GOOGLING—FOR FUN AND PROFIT PART 2
YESTERDAY WE BEGAN GLEANING TIDBITS from Donald MacKenzie’s “The Future of Search,” London Review of Books, November 20, 2025. Today in Part 2 he (and we) continue analyzing implications of … Continue reading
GOOGLING—FOR FUN AND PROFIT PART 1
WHAT WITH RESEARCHING ONE THING AND ANOTHER, I am a regular user of the Google search engine. So it is with compelling interest that I read Donald MacKenzie’s “The Future … Continue reading
ON MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHIES
A CENTURY AGO, MATHEMATICIANS DEBATED THE EXISTENCE of numbers. “You’d think, after millenniums, we’d have gotten that straight,” writes Jordan Ellenberg in The New York Times Book Review, November 23, … Continue reading
FAKE IT TILL IT MAKES IT
HALLUCINATIONS MADE BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE are rooted in the adage above. Celina Zhao recounts, “A.I. Hallucinates Because It’s Trained to Fake Answers It Doesn’t Know,” AAAS Science, October 28, 2025. … Continue reading
SCIENCE AND OUR WORLD
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, ENGLISH MATHEMATICIAN ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD delivered a series of Lowell Lectures titled Science and the Modern World. In a “Classics Revisited” essay, Science, October 16, 2025, … Continue reading
ONE BRILLIANT HELMET
MADELINE COLEMAN REPORTS IN THE ATHLETIC, The New York Times, October 9, 2025, “Isack Hadjar’s F1 Helmet is a Tribute to Physics, Fatherhood, and a Decade of Racing.” Coleman observes … Continue reading
INTERACTIVE MEDIA & GAME DEVELOPMENT—WPI AMONG THE LEADERS
COMPUTATIONAL ADVANCEMENTS—ROBOTICS, EDUCATION, HEALTHCARE, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND EDUCATION—are a significant driver of modern culture. And Worcester Polytechnic Institute, my undergraduate school, is among those leading the way in Interactive Media … Continue reading
THE 35TH FIRST ANNUAL IG NOBEL PRIZES
HANNAH RICHTER REPORTS “The Ig Nobels Are Science’s Most Lighthearted Event. This Year Is ‘Not Typical,’ ” AAAS Science, September 19, 2025. Not typical, of course, because of Trump’s autocratically … Continue reading
A GREEN IDEA HOUSE
JEFF BRADY DESCRIBES “5 LESSONS FROM A HOUSE That Generates More Energy Than It Uses,” NPR, September 20, 2025. Brady recounts, “Robert Fortunato’s ‘Green Idea House‘ has been doing that … Continue reading
A.I. PRIMERS
HERE I MEAN “PRIMERS” in the short-i sense; Merriam-Webster: small books for teaching children to read. And, in the fast-developing world of artificial intelligence, we’re all children needing to learn … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 