Sherlock Holmes in A Study in Scarlet (via John Hawks): “You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A […]
Michael Edward Johnson
Posts by Michael Edward Johnson
Quote of the Week: April 1
Netvibes recently opened a San Francisco office, and Mr. Krim acknowledged that he was fond of the Silicon Valley culture in which everyone seems to live and breathe computing and technology. “I miss the fact you can start an interesting […]
Quote of the Week: March 25
In his classic A Mathematicians Apology, published 65 years ago, the great mathematician G. H. Hardy wrote that “A man who sets out to justify his existence and his activities” has only one real defense, namely that “I do what […]
Quote of the Week: March 18
This week’s quote goes out to Mike Kaplan: If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you’ll learn something important about business school. You don’t even […]
Quote of the Week: March 11
Rod Humble, Executive Producer of The Sims franchise (and a past acquaintance), on how he plans to expand the video game market: I don’t know if there’s any fixed lifecycle for the Sims franchise because I think that it can […]
Hiatus
All, I’m once again blogging after nearly five months; I apologize to my readers for the hiatus. A combination of things conspired to keep me away- after my last post, I was invited to join the Citizendium Executive Committee, my […]
Citizendium
Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia who later quit the project over differences in vision, just announced a direct competitor to the project: Citizendium.[1] In short, it’s a Wikipedia-style site with a focus on building a more scholarly, expert-centric community. […]
10 Reasons Why
A little lighter (and yes, tongue-in-cheek) fare this time. Back to the usual soon. 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Argue with Just a List of Reasons 1. It’s overdone. Digg and Reddit are plastered with 10 reasons why this and […]
On Technology, the Future, and Material Wealth
Something I’ve been musing on recently is material wealth, and why it is (or isn’t) important. Now, there are hundreds of books and millions of theories on money, what it’s for, how to get it, whether it’s important or whether […]
Friendly Foxes
I should be on a weekly schedule starting next week, perhaps with a long-delayed post on epigenetics. Until then, here’s something that I found fascinating. The New York Times recently tracked the progress of Dmitri Belyaev’s epic fox domestication experiment. […]