Writings, Reviews, Cultural Criticism
Not long ago, the topic of vasectomies came up in conversation at a family dinner. I mentioned the dreaded “v” word just to watch my brother’s response—the grimace and the sudden shift in the chair as he drew one leg over the other. My brother and I are, in some ways, vastly different people. And application of the “v” word acts as a kind of litmus test that quickly determines which sort each of us is.
For my wife’s birthday, I bought her tickets to Wicked, which we saw on Saturday. It uses the Wizard of Oz as its point of departure and tells the story of life before Dorothy — the relationship of Glinda the Good Witch and Elphaba (who became the Wicked Witch of the West) — and also the story of how the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion came to be.
This is a follow–up to my entry on BitTorrent. I have another theory about why BitTorrent doesn’t work. According to Wired, BitTorrent’s creator, Bram Cohen, has Asperger’s syndrome.
Some would have us believe that this snazzy P2P app is for the information age what newsprint was to movable type. And so I decided to see what all the fuss was about.
In this month’s issue of Wired, there is an article which gives me much encouragement. It’s an account of a psychologist named Gordon Rugg who, in his spare time, has devoted himself to the puzzle of the Voynich manuscript. This is a medieval manuscript which appears to have been encrypted by its author. No one…