My friend Jenny asked me the other day why refrigerated wine tastes so mellow, compared with the flavor explosion you get with room-temperature wine. It’s a great question, and the principle behind it is so important – you see it every day of your life, whether you know it or not. It’s the concept… Read more »
Monthly Archives:: June 2012
MediaWiki, Blockquotes, and CSS
The Problem I recently ran into some trouble getting some <blockquote> sections of my wiki to show up and be rendered properly. I defined a CSS style called “quote,” which I wanted to apply to some excerpts from books that I was quoting in an article on my wiki. First, I defined the CSS “quote”… Read more »
Technological Skepticism and the Short Stories of Philip K. Dick
It’s Complicated I want you to think about the one piece of technology in your life that would be the hardest to do without. Take a mental inventory of your desk, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, garage, your pockets, and think of all of the technologies there, and how you would deal with each one disappearing… We… Read more »
Ulysses Goggles
In March of 2011, the way that I read books changed. Indeed in changing the way that I read books, I also changed the way that I watch movies, read plays, and listen to music. The seeds of the change were in place long before, but it was not until that March that they came… Read more »
Major League Biasball
I loathe football. It’s how I was raised. I was raised in a baseball household, and I have many fond childhood memories listening to Vin Scully call Dodger baseball on the radio, or watching the newly-minted Diamondbacks franchise playing in Bank One Ballpark. But I have come to avoid baseball, to loathe it in the… Read more »
Five Things to Ask Weasels and Peacocks When You See Them (Toastmasters Speech)
“Bob Dylan is the defining figure of 1960s counterculture, and a brilliant songwriter. Some people call him the king of folk, some people call him the godfather of hip hop. But everyone will agree, he’s one of the greatest musicians ever.” That sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s got a nice ring to it, a nice… Read more »