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The Last Polaroid
Photographers today like to call their pictures "images". But when I was a kid, photographs weren't "images". "Images", to quote Abraham, are formless and void. When I was a kid, photographs had very...
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The End of Taxation
With the election cycle coming to a close here in the USA, there's lots of the usual talk about tax reform. During the campaign, Ron Paul, Mike Huckabee, and John McCain endorsed a "fair tax" -...
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The 2008 Ceci Award
Penny for the Guy? It's that time of year again; Guy Fawkes day is here, and with it comes the presentation of the annual Ceci award for the year's most significant contribution to clear thinking...
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Role Model
This is Brent Jeffery. I met him tonight on MARTA's Orange-line train from Atlanta Hartsfield airport to Lindbergh Center, and I'm in awe of what he does. To put it in perspective, I speak to...
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Martin
Today we celebrate Martin Luther King. What I celebrate him for, more than anything, is that he reminded us how to handle injustice. He did not handle injustice by attacking it, or by blaming others...
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The Zone of Essential Risk
Bruce and I recently had a bit of email conversation about his eBay Fraud blog entry. I emailed him saying that this incident is the fraud pattern for which escrow agents were invented; Investopedia...
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The Porkalypse, Blakley's Law, and the WHO
Swine Flu has been downgraded to Influenza Type A (H1N1) for the sake of the pigs, but the WHO Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response Phase is still at 5 ("A pandemic is imminent"). The Department...
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Cyber Security
The Obama administration released the results of its Cyber-Security Review last week. The report's conclusions and recommendations aren't going to do any harm, but they're not going to solve the...
View ArticleIn Memoriam
I'm breaking one of my rules because I can't bear to headline this entry with a picture. As if it weren't bad enough that American Airlines has just announced the demise of the "nerd bird" nonstop...
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Remembering Frank
Frank McCourt died today. Frank was famous for Angela's Ashes - his account of his "miserable Irish Catholic childhood". If you haven't read it, you should. He was a wonderful writer. Mostly by...
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Never a Small Step
"The day", to my grandparents's generation, was December 7th. To my parents', it was November 22. To me, and to my generation, "the day" is today - July 20. I like to think that Neil Armstrong fumbled...
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Goodbye, Don
Don Bowen died yesterday. He was 51 years and two days old - a bit older than me. He died of a brain tumor. I took the picture of Don you see above in San Diego's Gaslamp district on July 30. Don was...
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What Does DHS Think TSA's Job Is?
I've been puzzling over Janet Napolitano's comments in the wake of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's semi-successful attempt to ignite a bomb onboard a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas day. At first I...
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Not Worth Stealing
This week in movie news, Hitler has reactedbadly to the news that Constantin Films, who own the copyright to "Downfall", have issued a DMCA notice resulting in the removal of many "Downfall"-based...
View ArticleGreat Movie, Cheap Gear
While you're waiting for the New Studio's financials, take a second to watch "Uncle Jack": It's 5 minutes long, its story is far better than Avatar's and it was shot in three days with equipment you...
View ArticleMath Education Sucks the Same Way TV Sitcoms suck
Fascinating observation from Dan Meyer at TED. Bonus: shout-out to the iPhone as a cheap & easy way to produce compelling video to fix the math education problem.
View ArticleHow Much Do Movies Really Cost?
A while back I wrote about how much it costs Hollywood to make a movie, using Avatar as a (particularly depressing) example. Avatar seems to have cost about $237 million, of which $150 million went to...
View ArticleA Beautiful Short Film
How Football came to Panyee. This film is wonderfully made and tells an inspiring story in a little over 5 minutes. It doesn't hurt that the setting, Panyee Thailand, is one of the most beautiful...
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