I recently met someone I worked with briefly in the past. He told me he was in jail for three months. For this story I will call him Ken. Ken said that while in jail he asked himself where and how he wanted to live (in jail and not supporting his son and being without his son’s mom) or the other. Read more »

Some people will always be more gadget-oriented than others. Moreover, personal-area networking doesn’t just mean connectivity between several devices on a single person. The same technologies will allow networks to be established automatically between people near each other. Read more »

PANoramic view
Bluetooth isn’t the only personal-area networking (PAN) technology. The ultimate personal network is the human body. Working with Neil Gershenfeld (author of When Things Start to Think) at the MIT Media Lab in the early ’90s, Tom Zimmerman designed a low-frequency 0.5MHz wireless networking technology that passes signals directly through the body and has a range of about 1 meter. PAN has many uses (think about exchanging business cards by touch) but given market realities and the widespread support for Bluetooth, Zimmerman is now focused primarily on authentication applications in business, industrial, and consumer environments. Read more »

My husband’s uncle, Charles Moran, died a couple of months ago. He was a lovely man who studied, among other things, what determined genius in people. His sister sent us a remembrance card and the passage on the back, one I hadn’t thought about for years, resonated so much I felt compelled to write about it. Read more »

The Prior Year’s Assessment Worksheet below is for your use in assessing your previous New Year’s resolutions to lose weight. Before completing this form, make three copies. Attach one copy to the end of your new 2001 calendar—back by the month of December, and make a note to complete it late in December of next year. On the second copy, write in 2000 as the year, and on the third copy, write 1999.

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Last spring, I was a D.C. intern. Thanks to the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, almost everyone I met got a silly smirk on their face and thought they would be real original by making some lewd comment about my title. While their comments were understandable, they were also unnecessary and quite annoying to me and most likely every other female interning in our nation’s capitol.
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