Have you ever wanted to be a hardy Canadian explorer/fur trader or just look like one? Me neither. But just in case…

The Media Lab’s European outpost does work in “human connectedness,” which starts with the premise “Humans have a biological need for contact with other humans,” and intends “partly to develop technologies and experiences that allow us to build, maintain, and enhance the kinds of relationships we are used to having in new ways.” My initial […]

Microsoft has developed some probably interesting techniques for 3d reconstruction from 2d images. The BBC article has an interesting emphasis: “A virtual world that allows people to walk alongside the apostles or Christ himself has been created by researchers.” Granted the Christ reference appears to have come from one of the MS researchers, but why […]

I heard a rumor in my misspent youth that the major tobacco companies had registered trademarks such as “Acapulco Gold” and “Maui Wowie” in anticipation of the legalization of pot. For some reason, I recently remembered that rumor, and figured the gummint is sufficiently technologically advanced that I could find out, and indeed they are. […]

Harry Houdini not only hated spiritualists, he also had magnificent taste in stationery. (Later note: I can’t make this stupid link work. Try searching here for “houdini letterhead” and see all of the ones he had- I had chosen to highlight the most colorful one.)

I really like the American Memory exhibit “Architecture and Interior Design for the 20th Century: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner“. Because the photographs, taken between 1935 and 1955, are intended only to illustrate architectural form and detail they are mostly empty of people. The result is a wonderful assortment of empty landscapes. I’ve […]

Some Dutch commies seem to have a quite a nice assortment of digital exhibits, some with English info as well. All in all a pretty nice web site!

In what, as far as I know, is the first “success” for the DMCA, a guy selling mod chips for XBOX has been sentenced to five months of jail followed by five more months of house arrest and fined $28,500.

The King County Library System will no longer be holding their twice-yearly mega-sales of surplus books, but instead will be selling them through a jobber that will sell them on Amazon. Their first jobber was Sweethome, in Texas, but their warehouse was vandalized, wrecking great quantities of books. The second and current jobber is bLogistics […]

Headline from the Eastside Journal in 1941, “Agent Explains Care of Chickens After Blackout.”