What is this, the Roombas-in-Space hour? Now the Swiss are getting into the act too!
Archive of posts filed under the Science and Technology category.
“A New Tone for Health Authority?”
This article by Ben Hamamoto makes the case that how we see and judge authority is changing, and that the Internet could be responsible: [...] with science and health, we do value a certain cold detachment. Public health organizations in the U.S. have traditionally been very careful to appear serious, probably because appearing too casual [...]
“Global warming COULD SHRINK THE HUMAN RACE”
Apparently the historical size of horses is inversely proportional to the temperature — in other words, when temperatures were hotter, the ancestors of modern horses were smaller, and vice versa. It makes sense, since smaller bodies are easier to cool. Unfortunately it’s also well-known that reptiles have just the opposite response, getting larger as temperatures [...]
Git makes website maintenance easy too!
We’re gearing up to release our first program for the general public in quite some time, so we’re going to need a real website again, rather than the one-page placeholder that I put up several years ago. The last time I had to design a website was before the turn of the century. I started [...]
“DIY ‘Back to the Future’ hoverboard actually hovers”
Nice. I might even be tempted to buy something like that.
“RIP: Peak Oil – we won’t be running out any time soon”
It’s so hard to find a good, credible, looming disaster to panic about, and then those pesky scientists keep destroying the few that we manage to find. Runaway global warming keeps getting kicked in the teeth by inconvenient facts. Nuclear power disasters persistently refuse to be anywhere near as disastrous as people hope. Scientific advancement [...]
“How to remove your Google Web History”
I did this (thanks for the early heads-up, Ploni), though I had a few problems getting to the history page. Once I managed it, I was appalled to see how much stuff they’d managed to associate with me… nothing damning, just massive amounts of it. If someone wanted to cause me problems, or wanted to [...]
“Laser used to cool semiconductor”
I can imagine the marketing blurb now: “Now with lazer cooling!” (Yes, I know laser is spelled wrong, but marketing guys are very fond of their Zs. Which might explain why it’s so tempting to sleep through most of their presentations, but I digress.) With some work, this sort of thing might someday be employed [...]
“Lesbian Necrophiliacs”
You don’t find an article whose title includes the phrase “Lesbian Necrophiliacs” too often. And it’s safe-for-work (and for my more prudish readers) too! Even without the title, the article is pretty interesting. Cloning has apparently evolved lots of times over the history of Earth, but it’s almost always a death sentence: if every creature [...]
“The Pirate Bay torrents printable 3D objects”
Ever since I read Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, I’ve been wondering what would happen when anyone could download a set of plans and print their own, for example, Star Wars toys. And more to the point, what would happen when those plans could be pirated. Anything digital can easily be copied; the Internet is [...]