AI: Art of the Artificial

Feb 1, 2023–Even during the dark ages of darkrooms, the world could not trust photographic evidence. Despotic regimes routinely manipulated pictures of leaders, artfully inserting or deleting faces according to their political status. With the advent of imaging...

Accounting 101

Jan 18, 2023–Do you balance your checkbook every month? Years ago Buck Henry said he got to the point when he received his monthly bank statement, he just wrote down the amount it said he had, and never bothered to reconcile again. To his amazement and gratification,...

Are you a Bromide or a Sulphite?

Jan 11, 2023–Gelett Burgess was a humorist you don’t know you know. But you do know his most famous work: I never saw a purple cow, I never hope to see one But I can tell you anyhow, I’d rather see than be one But that was not his most fascinating work. In...

Shifting time

Jan 4, 2023–To cut travel time, we focus on two options: 1) decreasing the distance between two points, or 2) increasing speed. What if instead we could condense time? What if we could remove every other second, for example? Or at least remove the awareness of every...

Stream Dreams

Dec 28, 2022–I’m a basketball fan who has been unable to watch any broadcast games since 1999 when our TV antenna quit working. To see the first Spurs championship run, I had to go to 87 Ice Box which my wife didn’t like because I was also watching the kids. But they...

Tis the Seasonings

Dec 28, 2022–How many spices and seasonings do you have in your kitchen? How many do you actually use? I’m guessing those are wildly divergent numbers. I’m working on a theory that the hidden culprit in unhealthy eating is the amount of seasoning we use. Whenever I...