On Black Friday, the incongruously named day-after-Thanksgiving I rang up Amazon.com and joined the middle class. Yes, I plunked down $1999 for a Samsung LNT4671F. (I know, I’ve railed against idiotic naming conventions for consumer products in the past). It’s a 46″ LCD TV, 1080p, 120 Hz, HMDI 1.3 with built-in spicto-blango-color-correcting-carousel blah blah blah. [...]

My birthday is in four days!
Normally that statement would be grounds for a demerit since it might be seen as a blatant plea for gifts. But really it’s just a friendly reminder to my 3.42 billion fans that I have a HUGE Wish List available for perusing on Earth’s Largest Store. OK, no it’s [...]

Today’s missive will be necessarily brief as I am simultaneously running an international conference, an exhibition, a concert, and a reception this evening at USC. As I was standing in the shower thinking last night about what to write, I remembered how my dear aunt Kathy sent me an email a few weeks ago that [...]

I am not normally associated with the tin-foil hat crowd but something has been cropping up with regularity in the news that has been keeping me up all night lately, which then makes me tardy with all sorts of assignments. I am talking about “Peak Oil,” the doomsday scenario that nearly everyone seems to agree [...]

Considering this site has a decidedly technophile bent, it may strike some (well, not Kassia) as odd that I am so preternaturally focused on the oh-so-very-old-school world of books. Perhaps it’s because I have spent my entire adult life working in libraries (full disclosure: I am not a librarian, thank goodness).

So this week I [...]

It’s probably no secret that many of us ‘Lopers are ex-denizens of the great Central Valley of California. We all fled the land of raisins, heat, and smog for a variety of reasons (for me it was the educational opportunity at a UC school). However, there remain behind some last bastions of civilization who continue [...]

As an inveterate booklover who was spent his entire professional career working in libraries, I have come to enjoy the glory of the “Annotated Edition.”

I am talking about those editions of books that are for the true completist who wants to rapturously revel in every last detail concerning the book they love. You [...]

Today is Christmas Eve. No, really it is.
While the unwashed hordes have descended on Las Vegas the past few days for the annual Consumer Electronics Show to hear Bill Gates talk for the umpteenth (and hopefully, last?) time about how Windows and its Media Player 12 or 13 will be the key to the wired [...]

For my inaugural ‘Loper report, which I’ve delayed almost as long as Vista, I thought I should tee off on something that really gets my goat. And that is: how companies come up with their positively idiotic names for products. You know what I’m talking about. Those names that sound like they were picked from [...]