Category Archives: uncategorized
Painting the world with pixels
You are guiding your cart down the aisles of the supermarket when the price tag on the Cheerios beckons to you. Literally. An animated figure on the shelf tag waves and signals for you to come closer. When the array … Continue reading
Security theater on the web
Perhaps the most important security concept within modern browsers is the idea of the same-origin policy. The principal intent for this mechanism is to make it possible for largely unrestrained scripting and other interactions between pages served as a part … Continue reading
In the long run we’re all dead
So said John Maynard Keynes, but what did he know about the long run? He was a swell who spent his mornings in bed, trading international currencies over tea and crumpets. Yesterday was my day for the long run: I … Continue reading
My dekasabbatical
The new issue of American Scientist is on the newsstands and on the web. My “Computing Science” column takes a stab at explaining the Hubbard model, a staple of condensed-matter physics that I’ve been struggling to understand for at least … Continue reading
Spare ribs
I’ve been Way Out West for the past few days, exploring a desert landscape where everything bristles. Ros and I went walking in the foothills of the Santa Catalina range, north of Tucson. At one point along the trail we … Continue reading