One year ago today
Photoshop fail at The Daily Mail: There's something fascinating about the daily fail at the Daily Mail, where a nightmarish alternative reality—cloned flora, ghostly spaces, grinning dismemberment—is an emergent property of ineptitude.
Five years ago today
Good: The return of amateur science: For 72 years, Scientific American ran its popular “Amateur Scientist” column, which debuted in 1928. Projects included constructing an electron accelerator, making amino acids, photographing air currents, measuring the metabolic rate of small animals, extracting antibiotics from soil, culturing aquatic insects, tracking satellites, constructing an atom smasher, extracting the growth substances from a cantaloupe, conducting maze experiments with cockroaches, making an electrocardiogram of a water flea, constructing a Foucalt pendulum, and experimenting with geotropism. Who knew you could have so much fun at the kitchen table?
Ten years ago today
Some thoughts for 2004: The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems — free expression, copyright, due process, social networking — may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems.
