With no one around in the white of winter, one is more suceptible to poignancy. And in the case of this particular story, I would say the degree of melancholy and loneliness is roughly proportional to the animal in question.
A solitary whale wanders the north Pacific, calling out for a kinsman or comrade. But there are none of either to be found, because this whale’s call, for whatever reason, is completely unique. Baffling and sad.
Long-time Macintosh users might remember an application called Graphing Calculator that shipped with the first Power Macintosh computers. The Power Macs used a new kind of IBM processor, and were way faster than their predecessors. Graphing Calculator showed off this power in an immediate, visceral way.
It graphed equations. It could do lines, curves, inequalities, and equations in three dimensions. The latter could be rotated in real time, and this kind of manipulation was the first glimpse many people had of real-time 3D surfaces on their computer monitor.
The whole thing was both a killer demo and an amazing educational tool. There’s a version of it that runs on OS X now, although it doesn’t ship with the OS like it used to.
But what I and most others didn’t know is that it was developed by two Apple guys whose projects had been canceled—but they kept sneaking into the building to finish it. It’s an amazing story. Check it out.
The latest from Miss J, who’s borrowed the original Star Trek series on DVD and is watching it:
“It’s on this planet where the men are all primitive, but the women are advanced, and live underground and wear miniskirts. Although you’d think that with no patriarchy to oppress them, they’d just wear their pajamas all the time.”
I love this woman.
I have recently had the happy opportunity to actually do some reading. It’s quite novel. These “books” have “pages,” thin films upon which text is writ. They require no electricity, are non-volatile, and have a pleasant tactile response. I recommend them.
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