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Death Is A Lonely Business

June 7, 2012

The space ship lifted off from the launch pad just outside Waukegan, Illinois. The rocket carved an upside down “L” as it flew west. Long before the gantries moved to Cape Canaveral they were on the shores of Lake Michigan. Waukegan was a bigger city then. And because the country was gripped by the first […]

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Let ‘Em Eat Air

February 15, 2012

I like to read PSFK because they track the wackiest stuff. And sometimes the juxtapositions on their feed are so bizarrely related as to seem intentional. Take these two I saw today. The first post that caught my eye was entitled: Edible Helium Balloons Are The Latest Delicacy – about a dessert apparently offered by Chicago’s hautest/playfulest restaurant […]

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Swarming Nano Quadrotors

February 1, 2012

It is a spectacular demonstration of the capabilities of human engineering. Linked Nano Quadrotor Drones fly in unbelievable choreography. Meanwhile other scientists make drones that fly by flapping their wings: How long until we combine the two – and make flying robots that do this? And when we birth those drones, will they feel what they […]

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Fathers Know Best

January 31, 2012

Whenever I get to the City of Brotherly Love I try to spend time communing with some of the enduring symbols of our Republic. No, I am not talking about the cheese steaks at Pat’s – though both my son and I did partake and much to my extreme pleasure, neither of us required an emergency angioplasty […]

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A Christmas Miracle

December 24, 2011

It is an iconic photograph. The only record of a particular Christmas Miracle I witnessed – still percolating in our popular culture. Its subject – our lonely planet – rising above the surface of the moon. It was snapped on this date 43 years ago aboard Apollo 8 – by Astronaut William Anders. Prior to […]

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Take a Message – Too Much Of A Good Thing

December 16, 2011

Loyalty to any one sports team is pretty hard to justify. Because the players are always changing – or the team can move to another city, you’re actually rooting for the clothes when you get right down to it. You know what I mean, you are standing and cheering and yelling for your clothes to […]

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Seeing Is (no longer) Believing

November 29, 2011

A photo used to be a surrogate for reality. But screwing around with photos and distributing them widely has become so prevalent, companies have sprung up to do photo forensics - they help differentiate between an undoctored image and a manipulation. And I am not talking about the doctoring that goes on inside your point and shoot or camera […]

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Shattered

November 18, 2011

Walking though the Loop. Ear-buds jammed in tight. Tunes cranked. My music shuffling through songs chosen to conjure up feelings and times from my past – like photos in an album, err.. I mean on my screen saver. Eyes in the present. Ears in the past. My mind somewhere in-between, integrating it all. Unlike LA, downtown Chicago is a great walking […]

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