I’m still trying to keep up with the TED talks, and today’s is a cool one for anyone interested in either Tesla or the concept of broadcast power generally. To be fair this is a much shorter-range version of broadcast power than Tesla was after, but still… The presenter is the CEO of WiTricity, which is commercializing the technology, which… Read more →
Category: Science and Technology
A continuous moving on
Have I previously discussed my enjoyment of the word flux? I don’t think I have. In fact, I like the word enough that I’ve just officially adopted it for the next year at Adopt-A-Word. As the word’s new guardian, I will, of course, be traveling the web to ensure the word is not misused, or under-used. (This is a charity… Read more →
Conventional Wisdom Validated
Some things I have always posited as true: Women, in general, are more attractive than men. I.e. looking at the average woman, is a more aesthetically pleasing experience than looking at the average man. Men, on the whole, are more interested in appearance in a potential partner than women are, generally speaking. And now there’s some research that seems to… Read more →
Going To Mars
Have you taken a moment to add your name to the 2011 Mars mission? I did, and I can prove it. I partly did because hey, it’s Mars, and partly because one of my poker group works on the Mars Rover. I can get a lot of comedy out of “my participation” in the project. Sure, he did the mechanical… Read more →
Reinforcing My Anti-Powerpoint Stance
Of all the people with whom I’ve had in person discussions about the plague that is PowerPoint, no one is as vociferous in their denigration of that application, and the kinds of thinking and communication it encourages than IWith the possible exception of my wife, who has done things like present an academic paper at a conference–conferences tend to expect… Read more →
Notes From The Augmented Hobo Community
One of the things I’m interested in generally is the notion of augmented or mediated reality–everything from simple HUD overlays to the kind of stuff Karl Schroeder so excellent explored in Lady Of Mazes. Some of the ideas that were clearly science fiction just a little while ago are turning into real street level science fiction–you could be walking around… Read more →
The why of your eye, and the tricking of it also
This week when I was picking up comics at the shop, my daughter talked me into buying Jay Hosler‘s latest science comic, Optical Allusions, to read with her. This was a pretty easy sell, considering my previous enjoyment of Hosler’s Clan Apis and Sandwalk Adventures (both of which, it occurs to me just now, are good candidates for being pulled… Read more →
Language and the Shaping Of Thought
While I was doing my undergraduate studies, in addition to my Engineering degree, and my minor in Philosophy, I also pursed a number of “options”, notably including an option in Cognitive Studies. Both the mechanics of thinking and the philosophy of cognition and identity were (and remain) of great interest to me.I wonder if there’s anything to be noted from… Read more →
Aside
See, this is the kind of thing I read popular science articles for: not only do we have single-celled organisms the size of grapes (!), and the seemingly ridiculous possibility that they move under their own power, but the consequent possibility that the entirety of conventional wisdom about the fossil record can be called into question. All in around 7 paragraphs.
Aside
Man, AECL’s Chalk River Lab has really been going down the tubes since I left. Or really, ever since I completed my part in the three-generation tradition of my family working there.
Software Thinking
Most mornings I try to check out the interesting new links on the particular categories of Reddit that interest me. For the most part, I don’t bother with the comments–they are generally noise, not signal. However, the best computery thing I read last week, and possibly for a significantly longer window, showed up in one of those comment threads. And… Read more →
Scary Creatures From The World Of Science
Reading a story about a colony of billions of amoeba, a colony so big that it was visible across a 40 foot area is pretty spooky. Reading further in the article about: the fact that these are “clonal” amoeba–all genetically identical copies, the fact that these amoeba can apparently work together and function as a kind of hive organism, the… Read more →
Minor Meditations On Religion and Neurobiology
There’s lots to think about in the write up on recent studies into the relation between neural wiring and the concept religion at the New Scientist. A really simplified version would be that the brain has a couple of built in biases that make the concept of religion arise almost naturally. One is that we have different cognitive systems for… Read more →
Email Client Questions and Rants
So, I’m thinking it’s time for me to change my personalWork is not up for grabs, and it requires Outlook, but since I can’t both be connected to the work network and the outside world at the same time I’m not sharing work and personal stuff–they are different profiles. Actually, I rarely use the thick client for work email, living… Read more →
Aside
What does it say about me that when I read a piece on scientists attempting to create human/animal hybrids in order to harvest stem cells from animal eggs, that my immediate reaction is “Oh noes, they’re going to make the cat girls and some skeevy people will be way too excited about it”?
