Technology
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Category archives for Technology
Small town movie theater tech
Posted by PZ Myers on May 27, 2011 I was reading Roger Ebert’s lament over the disgraceful decline of quality in theater projection (a function of theater owners who just don’t care anymore and the corrupting influence of bad 3D), and then I remembered that last year I took some pictures of the funky old technology in our local movie house, the Morris…
Misery on the screen
Posted by PZ Myers on May 17, 2011 You can’t get riper nerd schadenfreude from anywhere but a bad powerpoint competition. There are some real horrors at that link, but they unfortunately miss a trick: the greatest suffering is not inflicted by the single slide, but by the endless flood of one bad slide after another. I have suffered through a presentation by…
What is really important
Posted by PZ Myers on March 22, 2011 the total number of hours consumed by Angry Birds players world-wide is roughly 200 million minutes a DAY, which translates into 1.2 billion hours a year. To compare, all person-hours spent creating and updating Wikipedia totals about 100 million hours over the entire life span of Wikipedia. The rest of the article is an interesting…
Do not taunt Anonymous
Posted by PZ Myers on March 1, 2011 I agreed with Doctorow that the recent shutdown of the Westboro loons was a stunt by WBC itself. Now Anonymous has spoken out in an interview with Shirley Phelps-Roper denying any involvement. Here’s the hilarious bit, though: midway through the interview, after Phelps-Roper’s prolonged ranting and raving, the Anonymous spokesman calmly announces that they were…
Where’s the duct tape?
Posted by PZ Myers on February 18, 2011 Obviously, I did it all wrong. I have a digital video microscope in my lab, but what I did was spend about $20,000 on a nice microscope, $1000 on a digital still camera and about $500 on a digital video camera, and $200 on a pair of custom adapters to link them together. The principle…
Do I really want a robot that can dance better than I can?
Posted by PZ Myers on February 2, 2011 I’m white. I’m a nerd. I live in Minnesota. I have no rhythm at all — dancing for me is more of a syncopated chaos. But now, for a mere $40, I can get a little yellow robot that can dance. Maybe the robot would be willing to give me lessons?
Evolve a car
Posted by PZ Myers on January 29, 2011 Looking for a nice demonstration of genetic algorithms? Here’s a simulation that takes randomized connected collections of polygons and wheels and scores them for their ability to traverse a rugged 2D landscape. I tried it last night, and it gave me an assortment of very bad vehicles: for example, a lot of them were just…
How to game Google Scholar
Posted by PZ Myers on January 25, 2011 I’ve heard back from a few people now who contacted Google about the issue of indexing creationist sites in Google Scholar; these are informal remarks from the team, not an official policy statement, but they’re still interesting. And revealing. And useful. They’ll change your perspective on Google Scholar. The premise of the petition to Google…
If ever I lose an arm…
Posted by PZ Myers on December 9, 2010 OK, I bow to popular opinion: almost 100 people have sent me a link to this story about a prosthetic tentacle. It’s a brilliant idea, but I don’t know anyone who has lost a limb who would suggest that their prosthesis is even an adequate alternative. It’s a little insensitive to swoon over one, then…but…
The final decision on the biotechnology debate at the Economist
Posted by PZ Myers on November 16, 2010 After the total votes were added up in the big GMO debate, the Economist scores it 62% against biotechnology, 38% for biotechnology. They also explain that there was a huge turnout and that there was a lot of active campaigning for particular views. The voting has shifted dramatically during this debate, starting out heavily in…