|
|
 |
Dr. Samuel Says
|
Weirdness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 29 October 2009 |
I am always cheered when I see signs of governmental initiative. Too often, bold proposals are dragged down by bureaucracy and general political inertia. Or weak-willed naysayers. Or, in this case, sanity.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 October 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Arts & Science
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
I’ll tell you one nice thing about the H1N1 virus, it opens up a lot of time for home entertainment. After getting virally stomped last week, I spent an alarming amount of time in the Dyscern World HQ Labs digging into the DVD stack. At one point, I formulated an awesomely complex theory regarding Marxist-feminist subtext in the John Hughes oeuvre. But that was probably the cough suppressant.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 October 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Friday, 02 October 2009 |
Ever since my vintage 1962 Airstream mobile home was sucked up by a tornado in Oklahoma, I’ve been interested in the idea of alternative housing. As you know, I spend the bulk of my time in a series of undisclosed underground locations, thanks to various corporate assassins and Interpol warrants. But I occasionally like to take the Dyscern World HQ lab monkeys on vacation. They particularly enjoy Colonial Williamsburg, for some reason. I've found, however, that very few hotels are willing to accomodate 14 rhesus monkeys. So we often have to look for alternative rentals.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 02 October 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Bidness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 27 August 2009 |
I keep thinking Twittermania is going to calm down and go away, but it seems that it’s only gaining momentum. I rather admire the discipline and efficiency required to communicate in 140-character bursts, but the misspellings and arcane acronyms make me crazy. I’m the sort of fellow who still composes emails as if they were official correspondence. Using, you know, grammar and stuff.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 27 August 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 12 August 2009 |
Skimming through the latest edition of AER Journal: Research and Practice in Visual Impairment and Blindness, I came across an interesting item. It seems that researchers have found some success using videogames to help the blind improve real-world navigation skills. But, you are asking, how can the blind play videogames? Well, you’ll be amazed…
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 August 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Weirdness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 29 July 2009 |
As loyal readers are aware, I sampled several careers before settling into my current R&D post here at Dyscern World HQ Labs. CIA analyst. Fashion model. New Zealand Poet Laureate. This sort of thing. For many years, I dabbled in the theater. I had a few plays produced Off Broadway in the 1940s. Well, Off-Off Broadway. Actually, if I am to be completely honest, the technical term would be Off14 Broadway.
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 29 July 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Arts & Science
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Friday, 17 July 2009 |
“Is that a lunar landing module in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?” A girl tried using this joke to pick me up last night at the big NASA party in Pasadena. Not a bad opening line, and turns out she had the science to back it up. Turns out the computers used in the Apollo 11 moon landing had the approximate computing power of a modern cell phone. So bear this in mind. Many of the items available right here at Dyscern are powerful enough to navigate a manned spacecraft to the moon.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 17 July 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 09 July 2009 |
According to my calculations, the most annoying entity in the universe is the iPhone owner who lords his gadget over non-iPhone-owning friends. This isn’t just personal experience or anecdotal evidence (though both apply) -- it is raw, empirical data. I’d show you the algorithm, but I currently have it up for bid to Apple’s competitors. I’m expecting seven figures.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 09 July 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Friday, 26 June 2009 |
Back when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, we didn’t have the technology available to students today. Papers were written by hand, or laboriously pecked out on manual typewriters. No overhead projectors or PowerPoint presentations, either -- just cranky old tenured professors with chalk, blackboards, and dubious leftist politics.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 26 June 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 28 May 2009 |
In the interest of research, I recently convinced the Powers That Be here at Dyscern to outfit the labs with latest in console gaming technology. I like to track emerging trends in graphic engines and game design, and the rhesus monkeys like to play Fallout 3. Something about the destruction of the human race seems to delight them.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 28 May 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Weirdness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Friday, 15 May 2009 |
Taking the train into work today, I spent some time flipping through the latest USPTO patent applications, which I like to do between Soduku and calculating pi a few thousand more digits. Keeps me on my toes, you know. Some might find browsing patent applictions tedious, but I find it can be quite rewarding, if you don't mind the rather wooden prose style.
|
|
Last Updated ( Friday, 15 May 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Smart Design
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
Through a complicated set of circumstances -- involving off-track betting, Interpol, and a briefcase full of Krugerrands -- I recently agreed to babysit my five-year-old nephew Farnsworth for a week. (Don’t ask -- family name). He’s already wrecked several ongoing experiments here at Dyscern World HQ Labs, and somehow managed to leave a juice box in the hermetically sealed nanocluster chamber.
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 May 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Weirdness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Thursday, 30 April 2009 |
|
In William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, computer viruses were more than just malicious bits of invisible code. They were terrifying three-dimensional AIs that darted through the Matrix like monsters. The famous Chinese icebreaker program used in the novel is described as a kind of chrome wasp, viciously penetrating data networks and replicating, hivelike, as it devoured information.
|
|
Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 April 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Weirdness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 08 April 2009 |
|
As loyal readers will know, before I took over operations here at
Dyscern World HQ Labs, I piloted several top-secret research projects
for various government agencies and multinational corporations. Hence
the army of CIA and corporate espionage assassins on my tail, and my
subsequent use of aliased personas and secure underground bunkers.
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 April 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
|
Bidness
|
|
Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
|
|
Wednesday, 01 April 2009 |
|
I suppose it was inevitable. Microsoft this week announced that it would be discontinuing its Encarta product line, effectively bringing to an end the decades-long multimedia encyclopedia wars. The winner? Wikipedia, of course, which is now the destination for approximately 97 percent of Internet encyclopedia queries.
|
|
Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 August 2009 )
|
|
Read more...
|
| << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next > End >>
| | Results 1 - 15 of 172 |
|
