My current effort on fixing up the FJ Cruiser is focused on building a platform where the back seats used to be.  This platform will serve t...

Debbie and I went to lunch yesterday with a friend and former colleague, Aleck L. – at Sushi Ota in Pacific Beach.  It was make-your-brains-...

Dave Carter, over at Ricochet, waxes poetic about his personal encounter with Murphy's Law the other day.  Here's one paragraph to w...

In any system for transmitting messages using encryption, the security of the system boils down to the security of the encryption key.  This...

When you distrust your government, you start looking at things in a different light.  Consider this: on March 31st, 2010, Colleen Kelly vi...

From a post by Neo-Neocon : That has always been the danger of having a republic. Its success rests on the character and the understandi...

Former colleague, friend, and reader Doug S. says “Just got these and they are freakin (geekin) awesome!”  Yes, he really does talk that wa...

Red sprite lightning is a phenomenon that was long rumored, but only recently confirmed.  This is the only color photograph of it.  This sor...

This is but one of many stories emerging from the Oklahoma tornado tragedy, but this one is of particular interest to dog lovers.

Ocean-bottom methane hydrates offer that possibility .  Researchers are working hard on practical ways to “mine” the stuff. So think about...

Executive summary: excellent book; read it. Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died in 1951 – far too young, of cancer.  Her cells were...

Martin Rue writes about this simple piece of advice he got from his grandfather: “ Understand how it works. ”  Instead of just understanding...

Here's a very compact collection of statistical formulae , nicely organized and with almost no explanation.  I can't decide whether ...

Dolphins trained by the U.S. Navy to locate sea mines (at the Pt. Loma facility) have located a Howell torpedo from the late 1800s (the on...

Via reader Simi L.:

Cicadas are currently emerging on the east coast of the U.S.  These are interesting large insects that I remember well from my childhood ...

Just go read it ...

This article rants and raves about the cost of college tuition , which for the past 20 years or so has been rising much faster than inflati...

This was taken in Los Angeles.  The two hummingbird species shown (Allen's and Anna's) are both native to us as well...