I’ve heard the term “microexpressions” used in passing before, referring to the subtle and often-missed facial expressions that can confirm or contradict your words. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point , has a new article out: The Naked Face, where he talks in-depth about microexpressions. This is a facinating read.

John and John: together for twenty years. Here’s a story that sounds impressive, but really isn’t. Once, at a TMBG concert in Albuquerque, John let me play his guitar during a song. Then, later in that same song, John let me play his accordian.

Perhaps Scott Adams has met one of my oldest friends from college, Phil de Cat.

Randy drove a Ryder truck from San Diego to north of Seattle and took pictures along the way. They’re assembled in one of the most elegant and beautiful photo logs that I’ve ever seen. Careful – all images load at once, so if you’re on a dial-up, it’ll take a while.

Imagine this: a sound system “speaker” that instead of blasting out soundwaves in the audible range sends out a highly-focused direction beam of ultrasound, completely inaudible to the human ear. But when your head is placed inside the beam, your skull transforms these waves into something that only you can hear. Headphone-less headphones. That’s exactly what Elwood Norris has built and is demonstrating to industry. The article points out some of the neat-o uses for such a technology as well as showing how it can be used for evil.

I imagine everyone reading this has heard Leonard Nimoy’s Ballad of Bilbo Baggins , but did you know he did a music video for it? I didn’t, until Mr. Pants told me.

You might think that Kennedy revealing an A-bomb a few blocks from the White House would be highly newsworthy, but you’d be wrong.

It was a kinda sad day yesterday. After 39 months, a timespan that has seen incredible change in my life, I had to part ways with my beloved Saturn. It was a 1999 Green SL2. I leased it, mostly because there wasn’t any other way to get a dependable car then. Apart from a horrendous hassle from the dealer (who was a typical car dealership, and not a typical Saturn dealer), it was a wonderful car. I didn’t have a single problem with it. Not so much as a flat tire or a traffic ticket. I never got around to giving it a name, because I was waiting for some sort of personality trait to base the name on. Some quirk or something, you know? But it was ruthlessly efficient in getting me where I wanted to go in comfort. It carried my many things without complaint. It was too machine-like for a name, I guess. Anyway, the lease was up yesterday. With the farm now, we really needed a pickup and Saturn doesn’t make one of those. So I took it back to there I got it, gave back the keys, and walked away. (Well, rode away actually. Chris met me there.)

Athens and our “wireless cloud” make the news.

With any luck, tonight I’ll be the owner of a 1976 Gravely Tractor, with optional seat and mower/brush cutter. These tried-and-true walk-behind tractors are ideal for land like ours. The tractors themselves aren’t easy to buy, because owners tend to hold on to them for life, but I found one on ebay that’s within a three hour drive away. And while the tractors themselves may be hard to buy, the attachments and parts are plentiful. UPDATE: No luck. As happens all so often on ebay, a dealer swept in at the last moment and snapped it up. I was there, hitting refresh like a madman up to the end, and with 4 seconds to go, he beat my price. I tried to type in a higher number (it was still below value), but couldn’t get it done.