We’ve been staring at these pages since January 2006 — more than two and a half years, as I write this — and there’ve been close to 400 entries a year. That’s over 1000 so far (this is entry number 1065, in fact). The Search bar at the top of the page makes it convenient to find something specific, but if you just want to see what’s around, you have a lot to browse through.
To make it easier for new readers (and for me!) to find some entries that I consider to be particularly good, of lasting importance, or just representative samples, I’m creating this entry, which I’ll put on the front page and will update as new entries qualify. It’s roughly categorized, and is simply my own selection of the entries I want to highlight. Perhaps it’s a good place for a new reader to start, to see what I’m about and what I have to say. Within each category, the items are in chronological order, oldest first.
[Last updated on 10 July 2009.]
Categories:
About Me, Including Rumination and Philosophical Thoughts
Diversity and Feminism
Politics: The U.S. President
Politics: Civil Rights and Human Rights
Other Politics, Government, and Law
Atheism and Religion
Recreation: Art, Music, Dancing, Movies, Hobbies...
Technology, Computers, and the Internet
Mathematics
Education
Language
Miscellaneous Other Things
About Me, Including Rumination and Philosophical Thoughts
The questionnaire (the ten questions James Lipton asks)
Reassessment and prioritization
Plus ça change...
NYC anti-war march
Light Amplification through Stimulated Emission of Radiation
Professional courtesy?
Personal responsibility
The Competition
Cultivating fearlessness
Celebrate! Celebrate! Dance to the music!
Louis
On torturing terrorists
Max
Is it art?
Life’s too short...
Try, try again
Diversity and Feminism
What we think of Islam
Equal pay
Smart women, the continuing discussion
A word on Affirmative Action
Gender balance
Are rapists getting away with it?
Equality of rights under the law
Assimilation vs cultural diversity
On adopting minority children
Sex offenders and “date rape”
¿Cómo se llama usted?
On racial awareness
Politics: The U.S. President
Outrage, and doing something about it
“I love free speech.”
Lügen and mensonges and mentiras, Oh my!
The court jester
For the right reasons?
Reality-based government
Politics: Civil Rights and Human Rights
“Marriage”, not “civil union”
Threats against the press
NPR listeners’ comments on habeas corpus
Presumption of innocence
Searching the constitution
Le Pen avoids the pen
My laptop, my home
The Torture Hearings
Terrorism on American soil
Other Politics, Government, and Law
Drop Out of the College
Supreme arrogance
“I forbid!”
Larry Darby and the Two Party System
What if you’d died before you were born?
Judicial accountability?
What can you do?
Qualifications for the job
Of course everyone has the right to own guns!
More on YouTube and Viacom
Technology and the Keystone Cops
Don’t tase me: more police excess
Separation of Church and Tax
Protecting ourselves
On psychics and fraud
Atheism and Religion
Making monkeys out of teachers
Technophobia
No child left behind
Die Schöpfung
What God wants
Ham-handed arguments
Have we got a minyan for the election?
Fill my eyes with that double vision
Religion, atheism, and morality
Science and faith
“God is my dictator”
Who, exactly, intervenes?
When did I stop believing?
Equal time for nonsense?
Recreation: Art, Music, Dancing, Movies, Hobbies...
Hiking in the lower Hudson valley
Pink Martini
Modern Western Square Dancing
What fools these mortals be
Round dancing
“Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man”
Grounds for Sculpture
Hang up and listen to Zep
If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution
A Saturday afternoon in Washington Square
“Bleu”
The Dinner Party
Technology, Computers, and the Internet
Some of these are parts of a series (noted in the list), and they usually contain pointers to the rest of the posts in the series.
PKI, PKI, PKI (public-key infrastructure)
More on patents
Vote or Die...bold (Can computer voting work?)
Night of the Living Dead (a series on “zombie” computers)
Social networking
Digital technology
Digital signatures (a series)
Ah, but I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now
Why are passwords weak?
Privacy, technology, and research
On spam: the interview
Internet cafes and other public computers
Object-oriented programming
PayPal anti-phishing token
Email subject lines
Internet Architecture Board (explaining Internet standards)
Polling, computerwise
The good and the bad of top-level domains
Halt! Who goes there? (email challenge/response systems)
Aspects of computer security (a series)
Productivity and the Information Age
Logging in securely on the web
Is CAN-SPAM useless?
Anonymity, and levels thereof
Your privacy on the Internet
On replying to email
A word about “net neutrality”
Instant messaging vs email
Behind the lectern at Second Life (presenting via avatar)
Covert channels
The conflict of simplicity vs glitz
Plug-ins, and SASL
Short-changing with short messages
I don’t get Facebook
The Internet, in New Scientist (a series)
Linux for Mom and Dad?
Net neutrality and paying for usage
Computers in movies and television
“Branding” for email and web sites
Mathematics
Paradoxes (and other mathematical oddities, a series)
Random is as random does
Trigonometry of car doors
Education
Prepared for college?
Teaching with technology
The PhD fraternity
Don’t know much geography...
Are you smarter than a high school senior?
What grade is an “F”?
Innumeracy: Why can’t Johnny add?
Teach your children well
Language
Apostrophes
Between Scylla and Charybdis
Precedent for precedence
Misplaced modifiers
Mad hot verbing
In a manner of misspeaking
Help for the politically correct
Miscellaneous Other Things
Do Americans know the US constitution?
Finding time to blog
Social connections, continued
Esprit de corps
A great idea for March!
I swear...
Careers
I, the jury
How not to give a presentation
Visualizing large numbers
Product packaging
He’s checking it twice...
Twelve angry men
You Must Read This
Gambling on insurance
Is a man’s stoop his castle?
Risk: reality and imagination
A tale of two Steves
If someone is worth recommending...
Cross-checks on ethics
Scientific garbage: enablers
