Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

In memory of the Model T Ford -- Comment()
Farewell, My Lovely! "Springtime in the heyday of the Model T was a delirious season. Owning a car was still a major excitement, roads were still wonderful and bad. The Fords were obviously conceived in madness: any car which was capable of going from forward into reverse without an perceptible mechanical hiatus was bound to be a mighty challenging thing to the human imagination. Boys used to veer them off the highway into a level pasture and run wild with them, as though they were cutting up with a girl."

This is a classic essay from 1936 about the demise of Model T, which is still one of the most successful car models of all time.

Space in news -- Comment()
Space news: Europe's moon probe, NASA's scramjet: "There have been two important pieces of space-related news recently, the first of which was the European moon probe's success in entering the moon's orbit. The second bit of news concerns NASA's scramjet test flight." [Ars Technica]

As a somewhat related note, I was yesterday elected to the board of Ursa Astronomical Association in Finland. Great! I'm hoping that some of my daughters get interested in astronomy as well.

-- Comment()
IBM to host worldwide scientific computing grid: "IBM aims to take the lead in distributed computing by creating the world's largest networked computing grid for scientific applications: the World Community Grid." [Ars Technica]

-- Comment()
Working Mac: The Keychain's Hidden Powers: "Passwords, serial numbers, ATM codes -- we're all swimming in a sea of information that's secret (or should be). Make it easy to remember, and someone may swipe it. Make it hard to guess, and you may forget it yourself. Mac OS X has the answer: the Keychain. Here's how to use the Keychain in OS X 10.3 to hide all sorts of information, from password hints for Web sites to notes on a confidential business deal." [MacCentral News]

Don't trust Wikipedia -- Comment()
The Faith-Based Encyclopedia: "The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."