I’ve been interested in the Vancouver-based startup D-Wave for over a year now. They make quantum computers. And, unlike any other company in the world, they’ve actually made working ones. This week they’re demoing a pattern recognition test that’s very difficult for traditional computers– scanning pictures and quickly identifying which ones are [...]

This my reply to the second part of Mike’s email from this morning. He was asking if people could tell the tones of Chinese characters from their written form.

I assume Mandarin doesn’t have this issue (of not being able to tell how syllables are inflected) since each syllable has (one of 5?) inflections: hook, [...]

I hadn’t really had anything I felt like writing about for a couple of days, but then Mike sent me this email:

Obviously we don’t have accent marks in English. Is
this because we have more complex rules or is there no
way to tell exactly how a word is said based solely on
how it’s written?

Thanks, Mike. [...]

When my old friend, Mike Duckwitz, got married this winter, he and his wife asked for an unusual wedding gift. Instead of gifts for themselves, they asked for donations to ASODECIGUA which is a charity for malnourished children that they worked with during their time in Guatemala. I’ve lived in Guatemala for a [...]

Tonight I was able to borrow my uncle’s car and drive up to Boulder. I got to see my old roommate and running partner Matt, Mike, and Warren. Warren went to high school with me, but I didn’t really get to know any of these guys well until college. Still, they all [...]

As many readers realize, the pronunciation of many English consonants change based upon whether or not the preceding consonant was voiced. For example, consider the word “cards”. The pronunciation of “z” and “s” is the same, except for the fact that “z” is voiced and “s” is unvoiced. The same can be said for “d” [...]