This is probably the first really tangible benefit of any form of nanotechnology. It won’t be the last. I expect that replacements for most body parts will be able to be fashioned and seeded this way within a decade, and that it will become common practice within twenty years. So much for the SF/horror scenario …
Continue reading ‘“Surgeons carry out first synthetic windpipe transplant”’ »
I used to play some computer logic games, and really enjoyed them, but I got good enough at the ones that I liked that they weren’t a challenge anymore, so I quit. I decided a couple weeks ago to try to find something comparable, and the ever-helpful Google provided me with a long list of …
While researching a programming problem yesterday, I found a wonderful signature block on a message from someone named Alf P. Steinbach: A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is it such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in …
Continue reading ‘How Not To Answer E-Mail: A Four-Line Tutorial’ »
Fun bit of trivia: Phineas Taylor Barnum (better known as P. T. Barnum) was born exactly two hundred one years ago today. Just about any American kid who watches any TV probably still knows his name, by way of the touring circus he founded, now known as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. “The …
I try to keep this blog away from politics, but for issues of sufficient magnitude and importance, I have to bend that rule on occasion. If you’re American (and maybe even if you’re not), you’ve probably heard by now about the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled that money was …
Continue reading ‘“Move to Amend: coalition to abolish corporate personhood”’ »
As promised in yesterday’s post, this article includes a section on backups in Linux. It also has a lot of other useful stuff for Linux-users, especially newer ones, and some of the information there might just tempt Windows users (at least) to want to take Linux for a run. 🙂
I expect most of my readers already have at least a minimal backup system in place (you do, don’t you?), but for anyone else who stumbles onto this blog, here’s a good primer for Windows and Mac systems. (People running Linux, have patience, it’s coming. EDIT, 2011-07-03: it’s here.) Believe me, if you don’t have …
Wow… three new battery technologies that sound awesome. If they all pan out, rechargeable batteries could charge up to 90% capacity in two minutes, have three times their current battery life (six times for “mobile gadgets”!), and be lighter as well! Imagine a full-powered laptop that’s lighter and would last several work days on a …
I wonder how this plays out in peoples’ politics? (No I don’t, I know exactly how it plays out. And if you think about it, so do you. But I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader, along with the corollary of what it says about a those who subscribe to a particular political …
Continue reading ‘“Why Too Much Self-Control Breeds Aggression (and What to Do About It)”’ »
I like this idea, at least for learning musical instruments. I almost hope that it doesn’t advance much further for now though, I’d hate to see the result of getting a virus in the controlling computer. 😉