Author Archives: SeanMcTex

Archimedes: A Big Enough Lever

May 9, 2008 – 8:42 am

This morning on the way to work, I was thinking about the critics of the One Laptop per Child program. Lots of people maintain that, rather than sending a $100 laptop to kids in third-world countries, we would do far better to send them $100 in food. And to a degree, I think they’re right [...]

Posted in Computers, OLPC, Philanthropy | Comments (3)

Sci-Fi Future: Bioengineering

April 30, 2008 – 9:10 am

On one of our recent dates, Kathy and I had stopped by the local pet store to browse around a bit. While passing by the fish, I noticed tank full of fish that were even more brightly colored than the usual tropicals. When asked, a salesperson explained to me that they were GloFish: zebra fish [...]

Posted in Commerce, Curiosities, Environment, Food, Politics, Science | Comments (3)

Emily’s Latest

April 27, 2008 – 9:57 pm

On Friday night, Emily disappeared into her room for about 3 hours, only emerging briefly and intermittently, looking increasingly like a chimney-sweep at the end of a hard day each time I saw her. My curiosity was, of course, piqued, but she refused to let me see what she was up to until she finished [...]

Posted in Art, Family | Comments (6)

Sandfest 2008

April 24, 2008 – 12:06 pm

This year we decided to do Sandfest properly. I went prowling for places to stay a couple months ago, and somehow managed to secure a wonderful house right on the beach, an easy stroll from Sandfest itself. The big, open house with lots of places to sleep worked out great for our mob, which numbered [...]

Posted in Family, Travel | Comments (0)

Bo Jon’s Surf & Gifts: Beware

April 24, 2008 – 11:49 am

Sunday, April 20, 2008
This past weekend, the family was down in Port Aransas for Sandfest. As we were leaving town, we decided to stop by Bo Jon’s Surf & Gifts, a big gift shop near one of the central intersections with an entrance made up to look like a shark’s mouth, about 2:00pm. While we [...]

Posted in Commerce, Family, Travel | Comments (2)

2 Jokes

April 13, 2008 – 10:06 pm

Some original jokes to recently come* out of the humor mines where we mercilessly work our children night and day:
From Liam:
Q: Where do you get cold, hard cash?
A: At Frost Bank! (Note: this may be only regionally funny; I’m not sure how far away the aforementioned financial institution has branches.)
From Maggie:
Q: What does a crow say [...]

Posted in Family | Comments (2)

Gambling More Reliable Than Voting

April 11, 2008 – 8:07 am

Over at his weblog, my friend Jim Roepcke posts an interesting comparison of the regulations governing slot machines and those over electronic voting machines. It’s pretty sobering, and makes The Onion’s story on the election results being released in advance look alarmingly plausible.
It’s absolutely ridiculous that software that does something as straightforward as polling should [...]

Posted in Politics | Comments (0)

Sundries

March 31, 2008 – 3:59 pm

A few goings-on of late that bear mentioning:

Liam has started playing Little League baseball. It’s a load of fun, and significantly more action-packed than Major League, since stealing bases is allowed and the boys aren’t so hot at catching the ball. During the last game, which due to time limits was only 4 innings long, [...]

Posted in Curiosities, Family, Games, Movies | Comments (2)

Waving Hands

March 26, 2008 – 7:59 am

Last night, Kathy and I went to see Keith Wann, a stand-up comic, at the Texas State student center. The interesting thing about Keith is that, though he himself is able to hear, he was born to deaf parents and has lived a fair portion of his life in deaf culture. He performs using American [...]

Posted in Curiosities | Comments (0)

Goings-On

March 10, 2008 – 9:03 am

“I’ve been one poor correspondent, I’ve been too too hard to find…”
Sorry about the scant posting of late, my little chickadees. Lots of life going on, and the A Photo A Day project was sucking up a bit of time in February, even though I didn’t manage to totally complete the challenge I set myself.
Here [...]

Posted in Music, Politics | Comments (0)