opposition,” which I didn’t like. (I figure the first denoted anti-Iraq war folks like me [...]

Coming to a local Family Mart near you! Well, maybe not literally available at a Family Mart — my favorite Japanese konbini (convenience store) — but going on sale September 16 by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to Tokyoites is “Wakamaru” (Young Circle? Circlette?), a functional child-sized “Homeuser robot” that (who?) can recognize 10 individual faces and [...]

Leave it to the Japanese to do the R&D for sci-fi otaku fantasies without worrying about practical applications and then actually begin to produce interesting results. Sure, there are a lot of first-rate robotics labs in the U.S. and elsewhere and they do some cool things. There’s actually a robot lab here at Vandy which [...]

It’s been a while since I posted any photos, so I might as well show y’all my new office at Vandy. These shots were taken before final details and decorations, but you get the idea. I got to pick out the furniture and went for light, airy, modern, minimalist. Just like me.

No, not the canned pork product, but that which I regularly receive on my Macs. First of all, I have to point out that the spam filters that Vanderbilt uses for emails sent to my Vandy account catches some — mostly financial-scam stuff. I use Spam Sieve with Apple Mail to catch the rest. I’m [...]

Let’s analyze this statement, made today by George W. Bush in his lameduck effort to turn back deteriorating support for his misguided crusade. But before we do that, let me say that I googled part of the quote just to verify my accuracy by finding the original and lo and behold, guess what the top [...]

Today the Base Realignment and Closure Committee (BRAC) voted on base closures around the United States. When I listened to the news (NPR) it was cast as party time for those states and municipalities who were “spared” base closures and catastrophe for areas voted to “suffer” closures. The party atmosphere demonstrated in Texas in particular [...]

I’m sick of cars, especially big cars. I’ve developed an almost visceral hatred toward large lumbering gas-guzzling behemoths. This is not new. What is new is that this feeling is reaching an existential level, to the extent that my body and mind recoil at the thought of consuming oil now. I feel dirty driving; I [...]