General John Sullivan was a Lieutenant General in the Continental Army during the American Revolution. In 1779, he was tasked with removing the Iroquois Federation as a strategic threat and a force in New York State. The six nations of Iroquois were divided in their allegiances… Read full post »

I first saw the Netlord at a computer security conference. I didn't notice him at all, at first. It was only after I heard people whispering about him that I saw him sitting in a corner. They huddled in groups, furtively looking at him and studiously… Read full post »

For most photography, there is a certain condition that the photographer sees in the viewfinder that triggers a shutter release. In portraiture, it may be a certain smile that you're looking for, or a particular tilt of the head. The study of what triggers you to… Read full post »

I signed up for the Korsakoff mission three years ago. It seemed like a strange assignment, but I was happy to volunteer for a solo deep space mission. Command wanted a pilot, and I needed a purpose. I'm still not sure why the Central Computers picked… Read full post »

When we take action pictures, we're trying to record an event. The instant that the photo physically represents is meant to describe the entire event. An “Event” isn't a baseball game or tennis match, it's an individual encounter between a batter and the ball or a… Read full post »

North Korea conducted a missile test on Monday after the announcement of Kim Jong Il's death.  This test may have larger implications in the hereditary transition currently going on in North Korea.  There are two intertwined factors that affect the transition of power that will in/… Read full post »

We grew up in an old house on a lonely lane. The cedar shingles had long turned weathered and warped. At night, the moon would give them an eerie light and make me think that ghosts and phantasms were dancing across the creaky roof. It wasn't… Read full post »

Direct marketing is everywhere on TV today. The formula is tried and true. Offer a product to the consumer. Extoll its virtues in as many ways as possible. Establish a value that's higher than your asking price. Surprise the consumer with a lower price. Finally, double… Read full post »

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, patent medicine use became fairly widespread in the US. The concepts of general anesthesia and surgical hygiene were still in their infancy during the American Civil War. With such a dearth of knowledge about bacteria and the foundations of disease,/… Read full post »

As you sit at your desk, you are displacing the air around you, creating a void in the atmosphere. Like water, air wants to fill the space, so it presses evenly against you. When you move your hand, air piles up in front of your hand,… Read full post »

This may be the oldest Poinsettia you've ever seen.  It's 11 years old.  Marty Karch was my manager for almost ten years.  As his retirement neared, he bought a small countdown clock.  Every day, in his office, it quietly ticked away the hours, days, and months… Read full post »

One of the features of new cameras that I find very annoying is the settings priority mode that doesn't allow the camera to take a picture if it hasn't achieved the proper settings. When you press the shutter button, the camera may or may not take… Read full post »

Photography is much like a sentence in that there is “grammar” and a set of rules surrounding it. Emphasizing the subject in a composition is akin to the proper Noun. Keeping the parts of the picture in a common ratio is like avoiding a run on… Read full post »

We had listened for an alien signal for generations when it finally came. It was a primitive radio signal that we could not decipher. We only knew that it had coherence and structure, but the signal defied all our attempts to understand its meaning. There were… Read full post »

I have writer's block. For more than a week, I've been searching for an idea that I could propel for more than a paragraph. Each candidate presents itself only to be quickly beheaded with inquisitional swiftness. The filament sword? A string of nanotubes sprouting from a… Read full post »

All pictures in photography have some distortion in them. Usually, we can't perceive it because the image doesn't have many straight lines or our perspective minimizes the effect. Buildings, roads and other subjects with straight lines show this distortion quite clearly. Perspective shif… Read full post »

Exposure Value, or EV, is the mechanism on a camera that allows you to shift the exposure away from the value that the camera's light sensor gets. When a camera manufacturer develops the light meter for a camera, they use several stock colors and images to… Read full post »

Photography is a medium that condenses an event into an instant. Choosing which instant to capture has a great deal to do with the message that the image will convey. In the psychology of photography, anticipation usually has more power than result. Take a batter… Read full post »

I was friends with Lucian for years. We worked in the same network monitoring facility. Where I was brash, he was studied, where I was slovenly, he was dapper. Together, there was no problem in the net that we could not solve, no project that was beyond… Read full post »

Electromagnetic pulses, or EMPs, are energy bursts that can disrupt electronic equipment, but how do they do it? The answer is in the design of modern electronics. Admiral Hyman Rickover famously carried an 11 inch piece of wire with him that he would show to people… Read full post »

I can almost see the sun through my window. I can imagine what the light of a new day will feel like, even with my eyes closed. I don’t trust my memory. This really will be a new dawn for me. I have to remember what happened last night,… Read full post »

Juche, loosely translated, means “self reliance”. North Korea has used this concept as a central tenant of its government for about 40 years. The specific meaning and application of the slogan has changed, but the core value hasn't. In its modern history, North Korea has relie… Read full post »

 The streets of Rome have hummed with the footsteps of people for more than two thousand years.  The Pantheon has been there all that time to record them in its worn floor stones.  Originally built to pay homage to Roman gods, it has survived into… Read full post »

I was six feet tall and 180 pounds in eighth grade. I was the first person in my middle school to get hairy legs. I had the physicality to be a really good bully. I only bullied one person in school, though. He was the only… Read full post »