Technology
bushwells | September 12, 2007James Lileks maintains one of my favorite high-kitsch entertainment time-sinks, namely The Institute of Official Cheer. Lileks has scanned all sorts of advertisements, comics, and cookbooks (sp. The Gallery of Regrettable Food) from the 30, 40s, 50s and 60s, and then has commented on them. Some of his text makes me smile. Some makes me laugh aloud, spraying my computer monitor in a Jackson Pollock-like motif using masticated food or coffee as the medium.
A science and technology related addition to the Institute is Compu-Promo. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:
The "Computer" photo…
revere | September 9, 2007A few days ago we brought you Word from Australia that Osama bin Laden had driven through several high security checkppoints on the way to Bush's hotel in Sydney, Australia. He just wanted to tell him it was "all a misunderstanding." Given the heavy security for Bush's visit, making it through these checkpoints was like a miracle.
Well, it turns out, sadly, it wasn't really a miracle. Osama wasn't really Osama, but a member of the cast of Australian Broadcasting's TV show, The Chasers. "The Miracle of the Checkpoints" just wasn't in the script of Australian security theater. But The Chasers…
cmooney | September 7, 2007 Several weeks ago, Newsweek ran a much-discussed cover story by Sharon Begley "revealing" the story that many of us have been writing for years: There has been a campaign, supported by many fossil fuel interests, to sow doubt about mainstream climate science. Duh. The main newsworthy thing about this effort, to my mind, is that it now appears in decline. But it was a naughty, naughty thing to do, and it certainly ought to be exposed and re-exposed.
So far, so good.
But then comes Newsweek's own Robert Samuelson with a chowder-headed takedown of his own magazine's "Truth About Denial" cover…
petnoyer | September 5, 2007Part four of four in a series about Greenpeace recent manned submersible expedition to two of the largest submarine canyons in the world, the Pribilof and Zhemchug Canyons in the Bering Sea off the west coast of Alaska.
The following exclusive interview was conducted by Deep Sea news over email with Dr. David Guggenheim, submarine pilot and scientific advisor for the Bering Witness expedition. He is the founder of 1planet1ocean; and the OceanDoctor blog. In this interview, he answers 11 questions detailing his recent experiences as sub-pilot, scientist, and communicator.
1. What kind of subs…
catdynamics | September 5, 2007So the USAF took half-dozen nukes on an inadvertent roadtrip across the US heartland
careless that, but shit happens
no harm, no foul, as they say
The interesting question is why the 5th Bomb wing is shipping Air Launched Cruise Missiles to the 2nd Bomb wing?
The missiles are being decommissioned, notes the WaPo article, but that is subtly misleading.
The bulk of the ALCM inventory is armed with nukes, but the use of ALCMs in the last decade has been standoff conventional precision bombing by launch from B-52Hs, after the ALCM-B is converted to an ALCM-C - "C" for "Conventional".
There are,…
nisbetmc | September 3, 2007
On Friday I will be taking part in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University, speaking to attendees about how the public uses science information online. Whether news, YouTube, blogs or social networking sites, what does research tell us about the best way to engage key audiences?
Sponsored by the Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold program "advances environmental decision-making by providing academic scientists with the skills and connections needed to be effective leaders and communicators."
Next week, on Wed. Sept. 12, I will be in Boston at Northeastern…
bcohen | August 29, 2007This post was written by guest blogger Wyatt Galusky.*
It is in homage to David Ng's Police post of yore that I invoke this album cover to inaugurate the final installment of this three-part post on mystery, the unknown, and the remainder, all loosely filtered through quotes by Theodor Adorno.
The term "ghost in the machine" originates with the philosopher Gilbert Rile, who used it to mock the mind-body dualism of Rene Descartes (who claimed that the physical body was guided by the nonmaterial mind through the pineal gland).
For my purposes, I want to talk less about any vestiges of…
clock | August 26, 2007When technological or social changes start altering the business landscape in a particular industry, people involved in that business tend to respond in three general ways.
The visionaries immediately see where their world is going, jump to the front edge of it and make sure that the change is as swift and painless as possible, resulting in as good new business environment as possible. They immediately sell their horses and invest in the development of the internal combustion engine, gear-boxes, brakes and start building car factories.
The followers are much more timid, but they are astute…
neurophilosophy | August 24, 2007This year, several research groups have used bacterial proteins called channelrhodopsins to develop a technique with which light can be used to control the activity of nerve cells or the behaviour of small organisms.
For example, Ed Boyden's group at the MIT Media Lab used the method to activate or inhibit neurons on a millisecond-by-millsecond timescale, while Karl Deisseroth and his colleagues at Stanford have created an optical on/off switch that can control the movements of the nematode worm.
Devices employing such technologies could in theory be used in advanced neural prostheses for a…
sb admin | August 22, 2007The Mountain Eagle's Tom Bethell pulls no punches in today's editorial with an in-your-face critique of the coal industry and their investment (not!) in safety technology. He writes:
"Name five U.S. coal companies that have generously supported research to develop a two-way PED, hardened wireless two-way phone systems, and a tracking system capable of instantly locating miners. You canât, because none has."
"Worse yet, the coal industry isnât spending a dime to help undercapitalized entrepreneurs move their promising products from bench-testing to mine-testing and then through the final…
sporte | August 21, 2007
If you've read the previous posts on this topic, here and here, you're probably aware by now that I have this weird (okay, maybe fanatical) obsession with data. Or at least, with knowing if my data are right so I can get on with life, do the analysis and figure out the results.
My results from last week suggested that re-processing chromatogram data (from the ABI 3730) with phred was probably a bad idea, but still, I only had one data point and I really wanted to know if anyone had done a more thorough study and compared larger numbers of chromatograms.
Naturally, someone had.
tags: DNA…
pharyngula | August 20, 2007Here's some exciting news: Artificial life likely in 3 to 10 years. It is exciting but not surprising at all — but of course we're going to be able to assemble entirely artificial life forms soon. It's just a particularly complicated kind of chemistry, and it's more of a deep technical problem than anything else. I wouldn't be quite so specific about the date — there are also all kinds of surprises that could pop up — but I'm optimistic, and I think the overall assertion is supported by the increasing rate of accomplishment in the field.
But of course, in addition to the usual suggestions…
purepedantry | August 17, 2007A lab in Japan has created a new way of making 3D animation by using lasers to create balls of plasma in the air:
Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a device that uses lasers to project real three-dimensional images in mid-air. The institute unveiled the device on February 7 in a demonstration that showed off the device's ability to project three-dimensional shapes of white light.
AIST developed the projector with the cooperation of Keio University and Burton Inc. (Kawasaki, Japan). Until now, projected three-dimensional imagery has…
cmcclain | August 16, 2007Hat tip goes to Kiki, who pointed out a recent article in Wired, U.S. Readies for Polar Warfare (Updated). There you have it...Canada is amping up its military presence in the Arctic and so is the U.S. In an recent announcement titled Technologies for Persistent Operations in High LAtitude Regions (POLAR), Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking for new technology and operation concepts that would give our forces the advantage.
The article also points to the 2001 symposium report Naval Operations in an Ice Free Arctic that you can download as handy pdf. The obvious…
clock | August 16, 2007Oekologie #8 is up on Direction not Destination
Four Stone Hearth: volume 21 is up on Archaeolog
The 13th installment of Philosophia Naturalis is up on Cocktail Party Physics.
Skeptics' Circle #67: Giant Robot Edition is up on The Bronze Blog
Carnival of Space #16 is up on Advanced Nanotechnology
jstemwedel | August 15, 2007As I mentioned in my last post, I was sucked out of the blogosphere for much of last week by the International Society for the Philosophy of Chemistry (ISPC) 2007 Summer Symposium .
I did not live-blog the conference. I did use overheads. Why, other than being a tremendous Luddite, would I use overheads?
One big issue that has me using overheads rather than PowerPoint presentations is time. As many conferences are, this one was scheduled within an inch of its life. Each speaker had 20 minutes to talk and 5 minutes at the end for questions and answers. Indeed, if the previous speaker…
worldsfair | August 15, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3- - -A: University College hospital,Ibadan, B: Entrance to College of MedicineMonday morning, the first day of the workshop, and the adrenaline was already pumping. Today, we would have the opportunity to check out the facilities we had to work with, as well as meet our students for the first time. All of this, would be held within the College of Medicine, a teaching outcrop of the University of Ibadan, nestled within the grounds of the University College Hospital.
The hospital itself was an overwhelming structure, apparently one of the largest (though not the largest) on the…
thusspakezuska | August 13, 2007Benjamin Cohen at The World's Fair has an excellent post up that should interest many readers of this blog. It is an interview with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization. Here's the intro, to tempt you to go read the whole post:
David Hess is a longtime leader in the field of STS. Like few scholars, this claim holds true by reference to academic leadership, mentoring, research, and community involvement. His past books, Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia University Press…
oracknows | August 13, 2007I debated for a while about whether or not I wanted to comment on this one. The reason, of course, is that, to some extent, I've commented on a similar article before. Also, given the utter contempt that the blogger who posted this series holds me in and his delusion that I am somehow "obsessed" with him, I worried that commenting about this series, which he posted with some fanfare, might feed that delusion some more. In the end, though, because the series was by someone other than this particular blogger and because, as before, it was presented as a stinging indictment of our system of…
bcohen | August 13, 2007Part 1 | 2 | 3- - -
The World's Fair sits down with David Hess, author of Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry: Activism, Innovation, and the Environment in an Era of Globalization (MIT Press, 2007) and Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, NY.
David Hess is a longtime leader in the field of STS. Like few scholars, this claim holds true by reference to academic leadership, mentoring, research, and community involvement. His past books, Science and Technology in a Multicultural World (Columbia…