January 3, 2009
Ben told me yesterday that his new year's resolution was "to hope that the economics improve." It was a sweet statement, but I couldn't help notice that it involved no work on his part—unless you count as work worrying about something over which you have no control. My resolution is less noble, and it also requires no work: I will …
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April 26, 2008
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that not one of you is wondering why I haven't been writing as often on this here website as I used to. Well, I'm going to tell you why, anyway. It's not because I don't have enough time. Never had enough time. And it's not because I've lost interest. …
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March 22, 2008
Whenever I see something about books as objects, as opposed to books as reading material, I think of my friend Vernon Wiering. Vern is one of the most talented people I know: a masterful bookbinder, carpenter, and tailor. At a time when many people, including myself, spend an inordinate amount of time in the virtual world—for work and entertainment and …
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February 25, 2008
On the bus ride to work this morning, I was listening to the podcast of a sermon given by Rob Bell, in which he quoted Cornel West, a Princeton University religion professor. When asked in an interview by Rolling Stone magazine if he was optimistic about the future, West replied: The categories of optimism and pessimism do not exist for …
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October 19, 2007
This article from People Magazine is over a year old, but a blog I frequent just posted a link to it, so I read it for the first time tonight. It's a truly amazing story of a boy who uses echolocation, the same technique that bats and dolphins use, to "see": Completely blind since the age of 3, after retinal …
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October 3, 2007
A couple years ago I started roasting my own coffee, using an old popcorn popper and some green coffee beans I picked up online. A year later, I graduated to a little coffee roaster especially designed for home use. It usually did a great job of dissipating the smoke, which allowed me to keep it in the basement, but when …
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June 7, 2007
Why drive a Toyota Prius when you can drive in style? For the security-conscious motorist, Amazon is offering the Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank. With top speeds of 40mph, this is the perfect vehicle for city or desert driving. According to the product description, the Badonkadonk's "interior is fully carpeted and cozy, with accent lighting and room for up to five people." …
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January 3, 2007
Today was an unusual day in my town. Five blocks down the street from where I live, there was a funeral for a former President of the United States. Lucy got out of school in time to walk to the Episcopal church with Sara and see the honor guard and the secret service and the hundreds of onlookers. They also …
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December 29, 2006
An article in the New York Times got me thinking about all of the food and wine websites I come across, even though I have little interest in either food or wine — other than, of course, the ingesting of them. Food and wine led me to parenthood, which completes the three-legged stool of familial bliss. So here it goes, …
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December 9, 2006
For everyone who loves the edge pieces, there's the new brownie pan from The Baker's Edge. It's really a simple design, one of those things that makes me wonder why I had never thought of it. The web site lists the following features of the pan: Patented interior edges give each serving at least two chewy edges. Fits standard box …
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November 11, 2006
My wife is moved by beautiful things. She has a natural eye for design and can create a gorgeous living environment with effortless grace. Whether she's looking at fine art or stationery, photography or furniture, she knows what she likes, what works, and why. I on the other hand, don't really have an inherent design sense. In fact, a lot …
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July 11, 2006
A while ago I wrote about an egg poacher toaster, which I thought was pretty cool at the time. But now there's a new toaster on the block, one that I think every toaster lover will want. The Pop Art Toaster from Urban Outfitters (via FreshArrival) lets you customize your toast design. Just slip in a slice with one of …
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June 14, 2006
Here are a few interesting things I've come across in the past few days: Update: My wife thinks the video of Bush "singing" U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday deserves more prominent placement, so here it is. onegoodmove.org: Sunday Bloody Sunday. Someone with a lot of editing chops and patience puts George W. Bush in the role of lead singer of U2. …
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May 1, 2006
Last week a friend of mine who lives about four blocks away from me got mugged. Paul was by his car in the alley behind his house when four kids looking about 14 or 15 years old approached him and asked for the time. He looked at his wristwatch, and before he had a chance to look back up one …
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April 11, 2006
During my long absence from the blog, I've gathered up a few things from other blogs and magazines that I think are unusual or useful or interesting in some way. Here they are: Unusual Electroluminescent decor at loop.ph. These fabrics will display lighted patterns in response to various environmental cues, such as heat, light, sound, motion, and pressure. My wife …
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March 15, 2006
Northwest Airlines sent a mass email yesterday touting a new "feature" that they're testing: "Coach ChoiceSM Seating." Here is how they describe it: Northwest has begun saving some preferred seats (including aisle and exit row seats) in coach class until check-in, which is available 24 hours prior to departure. You can confirm these preferred seat assignments for only $15 per …
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March 14, 2006
This video was making the rounds among bloggers a couple weeks ago. It's an actual news report from Rochester, New York, of an autistic teenager who, after years of serving as the team manager, gets put in the last game of the season by his coach. You won't believe his performance. When Sara and I watched it, we both got …
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March 8, 2006
Well, that was an interesting little experiment. Thanks to all of my family members who took pity on me and offered to buy the camcorder. Even my mother, bless her heart, put in a bid. Thankfully, though, she succumbed to reason and retracted the offer when I asked her when she would ever actually use the thing. A friend at …
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March 1, 2006
I had a nice, tiny Sony DV camcorder for a while, but last summer it mysteriously disappeared. I searched all over, waited for it to rematerialize, and after months of missing the chance to record my cute kids doing cute things, gave up and bought a new one, the Panasonic PV-GS65 Digital Video Camcorder. Two months after it arrived in …
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February 11, 2006
A recent Make : Blog entry points to this strangely fascinating website with pictures of pennies stacked in cantilevered fashion to produce the most amazing structures. The pictures start with the simple designs and progress to the impossibly complex. If nothing else, it's a fun diversion. But who has the time to create them? View Pictures of Pennies …
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January 9, 2006
Here's one for the why-didn't-I-think-of-that category: the Laundry Rug Bag, which sells at ParamountZone.com (via PopGadget) for only £14.95. Now we can throw our clothes on the floor and feel good about it. When you're ready to do the laundry, you just grab the drawstrings that run around the perimeter of the rug, and it cinches up into a bag. …
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December 23, 2005
If you're one of those last-minute gift wrappers, you might find this set of gift-wrapping instructions from eHow helpful (via Lifehacker). They describe the conventional wrapping method as well as ways to wrap oversized and unboxed gifts and some funky alternative wrapping ideas. And while you're looking through the useful household tips, you might want to check out the glue …
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October 17, 2005
McSweeney's Internet Tendency is one of my favorite things to check out on the web every now and then for a little oddball humor. It's a perfect site to visit in times like these, when I'm busy, busy, busy with work and family and side projects and various distractions. McSweeney's is a tiny distraction that doesn't take a lot of …
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September 22, 2005
The timing on this entry couldn't be dumber, since the major travel season just ended a couple weeks ago, but—who knows?—maybe some people are starting to plan their Thanksgiving and Christmas (or Hannukah or Kwanzaa) vacations. Here are a few websites that might make your travel planning a little easier—or maybe just a bit more fun. The Universal Packing List: …
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August 8, 2005
As I was flipping through a couple of my old Thomas Merton books the other day, I came across this prayer that he wrote. I remember printing it out a couple years ago and giving it to my students who were about to graduate from high school (it was a parochial school, so no separation of church and state issues …
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July 30, 2005
It's been a while since I last dumped a bunch of links on me olde blogge, so I thought now would be a good time to share. Here are a few things I've come across: Virtual Street Reality: Impossibly cool 3D effects with sidewalk chalk. Photo Fakery from OE Magazine: "Identifying falsified images can be straightforward if you know a …
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May 16, 2005
A couple weeks ago my daughter put on for the first time a beautiful dress that friends of ours had given her. I loved the pattern, and I loved the colors—blue and green. In fact, I decided to redesign my website using the dress as a color palette. Bright greens. Bright blues. Maybe a dash of yellow. All very spring-like. …
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April 5, 2005
A friend recently asked how I find so many cool websites. I'd like to be able to take credit for sniffing them out myself, but almost all of them come from other bloggers who do all the legwork. I just track some of these blogs and keep an eye out for interesting things that they link to. So, here's my …
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March 21, 2005
I haven't been in much of a blogging mood lately, so I thought I'd just dump these links into a single entry rather than writing about anything in particular. Slacker Manager - The unspoken language of..., wherein the writer provides a number of humorous non-verbal cues for ending a conversation in the workplace. How to Cut, wherein the writer presents …
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March 9, 2005
Since I finally started chipping away at my list of things left undone, I thought I'd take a look at some other ways to spruce up the house a bit. My wife had heard about magnetic paint a while ago, but she couldn't find it at any of the hardware stores she tried—even the big boxes. So, I was geeked …
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February 22, 2005
Here's the latest installment of links for your viewing pleasure. Just so you know, all links go to 100% genuine things. I don't peddle that artificial stuff. LivePlasma: This site allows you to visually search for movies and music, much like the Visual Thesaurus (see my earlier entry) does for synonyms. It's great for discovering new musicians or movies that …
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February 8, 2005
Nendo Drawer House: You really have to see this one to believe it. Everything from kitchen to bedroom, living room to stairs is hidden from view until you "open" the drawers that line the walls. Designed by a Japanese architecture and design firm. [hat tip: MoCo Loco] 10x10: An interactive exploration of the words and pictures that define the …
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February 7, 2005
While some people are fed up with shoelaces altogether, at least one man, Ian Fieggen, is enamored with them. Mr. Fieggen has dedicated a website to shoelaces, a site that includes 22 lacing methods. It may seem a bit daffy, but you have to admire the guy's passion. He's even meticulous enough to make sure everyone can share the love: …
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January 18, 2005
A friend at work showed me this map that MSN generated based on a request for directions from one city in Norway to another. MSN has him going from Haugesund (Rogaland, Norway) to England on a ferry, down to London and across to Dover, through the "chunnel," out into France and up to Belgium, into The Netherlands and across to …
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December 21, 2004
Here's a funny, bizarre little game you can play online: Guess the Dictator and/or Sitcom Character. You just think of a dictator or television sitcom character and answer a series of yes or no questions about the person. The web site will figure out who it is every time. …
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December 1, 2004
I love amazon.com as much as the next surfaholic, but sometimes the clutter and the noise and the enormous number of choices can seem overwhelming. That's when I like to turn to simpler shops on the web, sites that offer fewer items but more compelling options, sites with elegant design and beautiful presentation. It hardly matters that most of the …
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November 26, 2004
The first snow of the season fell just in time for Thanksgiving this year. Holland, Michigan, as you can see in the picture below, got about 10 inches, while Grand Rapids seemed to get a little less. For those of you living in Florida or California, please don't envy us here. You may miss the snow and the "traditional" winter …
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October 29, 2004
Scanning through the New York Times Books section, I came across an article about the death of one of my grad school professors, Douglas Day: Douglas Day, a biographer and critic who won a National Book Award in 1974 for his life of the English novelist Malcolm Lowry, died on Oct. 10 in his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was …
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October 25, 2004
A couple people at work tipped me off to a new product that CostCo is selling through its web site: caskets. Priced from $924.99 to $4,699.99, these caskets come in a variety of styles. The names are a little disconcerting—Michael ($1,499.99), Charles ($4,699.99), Mother ($924.99)—but at least they don't have one with my name on it. For a while longer …
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October 13, 2004
Here's another story to make my life seem mundane. A group of guys quit their jobs and decide to travel across the country. On their Segways. At 10 miles per hour. Oh, and they have a film crew tagging along to create a feature-length documentary about their trip. They have all sorts of events planned along the way and are …
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August 30, 2004
As I was putting on a fairly new pair of pants today, I wondered why the clothing company had decided to use a button fly instead of a zipper fly. Three of my four newest pairs of pants have button flies on them, and while I like the pants for other reasons, I can't stand having to button them up. …
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August 5, 2004
File this one under the there's-a-journal-about-everything-under-the-sun category: International Journal of Impotence. Makes me wonder if there's a national one as well. …
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July 13, 2004
But it's all in your head. Check out this optical illusion for a fun yet dizzying experience. …
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June 15, 2004
The Chicago Tribune reports that the USDA has finally come to their senses and declared that french fries are fresh vegetables. According to the article: The Frozen Potato Products Institute appealed to the USDA in 2000 to change its definition of fresh produce under the law to include batter-coated, frozen french fries, arguing that rolling potato slices in a starch …
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June 8, 2004
Seems I'm quite late in discovering that Google has confirmed my suspicions about our current President. Others have noted the Bush - miserable failure connection as far back as December 2003. Here's what to do: Go to Google In the search field, type: miserable failure Press the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button A BBC News Story explains how, with a little …
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May 8, 2004
Okay, I am not making this up. I was looking up an album by Rosie Thomas on amazon.com the other day when I noticed the strangest thing. Where the page typically would have a section called "Our Customers' Advice," it instead suggested that "Customers who wear clothes also shop for:...Clean Underwear from Amazon's Target Store." You see, with all the …
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April 6, 2004
As hard as we try to avoid it, we seem to be coming up with more and more ways to ruin our kids' lives. First we give them ADHD by letting them watch TV: "Study: TV may cause attention deficit." Then we compound the problem by trying to manage it: "Research finds ADHD drugs could hinder growth." Children who took …
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August 12, 2003
The New York Times Magazine from a couple weeks back ran a story about an economist named Steven Levitt. He's one of these guys that somehow manage to have accolades rained on them while they tell everyone how unworthy they are. He says he's no good at math or theory, and he humbly admits that his professional interests are trivial, …
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