February 22, 2010 – 11:13 pm
As far as nifty gadgets go, it would be hard to top the computerized anti-mosquito laser cannon we showed you a few days ago. But a German tinkerer has certainly come up with an impressive little toy. Video here.
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February 11, 2010 – 11:22 pm
Well, whatever Iran had planned for today appears to have been a bit of a fizzle, at least as far as a “blow” to the West is concerned; indeed even the link I posted yesterday appears to be down. Any heavy blows were apparently reserved for the political opposition, and delivered by the Basiji. Don’t [...]
January 14, 2010 – 11:50 pm
I’m in rather a bit of discomfort sitting at the computer tonight, having pulled, with a loud “pop”, something in my after rigging while teaching class earlier this evening. So I’ll leave you for now with an advisory item that’s been making the rounds about online security. Here.
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January 7, 2010 – 12:28 am
Not being a man of independent means, I’ve been selling off my dwindling store of days just to earn a crust. As it happens I sold off almost all of this one, and so have none of it left for writing. That means it’s time to add another weightless diversion to our “shameless filler” category. [...]
November 3, 2009 – 11:35 pm
With a hat tip to my friend and former employer Bob Wyman, here’s a clever way to get people to take the stairs.
October 27, 2009 – 10:53 pm
Heading wearily home on the subway late this evening, I skimmed an item in today’s Times — Waiter, There’s A Gavel In My Soup — in which the author Gay Talese described finding himself at the table next to Chief Justice John Roberts’s last Saturday evening at a cozy little Upper [...]
October 27, 2009 – 10:31 pm
With deadlines looming over me once again at work, I’m frazzled. It looks like it’s going to be another Shameless Filler Week here at waka waka waka.
Our Muse tonight is Terpsichore, as we present a video clip — sent our way by the lovely Nina — in which we meet Elvyna, [...]
September 14, 2009 – 11:00 pm
Ah, the healing power of music. Here.
It’s been a busy day of roistering at the wedding of a friend, and the little grey cells are in no shape to get behind the keyboard. So for tonight, all I can offer is a diverting little link, sent our way by reader JK. Here.
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Here’s something curious. I have no idea if this video — allegedly taken from a camera being snaked through a sewer line in North Carolina — is real or fake, or, if real, whther it depicts something already well-known or utterly strange. What the hell are these things? They look like [...]
I’m working very late tonight (and for the rest of the week), and have no time for brooding and scribbling — so for this evening, I’m afraid all I have to offer is froth and diversion. Here, then, are the great Harpo Marx, and his namesake, collaborating on a familiar theme.
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Here, if you haven’t seen it, is an amusing item from YouTube: how would Microsoft have marketed the iPod?
March 13, 2009 – 10:34 pm
Not much time for writing this evening, so it’s time for some Shameless Filler. In tonight’s edition: The 50 Worst Cars Of All Time.
January 19, 2009 – 10:29 pm
Software engineers often imagine that Google must be just the best place to work. A couple of years ago I visited a friend who works in their New York office (which then was in Times Square), and I have to say it looked pretty good: a beautiful, modern office with all sorts of worker-friendly touches: [...]
December 15, 2008 – 1:59 pm
Having trouble getting in the Christmas spirit? With yet another hat tip to our reader ‘JK’, here’s a story that has it all: solid religious content, a prophet in the wilderness, and, if the story’s true, an impressive display of lights.
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December 3, 2008 – 10:05 pm
I have several email accounts, and I get plenty of spam, just everybody else. Every now and then, though, something comes in that I simply cannot, for the life of me, imagine why anyone would bother to send. Here’s the latest example:
Hello ,
Am David i want to know if u carry (Aluminum Planks) For Sale. [...]
November 15, 2008 – 9:00 pm
Well, seven, now; I should have penned this post back in August, when the title was most apt.
But there are definitely strange things afoot in British Columbia: story here.
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November 13, 2008 – 10:04 pm
This from today’s Borowitz Report:
November 13, 2008
Bush in Race against Time to Wreck Country
Legacy of Destruction at Stake
Confounding the conventional wisdom that he is a lame duck president with no agenda as his days in office dwindle, President George W. Bush is redoubling his efforts to mutilate the country before his term expires, aides confirmed [...]
October 16, 2008 – 2:37 pm
We’re traveling this evening, and there won’t be much time for writing. But as you know, I hate to send you along empty-handed — so here is a particularly gratifying video clip, courtesy of Alex Bragg, one of my younger (and more formidable) training brothers down at the kwoon.
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October 14, 2008 – 10:46 pm
Google has, for ten years now, been an amazing engine of creativity. Not content with their brand literally becoming a synonym for Internet search, they have kept up a steady output of innovative technology: GMail, GTalk, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Sky, Google Moon, Google Mars, Google Groups, Google Book Search, and on and on. [...]
October 4, 2008 – 11:54 pm
It’s been a busy couple of days, and having had scant time for reading, quiet reflection, or writing, I have nothing original to offer this evening. But I hate to send you off empty-handed, so I invite you all to have a look at this year’s winners of the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize, which included [...]
September 28, 2008 – 12:35 am
I do wish I weren’t so susceptible to the enervating effect of warm, damp weather. Today was exactly that: overcast and misty, without the slightest stirring of a breeze, too warm for comfort (mine, at least), with the humidity pegged at 100%. In me these conditions induce a feeble-minded torpor, a morose lassitude, an otiose [...]
September 22, 2008 – 11:55 pm
Today was the first day of autumn, which means it will be Christmas before you know it, and once again we’ll be racking our brains to find just the right gift for those hard-to-shop-for people on our list. My mother-in-law is a good example; she is is a woman of refined and particular tastes, and [...]
September 8, 2008 – 10:04 pm
It is difficult sometimes, I will confess, to maintain a steady stream of penetrating insight and infectious wit. Although I know the pen is mightier than the sword, sometimes the flow of ideas is restricted, and occasionally, even despite all the momentous events transpiring in continents far away — like the approaching activation [...]
August 18, 2008 – 12:05 pm
We are on holiday at our little seaside retreat, and the schedule is simply so demanding — sleeping, loafing on the beach, swimming in Wellfleet’s cool and limpid kettle ponds and the backshore’s bracing surf, sampling the area’s toothsome viands, strolling through town, visiting with friends, brushing up my Iron Wire out on [...]
August 5, 2008 – 10:55 pm
The subset of our behavior, dispositions, reactions, and so forth that happens with our conscious awareness and endorsement is trivially small, and one of the areas where we respond most automatically and unconsciously is our interaction with others. We react subliminally to an enormous variety of cues: posture, gesture, tone of voice, choice of [...]
After a splendid repast with my lovely wife Nina at an outstanding local eatery, I sat down at the computer late this evening resolved finally to get a meaty post written on at least one of the topics I’ve had in my sights this weekend. At the front of the queue are responses to provocative [...]
A couple of weeks ago my old friend Carl Sturken, with whom I’ve been knocking about since fifth grade, called me up to ask if I felt like joining in a pickup band to play at a 35th reunion for the Princeton Day School class of 1973. (I’m not an official member of the class, [...]
April 12, 2008 – 10:08 pm
It’s my birthday this weekend, on Sunday, April 13th. (I’m 52.) I’ve been taking a little break: just reading and puttering around up here in Wellfleet, and scrupulously avoiding any serious brainwork or controversial posts (I love the rough-and-tumble of a good debate, but the little grey cells needed a rest). So here’s another undemanding [...]
I’ll be traveling later today, and off the air until tomorrow at the earliest. So for now, here is an enormous, time-wasting distraction to keep you occupied.
March 13, 2008 – 10:52 pm
I got home quite late tonight, and serious scribbling is not in the cards. So go to this website, install Silverlight if you haven’t already, and have a look at where we’ve got to in the presentation of visual data.
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Here’s a nice shot: the Earth and Moon as seen from Mars.
February 27, 2008 – 3:49 pm
From my lovely wife Nina comes a link to a restaurant that gives new meaning to the phrase “haute cuisine”. I don’t know how the food is, but you certainly get the atmosphere.
Have a look here.
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December 20, 2007 – 11:55 pm
This is a busy time, and although there are some weighty topics to return to, I think they may have to wait until things quiet down a bit.
But there’s a bottomless well of entertaining material to pass along, and tonight I offer a tasty morsel.
From my old friend, the great recording engineer Larry Alexander, [...]
December 18, 2007 – 1:47 am
Here’s an entertaining article on pentagonal tilings. (I worked rather late tonight…)
December 10, 2007 – 10:41 pm
Have you ever heard of symbolics.com? I hadn’t either. But this humble domain has an important distinction: it was the first .com name ever registered.
If you’re curious, you can find a list of the first 100 here.
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November 21, 2007 – 12:06 am
I don’t usually go in for sensational, gruesome stories in these pages, but having spent so much time today wrangling with commenters on the previous post, well, what the heck. Have a look here.
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November 9, 2007 – 11:45 pm
Some pressing personal matters having laid claim to my attention these past two days, I have had no time for writing. So for tonight, it’s “America’s Finest News Source” to the rescue, with two important stories. The first describes a startling discovery that might be just what our flagging economy needs, and the second follows [...]
October 18, 2007 – 10:57 pm
There are several things in the news that are worth mentioning tonight; in particular I’d like to ruminate a bit on the James Watson imbroglio. But I’ve just got back from teaching class down at the kwoon, and it’s too late to begin a long post (especially as my forearms are a bit banged up, [...]
September 27, 2007 – 11:34 pm
I do apologize for the paucity of content around here this week. But don’t go away mad: here, with a hat tip to my friend Greg Estren, is some fabulous video footage of the exotic fauna of the ocean’s abyssal depths. Do have a look.
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September 17, 2007 – 11:45 pm
I’ve been swamped, and have had no time for the sort of brooding and omphaloskepsis required for gestating these posts. But today my friend Louis Franzetti sent along a copy of some recent Darwin Awards, and to keep you occupied this evening I offer a link that pops up a randomly chosen example every time [...]
August 25, 2007 – 10:40 pm
We are still more occupied with sun and surf than the glowing screen, but will be back in town, with nose reapplied to grindstone, this week.
Meanwhile, a rather odd item from the frontiers of astrophysical research: it appears that there is an enormous hole in the visible universe, a billion light-years across. Lately it [...]
August 23, 2007 – 4:52 pm
The publication schedule here at waka waka waka may be a little gappy for the next few days: we are off on a family vacation (a rarity these days, with both kids entering early adulthood), and squinting at the computer for hours on end fits poorly into our activities schedule. We will, however, post up [...]
From my former PubSub colleague Mike Zaharee comes a delightful link: history’s greatest spacewalks.
I’m not quite myself tonight. Not only has the ghastly heat and fetor here in Gotham reduced me to a gibbering wretch, but at the end of the day I visited my periodontist, Dr. Louis Franzetti, who implanted two small screws in my upper jaw, as part of an ongoing cakehole-reconstruction project roughly on the [...]
Here’s an odd little item that popped up in the news yesterday: a strange ball of light (which, curiously, seems to cast a sort of shadow) moseying around the parking lot of the First Judicial Courthouse in Santa Fe, NM. It was picked up by a surveillance camera, and the video has been making the [...]
Making good once again on my offer of weightless froth, here, with a hat tip to Jon Mandell, is a preposterous little item, involving a police officer who confiscated some marijuana, baked it into brownies, and shared them with his wife. Hilarity ensues.
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We’re traveling again tonight, so for now I’ll just offer readers an uplifting news item, in which we are told that South American doctors can immediately spot male patients who have been bitten by the Brazilian wandering spider. Apparently, their symptom precedes them.
Learn more here.
P.S. We wish to reassure you that this post’s proximity to [...]
We will return to weightier matters as soon as time permits, but meanwhile:
You may think you know plenty about duck phalluses, but you have nothing on one Dr. Patricia Brennan, who has made the study of the anatine willy her life’s work. Most male birds, in fact, are entirely ajohnsonal, but ducks buck this trend [...]