Idle Words: Posts by Topic

Travel

• A Morning in Iceland [Nov 03] - aurorae and hot springs
• Utrecht - introduction to Sinterklaas
• Rotterdam
• Haarlem - hometown of my hero Frans Hals
• Lille
• A Voyage Down The Gowanus - New York's hardest-working scenic waterway
• Warsaw - about my hometown
• Bukowina Tatrzańska
• The Three Gorges A voyage down the Yangtze
• It's Always Christmas in Wuhan
• Chongqing

Space

• A Rocket to Nowhere - thoughts on the Shuttle program
• Meanwhile Back in Space - on the new Vision for Space Exploration
• Comet Impact Extravaganza - Nice simulations

Great Events

• New York City Marathon - Bleeding nipples, P Diddy
• Poland Joins the EU - Report from the party
• Elephants Invade Manhattan
• Attacked by Thugs - my adventures with the Warsaw police
• Wolfram Speaks - Crazy genius at O'Reilly Bioinformatics conference
• Addison County Fair and Field Days - encounters with pork and other livestock
• Orthodox Easter - celebrating with a van load of foreigners
• PC Forum - the joys of reading Bruce Schneier's email

Canada

• The Bay of Fundy
• Halifax
• Sneaky Canada
• Canadian Beefcake - legendary Quebecois strongman Louis Cyr
• Quirky Canada Has Own Currency, Laws
• Canada Day
• I Cannot Speak Your Crazy Moon Language
• The Few Things I Won't Miss About Montreal

Internet and Computers

• The Ghost Blogs of Tibet - GeoURL and the dangers of user-generated metadata
• Celebrity Turing Test - A rock star tries to visit his own skeptical fan site

Art and Literature

• The Golden Calf - a translation of Ilf and Petrov's masterpiece
• Little Tragedies - metadata, annotation and Pushkin
• Your Literary Masterpiece was Delicious - teaching computers to read Russian literature
• The Chemistry of Art - on synthetic pigments and art history
• oiloncanvas.net - my day job

Rants

• French vs. American School Lunches
• Dabblers and Blowhards - why Paul Graham is a weenis
• Dating Without Kundera - seducing with better authors
• An Audioblogging Manifesto - calling it podcasting won't make it right
• 100 Years of Turbulence - on the history of aviation and the uselessness of patents
• Dave Winer Considered Harmful - Run! Bipolar bear!
• The Unbearable Thinness of Crust - in search of the best pizza in New York
• Best Practices for Time Travelers - the true story of John Titor, visitor from the future