January 18, 2014 – 2:14 pm
According to the New York Times, the “prolonged” execution of one Dennis McGuire — who had been condemned for the brutal murder of a young pregnant woman — has raised, once again, questions about the humaneness of various methods of execution. In Mr. McGuire’s case, the technique was lethal injection: As the lethal drugs flowed […]
January 11, 2014 – 2:11 pm
Today we have an interesting piece by Nick Land on John Smart’s novel approach to the Fermi Paradox (see here for more about the Fermi Paradox, if you aren’t familiar with the term): that advanced civilizations, rather than expanding into space, relentlessly turn inward. We read: John M. Smart’s solution to the Fermi Paradox is […]
December 11, 2013 – 5:31 pm
Speaking of NASA, here’s their latest robot. Seeing that they’ve given it a female shape and name, I’d have thought ‘Fatima’, or perhaps ‘Ayisha’, would have been far more appropriate — but ‘Valkyrie’ it is, at least pending a little re-education amongst the staff.
December 10, 2013 – 9:24 pm
On October 13th, NASA’s Juno probe, which is scheduled to arrive at Jupiter on Independence Day 2016, made a ‘slingshot’ flyby of Earth in order to boost its velocity. Using some low-res calibration cameras, it took a time-lapse movie of its approach to the Earth-Moon system. I don’t know why NASA is bothering with Jupiter, […]
December 7, 2013 – 11:05 pm
Back in July, I wrote the following: To the conservative, traditions arise naturally from the workings of human nature, as part of the ontogeny and organic development of societies. They are not the result of scientific planning or sociological theorizing — and like biological species themselves, they only come into view in retrospect. They are, […]
November 7, 2013 – 10:49 pm
Here’s a 3D-printed 1911. In metal.
November 7, 2013 – 1:19 pm
This is brilliant. Investors take note.
October 17, 2013 – 10:07 pm
I’ve been preoccupied, so just a pair of related links for tonight. The topic is ‘biobots’ — i.e., remote-controlled cockroaches — and new ways to use them.
October 13, 2013 – 1:30 pm
Forward-looking, tech-savvy investors knew a while back that 3-D printing was going to be a Big Deal. (Those farsighted speculators have already made handsome returns with companies like 3-D Systems and Stratasys.) The technology is still in its infancy, though — about where personal computing was in 1980 or so — and its truly transformative […]
October 6, 2013 – 10:21 pm
Here’s another, from DARPA: WildCat. See also: RoboSimian.
I wish Carl Sagan were alive to see this: a gigapixel panoramic view of the surface of Mars. Don’t forget to click the “full screen” button.
If this is for real, it is a major innovation. Call your broker.
It was inevitable: given that surveillance cameras are everywhere these days, and that facial-recognition software is increasingly cheap and reliable, “privacy” freaks (who obviously have “something to hide”, or why make such a fuss?) are fighting back with a high-tech countermeasure, in the form of goggles that emit a cloaking glare of low-infrared radiation. There’s […]
This is very impressive indeed.
This is quite a story, if it’s all it’s cracked up to be.
Wow, I love this little guy.
April 30, 2013 – 12:59 pm
CERN has restored the world’s very first website to its original URL. Here.
March 21, 2013 – 11:05 pm
This caught my eye: US plan calls for more scanning of private Web traffic, email Non-electronic communication will soon be a thing of the past. It’s interesting that the simplest of technologies — a packet of paper, a drop of wax — made possible, for thousands of years, something that for most people will soon […]
February 10, 2013 – 9:34 pm
Attentive readers may recall that a few years ago we U.S. taxpayers lent $465 million to Tesla, a maker of electric cars. More recently we restructured the loan so that Tesla wouldn’t run out of money. (It is now, after all, a matter of vital national interest that Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial speculations actually pay off.) […]
February 8, 2013 – 10:35 pm
Here’s an clever idea: crowdsourcing of malaria diagnosis, using a simple video game. Have a look.
January 31, 2013 – 12:13 am
This is fantastic: Japanese robots making German cars. Hat tip: William Gibson.
January 23, 2013 – 10:58 pm
How to make a rail gun. Here.
January 12, 2013 – 11:42 pm
The Uncanny Valley, that is. Here.
December 10, 2012 – 10:12 pm
Forgive me, readers, but I have to make a brief technical digression: for some time now I’ve been grappling with a common but perplexing computer problem, one that appears to have vexed and confounded an awful lot of people. I’ve just found the solution, and I must share it here so that others Googling the […]
October 27, 2012 – 10:39 pm
With a hat tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s the latest on micro-drones. When I was at Singularity University this past April, a recurring theme was that the coming ubiquity of tiny, cheap and efficient sensors will soon have a seismic effect on the technological, and therefore the human, landscape. We like to think that […]
October 27, 2012 – 10:38 pm
Never heard of it? Neither had I. It has a negative Poisson ratio. Here. See also here and here.
September 20, 2012 – 5:27 pm
A reader brings to our attention a fantastic Google-Maps-based application. Here.
September 18, 2012 – 5:43 pm
Here’s another edgy little item: warp drives might be feasible after all. Sharpens up the Fermi paradox even more, if so.
September 8, 2012 – 8:55 am
Where? Google, of course.
August 21, 2012 – 1:38 pm
One trillion frames per second, folks.
Here’s a stunning 360-degree panorama from Mars, courtesy of the rover Opportunity.
With a hat tip to reader JK: In 1970, a Zambia-based nun named Sister Mary Jucunda wrote to Dr. Ernst Stuhlinger, then-associate director of science at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in response to his ongoing research into a piloted mission to Mars. Specifically, she asked how he could suggest spending billions of dollars on […]
I like this: our Reconnaissance orbiter snapped a picture of Curiosity descending to Mars last night. Here.
August 5, 2012 – 11:03 pm
All eyes on Mars tonight! I’ll bet the thing lands on a cat. More here.
Will this thing replace the mouse, do you think? I’m skeptical. It’s a great accessory, but one important feature of using a mouse is that one can rest one’s hand on the desk. Holding your arms up all day to use your computer would be tiring, I think.
August 1, 2012 – 11:01 am
Autonomous swarming quadracopters. Here.
In a tart item at NRO today, Kevin D. Williamson points out that eleven times more people die each year from neglecting to fill their heart-disease prescriptions than in gun assaults, and makes the piquant observation that “Gun control isn’t about guns; it’s about control.” Well, here’s something that should enliven the discussion: out there […]
From Big Think, a glimpse at the ongoing Graduate Studies session at Singularity U.
For tonight, an interesting item from the frontier of advancing technology. One of the the most promising innovations we discussed and saw demonstrated at Singularity University back in April was 3-D printing, in which a movable printer head builds up solid objects by depositing one very thin layer at a time. The extraordinary thing about […]
This looks promising: touchscreens that can create 3-D buttons as needed.
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 […]
From Brad Templeton’s blog: flying telepresence drones as medical first-responders. Here.
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 […]
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 […]
I’ve mentioned “exponentially advancing technology” a lot lately. Think I was kidding?