Month: January 2009
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Epic Google FAIL!
Vicky was googling local trails Saturday morning, when she started getting the following screen for each link she clicked: Google’s Malware Warning This is the screen Google provides when it detects a website as having maleware, which is a great service, but why was every link coming up malicious? I ran some searches myself. The…
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The Cake is a Lie! A Review of Valve’s Portal
You think you’re doing some damage? Two plus Two is *shzzzt* ten… IN BASE FOUR, I’M FINE!!! Ha! Ha! Ha! – GLaDOS Infinite Portals I had seen previews for this game online, and thought it looked pretty spiffy, but it wasn’t until I dabbled with the flash version that I was really intrigued (plus I…
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Molecular Perpetual Motion?
Photosynthetic Electron Transport Chain (Powered by the Sun) Credit: Tameeria at the wikipedia So the recent news of researchers synthesizing RNA that can replicate indefinitely kind of stuck with me, particularly the word indefinitely. This isn’t perpetual motion, because the molecule only works so long as it has a supply of molecules to manipulate. But…
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Is This the End of the Punk Rock Enlightenment Era?
There’s a lot of transitioning going on in American culture right now. Barack Obama’s Presidency is bringing dramatic changes in American Policy in just its first few days. A recent news story that caught my eye was how the brilliantly satirical Daily Show was wrestling with how its narrative will adapt to the new administration.…
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NEMO Science Center: The Vrolik Collection
There’s a Cabinet of Curiosities at Amsterdam’s NEMO Science Center, the Vrolik Collection. This display is one of many examples of the differences between Science Centers in Europe and America. There are some “gross-out” displays in American Children science centers, but lion penises and elephant clitorii are definitely not something we find in our centers…
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Barack Obama 20090120
For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed…
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NEMO Science Center: Why the World Works
Conducting a Charge from the Plasma Ball to a Florescent Light When we were first putting together displays for Port Discover, LuAnne Pendergraft was regularly correcting us when we referred to it as a children’s science museum. This was not a museum, this was a center. It was an active place, a place where kids…
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Seed Software
A short while ago, I commented on Kevin Kelly debunking Kurzweil’s singularity, citing the fact that an all-powerful AI can’t simply infer solutions to all our problems through Cartesian means. Interestingly enough, another kk post, The Forever Book, hypothesizes writing a basic text from which a newcomer to a subject could begin the process of…
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Published at the EE&LQ
An article I wrote showcasing some new development work we put out into production has been published in the Winter 2008 issue of Engineering, Electronics & Logistics Quarterly. My article starts on page 38. EE&LQ Article
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Birds of Paradise and the Human Condition
Came across this enchanting Alfred Russel Wallace quote while watching Attenborough in Paradise: I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the successive generations of [the King Bird-of-Paradise] had run their course — year by year being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with no intelligent eye…
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NEMO Science Center: Codename DNA
The NEMO Science Center in Amsterdam was my first opportunity to see science education in another country. NEMO is by far the largest and most unique science center I have ever experienced, with huge interactive displays and a delightful, playful architecture. I was also impressed with how deep much of the material went. There was…