I’m endeavoring to attempt something never before achieved in the history of mankind: make a New Year’s resolution, and stick to it. Given my desire, it’s apropos that I write this on the first day of the lunar new year, since the resolution for 2009 was: learn Chinese, like for real.
“For real” means [...]

My last post got me thinking about posting some top 10 lists on my blog, just for fun.
But then I thought, “10″? Do I really have that much to say about that many songs? I suppose I could endlessly fill the space with tired music critic clichés, but we should all be spared [...]

I am a closet music historian, and a not-so-closeted music geek. Anyone who bothers to get to know me finds this out sooner or later. On that “Rock & Roll Jeopardy!” show that VH1 used to run, they used to ask a lot of questions about ’80s pop, and I found out watching [...]

OK, not literally. But I thought I’d write a few words about Obama after the election, and then I ended up so busy that it sort of never happened. I could wait until the inauguration to write about this, in that most apropos of moments, but now is just as well, while the [...]

You know, for all our pontification and theorizing and building, the fact remains, we’re all just a bunch of gunk stuck onto a skeletal foundation. All of us from kings to the unemployed, from skinny super models to obese computer technicians to beefy bodybuilders…we’re all just skin and bones.
Some of us, though, are more [...]

To you non Web developers, there’s a special tag we use when we want to make text pop up as your mouse hovers over something. It’s called a tool tip, and if I’m not mistaken, the practice originated in Microsoft software years ago.
Now, to you Web developers, if you’re using a single header graphic [...]

Thorbjörn Holmlund kicks ass. He is working on a truly amazing project that cannot possibly be overlooked for its contribution to human civilization. Echoing Chares of Lindos, the Greek sculptor charged with constructing the colossus on the island of Rhodes, Holmlund’s legacy will be a modern day Great Wonder: a colossal moose.
The [...]

Sometimes you read something that just utterly depresses you. I have been sick lately, and I didn’t especially need more depression, but today I read this story at Wired, and it made me sink even lower. To summarize, researchers have studied some supposed dinosaur flesh that was recovered with some fossils and concluded [...]

Just returned to Beijing after a little mini-visit to Chongqing and Shanghai. The trip was good; Chongqing is probably the #1 up-and-coming city in China, and Shanghai, it turns out, is much better when you have friends there. (Go figure.)
This being my second visit to Shanghai, I wasn’t as concerned with traipsing around [...]

According to this article at CNN, during trade negotiations with the United States in 1973, Mao Zedong offered Henry Kissinger 10 million Chinese women, saying that “We have too many women…They give birth to children and our children are too many”.
I’m not sure what Mao wanted in exchange, but to me it certainly sounds like [...]