Posts Tagged ‘Drake’

We have met the enemy

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

What you’re looking at there is an attempt to visualize the results (so far) of a workshop run last year in Stockholm that attempted to define the boundaries of a “safe operating space” in which the ecosystem of the planet can operate without veering towards catastrophe.
The 28 scientists worked out nine categories that they were [...]

Posted in General, Science and Technology | 1 Comment »

Yes, that explains it.

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

You may recall that we’ve discussed the Drake Equation here before, and also Nick Bostrom’s efforts to amend it with what I called a Doom Constant.
Well it turns out that a very plausible answer to the Fermi Paradox that doesn’t involve either post has been suggested by a cartoon over at Abstruse Goose. I don’t [...]

Posted in One-and-done | No Comments »

A moment of hobo appreciation

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008

I passed a lovely bit of time today reading The American Hobo by Colin Beesley, a British academic paper about a quintessentially American phenomenon1. I’ve always found the romantic aspects of the hobo story fascinating (something that Utah Phillips has only encouraged), although I suspect I’m too soft to have lived that life even had [...]

Posted in Storytime | 3 Comments »

Monday Miscellany

Monday, March 31st, 2008

It’s really a miscellany today. I was half-tempted to title this 88 lines about 44 links, and maybe even do it in some kind of poetic structure, but fortunately a combination of laziness and good sense prevailed.

Nice to see that former local (and HGPA-member) Brian O’Malley’s movie deal is actually happening–at least leads are being [...]

Posted in Linkapalooza | No Comments »

Other Impractical Desires

Sunday, February 10th, 2008

Here are a few other things, of no practical value, that I’d love to get:

The Peggy programmable light board kit. I’d like to buy a few of these–one to put in the office in Boston to mock the Mooninite thing from last year, one to put in my office for alternative visualization experiments, and one [...]

Posted in Books, Food and Drink | 4 Comments »

A Targeted Miscellany

Monday, September 10th, 2007

A Sunday link list, of things that made me think of specific people.
For my lovely wife, to share with her radical feminist associates, is the story of the most famous pirate of all time. Especially the bits about the pirate laws governing female prisoners. And the end of the story.
Also for her yet another story [...]

Posted in Books, Food and Drink, Linkapalooza, Political, Science and Technology | 6 Comments »