Technology
Pharyngula
Category archives for Technology
Spam advice
Posted by PZ Myers on August 19, 2011 The Dennis Markuze story has made it to Ars Technica. I am much relieved to have that pest gone from my mailbox, but I was thinking about one point everybody is missing: the human brain seems to have an edge over computers. I just checked, and the FtB site has accumulated about 2100 spam hits…
This photography stuff is amazing
Posted by PZ Myers on August 9, 2011 This is a small piece of a larger — much larger — photo of a Vancouver street crowd. Go to the original image, though, which allows you zoom in and in and in — you’ll be able to see the faces in surprising detail of each of the little dots. The Vancouver Canucks Fan Zone…
Save the James Webb Space Telescope
Posted by PZ Myers on July 26, 2011 Lawrence Krauss has written an excellent defense of the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to Hubble which is currently under threat of cancellation. I was really down on the space shuttle the other day, but that’s because I think it was a failure at doing its job of enabling exploration and discovery — the…
The Space Shuttle gets a reasonable eulogy at last
Posted by PZ Myers on July 24, 2011 It’s so good to see someone take off the rose-colored glasses and tell it like it is: the space shuttle was a flop. The most important thing to realize about the space shuttle program is that it is objectively a failure. The shuttle was billed as a reusable craft that could frequently, safely, and cheaply…
Guess what makes Josh McDowell cry?
Posted by PZ Myers on July 19, 2011 I think the loony Christian apologist has got something right. He has identified the greatest threat to Christianity: The Internet has given atheists, agnostics, skeptics, the people who like to destroy everything that you and I believe, the almost equal access to your kids as your youth pastor and you have… whether you like it…
Help me put the Bergman-Myers debate on YouTube!
Posted by PZ Myers on June 28, 2011 I’ve received a suggestion that one potential source of a lot of the recent nonsensical creationist literature-quoting has a plausible source: Jerry Bergman. That guy is completely nuts, as I learned in a debate a while back; he’s also pretentious while not knowing much, and he’s painfully prolific, publishing lots in fringey creationist pseudo-journals. So…
What’s the matter with Andrew Brown’s brain?
Posted by PZ Myers on June 19, 2011 He’s completely lost me again. Brown has a couple of posts up complaining about people referring to mental illness as a “brain disease” and confusing mind with brain — he seems to deplore the growing recognition that the mind is entirely a product of the brain, and that psychology is built on a physical substrate,…
Networking is good
Posted by PZ Myers on May 30, 2011 I feel a little bit guilty saying this: every time I write about Jonah Lehrer, it seems to be about jumping on his ideas, even though I think he’s a good writer and his other ideas, the ones I don’t carp about, are interesting. The last time was when I criticized his noise about how…
Another reason to dread the airport
Posted by PZ Myers on May 30, 2011 On my last flight, I sat next to a woman who had the worst case of fear of flying I’ve ever seen. She spent the entire trip clutching the armrests and breaking into frequent bouts of tears; when I asked if there was anything I could do, she said, no, she knew it was completely…
I remember 1966, but my memory of 1999 seems to be all wrong
Posted by PZ Myers on May 28, 2011 This is a video produced in the 1960s to illustrate life in the 1990s. Nerds will find hilarity in the computer interfaces, women will rage at the gender stereotypes.