A friend of mine recently pointed me to this TAL podcast on the invention of money. Its most important topic, which I plan to ignore in almost all of this post, is coverage of how the Federal Reserve, without printing a single scrap of paper, created 1.25 trillion dollars - $1.25 million million, $180 for every human being on the planet - without ( Read more... )

I'm trying to be on vacation here. World, what are you doing.

First, a public service announcement: be careful of emails that claim to be about the Boston bombing, as malware authors never miss an opportunity to exploit a tragedy. Gmail will probably filter it. Yahoo and Hotmail will probably not ( Read more... )

Yesterday I had a giggling fit while listening to the latest Nature podcast. The person credited as the father of epidemiology? Yeah, he's named John SnowHe is credited most famously for the discovery that cholera spreads via liquid rather than airborne contact. I imagine his detractors in the miasma theory camp saying "You know nothing, Jo[h]n ( Read more... )

For reasons I don't quite follow, we've been getting mailers from motivational seminars that focus on the Law of Attraction, the silly idea that one's wants/desires/thoughts have decisive influence on how the universe behaves ( Read more... )

"Truth be told, I long for a bit of dullness ( Read more... )

"Meteorites are nature's way of asking, 'How's that space program coming along ( Read more... )

It's easy to deal with being busy. At least, we know what we're supposed to be doing. And those times when we're fried and need to distract ourselves with something utterly pointless? No problem: pull up a Flash game or read a trashy novel or watch some asinine TV show. But what about those times when we feel like we want something to do, but can't ( Read more... )

...that's all folks.

New blog at Dreamwidth. Please send me a friend request (or the equivalent), as I don't know yet how to find people.

So long, LJ. It's been something.

I've decided I'm moving over to Dreamwidth to restart a public blog in the next 2-3 months. I'll post the address once I've actually created the account. It'll be at least a few weeks. Right now I'm getting over a sinus infection, next week is packed with audits and three new projects at work, next weekend I'm flying to Seattle for a venture ( Read more... )

It's been an exhausting couple of weeks. But before I get into that, let's talk about ( Read more... )