Acts of Volition

These photos of the space shuttle Atlantis passing in front of the Sun are astounding.

I’ve noticed that my lovely wife has an interesting process when composing email. She actually reads what she’s written before she sends it. It goes something like this:  •  Write the email  •  Proofread it  •  Send it  •  This is in contrast to my technique:  •  Write the email  •  Send it  •  I …

We made a cool tech demo of some new Video features from the upcoming Firefox 3.5 (which is required to view the demo, of course).  •  View the Demo(Firefox 3.5 beta required)

The new Wolfram|Alpha “computational knowledge engine” is fun to play with. My favourite response so far comes from a search for Prince Edward Island:  •  “Assuming "Prince Edward Island" is an island | Use as a volcano instead”  •  While the system is remarkable, I’m sceptical that a resource … read more »

As a non-historian (like you, I suspect), it seems to me that the views of great minds of the last few hundred years are often garnered from private letters they had written or received. Maybe it was C.S. Lewis writing to J.R.R. Tolkien (probably about who had the best initials), or Thomas …