Homo Sum:
humani nil a me alienum puto

And now for something outside my usual range… As I talk to more and more single people who are roughly my age, it becomes apparent to me that the Internet dating scene has become both gigantic and socially acceptable in the time I’ve been off the market–whatever stigma there once was to dating services has [...]

Collected from here and there about the networks, for your amusement or edification, I would really like to believe the story of Denny & Peach is a vignette that accurately captures a bit of the wonder of the world. But even if it’s a fiction, it’s a lovely little one. Also, SWORD CANE! Same thing [...]

Between this whole house-selling/house-buying thing, and the relatively insane week I’ve had at work, I have been neglecting the blog. Let’s catch up on a few things that have popped up in the meantime. I may have mentioned here before that I enjoyed Farmer’s Riverworld books (for getting me into Burton, among other things), and [...]

Normally you’d expect to visit an article titled 15 Ugliest Products Ever in order to have a bit of a drive-by laugh at what some people think is tasteful or interesting or whatever. Ugly is a subjective judgement, after all, but you do expect to be able to pretty well mock anything that someone is [...]

If I were playing Balderdash, or something similar1 and the term in question was “Paris syndrome” I am reasonably certain I would not guess the actual definition as the one most likely to be true–almost without regard to what the other choices might have been. Let me get this straight: for a small, but statistically [...]

You may recall that we’ve discussed the Drake Equation here before, and also Nick Bostrom’s efforts to amend it with what I called a Doom Constant. Well it turns out that a very plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox that doesn’t involve either post has been suggested by a cartoon over at Abstruse Goose. I [...]

Let’s see if we can close some of the myriad tabs I’ve opened in the process of trying to catch up with everything that happened in the non-work world while I was off spending time at the Melbourne office: I’m quite impressed at the 16-year old (from the city where I did my university days) [...]

Watching Maine becoming #5 this week, it occurs to me that while the process may be terribly slow from the perspective of people who just want to be treated equally (and I know I can only say that off-handedly since I already have all the privileges–white, male, straight, etc.) the whole thing is pretty much [...]

If you look at every one of these [derivative] products, they make sense. But in aggregate, they are bullshit. They are crap. They serve to cheat people. I have to say it: you have to do something about pay in the financial system. People in this field have way too much money. And this is [...]

You know, between the Heritage Minutes, Hinterland Who’s Who, and now the National Film Board’s online archives, it’s possible to have a really weird Canadian culture flashback online–at least for people my age. I don’t expect the Yanks to understand this post.

And now, a few observations about things completely unrelated to either North American election: That Wisdom book showed up today. Totally worth the money. It’s been a long time since I bought a “coffee table book”, but if I had a coffee table I’d be proud to leave this out on it. You know where [...]