Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
I’d be all for this idea if it weren’t for one thing: at this point in history, do you really want to give the people currently running various levels of the US government the ability to commandeer a walking weapons platform explicitly designed for really big lasers? (I’m mostly joking… but only mostly.)
More on the nuclear “disaster” at Fukushima, and its consequences. And a few facts about Chernobyl that most people aren’t aware of as well. (And this will be my last post on the subject for at least a month, I promise.) This is the problem that everyone faces, who describes nuclear incidents as they really …
Continue reading ‘“Mummy, mummy, there’s a nuclear monster!”’ »
You know, when I see things like this, I have to ask where these guys were when e-mail was the sole domain of us geeks. Does anyone else remember Operation Sundevil? Or the raid against Steve Jackson Games (makers of one of my favorite games in my late teens, Car Wars) around the same time? …
Continue reading ‘“Email protected by Fourth Amendment, says appeals court”’ »
This post is old, but touches on a topic that’s near and dear to my heart — methods of stopping spammers from overwhelming a publicly-available e-mail address. It argues that posting an address in a somewhat-obfuscated form (like “myname AT spamtrap DOT com”) actually helps spammers, because it’s much easier to search for using Google …
An interesting twist on the idea, beloved by science fiction readers for the last fifty years, of using a solar sail for space travel. And it just might work, too.
Another fun one. Try to figure it out before it’s explained. 🙂 (Hint: as with yesterday’s entry, perspective is everything.)
This one‘s fun. I couldn’t figure it out until the guy turns the board sideways to make it obvious.
I’ll believe this when I see it. I’ve been hearing such claims for at least the last decade. But it’ll happen some day, we’ll see if this is it or not.
Historically, the only three non-physical things that people will pay for are time, knowledge, and experience. Everything else can be broken down into one or more of those. For example, your average person working at the local Burger Shack or Wendell’s Widgets factory is trading his time (in the form of unskilled labor) for money. …
Emphasis on the word could, as this is pretty vague. But if it turns out to be true, this could be very interesting.