It's been said that the future will be much like the present, only longer. But knowing the future would change your life. If you knew the exact location of your death you might avoid that place and buy a few more years. ("No, I can't go to the Teacups ride...

Last week I paid a visit to an old friend in television news. I watched the ten screens in his office showing competing news stations and live feeds. I listened to his scanners buzzing with cop voices. His computer instant message system wanted his...

I didn't know you could play a Celine Dion CD off a car battery. But Mike Casper has figured out a way to do it. He's one of 20 or so residents of River Haven, a transitional encampment in Ventura County, California. River Haven...

We humans are learning that our pets are pretty smart creatures. Not only have they managed to negotiate free room and board for life, they also help people heal and have learned how to communicate with us using our own language.

There's a border collie who, according to one

Derek Jeter is actually Superman, right? Even better if he wore a cape to games, but then he might trip over it on the way to receiving his friggin' World Series trophy.

When I say I hate the Yankees, I know I am in...

Everyone is connected by six degrees of separation.

I like the sound of that. The phrase it's a small world after all has been seared into my mind by singing robots at Disneyland. (Do you have that song stuck in your head now? Sorry.)

Six Degrees became a popular phrase...

At Facebook they analyzed everyone's status updates and arrived at the conclusion that there is one day all year when Facebookers are happiest. Christmas.

Data crunchers in other labs have revealed that if you live in Vermont you will live longer than if you live in New York.

Is it possible to construct a village of new homes in a day, providing much-needed housing for the homeless in Ventura County, California? The answer is yes if you have a few hundred volunteers, two battalions of Navy Sea-Bees, an innovative design for geodesic domes, and some vision.

The innovative...

What's the best way to choose a mate? Here's some good advice.

"Look over a sample of males and go for the one with the longest tail."

Actually, that advice works really well for birds. Not so well for people. Scientists speculate that female birds might have had a preference...

I was training for a marathon but my left knee wasn't along for the ride. It filed a complaint with the rest of my body. There was a long line at the somatic complaint window that day, so by mile 11 nobody in authority was listening to the knee.

KNEE:...

What if I told you there's a way to pick stocks that is so reliable you'll do better than the experts? But in order for it to work, you'd have to give up something: Your access to information.

Ignorance is power.

In 2000, an investment magazine held a stock picking...

A while ago I did a search for my name on Google to check in with my Internet self. It's time to hit "search" again to see how busy I've been.

According to LinkedIn, I still have my old job in Dallas/Fort Worth, workin' away at strategic procurement for HP....

I wasn't in the room when it happened, but I have it on good authority that you can stop a man's heart, cut out a malfunctioning aortic valve, pop in a new one, bypass years of accumulated disease and then start up the system like a reliable old car. And...

Twitter, sacred? Well, maybe. A recent blog by Stephen Dinan started the ball rolling for me by asking "When something is wildly successful, as Twitter now is, I often ask myself about its higher purpose. In other words, what might be the...

If your ear gets clogged does it mean that you are trying to avoid hearing something that you don't want to hear? If you have a cough that won't quit, could it be that you are "barking" for the world to pay attention?...

Much has been written and said about the passing of Walter Cronkite. Will there ever be another like him?

I was in a network meeting the other day, and the executive running it was explaining that during the Jurassic Era of television,...

With the confirmation hearings of Judge Sonia Sotomayor underway, we have a woman in a very public spotlight who needs to prove herself to questioners who are mostly men. She's had to emphasize her devotion to the law, her detachment from emotion, and her all around stability. She'd probably...

This month I'm conducting an experiment in not striving. I'm nine days in. It's going pretty badly. Pushing, grasping, wanting and hoping are kind of like getting up in the morning: I strive, therefore I am. Some sharks are like that -- they can't stop swimming because then they...

We finally finished watching No Direction Home: Bob Dylan the great documentary directed by Martin Scorsese that aired on PBS in 2005. Watching this film has been a multi-year project. I started watching it with my wife before she was my wife. The film looks back at Bob Dylan's...

This week's Newsweek cover article is a slap at Oprah Winfrey for crazy talk about complementary and integrative medicine. Oprah does cover some fringe stuff that is wacky and sometimes wrong. But I think she's right to do it. Here's why.