It’s not getting any smarter out there. You have to come to terms with stupidity, and make it work for you. – Frank Zappa

sycamore, uploaded by bitmapr. A month or two ago, we were walking through a parking lot on our way to Fresh Choice when we walked by a young sycamore tree. There were a few sycamore seed pods lying on the ground: Small, round, hard green things with spikes sticking out all over. Clara said: “Look,

San Francisco literary festival October 6-14: Litquake » The Festival

Now that Talk Like a Pirate Day is over, Clara and I are wondering: When is National Talk Like a Parrot Day?

One of the minor irritations of being an adoptive parent is the probing, too-personal questions that strangers feel like they’re entitled to ask you. I usually find these questions easy to deflect, but some parents get really upset by them. So, if you’re an adoptive parent and you get angered by the

Growth is inevitable, therefore, it “should be channeled into already urbanized areas.” Thoughtful ideas here: Coastsider: Letter: Smart Growth and the Coastside

Sept 14 is World Hearing Voices Day: Can hearing voices in your head be a good thing?

The similarities between YouTube and Napster are uncanny. Copyright-infringing content, sudden popularity, a seeming direct connection to the pulse of popular youth culture, scandals, a San Mateo address. (I’m not the first one to notice this.) But the similarities run deeper. YouTube is architectur

Ben Schott, author of the entertainingly eclectic Schott’s Food & Drink Miscellany, charts the past 5 years: Five Years of Consequence

How philosophy can help create secure databases — or, more likely, create massive non-data maintenance headaches: Cryptography | The non-denial of the non-self | Economist.com

Target’s “Franklin Roosevelt” action doll looks curiously anachronistic for a mid-20th century President…

I love the loud jazzy text-movies of Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, which has been around for a few years and continues to produce funny, engaging new works in the same vein. Granted, their use of Flash technology doesn’t sound like a recipe for entertainment: words flash on-screen in stark black