The New York Times has an article today on innovative instruments, or the dearth thereof, in classical music. The gist is something like this: because classical music takes so many people and so much money, innovation is risky. There has to be a quorum of desirable music that takes advantage of new instruments, and, perhaps [...]

El Caballo has been in the news a lot lately, most recently because he thinks Osama bin Ladin is a CIA agent. But now he has a blog. Read it, translated into English, here. After reading Castro’s My Life–an autobiography through interviews–I became convinced that he is, in the Miltonic sense, Luciferian: often he is [...]

I have trouble believing that there wasn’t some movie magic and/or behind-the-scenes chicanery to make this video work, but, on appearance alone, it’s bar none the best thing to happen to Rube Goldberg since the invention of the marble.

Be sure to read the artist’s statement at the bottom of the page. And remember: my birthday may have passed, but I accept gifts every day of the year!

This is the most creative salvo against corruption I think I have ever heard: giving Indian officials the printed notes shown above. And of course, like all good things, it comes from the professoriate. Courtesy of the World Bank Blogs: … the idea was first conceived by an Indian physics professor at the University of [...]

Second Life is a place that, depending on your perspective, represents either the most successful 3D virtual world ever created or a cautionary tale of jumping on the technology bandwagon a little too early. Go to Second Life today and you’ll see what most users encounter most of the time: a huge, desolate virtual world [...]

One of the interesting things about seeing a movie that has been as commercially successful  as Avatar is hearing so much discussion about it before you go and see for yourself what all the hype is about. Now, I religiously avoided any kind of spoiler discussion. But I couldn’t help but notice that the Catholic [...]