Man, I’ve been slacking on the blog.

Sorry, everyone. Things got kind of busy there; relaxing, but busy. During the break, Lesley Massey and I got to hang out in Chicago, and we went around and had a grand old time. Then, almost immediately thereafter, quarter 3 started up.  I have a feeling that I’m through the hardest parts at Medill, and … Read more

How I spent my spring breakation …

I caught a cold. It even came with a minor ear infection.  So I’ve been popping the amoxicillin and OTC cold remedies.  Bummer. I saw Watchmen. I liked it.  It got a bum rap from the fanboys (and critics), but then again, how could it not?  Some of the reviews have said that it was … Read more

Game theory used to predict novel behavior in birds

This is interesting. ScienceDaily.com is reporting that some folks at the University of Exeter have used game-theoretical models to predict strange food gathering behaviors that ravens exhibit only in particular geographic conditions… “The researchers built a mathematical model to understand how this behaviour evolved and why it might occur in some roosts and not others. … Read more

What’s the opposite of paranoia?

Well, I asked Google, and I found this metafilter page, which helpfully has an answer from one of my heroes, Robert Anton Wilson: Robert Anton Wilson called it “metanoia”: Paranoia = “everything wants to destroy me”; Metanoia = “everything wants to help me”. I’m not sure if he was getting that somehow from John Lilly’s … Read more

No more public calendar galleries from Google :(

So I’m trying to find lists of events relevant to my beat, and I find that just YESTERDAY Google decided to discontinue the public calendar gallery. So much for that research advantage. 2/5/2009 We’ve removed public calendar search and the public calendar gallery. For details, please see: http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=139970