The national library in Norway refuses to give ISSNs to weblogs, although many weblogs clearly fit the definition of a periodical worthy of an ISSN: periodical, archived, dated, one title, some kind of serious (faglig) content, etc. Obviously the ISSN system, with […]

The theory of relativity explained in words of four letters or less. It reads a little like Cat in a Hat, only with fewer rhymes and less impressive rhythm: “I can hear you say, “No way. That can’t be!” But I tell […]

When we picked up Noah from the airport a couple of weeks ago, my daughter and I brought along her ABC book so we could do her reading homework on the airport bus. On the way back from the airport, My daughter […]

Of course, putting the category at the bottom of each post leads to some funny sentences. I’ve not designed my categories for this grammar: “Posted by Jill to world at 8:59” – well, yes, I suppose I am posting to the world. […]

Problems in Iraq: deodorant desparately needed.

Extremely frequent visitors may have noticed that link-packed comments advertising various drugs keep popping up and disappearing here. They’re always comments to posts that have a lot of links pointing to them and thereby a high Google PageRank, which is obviously what […]

He slept through my entire visit, so I didn’t get to hold him. But while his mother was unwrapping the soft cotton blanket I’d brought for him he opened his eyes a little, not quite awake, but looking steadfastly at me as […]

This morning I was writing when Mark pinged me in iChat: There are definitely a few times I’ve been alone in foreign cities where I’d have liked to sit down, order a coffee, unfold a slim laptop and find a list of […]

Digitales2003 is calling for stories and texts about gender and technology. Different stories: One often hears that girls are not interested in technical things because they are too cold and too systematic, but what about telling them that one of the pioneers […]

Reading an old copy of The Guardian’s Review section over breakfast, I found this that I want to remember: When Marco Polo first saw a rhinoceros on Java, he recognised it as a unicorn. The creature had a single horn and the […]