I haven't posted in ages. Been busy writing, aging, shouting at clouds, exploring exciting new donut flavors, writing, thinking about writing, writing, and not posting. Then a friend passed along a real head-kicker, and I had to share. Tokyo's A-Lab Co and the Kodaiji Temple in Kyoto unveiled a robot modeled after Kannon Bodhisattva, designed to educate visitors to the temple about Buddhism. The video below sent my brain spinning in a way few bits of futurism news do these days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKhgSCc6OAE The video shows monks bowing to a robot as it explains the … [Read more...]
An Urgent Report on Terribly Important Things
As the days and weeks go by, certain news stories, trivia bombs, and random developments in the Weird catch my attention. When these items reach a critical mass in my brain (i.e., I’m about to forget a bunch of them), I rush here to share. My mind can hold about as much information as a single fortune cookie strip at any one time (excluding the lottery numbers), and not a byte more. So… Important Cold War Dental History Update It turns out the secret agent cyanide tooth is a myth. I always suspected this—you’d kill yourself biting into an almond--but it still hurt when Mental Floss … [Read more...]
Fencing is Bloody Good Bloodless Fun
I was a fencer in college. I’ve tried many sports over the years, but nothing ever fit my personality as much as fencing. For one, it’s an individual sport. Those always appealed to me because I can’t handle multiple moving parts of anything. I’ll never be a juggler. Two, it played right to my introverted nature. You only have to deal with one person at a time. No talking. You even get to hide behind a mask. Third, my love of fencing dovetailed with another fascination: Things from the ancient world surviving into the modern era (benign things only, natch). Tossing coins in fountains. … [Read more...]