Carol, my folks, and I are all back from China, after over three weeks traveling from Tibet to Hong Kong. Many great stories to tell, and Carol & I managed to shoot nearly 4000 photos, so we'll be trimming that down and putting some up relatively soon. For now, we're just …

A very interesting article appeared on Aaron Swartz's blog (thanks to Daring Fireball for a pointer) where he talks about the breakdown of those creating content on Wikipedia and about how (contrary to comments by Wikipedia founder Jimbo Wales) the site appears to be constructed by a very large number …

Wired has a good overview of green car technologies today, including flex-fuel, diesel, and hybrid cars. It's not terribly in depth, but it hits the high points and some of the low points of each of the now-available or available-this-year technologies.

So, you've been reading a lot about Global Warming and other environmental topics and you're interested in finding out just how much the power in your area pollutes. However, you're interested in more than just Carbon load, since although you may not believe in Global Warming, you are pretty certain …

Google (or google if you ask the Merriam- Webster dictionary) is now officially a verb. According to a story from CNet, Google was added to the EOD on June 15th of this year, and today Merriam-Webster added google.

Wired has a cute piece about the words that have emerged surrounding the iPod and it's use. And, although I've never heard of it being called the iPizzle, the article is pretty funny.

In this article from Discovery News, Bruce Charlton, Reader in Evolutionary Psychiatry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, puts forth that he thinks many educated adults never reach mental adulthood. Thoughts anyone? There is a short paper on related ideas by Dr. Charlton.

OK, for those Simpsons lovers and math geeks out there, you probably already know this. However, for those who aren't into both (or either), there's a good article from Science News about the frightening number of little math jokes in the show. Quite frankly, I've always been impressed with the …

BusinessWeek has an article about the cost of things throughout the world. Check out the slide show that contains a list of items (including the iPod, a can of Coke, an iBook, a Big Mac, and other iconic purchases) and their current prices in various cities throughout the world (London …

If you are a model airplane aficionado, or even if you aren't, you should check out the video of an absolutely amazing demonstration in the form of what is, in effect, an air dance.

It probably wasn't two days ago that Carol and I were talking about how annoying it's become that magazines now often bury their tables of contents deep within their ad-laden pages, in some cases allowing ads to interlope between the pages of the table. Well, Philips Electronics has noticed and …

So, for those interested in being a bit happier about the future of journalism (and perhaps even the world in general), check out C-Span's StudentCam for some interesting videos made by school children (mostly high school, but some junior high). Issues covered are from intelligent design to piracy, school safety …

An article from the Guardian details an ongoing lawsuit in the UK that pits the authors of a nonfiction book Holy Blood, Holy Grail against Dan Brown, best-selling author of the Da Vinci Code. The suit challenges Brown over his source material and claims that Holy Blood,Holy Grail is …

According to an article from the Lexington Herald-Leader that discusses work by Cliff Arnall of the University of Cardiff in Wales in which he determined that January 23rd was the worst day of the year. Especially poignant for those in Canada, where elections are held today. BBC News ran an …

BrandChannel has published their latest brand study. The 2006 brand stats place Google slightly ahead of Apple (the two have been trading places for the top spot since 2000). It might not be particularly meaningful, but it's an interesting thing to look at anyway.

Better late than never. I just wanted to wish all of the readers of this site a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, or whatever you and your family celebrate and all of the best in the New Year!

A recent article in Nature looked at 42 entries about scientific concepts in both the Encyclopedia Britanica and Wikipedia and have found that the latter is almost as accurate as the former, with EB having 3 errors per article to Wikipedia's 4. Further comment is made by some information scientists …

Carol and I attended a "candlelight" vigil on the front lawn of the Capitol this evening and were impressed by the turnout and were left with a great deal of concern for the people in Kashmir, the rest of Pakistan and other parts of south-east Asia. One month after the …

This has probably been available for a while, but I put a story up on Cartographica about a new twist. Akamai's Net Usage Index is now available as a widget for Macintoshes running Tiger and Windows machines running Konfabulator.

Finally, after months of waiting, a good, in-depth technical review of the new Harmon-Kardon Drive+Play iPod adapter. This one, brought to us by Ars Technica, has a lot of detail and information. In the end, the device looks compelling for many users.