Topics pertaining to science and technology, current or future.
I’ve mentioned the problem before, about three years ago: the platinum/iridium cylinder in France that is the official reference for the kilogram is losing weight, for reasons that currently baffle science. Any reference object is useless if it can’t be relied on to stay the same, so the science community is making a determined effort …
Continue reading ‘“Boffins mount campaign against France’s official kilogramme”’ »
A delightfully contradictory juxtaposition. GoddessJ is a science wonk who collects Tarot decks, one of these would make a perfect Christmas gift for her.
Un-freakin-believable. What’s the saying, that people always underestimate technological progress in the short term, and overestimate it in the long term? It’s true… ten years ago I’d have said this couldn’t happen in less than twenty years. (Oddly enough, I’ve never read any SF stories that incorporated credit cards at all, even technologically advanced ones …
The title has a question mark in it, but the article makes it pretty clear that there’s no question about it. It sounds like the science is pretty well established, and we’re just nerving ourselves up to take the next step. And once medical cryogenics is in common use on Earth, there’s little stopping us …
Continue reading ‘“Freezing Ourselves: Medicine of the Future?”’ »
Stranger in a Strange Land was published 49 years ago, and it included robo-cabs. Flying robo-cabs, no less. And I’m sure it wasn’t the first. Come on, science — if I can’t have a flying car yet, at least hurry up with the self-driving one! 😉
I wish I could believe this sort of thing. I have no doubt that extraterrestrial life exists — merely from a mathematical perspective, it seems all but certain, just from what we know about life and the universe already. But that technologically advanced beings have visited Earth? I know far too well how easily humans …
Continue reading ‘“Sci-fi wars? Pilots say UFOs knocked out nukes”’ »
Excellent news for space enthusiasts! I heard an interview with one of the lead scientists on the LCROSS mission, who said you can get almost a gallon of water out of a wheelbarrow-full of lunar dirt, at least where LCROSS struck. That’s ridiculously rich, especially compared to what we expected to find, and it will …
Continue reading ‘“Our Moon is wet and welcoming, says excited NASA”’ »
Though a failure on the privacy front, this video is amusing to watch. Does anything strike you as odd about the movements of the curtain? Probably not, because we’re all habituated to computer-based automation and its limitations. But if it were controlled by a human, it would act quite different, anticipating the movements of the …
Continue reading ‘“Robotic privacy curtain moves across window to block snoops”’ »
This is the kind of thing that just wasn’t possible before the Internet. No single organization had the data needed, not even the government in some cases (and in others, only the government, who could manipulate it or keep it secret if they wished). Even now, only Google and maybe a handful of others have …
Continue reading ‘“Google tracks inflation with interwebs data”’ »
I was dismayed to discover that the utility room in our new house does not have a drain in it, one of its very few shortcomings. If the water heater ever leaks (as happened in our previous house once already), it will be a major problem — there’s nowhere for the water to go. There …