Singularity University‘s Peter Diamandis talks about the SpaceX Falcon launch. Here.
Our reader The Big Henry has been sending along some engaging science-related links lately, and he’s just sent me another. This one has to do with the possibility that “biophotons” — light quanta emitted within living cells — may be a channel for some sort of information transfer. I’ve never heard anything about this until [...]
Life just keeps getting better.
From Brad Templeton’s blog: flying telepresence drones as medical first-responders. Here.
Here’s an item that should come as no surprise to anyone: Religion Is a Potent Force for Cooperation and Conflict, Research Shows The article discusses a paper by Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges that describes religion as strongly fostering cooperation within human social groups, as a means of competing more successfully against other groups. We [...]
Coffee Drinkers Have Lower Risk of Death, Study Suggests
Here’s an interesting item: “Good” Cholesterol Not So Good After All, New Study Shows The revelation that high-density lipoprotein, or HDL, is the “good cholesterol” has suffered a major blow. A meta-study involving over a hundred thousand participants used two different strategies to see if genetic mutations that increased levels of HDL also decreased risk [...]
A few months ago one of our readers reader kindly sent me a copy of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith. I finally got around to reading it, and recommend it to you all. Here’s the publisher’s summary over at Amazon: For [...]
Attention, readers: Radio Derb is back. John Derbyshire, following his defenestration by National Review, has dusted himself off and taken his weekly podcast over to Taki’s. So far, there are three new installments. Have a listen here. And speaking of Derb, here’s a recent essay of his, also at Taki’s: Ridding Myself of the Day.
From time to time in these pages we have noted the accelerating caponization of the Western male, as the grand project to bring the sexes into complete convergence somewhere deep in distaff territory continues apace. Fortunately, there are still a few pockets of resistance.
Here’s a novel approach to implementing coordinated behavior in a non-hierarchical “swarm” of autonomous machines: Biologists have long puzzled over the ability of bacteria and social insects to sense not only the presence of compatriots but their number and to synchronise their behaviour. It turns out that these creatures perform this synchronisation using a process [...]
Remember Colin Quinn? That Brooklyn comedian who was on Saturday Night Live for a while? I happened to be looking at Twitter just now and watched him destroy whatever was left of his professional life. In response to the news that the majority of babies born in the USA are now non-white, he emitted this: [...]
Attention, teens: if you need some help answering the call of the wild, then make your way to Sex: A Tell-All Exhibition, now running at Ottawa’s Museum of Science and Technology. The exhibit includes floor-to-ceiling photos of nude toddlers, children, teens and adults, and an array of heated, flavoured and textured condoms rolled over wooden [...]
As if the news out of Washington D.C. weren’t already depressing enough, here’s an especially sad item: Chuck Brown, the “Godfather of Go-Go”, has died at age 75. As noted here, I was lucky enough to do a record with Chuck long ago, and the lovely Nina and I saw him play just last summer [...]
For those of you who might enjoy it, here’s a five-part interview with Thomas Sowell on the role of intellectuals in modern democracies. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5.) Churchill said this, once upon a time: The worst difficulties from which we suffer do not come from without. They come from within. They do not come [...]
Ever since seeing Fantasia as a boy, I’ve been fascinated by animated renderings of music. Poking around online today I found two very different animations of J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #6. Both are complete mappings of the musical score onto a scrolling visual display, and so both express the same information. I can’t decide, though, [...]
I’ve mentioned “exponentially advancing technology” a lot lately. Think I was kidding?
Here’s a poignant item from the Daily Mail: a P-40 Kittyhawk lost in the Sahara 70 years ago has just been discovered, preserved in the sands.
Our reader Henry has sent along a thought-provoking item about a mechanism by which complex systems can bootstrap themselves into existence: autocatalytic sets. The idea is particularly intriguing in its metaphorical generality, and its applicability may well extend beyond chemistry to social and political domains as well. Have a look. An explanatory article is here, [...]
The big news of the day is that President Obama, after years of reticence on the topic, has just announced that he supports same-sex marriage. I don’t suppose this will have much effect on the vote. It’s hard to imagine that his coming out in favor of SSM will snatch any supporters away from Mitt [...]
My, so many interesting things afoot in the Gulf and environs lately! Much to think about: – The ongoing game between AQAP and the Saudis… – …in particular, between Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri and Mohammed bin Nayef (little brother Abdullah Asiri having already sacrificed his life in vain on that score); – That Fahd al-Quso was [...]
East Germany, before and after.
As depressing as presidential campaigns are, they can be entertaining, too, as long as you enjoy forms of entertainment that don’t cheer you up. President Obama just gave us a good example with his latest promotional offering, The Life of Julia, which chronicles a faceless, solitary woman’s journey “forward” from cradle to grave, apparently without [...]
There’s a sad front-page article in today’s New York Times about frontotemporal dementia, a family of degenerative brain diseases that gradually destroy not only various skills and cognitive functions, but also the essential nature of a patient’s personality. These diseases are stark reminders that what we are — that all of what we are — [...]
Here’s a remarkable critter: a plant-animal chimera called Elysia chlorotica. Once it has dined on enough algae to prime its photosynthetic pump, it lives on nothing but sunlight, and never needs to eat again. Amazing. More photos here.
Many years ago I stumbled across a book called The Descent of Woman, by Elaine Morgan. It was the first I’d ever heard of something called the “aquatic ape hypothesis”, which claims that certain features of the human body — our hairless skin, our bipedalism, and some other things you can read about here — [...]
It’s been a long day at work, but I might have managed to write a post nevertheless — had I not lost myself for the past hour at the infinitely engaging (at least for a well-seasoned old gaffer like me) ‘miscellaneous” page at Lileks.com. Have a look for yourself.
We note with some surprise the Obama campaign’s adoption of the word Forward as its new slogan. The word has, of course, been a rallying cry of socialists and Marxists for a very long time — so much so that Wikipedia even has an entry about it. Perhaps this indicates a refreshing frankness on the [...]
Uh-oh — according to Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, maybe we’d better not. We reserve comment.
April 30, 2012 – 10:34 pm
Here’s an item from NightWatch‘s Robert McCreary: Iran: For the record. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei provided the following guidance in response to a question about whether it was sinful to use social media. “In general, the use of social networking websites (such as Facebook, FriendFeed, Orkut, etc) is impermissible if their use entails a corrupt [...]
Here’s a hilarious newspaper clipping, sent to Lawrence Auster by a reader: Read the caption carefully.
Here we are in 2012, and the most advanced technological civilization that has ever existed is stymied by three tons of meat in a log cabin. What was it that Emerson said about hobgoblins?
April 26, 2012 – 10:09 pm
First thing tomorrow I’m driving down to Milburn Landing State Park, near Pocomoke City, MD, for a weekend of camping with some boyhood chums: a long-overdue reunion inspired by a weekend we spent there 40 years ago this summer. One of us lives in San Diego, one in Minnesota, one in Cincinnati, and one in [...]
Sitting for a portrait? Keep this in mind. Going on a date? Head for Peter Luger’s. Last, but not least: there’s no need to be glum just because Earth Day’s over. Not until you’ve read Iowahawk’s annual homage to Gaia, anyway.
Here’s some murderous rage from Forbes contributor Steve Zwick, who is scouting out lamp-posts for those who refuse to fall in line with his views on anthropogenic global warming: We know who the active denialists are – not the people who buy the lies, mind you, but the people who create the lies. Let’s start [...]
Well, it appears that Marine le Pen will be the kingmaker in France this time around, having attracted fully a fifth of French voters to her National Front party in today’s election. This was nearly double the turnout for her opposite number on the Socialist far left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Assuming that National Front supporters will [...]
April 21, 2012 – 10:25 pm
Sorry, haven’t had much to say since getting back, and it might be quiet here for a few more days. I need a little recess while I think about things.
Anyone of a “certain age” will be saddened by the death of Levon Helm, who has succumbed to cancer at age 71. His rustic voice was a big part of the soundtrack of our youth, and it hurts to see it silenced.
April 19, 2012 – 12:09 am
Longtime readers will know that I’m a big admirer of Richard Feynman. In the nanotech discussions last week at SU, there was frequent mention of his visionary 1959 lecture There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, which is widely regarded as the genesis of the field. If you aren’t familiar with it, you can read [...]
I’m back from my trip to Singularity University, and I’ll just say it was one of the more remarkable experiences I’ve ever had — something like a futurist’s boot-camp, in the company of a hundred or so very smart people. The days’ events began at about 8 a.m., typically didn’t let up until midnight or [...]
April 10, 2012 – 11:43 pm
I’ll be away for a few days: my friend Salim Ismail has invited me to participate in a program this week out at Singularity University, so I’ll be flying to San Francisco early Wednesday morning. I’ll be posting when I can — this looks like it’s going to be a fascinating experience — but the [...]
April 10, 2012 – 10:36 am
Life is a risky business. To reach a comfortable dotage, one must thread one’s way past such omnipresent mortal hazards as cancer, auto wrecks, random assault, falling objects, air disasters, bullets stray or otherwise, atherosclerosis, capsizings, snakebite, cyclones, suicidal depression, carbon-monoxide leaks, cerebral haemorrhage, defenestration, shark attack, overdose, industrial accidents, poisoning, autoerotic asphyxiation, crib death, [...]
Armed with weapons purloined from Muammar Qaddafi’s arsenal, Tuareg fighters and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb give us what I think is referred to around Washington these days as a “teachable moment”. Today’s lesson? The law of unintended consequences.
Sam Harris, the neuroscientist who made his bones as an anti-religious gadfly and member of the atheist “Four Horsemen” (now down, sadly, to three), has been writing and speaking lately about “free will”. The expression is rendered in scare-quotes because in Dr. Harris’s view “free will”, as generally imagined, is an illusion, and less: it [...]
So: here’s the latest inevitable step toward having our brains permanently jacked into the Internet. Are you going to want a pair of these? In this demo the user talks to his glasses. But what’s the endpoint here? Once the interface is fast and intuitive enough, so that we can send and receive data as [...]
Here’s Eric Hoffer, writing in 1975: After all that we have seen with our own eyes there ought not to be a grownup person who is not contemptuous of the gibberish about an ideal society and does not look for the lineaments of a commissar in the features of an idealist loudmouth. The trouble is [...]
In case you’ve been shackled to a drainpipe for the past couple of weeks, there’s been an escalating tension in the air over the fate of Obamacare, now that the Supreme Court has heard the case. President Obama, warning the other day that he would view a negative ruling by the Court as “judicial activism”, [...]
Our friend David Duff posted an item today in which he quoted an article from James Bamford at Wired about a new U.S. data-storage facility: Given the facility’s scale and the fact that a terabyte of data can now be stored on a flash drive the size of a man’s pinky, the potential amount of [...]