I don’t really feel that sense of the end of something, and of something new beginning that we’re meant to feel at the start of a new year. I haven’t gone through any reflecting, and sizing up of 2005, because I don’t feel that usual sense of demarcation that the holiday season typically generates–I just feel each day as part… Read more →
Month: January 2006
H.G.P.A.
Have you noticed I talk a lot on this blog about my weekly poker game? This is some more of that–I should make a category for this so people can skip these posts if they don’t care. What you’re looking at there is a scan of some playing cards featuring the crest & slogan of the Halifax Gentlemen’s Poker Association… Read more →
SF authors say smart things (Part 2)
Responding on his message-board-cum-blog to a question about writing and “staying in the moment” Christopher Moore (whom I’ve mentioned here before) goes on at length about Buddhist concepts and their relation to the arts. Here’s the nub of what he says: In my studies I ran across an interview with Wynton Marsalis, wherein he compares Jazz to Sumi-e. What he… Read more →
SF authors say smart things (Part 1)
I’ve been doing a lot of talking about how silly “Intelligent Design” theory is, but deep thinking SF writer Karl Schroeder has pointed out that I (and a whole bunch of other folks, including almost everyone more optimistic about humanity than I am) may have been guilty of making the same mistake in the other direction: The idea that organisms… Read more →
Understanding my weekly game
I’ve always been interested in the idea of information visualization–that there are better ways to present information than the simple ones we always use. In fact, I once wrote a university paper on things that were experimental at the time, like transparently overlaid GIS information, etc. In this spirit, I present the eight other players in my weekly poker game,… Read more →
100 things we didn’t know this time last year
Each week BBC’s “the Magazine” picks out snippets from the news, and compiles them into 10 Things We Didn’t Know This Time Last Week list. They’ve put the lists from 2005 together and made a master list of 100 things we didn’t know this time last year. Here’s a couple of snippets to encourage you to click through: 8. Devout… Read more →
US government warns it’s running out of cash
OK, let’s just quickly check out the article: US government warns it’s running out of cash Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months. In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed… Read more →
