Author’s note: If you keep receiving a “New Entry” titled Uncle?, I apologize for the multiple emails. I’m having technical difficulties with 5-6 early blog posts and the techs at GoDaddy are trying to correct the problem. Thank you for your patience.

There are the stars and there are the “stars.” These fantastic “posters” were commissioned by Turner Classic Movies (TCM) to launch their seventh annual Summer Under the Stars. Every day, from August 1st to August 31st, TCM will run a daily marathon of films featuring one classic actor including Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Harold Lloyd, [...]

That funny-looking thing made up of vertical black bars and printed on nearly every mass-produced product turned 35 years old in June. That’s right, the bar code has just celebrated a major milestone. Designers of the bar code had one simple objective: to speed up the grocery checkout line and to provide a new tool [...]

Stories like the Henry Louis Gates incident make me crazy – enraged, you might say. There’s the incident itself, and then there’s the discussion, dissection, unearthing and finger-pointing. And to what end? When all is said and done, are we in a better place of understanding? Professor Gates, the African-American Harvard professor, had just returned [...]

A US drome-dairy – this is great. Illustration: ©WSJ Online

I rewatched the Powers of 10, one of the many films of Charles & Ray Eames. This 1977 IBM film short depicts the relative scale of the Universe using factors of ten. I had always focused on the narration and the imagery – the score was unobtrusive and complementary. I was surprised to discover that [...]

Just in case you were wondering how Bo sees things in his first 100 days, and beyond… Left: Portrait of Bo, The First Dog. Right: Bo sucking up to the President and his daughter, Sasha. Photos: Pete Souza/The White House

In 1909, there were nearly 100,000 cheetahs on earth. In 2009, that number has dwindled to approximately 10,000. Human interference has accelerated their decline. Laurie Marker, founder and Executive Director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, left her native California 19 years ago for Namibia. She has become one of the world’s leading experts on the [...]

The most popular color for a bettafish as chosen from the Pantone 2009/2010 color palette is: We’ll have to start making betta hybrids. Here are the survey results. Thanks to everyone who participated.

Part 2 (read part 1 here) Once again, get your shots, grab your passport and your gear, and prepare to experience – vicariously – some great off-the-beaten-path journeys. Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Skiff by Rosemary Mahoney Mahoney’s story is told in her 120-mile solo voyage down Egypt’s Nile River in a borrowed [...]