The New Blather

While most of the world was watching TV and surfing the web, scientists achieved the unthinkable: a pair of chatbots that can pass the Turing Test.  A recorded conversation was posted to YouTube just a few days ago.  Forgiving the digital voices, the content of the conversation is remarkably human-like.  This feat is both exciting [...]

I still haven’t read Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book. It’s been on my “to read” list for a while.  I did read Gaiman’s initial short story the book is based on, which appeared in some magical-themed anthology, and thought it was fantastic.  It featured a wonderful premise that felt both spooky and heartfelt at the [...]

I saw this report on Nightline a few hours ago.  I thought it was too funny to not comment on it. Padgett doesn’t have a PhD, a college degree or even a background in math. Because it’s long been believed that one cannot draw or even understand geometric shapes without a vast mathematical background. “I [...]

Well, life has many twists and turns.  Sometimes we look at the path we’re on and decide it’s time to change courses.  I sure know my life is changing, and, boy, it’s been a fun ride.  Everyday I’m thankful for having the opportunity to do things and learn so much.  This blog has chronicled my [...]

I’m continuing to work on my arbitrarily-ultra-secret cartoon idea, and this week I’ve been spending an enormous amount of time thinking about character and, more importantly, character relationships.  And I’ve had a sort of epiphany that none of the books on writing I’ve read seem to mention (not that I’ve read a ton), but it’s [...]

According to the Wikipedia article on perfect pitch (aka absolute pitch): no adult has ever been documented to have acquired absolute listening ability, as all adults who have undergone AP training have failed, when formally tested, to show “an unqualified level of accuracy… comparable to that of AP possessors”. I’m not exactly sure how these [...]

Here are all the movies I watched in the month of March.  Well, some are actually from February, but I didn’t do a post for the films of February, so they’ll just have to be included here.  I don’t actually watch a movie every single day.  I wish.  (A star (*) denotes movies I re-watched.) [...]