Random

Many of you will be flying today. You will be going to see those to whom you feel closest, or, indeed, most indifferent, in order to give thanks for your feelings.

You will also have to enjoy the watchful eyes, hands and smiles of the TSA inspectorate.

You may not find it entirely comfortable. However, like "Mythbusters" presenter Adam Savage, in the rush to leave the house, you may have forgotten that you have a couple of 12-inch razor blades secreted about your person.

Savage, in the highly entertaining monologue that I have embedded, describes how earlier this … Read more

Does gaming, some wonder, turn teens into psychopaths? Or are all teens, perhaps, just a little bit, you know, someplace else?

During my regular reading of the journal Pediatrics, I happened to come across a study that sought to begin to answer some of these torrid questions.

Researchers at Yale decided that it was about time someone tried to establish concrete data around the notion that gaming affects (or doesn't) the growing mind in a stunting kind of way.

So they anonymously surveyed more than 4,000 teens and asked them about their gaming habits and other aspects of … Read more

Standing in line to buy, say, a slightly larger television for a fine price on Black Friday is as much an American tradition as drinking coffee with a stale croissant or buying underwear only at the Gap.

You will delight, therefore, in the news that one Best Buy already has people in line to take advantage of its Black Friday specials.

According to WTSP News in Florida, a whole family has encamped outside a Best Buy in St. Petersburg. They are called the Davenports and they pitched their metaphorical tent on Wednesday at 10 a.m.

They are reportedly the first people to be encamped anywhere in the hope of snagging the first Black Friday offerings. And it seems this, more than the deals, is lifting their spirits far beyond the cloud.

For Lorie Davenport told WTSP: "We're here really early this year because we've always been second, third, and fourth and down the line."… Read more

Perhaps, like me, you will do anything for money. I mean, for art.

So you will be among the first to understand why Wafaa Bilal, a professor of photography at NYU, has accepted a proposition to have a camera implanted into the back of his head that takes shots of what is going on behind his back.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Bilal will shortly enjoy surgery to have the camera inserted comfortably so visitors to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar can themselves enjoy a live stream of images of Bilal's behind, or, rather, of what's behind Bilal. You see, the museum has commissioned this implanted spontaneity for a project called "The 3rd I."

The camera will reportedly be of mere dime size, but the apparent intention is that it should remain in place for a year.

I have never thought too much about what is going on behind my back. I expect there are nasty people making strange international signs, as well as sofa cushions wriggling to make themselves comfortable beneath my bulk. So one wonders why the back of the head was chosen rather than the front.

Artistically speaking (and that is a separate language altogether from English), the museum reportedly declares that this work of art is "a comment on the inaccessibility of time, and the inability to capture memory and experience."… Read more

Is it ever worth questioning officialdom?

After all, officialdom always seems to have an excess of "dom" and the power of the official to make that "dom" (which might seem really, really dumb) painful for the questioner.

Such might be the plight of software engineer John Tyner, who, the TSA has announced, is to be investigated for his behavior while going through airport security.

Tyner was flying out of San Diego last Friday and took exception to the idea of the new full-body scanners, which are capable of capturing whether you are hiding explosives in your … Read more

There is something both lovable and just about British policemen.

They roam the streets, dispensing righteousness, without the aid of a gun. Which makes it safer for the average British citizen to know that if they happen to offer a policeman a slurry quip they will not be offed within a nanosecond of the punchline.

However, it seems as if the British police is struggling to make ends meet, technologically speaking. For the Daily Mail solemnly reports that bobbies on the beat are being trained to text to save money.

You see, British policemen have radios attached to their lapels. … Read more

Do you get slightly disturbed when you go to see your favorite performer live in concert and, because of your keen sense of visual synchronization, you see that they are miming?

Well, brush off your negative last-century attitude and get with the program.

In the case of Japanese singing star Hatsune Miku, the program in question is Yamaha's Vocaloid Synthesizing Technology. Oh, there's a real person's voice somewhere at the heart of it. But who needs real people when you can have a hologram that will never be photographed snorting coke in a bathroom stall, never sleeps … Read more

We tend to think of paper planes as small things, thrown in class in order to get 7-year-olds through the crushing boredom of, say, arithmetic.

But you might not have guessed that some adventurous sort would, one day, try to build a paper plane with a three-foot wingspan.

If you did, I feel sure that it would not have crossed your mind, as it did that of three British amateurs, to build a paper plane with a three-foot wingspan and send it into space.

John Oates, one of the threesome, cheerily told the BBC: "I knew we'd be … Read more

Please pick up your stones, ready to cast them.

As you do, please hone in on the appropriate targets before you fling your pitches. And please don't step over the white line on the pitcher's mound. There will be sanctions.

For this is the story of the University of Central Florida, a college that is justly proud of the high-tech, Vegas-style, security measures it takes when its students are tested. And this is the story of, according to ABC News, a college that has been struck numb by those nefarious operatives known as cheating students.

You will have … Read more