David W. Boles' Urban Semiotic

I read something online the other day from someone proclaiming Rice University: "The Harvard of the South."

That's funny, I said to myself, because I always thought Duke University was supposed to be the "Harvard of the South."

Dananjay Anandan wrote this article.

Last week I bought an external drive. After doing some research online I headed to the best place in the city for computers, peripherals and other electronic goods.

In the middle of the city, located toward the end of Mount Road - the arterial that runs through Chennai - are a few intersecting streets and a dozen-odd bylanes that collectively rejoice under the anachronism of the "Radio Market". Also more popularly known as "Ritchie Street" - the name of one of the intersecting streets.

Bustling and always teeming, the Radio Market consists mostly of individual shops, some dealing in specialty products, and some that operate almost like department stores.

I headed to one of the latter and after narrowing the options down to a 160GB Western Digital pocket drive and a desktop model 250GB LaCie, decided to go for the extra space over reduced size. David's glowing review of the 2 TB helped!

I am never at a loss for amazement when it comes to the stupidity of inane parents. It has been hot in New York City this week.  The streets are hot.  Sand on the beach is hot.  Black rubber playground mats are hot.  Those basic facts of living still do not appear to scare some parents into proactively protecting their children from running around barefoot and getting burned when that danger to life and limb is completely avoidable by invoking common sense and human decency.

Gordon Davidescu wrote this article.

I am a Big Man.  I am a Pretty Man.  I am: The Gordon Davidescu. 

"The Dark Knight" -- the new Batman movie -- make $155 million over the weekend.  One cannot help wondering what sort of message the movie reflects in us considering its vast amounts of spilled guts, buckets of blood and unmitigated gore.  How do we contend with the strange, inhuman, joy found in the shared popularity of public killings?

We already know Jesus was found dead in his grave -- but the recent news that the entire Jesus "resurrection miracle" may have not been anything terribly special in light of a new discovery of a stone scroll extolling the common practice of dead people arising from their eternal slumber in order to live again decades before our favorite Jewish Messiah made his move -- leaves some of us wondering what's left in the Jesus trunk of miracles.

Not all creativity deserves expression.  Editing passionate inspiration with the instinct of a formed aesthetic is a necessary filtering of the creative impulse.

I was never a fan of cable modem internet service -- mainly because you share that copper wire with up to 100 of your neighbors -- but I now recant that condition after experiencing the Comcast Triple Play package overt the last three weeks.  I now have superlative broadband internet access, extensive HD cable programming and digital voice telephony.  My internet connection is so fast up and down that even the Speakeasy Speed Test gets whacked trying to make sense of it as you can see below:

Is a waxen Hitler as dangerous as the real Hitler?

On Friday, Apple released the second generation iPhone with 3G -- iPhone 2.0, if you will -- and it was an unmitigated disaster in every sense for any sensible person that values time over dilly-dallying and working over standing in line.