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I Can Has Cheezburger? is for me the Bee Gees of Web culture: a guilty pleasure which I sometimes feebly try to justify, but usually have to admit is just silly.
For some reason, this one really amuses me. (And confuses me: what IS that keyboard?)
Though few images are as brilliant as "Bat Country:"
Letterpress flooring
via Flickr
Can I get these when we redo the flooring in the hall, I wonder?
Fail
via Flickr
The Satanic holiday of Halloween, the culturally corrupting influence of Hollywood, and the threat of Nazislamawhatever, all in one (admittedly cute) package. As a friend IMed me, "this screams ALL YOUR DAUGHTER ARE BELONG TO OSAMA".
I had clothes like this when I was a kid.
[To the tune of Heart, "Magic Man," from the album "Dreamboat Annie".]
Just had a small earthquake. The house shook a little, and it probably lasted about 30 seconds or so; but nothing fell over.
Update: Not so small: 5.6, centered about-- oh heck, here it is on Google Earth:
Update 2: It was on the Calaveras fault, as you can see by superimposing the KML file that the USGS just generated, and a KMZ file from the USGS showing the locations of Bay Area fault lines.
I love Google Earth.
Technorati Tags: earthquake, Google Earth, menlo park, visualization
Joe McCarthy told me about a great essay by Stanford philosophy professor John Perry. I finally got around to looking at it, mainly as a way of avoiding writing to participants in a conference session I'm moderating later this week.
Appropriately, the essay is about "structured procrastination."
I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. All procrastinators put off things they have to do. Structured procrastination is the art of making this bad trait work for you. The key idea is that procrastinating does not mean doing absolutely nothing. Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things...
You can also buy the t-shirt.
[To the tune of Sound Tribe Sector 9, "Breathe In," from the album "2004-12-31 - Tabernacle".]
Technorati Tags: psychology, work
Fin de Siècle Lolcat
via Flickr
This is brilliant. Apparently this is an old ad.
From the Reuters wire:
Alzheimer's memory loss faster among well-educated
Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer's disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly, researchers said on Monday....
Every year of education delayed the accelerated memory decline that precedes dementia by about 2-1/2 months, according to the researchers at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.
But once this memory loss began, the rate of decline unfolded 4 percent more quickly for each additional year of education, the researchers said.
Someone with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education, based on the findings.
[To the tune of Neil Young, "Powderfinger," from the album "Weld".]
I guess Paul Saffo wasn't answering his phone yesterday: that would explain why the Mercury News called me for a quote in today's article about Microsoft's place in Silicon Valley. Bottom line: in Silicon Valley, Microsoft is seen as a little less dangerous, but not necessarily less evil.
[To the tune of Fleetwood Mac, "What Makes You Think You're The One," from the album "The Very Best of Fleetwood Mac".]
Technorati Tags: media, Silicon Valley
I'm a research director at the Institute for the Future, a think tank in Silicon Valley. I'm also an Associate Fellow at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, and a Senior Research Scholar in the Science Technology and Society program at Stanford University.
At the Institute, I work on the future of science and technology. In my free time I'm working on a book on the end of cyberspace. More details are available in my c.v. (PDF). My first book, Empire and the Sun: Victorian Solar Eclipse Expeditions, was published by Stanford University Press in 2002.
I also keep up-to-date profiles on LinkedIn and Facebook.
The banner is from a picture taken by Anthony Townsend, while we were walking along Raday Utca in Budapest, Hungary, October 2007.
Click to leave me a voice message using Grand Central.
Contact me via Skype.
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