Spoke too soon, perhaps

In yesterday’s ‘Too cool’ installment, I lamented not being able to illustrate the topic with my own images, and suspected I’d have no opportunity to do so. This was an abject ploy to make you feel sorry for me.

However, I soon became wracked with guilt over such blatant manipulations. Not to mention that, while searching through my images last night to illustrate a couple read more

Too cool, part 13: I’m a spider, raargh!

Since I have yet to obtain any images illustrating this (and because there may not even be examples of such within this country, I may not ever, sniff,) I refer you to Alex Wild of Myrmecos fame, guest-blogging on Scientific American’s site, for his post on “The fly that banks on arachnophobia.

If you wish, pause for a second and try to imagine how a fly might benefit from something read more

Save the kilobytes!

xkcd speaks to me this morning (click for original):


And this time, don’t think about pocketable, or not having to carry extra lenses, or that big LCD on the back.

I cover this with my students, first thing, so I might as well hit it here too: The first and foremost cause of bad photos, the thing that wrecks more of them than anything else, is motion blur – camera shake. read more

A fun read

This is just a quick one right now, directing you somewhere else. As part of a book giveaway, Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist asks for beliefs that you used to hold, and what caused you to stop believing. He even excludes god because, c’mon, it’s an atheist site so that’s largely a given.

The responses are quite interesting, though, so it’s worth going through the comments. read more

You keep using that word…

…I do not think it means what you think it means.

Okay, it would seem that even simple things go above people’s heads sometimes. Let’s try and make it even simpler.

In the US, we have this thing that sets up what the government is supposed to do, we call it the Constitution. Among many of its principles there sits a simple little thing called “no favor,” occasionally read more

The significance of being significant

It’s not a topic that pops up too often on this blog, but I still toy with the whole UFO/alien visitation issue from time to time. It’s halfhearted anymore, because there really isn’t anything new to say about it. Despite the fantastic increases not only in our abilities to capture civilian photos and video, but our air traffic control and military capabilities as well, UFO reports read more

Bankrupt an atheist!

How often would you get this kind of opportunity?

A year ago, I reposted a comic from Calamities of Nature, created by Tony Piro, one that achieved a certain amount of notoriety (not due to my efforts by any stretch.) This wasn’t a humorous comic, nor did it involve exaggeration, misstatement, caricaturization, read more

Just stuff

There have been a couple of things I’ve been working on and trying to update, and I finally have them available, so this post is simply a short list of new things available on the site.

I mentioned earlier that I would include a tutorial on removing noise, and so I read more

The Fish is back

I feel obligated to let my four readers know that the blog Weird Things has rebooted. Greg Fish took a hiatus because of time demands earlier this year, with no promises of a return. But he was kind enough to send me an e-mail last night announcing his encore, and I am happy to send people his way again. Technically, read more

Drop the ‘Straight’

I used to think the column “The Straight Dope” was pretty good, and well researched. I was first introduced to it about twenty years ago, when it was carried in the local independent newspaper called, for some unknown reason, The Independent (this is a local publication, not the British one.) Many years later, I found it online, and made a habit of stopping by semi-regularly read more

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