Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
I’ve had this vision for years of a machine that identifies mosquitoes in a house or around people in a backyard area at dusk, targets them, and ruthlessly burns them down with a precision blast from a small, high-powered laser. I’m generally a peaceful person, but I have no mercy toward fleas, ticks, and blood-suckers …
Continue reading ‘“Bill Gates drops $1m on laser-based malaria fighter”’ »
A good and up-to-date overview of defensive measures you should be taking to preserve your privacy on the Internet. I use many of the add-ons mentioned there already, but at least one was new to me too. (Here’s part 2.)
I’ve been using GPG to sign my e-mail for years, and encrypt it when the recipient will accept such messages (which is very rarely). I find it ridiculous that essentially everyone out there is doing the equivalent of sending e-mail postcards that anyone and everyone with access to any system along their delivery path can …
As a semi-related extension of yesterday’s rant, here’s some more evidence that science does have some idea what it’s talking about. If it didn’t, none of this would work. It’ll be interesting to see how humanity adapts to much longer lives. So long as life expectancy climbs slowly, I think we can handle it without …
Continue reading ‘“What Happens When the Average Lifespan is 150 Years?”’ »
Just in case you were wondering. 😉 I don’t know the context of that quote, but I’m very concerned about the science deniers in the US. It seems that, despite mandatory science classes in high school, most people still don’t understand science. Conservatives seem to think that science is like religion: convince enough people of …
Continue reading ‘“Moon *Not* Made of Cheese, Physicist Explains”’ »
Remember that wooden “spaceship” I mentioned a few months ago? Well, it has almost completed its journey, and I’m happy to say that the astronauts survived without major conflict for the full trip. Of course, they knew in the back of their minds that it wasn’t the real thing, so the stress wasn’t as bad …
Continue reading ‘“Wooden Mars ark voyagers set to step out on Earth”’ »
I love it. Lounge around in your underwear all day and still keep an eye on those shiftless no-good employees of yours. 😉 I doubt it’ll catch on in the near future though. And I hope the robot has a good software security system… if it has arms (something I can’t determine from the two …
Continue reading ‘“Boss leaves robot in charge of office”’ »
In Michael Stackpole’s book I, Jedi, set in the Star Wars universe a few years after Return of the Jedi, the main character must develop his latent Jedi abilities in order to track down and rescue his kidnapped wife. Unfortunately, the late and unlamented Emperor has done a very thorough job of wiping out all …
I saw something in a science fiction book once (I don’t recall which one, but it might have been David Brin’s Earth, though I can’t locate my copy of it now to verify that). It described a young man’s first encounter with a printed book, after spending all his life with a World Wide Web …
That’s right: more than one out of every two hits on this blog recently are spam attempts. I say that because that was the percentage of the last 1,600 or so hits that were on a single post with very little content… not coincidentally, the exact same post that spammers have been pounding on without …