Dylan Tweney

Like everyone, I feel shock, horror, and awful fascination as I watch the news stories and photos of the disaster in New Orleans and Mississippi. But the situation also makes me angry—incredibly angry—at the federal government, whose incompetence and obliviousness to the whole situation seems increa

Disconnecting for the weekend? Forget about it — your neurotic urge to stay online won’t let you. And besides, your inbox is a cruel mistress. But the Treo 650 costs too much, and, frankly, you spend more time reading e-mail and web pages than writing. Meet your new phone: The BlackBerry 7100g, whic

Judging by its name, you’d think the JVC GR-D295u was a futuristic cambot with a remorseless drive to destroy all living beings. In fact, the GR-D295u is more like the guy who hangs out on the last bar stool next to the door, nursing a Schlitz: friendly, easy to like, and a bit clumsy. That’s […]

I’m sure Karen will soon have more pictures of the chaos going on here, but here’s a sample. The big project for the past few days has been stucco removal–like flaying the house alive, actually, since it leaves everything still standing and more or less intact, but … skinless. It’s creepy. And a bit

For all you neo-con mommies and your impressionable offspring: Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! (thanks, Scot)

I recently started up Palm Desktop after 6 or more months of not using it at all, and was treated to this massive cascade of alarm dialogs. (Click the image to see the whole cascade in all its glory.) Thank god for that “close all” button!

NPR had a chat earlier this week with the two fathers of the Internet, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn. Interesting factoid from the interview: Cerf said that he is very hard of hearing, so that’s one of the reasons he welcomed the advent of email so eagerly.

Roughly half of Americans believe that extraterrestrial life exists–and that aliens are visiting the Earth, zooming around in saucers and secretly probing hapless human bodies. The Guardian has the entertaining details. The punchline comes in the author’s bio: Turns out he’s an astronomer at SETI. I

After months of work, Karen’s plans for our remodel finally got the green light from the planning department yesterday. We celebrated by sabering a bottle of champagne last night, and this morning Karen — together with a neighbor she hired — started stripping stucco off the outside walls of our hous

Virginians riot over $50, 4-year-old iBooks: Va. Laptop Sale Turns Into a Stampede “I took my chair here and I threw it over my shoulder and I went, ‘Bam,’” the 20-year-old said nonchalantly, his eyes glued to the screen of his new iBook, as he tapped away on the keyboard at a testing station. “They

Never saw this in his crystal ball… Psychic’s crystal ball burns down his flat in unforeseen blaze

From Technology Review, a summary of an interesting study on how the brain works to identify words: In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in late June, 42 undergraduates followed instructions to click a mouse on one of two pictures on a computer monitor. Some