Innovation
1958–A Year in Review
I turn 60 this week. Which doesn’t seem possible. I finished my PhD fifteen years ago. I got married nine years ago. I’m just now reaching my stride in a career I love. By any reasonable accounting of a life that would make me about forty. And yet the year is clearly printed on my…
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The Poisoner’s Handbook: A Belated Review
It is possible you have already read Deborah Blum’s The Poisoner’s Handbook. I was late to the game when I first picked it up and I have been reading it on and off for several years.* For those of you who haven’t read it, the book’s sub-title says it all: Murder and the Birth of…
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From the Archives: Lovelace, Babbage and Steampunk Comics (with a little grumble about Lord Byron)
Today is the 230th birthday of George Gordon, Lord Byron, and bits of his history are popping up here and there all over the internet. There are lots of good (or bad) stories to tell. He was a poet when poets were rock stars of the sex, drugs and iambic pentameter variety. And he was…
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