Monthly Archives: October 2005

We'll muddle through

After swapping out the power supply and CPU fan with higher quality models, one of my desktops is finally quiet enough to contribute to the SETI at Home. This project is a small way I can contribute to science without … Continue reading

Posted in Personal, The Future | 5 Comments

Software makes all game rules transparent

One of the nice things about including the subject of games on this site is, when I’m at a loss in other subjects, I can always rant about gaming pilpul and hairsplitting. Anyway, one of the endless unsettled disputes among … Continue reading

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I'm waiting for this shoe to drop

In the light of yesterday’s post, I wondered about progress in attempts to combine microelectromechanical systems and scanning probe microscopy. I looked in this direction because I had learned that it took the team at Rice eight years to figure … Continue reading

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Nanoscopic News

A team at Rice University builds a nanoscopic car chassis out of buckyballs and nanotubes. They claim the wheels roll but, some are skeptical. Over at the Georgia Institute of Technology, they hope to domesticate microbes and coax them into … Continue reading

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Shameless science fictional speculation

Maybe some of you have read “Dial F for Frankenstein?” In that short story Arthur C Clarke imagines the consequences of a minor technical improvement in the global communications network. Suddenly a new lifeform emerges out of the network and … Continue reading

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Bill and Ray call for security by obscurity

About a week or so ago Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy condemned the publication of the genome of the virus responsible for the flu epidemic of 1918. Kurzweil in particular called for the genome to be censored. I’m not an … Continue reading

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Thinking about labor and education

Well it’s more than a month since I’ve said anything. Mostly this was writer’s block and other preoccupations. But to resume: It’s common now for labor to outsourced from countries with high living standards and strong regulation to countries with … Continue reading

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