Archive for August, 2009

Holy Tesla, Batman

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

I’m still trying to keep up with the TED talks, and today’s is a cool one for anyone interested in either Tesla or the concept of broadcast power generally. To be fair this is a much shorter-range version of broadcast power than Tesla was after, but still…
The presenter is the CEO of WiTricity, which is [...]

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SF Authors Say Smart Things: Stross on mercy

Monday, August 24th, 2009

The subjects vary — crime and penal policy, healthcare, don’t get me started on foreign policy — but there is an ideological approach in America that is distinguished by one common characteristic: words and deeds utterly lacking in the quality of mercy.
There is a cancer in the collective American soul — a mercy deficit that [...]

Posted in Political, Smart Things | No Comments »

I shall call her Dr. Wife

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Yes, I think the title captures the news from Friday: Trish is now a Doctor of Philosophy.
(She was assured that as a newly minted PhD she gets up to six months of people having to forgive her for being asinine about the doctor title–booking plane tickets with it, etc. I don’t know if she’ll [...]

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Book Porn

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

Yesterday was a marvelous mail day at the McLaren household. Through a confluence of mail karma–or possibly because our mailman seems to be skipping a day whenever he gets bored with the route–I had several books arrive from several different publishers. This will consequently be one long post full of book porn. If you’re not [...]

Posted in Books | 1 Comment »

Newish Old Music

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

Over the last day or so, I’ve been on an MP3-ripping rampage–I think I’ve done about 120 CDs in the last day or two. I’ve got a goal to get the rest of the CDs I’ve never got around to ripping (about 1000 or so) digitized before the end of the month, so that I [...]

Posted in Music | 2 Comments »

A continuous moving on

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Have I previously discussed my enjoyment of the word flux? I don’t think I have.
In fact, I like the word enough that I’ve just officially adopted it for the next year at Adopt-A-Word.

As the word’s new guardian, I will, of course, be traveling the web to ensure the word is not misused, or under-used.
(This is [...]

Posted in Science and Technology, Storytime | 1 Comment »

The Sky

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

After having lived in Nova Scotia for eight years now, I take most things in stride.
However, there’s one area in which I seem to have kept my beginner’s mind: appreciating the sky. The sky here never lets me down–at least not on the days you can actually see it. Several times a week I am [...]

Posted in General, Storytime | 2 Comments »

My Awesome Wife, Part 2

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

Having posted that, it occurs to me that I may still be projecting a picture that doesn’t show the entirety of Trish’s academic awesomeness.
I am given to understand that most doctoral students have a very small number of publications, sometimes zero, during their doctoral programs–most are focused on their theses.
Trish, on the other hand, has [...]

Posted in Storytime | 1 Comment »

My Awesome Wife, Part 1

Tuesday, August 4th, 2009

My wife has a number of incredibly impressive qualities. Among other things she is smart, competitive, beautiful, organized, has a great smile, and has both enough good taste and enough insanity to have married me.
I may not mention her sheet awesomeness much–but if so, that’s mostly for your benefit, and not because I don’t recognize [...]

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Natal Day Link Post

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

Holiday Monday has kept me too busy to properly blog, so you get a bit of a tab-closing list instead.

I’m not sure that it covers anything new, but the piece from More Intelligent Life (the quarterly from the Economist) about authors and drinking was a fun read anyway.
I’ve seen some stories about tough people in [...]

Posted in General, Linkapalooza | No Comments »

I am weary of days and hours

Sunday, August 2nd, 2009

Earlier today I ran into this passage in the course of my wanderings:
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.

Now I’m generally not all about welcoming the [...]

Posted in Books | No Comments »

Conventional Wisdom Validated

Saturday, August 1st, 2009

Some things I have always posited as true:

Women, in general, are more attractive than men. I.e. looking at the average woman, is a more aesthetically pleasing experience than looking at the average man.
Men, on the whole, are more interested in appearance in a potential partner than women are, generally speaking.

And now there’s some research that [...]

Posted in Science and Technology | 1 Comment »