Have I previously discussed my enjoyment of the word flux? I don’t think I have. In fact, I like the word enough that I’ve just officially adopted it for the next year at Adopt-A-Word. As the word’s new guardian, I will, of course, be traveling the web to ensure the word is not misused, or under-used. (This is a charity… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
The Sky
After having lived in Nova Scotia for eight years now, I take most things in stride. However, there’s one area in which I seem to have kept my beginner’s mind: appreciating the sky. The sky here never lets me down–at least not on the days you can actually see it. Several times a week I am literally stopped in my… Read more →
My Awesome Wife, Part 2
Having posted that, it occurs to me that I may still be projecting a picture that doesn’t show the entirety of Trish’s academic awesomeness. I am given to understand that most doctoral students have a very small number of publications, sometimes zero, during their doctoral programs–most are focused on their theses. Trish, on the other hand, has rather a lot… Read more →
My Awesome Wife, Part 1
My wife has a number of incredibly impressive qualities. Among other things she is smart, competitive, beautiful, organized, has a great smile, and has both enough good taste and enough insanity to have married me. I may not mention her sheet awesomeness much–but if so, that’s mostly for your benefit, and not because I don’t recognize it. But let me… Read more →
Natal Day Link Post
Holiday Monday has kept me too busy to properly blog, so you get a bit of a tab-closing list instead. I’m not sure that it covers anything new, but the piece from More Intelligent Life (the quarterly from the Economist) about authors and drinking was a fun read anyway. I’ve seen some stories about tough people in the news, but… Read more →
I am weary of days and hours
Earlier today I ran into this passage in the course of my wanderings: From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever gods may be That no life lives for ever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea. Now I’m generally not… Read more →
Conventional Wisdom Validated
Some things I have always posited as true: Women, in general, are more attractive than men. I.e. looking at the average woman, is a more aesthetically pleasing experience than looking at the average man. Men, on the whole, are more interested in appearance in a potential partner than women are, generally speaking. And now there’s some research that seems to… Read more →
15 Books
I noticed on Walter Jon Williams’ blog that there seems to be a meme going around about quickly listing 15 books that you think will always be with you. Williams suggests actually modifying the meme by taking some time to think, which is an idea that appeals to me. In some senses it’s ludicrous–I just had a professional mover estimate… Read more →
Smart Things: KSR on leaving the Earth
When I consider the solar system as our working neighborhood, I am reminded not of “the final frontier,” but of Antarctica. Our Antarctic stations are a bit like moon bases that we can reach with airplanes. We staff them with rotating crews, and carry out interesting and useful research, but fully inhabiting the ice is not crucial to progress in… Read more →
Going To Mars
Have you taken a moment to add your name to the 2011 Mars mission? I did, and I can prove it. I partly did because hey, it’s Mars, and partly because one of my poker group works on the Mars Rover. I can get a lot of comedy out of “my participation” in the project. Sure, he did the mechanical… Read more →
Visualization And Facts
Are you familiar with GapMinder? It’s a great resource for visualization of all kinds of interesting data. One particular visualization that I’ve been thinking about lately is this presentation of life expectancy, average income, and population for several countries over time. It tells a primarily positive story about what’s been happening in the world over the last couple of hundred… Read more →
Finder: Go Read It
No, I’m not talking about Emma Bull‘s 1994 novel Finder–although I think you should go read that too, and all the other Borderlands stuff. I’m talking about Carla Speed McNeil’s comic Finder. Why should you read it, you might ask? Well, I think it’s one of the best straight up science fiction comics out there, and I’ve been following it… Read more →
De Gustibus
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 willing to put up as… Read more →
Reinforcing My Anti-Powerpoint Stance
Of all the people with whom I’ve had in person discussions about the plague that is PowerPoint, no one is as vociferous in their denigration of that application, and the kinds of thinking and communication it encourages than IWith the possible exception of my wife, who has done things like present an academic paper at a conference–conferences tend to expect… Read more →
Deep Geekery: DD-WRT
So, because of the recently discovered vulnerability in DD-WRT, I figured it was time to update the firmware on my router. Yes, I know that since I don’t allow remote configuration of the router I was somewhat protected from the threat, but I was due for an upgrade anyway. However, I do have to ask myself why I always think… Read more →
