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See-thru sea-life
This is just bizarre. (I can never remember how to upload a picture, so here’s the URL) Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute The things at the front of its head that look like eyes are actually nostrils. The green bodies inside its head are the eyes.
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There’s a “She Blinded Me with Science” Joke in Here Somewhere
Ian Pearson, a “futurologist” (which is a job title I want; sounds nicely nebulous) who advises companies on cutting-edge technology, has predicted that contact lenses with embedded TVs will be available within 10 years. Furthermore, he asserts that “digital tattoos” would pick up on the emotions portrayed by the actors and create impulses making us…
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What Are You Doing for Darwin Day?
Darwin Day celebrates Charles Darwin’s birthday (February 12, 2009 will be the 200th anniversary of his birth) and also provides an opportunity “to highlight Darwin’s contribution to science and to promote science in general.” If you’d like to find celebrations in your area, check out darwinday.org for a list of events (you can also register…
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More dollars than sense
I’m pretty sure that if I had an extra $155,000 around the house, I wouldn’t do this.
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Skeptical of the Singularity
The Daylight Atheism site is taking a stab at a few stock SF tropes, including The Singularity and Cryonics. Blogger Ebonmuse suggests that our assumption that they simply will happen, sooner or later, sounds a little like blind faith. The fastest number-cruncher imaginable, if given faulty data, will produce nothing of meaningful application to the…
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Periodic Table of the Awesoments
Aristole postulated that all good things were made of “win.” That was a pretty good guess, but he was drunk and probably also having an orgy. Modern day awesominers know there are actually 118 fundamental “awesoments” that compose all good things. Dapperstache has put together the periodic table of these awesoments; a great boon to…
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
An opinion piece published online in Nature examines the illicit use of “brain-boosting” drugs like Adderall and Ritalin by college students, and concludes…that we should totally do more of that. The seven authors–at least two of whom are consultants for pharmaceutical companies–argue that we “should welcome new methods of improving our brain function,” and say…
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Happy Birthday Vacuum Tube
On November 16, 1904, British engineer John Ambrose Fleming patented the vacuum tube, ushering in the age of modern electronics. The tube frequently shows up in Golden Age science fiction, but it seems rather charmingly retro instead of jarringly outdated. For a look at how computers might have evolved if the transistor and the integrated…
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:::whew:::
Now I can exhale.
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How to Talk to an Alien…Maybe
I think it’s a big maybe, as it’s predicated on the idea that alien languages might have at least some resemblance to human languages. Dr. John Elliott of Leeds Metropolitan University has developed a computer program which is analyzing a library of 60 disparate human languages to look for commonalities. In much the same way…