Today's selection from Delancey Place is important but troubling ( Read more... )

Essential reading and a pleasingly (if somewhat implausibly, to me) positive note to the end.

Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Climate Change's O.J. Simpson Moment

(Hat-tip to marypcb.)

This is a rather long reply to a post from ciphergoth. The question being, is it plausible that, in future, we will be able to resurrect people from their head, cryonically frozen post-mortemI am keenly interested in the prospect of whole-brain emulation, which strikes me as potentially plausible, with reasonable probability. For one thing, I think that this ( Read more... )

I am getting really concerned these days by a dangerous new trend that's catching on like a bad cliché among a lot of my friends & acquaintances who I thought were smarter & better-informed ( Read more... )

Couple of bits of particularly bad news that I have come across this week.

[1] M.I.T. joins climate realists, doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°CWell worth reading the piece and the links thence ( Read more... )

Just before I head off to the X Electrical Jule party, a little note of gloom and despair to enliven this winter evening.

Too late? Why scientists say we should expect the worstThe cream of the UK climate science community sat in stunned silence as Anderson pointed out that carbon emissions since 2000 have risen much faster than anyone thought ( Read more... )

Last day in Hannover (see Twitter passim), and I'm scouting around to see what's happening in the tech world. This story doesn't really quality, but it's interesting stuff.

From the Smithsonian magazine: the world's oldest temple: Göbekli Tepe, Urfa, Turkey.

This place is form the Neolithic, the last Stone Age, a full 11,000 years old. A full two ( Read more... )

Last week, there was the first private spacecraft to reach orbit - SpaceX's Falcon 1. And, marginally less impressively, since they're the world's largest country and the quickest-growing economy, as opposed to Elon Musk's privately-funded company -- China's first EVA from the Shenzou VII.

"This is big-league stuff, Arthur... Be the envy of other ( Read more... )

The Large Hadron Collider is approaching completion, and these spectacular photos give a beautiful glimpse of this incredibly vast machine. Yes, beautiful. Even if you don't normally get off on machinery, have a look. You will be surprised, maybe amazed ( Read more... )

I meant to mark this on the 30th, which it now is, technically, but I've gone and checked and like a pillock it was the 30th of June not July. Bum.

So that means that today it is not one century but one century and one month since the Tunguska Event. Ah, well.

Still something of a mystery, and still unfolding, something very big exploded with a ( Read more... )