I went to a presentation last fall by NASA about the future programs.  It was well presented and informative.  The most amazing part of it was "The Gap" - the five year period where the US will lack the capacity to put humans in orbit.

I was stunned.  Haven't we been doing this for decades now?  What's the issue?

The shuttles are being retired in ( Read more... )

Fascinating article from Wired.  The basic argument is that the ability process massive amounts of data makes traditional methods of sampling and extrapolation obsolete.

From the article:

"Scientists are trained to recognize that correlation is not causation, that no conclusions should be drawn simply on the basis of correlation between X and Y (it ( Read more... )

From Slashdot

An AP wire reports that DARPA has granted a $6.7 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop 'brainwave' binoculars. The binoculars will be built into a helmet, which will include EEG electrodes that will monitor the wearer's brain activity for patterns consistent with object identification/recognition. From what I can gather, the ( Read more... )

In the morning, 95.1 does not come in so well.
Today, drifting in and out was a haunting acoustic song
A man and a woman singing
Guitar accompaniment
About the passage of time
About that surreal feeling when you realize that memory was from 20 years ago
The consideration of having less future that past
The richness of having the deep memories
And the ( Read more... )

NPR did a story on the public radio station that you can listen to on car radios in the game Grand Theft Auto IV.  There have been other reviews of the TV shows that were created to be watched in the game.

It speaks well for the game, if they have put that much effort into the background.

It also speaks to what a bizarre world we live in.

This may be  a good idea, but I don't want to be standing next to the guy who's playing.

"It's a barbecue smoker mounted on a three-wheeled scooter, and armed with an infrared camera, spotlight, loudspeaker and aluminum water cannon that shoots a stream of icy water about 20 feet."

And it's fighting crime in Atlanta

At a recent conference here in Austin, there was a call for increased focus on basic writing instruction for high schoolers - noting that new techologies had eroded basic communication skills.

"We need to teach these kids how to write a basic email.  All they do is text."

Randy Pausch's cancer is spreading.  This is not a surprise.

Dr. Pausch was first diagnosed with pancreatic cancer  in the summer of 2006.  He responded well to surgery and chemotherapy, but nonetheless in August of 2007, the cancer had spread to his liver and spleen.   Another round of chemo was expected to buy him 4-6 more months of life.  Again ( Read more... )

Busy weekend commencing, and so with out further ado, I will link to this brilliant critique of post-simianism from the website for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

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The term ‘trans-simian’ comes from the shortening of ‘transitional simian,’ a concept Dr. Klomp has developed to describe an individual who is in an evolutionary ( Read more... )