SF authors generally make up their technologies based on the needs of the story they’re trying to tell, rather than based on reality, but the more “hard” science-oriented ones try to make their science as believable as possible too. This site seems to fit a common theme in this blog, of “track[ing] predictions and descriptions …
There’s a good bit of evidence suggesting just the opposite. Though it might all be down to Porn-Induced Sexual Dysfunction.
More news on the effects of violent video games. Only preliminary results, but it’s something to keep an eye on. As a somewhat-related item: most of us figure out the difference between reality and make-believe when we’re very young. Apparently those who don’t end up in organizations like the Red Cross, which is considering accusing …
Continue reading ‘“One week playing violent video games alters brain activity”’ »
A nice idea, but I suspect the execution would be pretty difficult. Hollywood special effects are a lot better now than in 1938, but there are many more science-educated people who would be a lot harder to fool too. All it would take is one slip-up, caught and pointed out by some bright teenager, and …
Continue reading ‘“Paul Krugman: save the economy by staging an alien invasion hoax”’ »
This sort of thing has been talked about for decades (it was the idea that spawned the book Jurassic Park, published in 1990, after all). I look forward to seeing the results, but I have to wonder how much mammoth behavior in the wild was learned and passed down from the herd. I suspect that’s …
Continue reading ‘“Japan, Russia in plan for elephant to birth CLONE MAMMOTH”’ »
A short quote to sum up the main idea behind the article: […] according to researchers at the University of Warwick and the University of Basel, we’ve pretty much hit the limits, and we’re never going to develop a science fiction-style ‘supermind’. Thomas Hills and Ralph Hertwig looked at a range of studies, including research …
Continue reading ‘“Human beings unlikely to get cleverer”’ »
These are pretty good, and if you can catch them all, you’re probably pretty safe on the ‘net. For now, anyway. I was surprised to note that they didn’t include any URLs with look-alike Unicode characters though. That’s practically impossible for end-users to detect, so they’d probably get howls of protest if they did, but …
Continue reading ‘“Think you can outsmart Internet scammers?”’ »
Speaking of unpredictable consequences, here’s another one: techniques developed to combat spam turn out to be useful against HIV. I always thought that spammers had a lot in common with viruses, in that both are annoying and potentially dangerous, but I didn’t expect the metaphor to stretch that far! 😉
This is the sort of thing that happens all the time. New technologies are used for purposes that are completely mundane: in this case, identifying the dog responsible for a pile of crap, and thus the owner. But for some reason, science fiction authors and other futurists rarely think of such secondary uses for the …
An excellent review of science fiction spacecraft to date and how close each might be to future reality, though sadly concentrated solely on TV and movie SF. I find the spacecraft in SF literature to be much more varied and interesting, and usually more realistic-sounding as well, given the science they’re based on. (There’s a …
Continue reading ‘“What should a sci-fi spaceship REALLY look like?”’ »