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National Public Radio's recent story about how the Scent Marketing Institute is helping gas stations to spread the smell of coffee at their gas pumps to spur sales at their convenience stores got me to wondering about whether this is an early warning of an imminent olfactory invasion afoot. Until now, most of the public odors (not counting public restrooms) we've lived with, both pleasant and unpleasant, have been un-manipulated byproducts of the natural world: our own activities providing a scent-scape which was often more informative than what we were seeing or hearing. I worry about a day when the forces of commerce start cluttering our nasal radar with noise and false information instead of the cues that we count on for our sense of place.

Whether it's the subtle mix of popcorn, salt air, and slightly stale fr...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

The cell phone industry has done an artful job of using its quasi-monopoly status to screw its customers into paying as much, or more, than their cable bill for services that can only be described as pitiful. Worse yet, in their efforts to make sure that we pay dearly for every iota of bandwidth and every minor convenience that they dole out, the carriers are screwing themselves and strangling any real innovation that could keep the wireless industry afloat in the long term.

If you know anything about electronics it's apparent that the cell phones bouncing around in our pockets are not living up to their potential. While they can take pictures, play music, or run a contact database, it's difficult, and sometimes impossible, to make these neat features work in concert with the stuff you already have on your computer. Impossible, at least, until you pay another $10 - $30/month for something that would be free on your laptop. A couple of years ago, I would have chalked up a pho...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

The news that the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) had probably succumbed to a fault in its solar array steering mechanism brought a sad although not unexpected loss of a machine that I'd come to think of as an old friend. The spacecraft, which had been built using many spare parts from my ill-fated project, the Mars Observer, went silent after mapping Mars since early 1999, nearly five times its nominal design life. Nevertheless, the news was especially poignant for me since it also echoed the passing earlier this year of G. Edward Danielson, a Principal Science Investigator on the MGS mission and an old friend who taught me so much about Mars, the Universe, and life in general.

If there's any consolation to be had, it's that both Ed and MGS l...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

After watching a couple of dozen generations of consumer electronics strut their way down the eternal conga line between the store shelf and the trash heap, it's still a mystery to me about what makes folks go from drooling over a new technology to actually laying out money for it. That's because I'm part of the large cohort of folks known as late adopters -- you know, the people who tend to hold on to the gadgets we have until they stop making batteries for them and we can't find the repair parts on eBay anymore. As someone who still packs a late-1990s Palm-V PDA in his pocket and a 20-year old Sony Trinitron in his den, my quasi-Luddite personal life is, in part, a direct result of my professional life, where I get to see exactly how unreliable, short-lived, and downright flaky most new technologies are. If you'd seen the underbelly of nearly every communication technology since the...  -- Click Here to Read More >>

The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) course I'm taking has proven to be even more of an interesting experience than I'd bargained for. While all the search and rescue, firefighting, and first aid training has been valuable and interesting, one of the most important lessons I learned is nowhere to be found in the CERT training manual. Spending an evening a week with a bunch of once-strangers from my community has reminded me that of the finest examples of the American spirit can be found in its volunteers. And in this time when the very foundations of our electoral system seem to be a bit shaky (see my editorial Gone in 60 Seconds), maybe it's time to apply some of that volunteer spirit to restore our confidence in its integrity.

That's why I'm taking Tuesday, November 7th off to volunteer as a pollworker,...  -- Click Here to Read More >>