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A cautionary tale for Vista users with automatic updates turned on
Last night I left a long computation running on my Microsft Windows Vista machine at work. When I came in the next day, I found my computer restarted. It was just happily sitting there, blank faced, waiting innocently for me to do something as if nothing had happened. A little too innocently, if you ask […]
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How to turn off automatic restart after updates on Vista
After enjoying the satisfaction of being protected from harmful viruses by having Vista destroy more work in one badly timed restart than I’m likely to ever lose to a virus, I looked into how to fix this while still leaving automatic updates on. As usual with Microsoft products, there’s no problem that can’t be fixed […]
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How to drive to and from Logan without a toll
I’ll depart from my usual genre of pointless complaining to actually put up something of use. Well, at least of use to the 1% of my readers who live in Boston. (Which prompts the following Zen koan-like question: what is 1% of ten people?) So, if you don’t live here, may I suggest you read […]
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Studies show reading this essay will make you smarter
Thus, by focusing on studies that seek to overturn existing belief, there may be an inherent bias in the medical profession to find false results. If so, it’s possible that a significant percentage of published studies are wrong, far in excess of that suggested by the published significance level of the studies.
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How modern art can be so horrid
I think the basis of the decline of visceral appeal in modern art of all types is the intellectuallization of something that can not, and should not, be treated as such. By replacing the true but inarticulable beauty of real art with the falsely eloquent self-referential theories of academic art, they broke it free from its only real basis: human reaction.
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A now a quick word from the late Norman Mailer…
Today’s Wall Street Journal includes a great quote from Norman Mailer, who recently managed to revive his career by dying: I always felt [Timothy] Leary really was a sort of bland asshole. What was it: “Turn on, tune in, drop out?” I thought he absolutely was wasting a generation. So I have nothing good to […]
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Sarkozy’s brilliant game with the unions
Following up on my last posting about the brinksmanship of digital camera manufacturers, I think it only makes sense that we move on to discussing French politics. As the French transportation strike lumbers on into a second week, Sarkozy still has done nothing about it, leading to questions as to exactly what he’s up to. […]
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Digital camera buying tip from an engineer
Last week my digital camera (Canon A610) died, after only two years of light service. (It turns out that a large batch of cameras made by Canon late 2005 had a bad CCD connector which tends to die after a year or two.) While I was obviously frustrated, part of me was also secretly happy […]
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Review: Olympus SP-560UZ
I switched to this camera from a Canon A610 that died on me. The first thing I noticed with this camera is that the picture quality on my $200 Canon was better or equal than this $400 camera. The dynamic range is poor, with skies often washed out to white. Like many “super-zoom” cameras competing […]
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Transhumanism’s first target
I’m thinking of having my teeth completely replaced by implants. We did not evolve to live to be 90, and our teeth are in no way equiped to make the journey with us. We spend ridiculous amounts of our time brushing them, filling their defects, having them pulled and replaced and straightened, all so that […]