We had a 747 go over our house at about a thousand feet a few years ago. It looked very large, but so did the Space Shuttle Discovery that it was carrying on its back to Dulles. It was a bittersweet closure for me; I was at the rollout of the Enterprise in Palmdale in 1976.

I’ve seen evidence that all sous vide cylinder cookers have the same internals — heating element, circulator fan — possibly manufactured by a single company. The differences in price seem to result from the finish on the outside of the cylinder and the electronics at the top. Our sous vide cooker, bought over a year…

I’ve seen evidence that all sous vide cylinder cookers have the same internals — heating element, circulator fan —…

I have an old keyboard Kindle displaying the current time, date, and weather information harvested from nearby Weather Underground weather-stations. (Because they are amateur stations, they tend to go down frequently, so the Kindle has to be able to switch from one to another. Fortunately there are a half-dozen of…

Years ago xkcd suggested the name

Me, too, though I was 31 at the time. I'm just to the right, out of frame. Earlier I was standing behind Uhura and Sulu as the Shuttle rolled out. There was a picture in LIFE Magazine showing ... the top of my head.