Tsk. A current radio spot gives the web address “wachovia dot com backslash new”.

Meanwhile, what’s new with me?

I’m reading Coxeter’s Non-Euclidean Geometry in the hope that it will give me the stuff I’ve sought in vain in other books: the actual formulae for coordinate transforms under the various isometries, rather than useless taunts like “a matrix with such-and-such properties” (which I don’t know how to recognize let alone generate). But it uses so many cryptic notations that I’m afraid I won’t understand the formulae if they do show up. Exercises would help. [Later: No such luck. It barely touches on H3 at all.]

My car’s starter burned itself out. Luckily this happened at home on my day off; a few hours later, all was well. My housemate pointed out that my last bit of car trouble (a dead battery) also happened at home. What a well-behaved car!

Pillow, the junior cat, has been smelling of smoke lately; and we don’t know where he’s pooping. It would seem he has found a second home, though that’s odd since he consistently flees human strangers. Perhaps he was seduced with catnip.

Roderick Long (1993): How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis: Medical Insurance that Worked – Until Government “Fixed” It

Hey, I’m a fictional character! Dr. Anton Sherwood, “an older man in a tweed suit”, appears in The Secret Hour by Scott Westerfeld, a novel about which I know nothing else. (I searched for my name, as one sometimes does, this time looking for ones that aren’t me.)

The latest thing to puzzle me in med-speak is “benign yet appropriate”. When would it be inappropriate to appear healthy?

There apparently exists a surgical tool called a synovial elevator. Makes me think of a bioengineered building, with beams of bone.

It occurs to me that, assuming Cuban Communism does not long outlive Fidel, a lot of gringos are going to buy nostalgic cars there.

Vladimir Bulatov makes and sells pretty things in metal, wood and stained glass. I haven’t bought any of them — yet!

Friendly societies: ancient free-market social security

Meet the Mind Readers: brain implants to control prostheses.

In previous studies, Nicolelis’s team showed that when monkeys had their brains hooked up to robotic arms, they assimilated the arm, effectively making it their own. “Their brains actually incorporated the robotic arm by dedicating neuronal space to it. We want to see if the same thing happens in humans,” he adds.

Can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. What I wanna know is whether – and how readily – a brain can embrace an interface that has no familiar analogue.

Played poker last night – for the second time in my life, if I haven’t miscounted – with some Stanfordites; I think I was the only one there over thirty. Won $2.50.