Ned Gulley's Blog.
Posted in Books on Jul 10th, 2004
A good read, filled with an obligingly weird cast of characters. There is something deeply appealing about a bruising, trash-talking pro tour for Scrabble heads. The author, Stefan Fatsis, goes native and eventually becomes an expert player himself as he tells his story. I like the part where he’s talking to the former world champ, [...]
Posted in Biology on Jul 9th, 2004
EE Times – Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 9th, 2004
Suppose your Rodian character in the online game Star Wars Galaxies has banked a small fortune of 10 million credits. But you’re also playing an impoverished pauper of a halfling in Everquest. If only there were a way to distribute Star Wars largesse to the Everquest needy. This is exactly the problem that IGE’s Virtual [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 8th, 2004
I’m reading Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind, the biography of the schizophrenic Nobel Prize winner John Nash, and I’ve just reached a point where, as a graduate student at Princeton, he invents a little game to illustrate game theory. This game, which captivates the math department, is called Nash in honor of the creator. It [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jul 6th, 2004
One hundred years or so ago, Winston Churchill, in his capacity as the First Lord of the Admiralty, worked vigorously to convert the old coal-burning Royal Navy to a newer and more efficient oil-burning fleet. This turned out to be a strategically sound decision despite the fact that it entailed a new dependence on oil [...]
Posted in Books on Jul 3rd, 2004
Hard to believe now, but the French army was widely considered the greatest in the world at the beginning of 1940. It is painful and eye-opening to see how quickly it was punctured, deflated, and slashed to ribbons by a smaller but infinitely better armed and trained German force in May and June of that [...]
Posted in Jay Cz on Jul 2nd, 2004
Today my good friend Jay Czarnecki (who has guest-blogged here before) joins us once again with some rambles of his own about rambling across the Maryland countryside in a red Honda Civic. Leave a comment for him and tell him what you think. Here’s what he has to say… These days I have an hour-long [...]