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Things that are better than they were:

Cars. In every metric. Safety, handling, speed, reliability. Cup holders! Across the board, every model is better than its counterpart, and not just by a little. It’s probably even arguable that every car sold in the US this year is better than any car sold up until about 1989. Maybe a ’63 Stingray is more […]

2016 03 17 Brent Comments Off on Things that are better than they were:

The blessing of autocorrect

Call it BWare’s Attribution: errors once deplored, or used as indicators or intellectual superiority, are now forgiven, as all our writings suffer the gentle ministrations of autocorrect.

2016 03 09 Brent Comments Off on The blessing of autocorrect

Airplane movie reviews, December-February Swiss

Swiss hasn’t really changed their lineup in three months, so it’s been kinda boring. They seem to have made a deal with the Broccoli family, so they have all 26 James Bond movies, and who really needs to see any of those again? But they do clutter up the lineup and take up all the […]

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2016 02 29 Brent Travel Comments Off on Airplane movie reviews, December-February Swiss

Seventeen years

  Congratulations, LIGO! Gravitational waves have been directly detected for the first time. Hulse and Taylor won a deserved Nobel for indirect detection, a measurement 13 years in the making. LIGO was longer in the making than that. This is such an impressive measurement! The first experiment I've worked on with a non-null result. I […]

2016 02 11 Brent Science Comments Off on Seventeen years

Menacing

There are few things more dangerous than a mom with a mobile in a minivan and a moppet at 7:45.

2016 01 29 Brent Bicycle Comments Off on Menacing

Credit where due

the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually […]

2015 10 28 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good
Science Comments Off on Credit where due

I welcome the House investigation of Brennan’s AOL account

Coming any minute now, one assumes. After they finish with Hillary's email server and Benghazi. Brennan is, after all, a man of such moral rectitude that I am sure he welcomes a full and open investigation.  

2015 10 21 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good Comments Off on I welcome the House investigation of Brennan’s AOL account

What are we going to do tonight?

Moore’s Law of Mad Science: Every eighteen months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point. –Eliezer Yudkowsky   Soon enough, it will be genetically modified mice we have to worry about hacking into OPM. I wonder if this takes into account the Flynn effect – IQ scores rise ~3/8 point […]

2015 10 02 Brent Because linking is an intrinsic good Comments Off on What are we going to do tonight?

As Seen On TV!

TIL: Sticking your fingers down your throat is not a reliable nor particularly easy way to make yourself vomit (don't ask). Darn you, TV! Once again you have lied to me. I am looking at you, Burn Notice. In my youth, I learned that hanging on to the hood of a moving car ASOTV is […]

2015 08 25 Brent Comments Off on As Seen On TV!

Cognitive dissonance

It's remarkable that it seems the same people who hold the view that, on Earth, self-driving cars will make the human driver obsolete are largely the same people who claim that, on Mars, self-driving science robots are so much worse than humans.

2015 08 19 Brent Science Comments Off on Cognitive dissonance

Away

I’ve been off climbing in one of my favorite places in the world. I might have some pix – I haven’t uploaded them yet to see, but given that it was pretty cloudy and wet and I was with someone who was completely and actively uninterested in my desire to make art, I didn’t take […]

2015 06 02 Brent Climbing
Photography
Travel Comments Off on Away

Putting things away

Not putting tools away says: I don’t respect others’ work. You’re saying, “The work I’m doing is important. I know where the tool is for the next time I need it because I know where I left it. However, the work you’re doing is not important. Because it’s not important, it’s ok for you to […]

2015 05 06 Brent Rant Comments Off on Putting things away

Disrupted

I installed a new car stereo this weekend [1], which has Bluetooth audio and phone and is in every way superior to the standard Toyota stereo [2]. Except that it looks like the sound system from a 1977 shag-carpeted pleather-lined van doubling as an on-call mobile cathouse. All the other ones in the Crutchfield catalog […]

2015 05 04 Brent Comments Off on Disrupted

Double yolked

I just went through a carton of a dozen TJ’s eggs, and 11 of them were double-yolked. There must be some folklore about that…

2015 05 03 Brent Comments Off on Double yolked

XO

This fellow gets fined an undisclosed amount for tagging a boulder in Joshua Tree. When the story is reported, you always see this photo: These folks are just super upset about this. As are these. Holy cow! Some furriner tagging the natural landscape in a national park! Get a rope! Of course there is no […]

2015 04 20 Brent Rant Comments Off on XO