Criminalization of Chemistry

Annalee at io9 posted a story about a Saskatchewan university student arrested for having a chemistry lab at home. What’s most disturbing to me is that a few years earlier, Saskatchewan police evacuated a Salvation Army community centre after finding chemicals for a darkroom. One interesting and unfortunate side effect of the consumer-electronicsification and digitization …

Interface Design: Not Canadian Grant Organizations’ Strong Suit

It’s fellowship season up here in Canada, and more and more of Canada’s granting agencies have moved to an all-online system for their grant applications. While I am in favor of using less paper and streamlining the application process, I do wonder why Canadian granting organizations have such categorically bad web design. Montreal is full …

The Record Mystique: Mysteries of Vinyl or, the second time as farce

This NYTimes story on vinyl has been making the rounds on various music boards since it came out Sunday. Many of the old writers lament that vinyl has been “relegated” to the Style section of the newspaper. Me, I just sigh every time the old myths are trotted out. [Vinyl] virtually collapsed in the late …