"Remote control of the home is a popular fantasy among technologists. Why not, they muse, call your home while you are driving and turn on the heat or air conditioner, start filling the bathtub, or make a pot of coffee? Some companies offer products that make it possible to do these things. Why do we need them? Think how much difficulty the average ( Read more... )

Most days, when I have a spare couple minutes at work, I look up the day's date on wikipedia (because I'm in charge of my education now, dammit). Things that happened on May 11: Martha Graham was born, this happened, which may not have led directly to the Russo-Japanese war, but didn't help, William Pitt (the elder) died, Minnesota became a state, ( Read more... )

I started a new to-do list notebook a few weeks ago. Today I: DID fold laundry, mail bills, take vitamins, eat 4 cups fruit/vegetables, run, shower, bake bread. I DID NOT: get to work on time. I need to sort through the old notebook: books to read, funny street names, names of recipes, movies, colors. I wrote them down to remember to write them ( Read more... )

Movies
The Freshman
Fresh
Free Money
Foreign Correspondent
The Formula

Of these, Fresh and Foreign Correspondent are the best. In his commentary on Fresh, the director made the point that we often look forward to the violent scenes in movies the way we look forward to musical numbers. They're often the best edited and put-together bits and they' ( Read more... )

I ride from in-town to out-of-town every morning, and from out-of-town to in-town every evening, the reverse commute. To ameliorate congestion, half the rains headed out of town stop and turn around at Grosvenor-Strathmore, just outside the Beltway, midway through my commute. This means only every other train stopping at my platform in the morning ( Read more... )

A co-worker is going to see a theatrical production of The Screwtape Letters, and a discussion of his trip prompted this exchange:

"Do you know CS Lewis at all?"

"No, not really."

"He's probably one of the top 30 most-read authors."

"Oh, okay."

"He's up there with, uh, that Lord of the Rings guy."

I was looking online for flowers to send a friend and searched one site for jasmine. I got this response:

"Search term "jasmine" yielded 0 results. Did you mean "casino"?"

Surprisingly, they had 3 results for "casino".

Greg: Hey, I thought you might be interested in this: http://gizmodo.com/5605438/step-into-a-world-made-entirely-of-booksRead more... )

I love rain, it is good.

I love wind, it is my breath and it takes my breath.

I love trees, they are pure and true.

Unfortunately, I also love having internet access at home. I can't prove that the internet is good, pure, or true, but we don't get to choose whom we love.

When I see the word "Texas" my brain says it "Tay-hass!". If I then see another word ending in -as, it gets a little garbled. "Kansas" becomes "Kay-hass!" and "Arkansas" becomes "Ar-kay-hass!", etc.

I grow white eyebrow hairs, apparently.