The Grand Master of science fiction is back

Scrolling through my news feed this morning I was thrilled to learn of a new posthumous novel by Robert A. Heinlein. According to my sources, The Pursuit of the Pankera is a parallel novel to Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast published in 1980. My well-worn copy is this post’s photo. Apparently the first third …

This is Wilson. He now works from home.

It has been one month since we last posted. Like many, we have been preoccupied. Preoccupied watching our business wither. Preoccupied finding other sources of income. Preoccupied tracking global outbreak maps, infection graphs, and mortality charts. Preoccupied overcoming ennui despite the extra time on our hands. Preoccupied sending dumb messages on WhatsApp. Too many journalists, …

Get your geek on!

I’ve been on campus for most of the day and around noon I took a break at Geek’s Café – a meeting place for superheroes and nerds – where the above plaque is attached to the wall of the outdoor seating area. How much geek is in you? How many of the culture references can …

If Kim Jong-un were the Easter Bunny …

he would probably look like this. This anthropomorphic chocolate nightmare is currently scaring children and adults alike in the Färbergasse in Graz. I assume it will be on display until Easter, so come visit our city and see for yourself before the season changes.

Why is a raven like a writing-desk?

I was pleasantly surprised this morning by Google’s doodle celebrating Sir John Tenniel’s 200th birthday. Unfortunately, according to the This Doodle’s Reach map, unlike the coronavirus, global spread was limited and seemingly random. If you missed the doodle in your country, the first link above will lead you to it. Tenniel was an illustrator and …

My dogma got ran over by your karma

In previous blogs we have written about confirmation bias. We have also examined movements like flight shaming, that use guilt to change individual behavior that is damaging to the common good or simply considered societally unacceptable. Today my biased dogma got seriously shamed by some unpleasant karma. You see, when it comes to the environment, …

Teamwork – the Foe of Greatness

I have always regarded the praises of teamwork with great suspicion and have seen most teams more as a waste of time than a generator for great ideas. Teaching at a university of applied science, I see that group assignments produce significantly weaker output than individual assignments. But as I am surrounded by a culture …

It’s the end of the world as we know it …

There are a multitude of apocalyptic climate change doom-and-destruction scenarios propagated in the mass media. Among them are “profoundly silly” big-budget films with poor acting and instantaneous ice ages. While these may be entertaining, I doubt that a bizarre Mad Max dystopian scenario awaits humanity as a result of anthropogenic transformation. So, what horrible things …

TANSTAAFL

Since childhood, I have been an avid Robert Heinlein fan (yes, despite his depiction of women in his later works) and one of my favorite aphorisms that Heinlein popularized is TANSTAAFL – “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” My last grocery store receipt brings this phrase to mind. € 24.35 after discounts …

Put that on my tab

The above social media post – recently republished in my university’s student magazine – made me consider how academic research has changed since my undergraduate days in the 1980s. Back then, we didn’t have any tabs open when working on assignments because the Internet and web browsers didn’t exist. When you wanted to know something, …