Proof of my nerd cred: among my occasional pastimes is picking an image from the “Images for Cleanup” category at Wikimedia Commons and, you guessed it, cleaning it up. Nerdiness sometimes brings unexpected little rewards: last night I came across … Continue reading
An old schoolmate of mine from the S.F. Bay Area had a quiz on Facebook tell her that she should live in Los Angeles. She was puzzled by this result, so I developed a more in-depth questionnaire to determine how well someone is suited temperamentally for L.A. So here it is: Derek’s L.A.dar, v 0.5. Continue reading
The tepid reaction to Facebook’s upcoming implementation of usernames has been amusing. Don’t get me wrong — I’ve been as big a Facebook addict as nearly anyone, but there is something cynically satisfying about seeing a web power player make … Continue reading
No, these lists aren’t going to become the only blog entries I write. Unless they’re wildly popular, in which case I’ll become unwilling to write enough of them. So, for now… Continue reading
The seemingly endless succession of Facebook memes had produced one intended to measure how well-read you are in terms of a list of 100 classic works. The list was supposedly compiled by the BBC, and it was claimed that the average person would have read only six of the 100 books on the list. Geek that I am, I dutifully went down the list and checked off the 25 of them that I had read, and posted it in a Facebook note. I put a few of my own comments at the end of the note, including the observation that the list was “a bit Brit-centric… I count no fewer than four Jane Austen books on here and six by Dickens, whereas I see but two Steinbecks, one Fitzgerald, and zero Hemingway. Plus, as Hemingway would point out, only chicks read Jane Austen. 
.” I characterized my final tally of only 1/4 of the total list as “kind of pathetic for someone who claims to be educated.” On the other hand, I also gave myself some credit: “I’m still four times more well-read than the BBC gives me credit for being – so suck on that, crumpet monkeys!”
That’s where the controversy began. Continue reading
If this is your first visit to C&B you may be wondering, "Who the hell is this guy, and why does he have a blog?" It's a fair question, so I've dedicated an entire page to answering it: check out About.
