More Wisdom from Cliff Stoll As often happens, I write on a particular topic and then find something else to add a few days or weeks later. Well, it happened again with Cliff Stoll. I had seen his TED Talk, but I had forgotten a few critical statements he made near the beginning. This is […]
Kellen The morning was spent on his usual routine, hair. There…it finally looks perfect. He got the desired look, the one of a douche-bag, the kind that drives the young (and sometimes not so young) women crazy. Kellen climbed into his beater RV, not a Corvette or a Mustang. Sure, he could have just as […]
Cliff Stoll To a mathematician, I’m a pretty good physicist… To a physicist, I’m a fairly good computer maven. To real computer jocks, they know me as somebody who’s a good writer. To people who know how to write … I’m a really good mathematician! Cliff Stoll Wired.com 12/18/19 Cliff Stoll sells Klein Bottles […]
Air Effects: a second-person account of an individual who picks up an almost empty can of air freshener. You are in your upstairs library; you appear to be reading Proust. Your thoughts, though, are not on the text. Let’s begin there. Things seem normal until you put down a half-eaten madeleine and pick up […]
The Inuit Sergio the Eskimo, that is what everyone called him. No one meant anything mean by it, it was just that his real name was way too hard to pronounce. No one knew his back story (no one ever cared enough to ask). The other tenants in his apartment complex would see him around […]
I posted a video I put together of a song by The WRB Project. Give this one a listen. Justin wrote it for his late sister. I really like it, it is powerful. As always, videos are shot with a budget of zero. We use the best equipment we can scrounge up. The point is […]
Nonplussed Aside from all the racial and cultural epithets that are being hurled with more and more frequency, there is a particular word that I genuinely do not like. It constantly confuses me; its use makes me stumble and bumble even though I am very familiar with it. I’ve seen it written and heard it […]
It’s a Beautiful Day for Baseball! I just heard that the great Joe Tait died. The news was not unexpected; he was old and had several health problems. Still… This I know, Joe’s voice was the theme music of my youth. It was Joe who would let me know that “The Cavs are going right […]
Truth Machine I am a boxing fan. There is something about two people standing face to face in a ring that is pure and primal. And yes, sometimes I think the sport should be outlawed. But then I watch a little UFC, and I realize boxing is tame in comparison. I find mixed martial arts […]
Subtle is as Subtle does, the Strange but True Story of 13 over 27 I have studied lots of different subjects. The most slippery is easy to identify. It is probability theory. Problems in this branch of statistics trip up experts (and me) all the time. There are lots of stories of famous scholars who […]