I’ve been coming to Boston several times a year for work for something like 13 years now. There are several pockets of the greater Boston area that I know really, really well. One such pocket is the area between exits 27 (Waltham) and 32b (Burlington) on I-95 (or “the 128” when you talk to natives.) In the 13 years I’ve… Read more →
Author: Mr. McLaren
Vacation Note #1: Double-check Manny’s work.
While Manny may seem like a very nice guy, especially after you’ve been driving for 12 hours and just want a hotel room to lie down in, you should really take the time to double check his work. For example, when you say “Hubley, Nova Scotia”, Manny apparently hears “Monterey, California”. And, perhaps more importantly, when you say “King, No… Read more →
On Vacation
OK, not really fishing, but spending a lot of time with the family this week, and not thinking about work AT ALL. I may have time to blog in the evenings, or I may be too exhausted from family fun. Don’t expect much, and it will be a (pleasant?) surprise if I have time to post something. Read more →
A More Explicit Punctuation?
That’s the “irony mark“, one of a set of proposed additions to punctuation. Others proposed include the doubt point (), certitude point (), acclamation point (), authority point (), indignation point (, essentially ¡), and love point ( or ). On the one hand, I think the idea of punctuation that can be used to explicitly distinguish some “attitude” aspects… Read more →
A congeries of iridescent globes
(Pi, originally uploaded by [P!]Wack.) This graphical representation of pi sure looks like an autostereogram to me. If you click through and look at the large version, and then sort of relax your eyes, you can faintly start to hear a soft chanting of “Y’Ai’Ng’Ngah Yog-Sothot H’Ee-L’Geb F’Ai Trhodog Uaaaah“. If at that point an image of a veil parting… Read more →
A Gentle Madness
Books are coming into my house much faster than I am reading them. Books very rarely go out of my house–I really, really try not to take in stuff that I won’t like well enough to keep, so it’s rare that something is inside that I am willing to part with. Obviously if things are coming in at a greater… Read more →
No longer a green shoot
In a folder in my office are a bunch of pieces of paper, each of which has a nicely formatted poem or quotation. At some point they were either posted in my cubicle, back in the days when I worked outside the house, or else they were framed and displayed in my house during the days before I had art.… Read more →
Some genre bits
I’ve been of the mind for a while now that there was a hole in my book collection that needed to be filled with a copy of William Hjortsberg‘s Falling Angel. Well, I see where Millipede Press is doing a lovely new edition, and with an introduction by James Crumley, no less! I think, though, that I’ll just get the… Read more →
Hanging Around The House: Still Unhung
Earlier this month I took advantage of the “50% of custom framing” offer at Michael’s to get a frame put on the large Michael Zulli oil painting, “Na Tire Finne”, that I mentioned previously. I picked it up today, and I think it looks great in the frame: Apparently the frame the canvas is stretched on (as opposed to the… Read more →
Educate Yourself On Darwin
Here’s another way to educate yourself that I ran into online today. The Guardian ran a piece on the opening of an online archive of the complete works of Charles Darwin. Here’s a quote: The collection brings Darwin’s breathtaking range of writing together for the first time, with 50,000 pages of searchable text, and tens of thousands of images, many… Read more →
Educate yourself.
You know, if you manage to avoid spam, porn, and piracy, there are lots of ways to communicate with intelligent people and educate yourself on the internet. The classic example, of course, would be academics. Improving communication amongst academics was one of the first purposes of the internet. Ironically most of the journals are locked up behind a copyright wall–journal… Read more →
Torture and the English Language
Well, it’s official now. Bush has signed the Torture Without Habeas Corpus bill into law: Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Law President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a “vital tool” in the war against terrorism. If the facts of the story aren’t already chilling enough,… Read more →
Elegant Anti-DRM Statement
For my money that’s the best of the winners of the FreeCulture.org contest to produce anti-DRM video. So elegant. Read more →
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
My favourite evolution-in-schools story this week: Apparently Michigan has at least some sense. The State Board of Education on Tuesday approved public school curriculum guidelines that support the teaching of evolution in science classes — but not intelligent design. … “The intent of the board needs to be very clear,” said board member John Austin, an Ann Arbor Democrat. “Evolution… Read more →
