Ned Gulley's Blog. Resident buzzwords: wise crowds, accelerated design, swarm robotics, synthetic biology.
Posted in Stories on Apr 10th, 2000
HOST: Good afternoon, and welcome to “Good Books,” a show for and about people who like good books. I’m delighted to say that we have a special treat for today’s program. You’ve all heard the old story that a million monkeys, if given enough time randomly banging on typewriters, could reproduce Shakespeare’s complete works. Of [...]
TIME: 2 BC, late Wednesday afternoon PLACE: The house of Gaius Tullus DeGustibus, in the northern suburbs of Rome, near the new Circus Maximus Mall. [the phone rings] ANTONINUS: Hello? PROBONO: Hello there… am I speaking to Mr. Gaius T. DeGustibus? ANTONINUS: [haughtily] No, this is his slave, Antoninus. May I ask who’s calling? PROBONO: [...]
by Bill York May 3rd: This morning I was a bit overwhelmed by the sounds from the bird nest outside my window. I bought a bag of marbles and a slingshot. It seems that I’m not meant to be a sharp shooter as I did not hit a single bird with the marbles. I gave [...]
Posted in Stories on May 5th, 1997
Ransom shook his head and replied: I’ll tell you how it was that I came west. It was nothing like that. I left the very next morning after old Mr. Saturday came to visit. Mama Haynes always said: “Send dreams not mischief, Mr. Saturday.” Now I know what she meant. I can see Mama Haynes [...]
Posted in Stories on Nov 11th, 1996
Beryl Haise carefully extracted the last Marlboro from the cardboard pack and placed it on the table in front of her. Gently, she moved it to the middle of the place setting where the afternoon sunlight would best illuminate it. She stared at it fixedly. Xavier Cugat’s “Mambo No. 5″ played on the jukebox. Across [...]
by Ortelius There were no clouds in the night sky, but no stars either. Arthur stood on the penthouse balcony, his thoughts slow but vast. Below him, cars crawled in intricate traceries, and buildings glittered, bright and hard. He wondered if the stars, like gods whose worshippers had turned toward brighter idols, would one day [...]
Welcome to the Star Chamber, a place where much is arbitrary except for the fact that new, tasty content will appear on this page every Monday morning. Newness is common enough on the web; scarcely a day goes by without hearing of yet another web-based company based on some good idea you had last month. [...]
Ransom looked nervously at the coil of rope next to his backpack. His left eye twitched as though to say: get on with it, they’ll be here any second. Daniel and Yvonne would be pulling their beat up Volvo into the driveway, ready to head out to Yosemite, and he was still debating what to [...]
Nosferatu Be prepared for disappointment. This was the number one piece of advice not only given to her by friends, but also on chatsites about face to face meetings. Fair enough. Mary could handle disappointment. In fact, it was only an odd series of coincidences that put her here in the first place. Plans for [...]
By any measure, it was a sleek and fabulously expensive computer. Over his video link, the journalist inspected it carefully: a compact black tower covered with tiny blinking diodes. “Aren’t those a little melodramatic?” asked the journalist, indicating the colorful lights. He checked to make sure the recorder was working properly. The link sounded good, [...]
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