ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • NEMO Science Center: You, Me, Electricity

    Elektra the Robot “The medium, or process, of our time – electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: you, your family, your…

  • JavaScript Turing Machine

    So I was watching the anime series Ghost in the Shell and I don’t feel productive when I’m just watching anime, and I can’t write words when watching videos, so I decided to do some programming purely for fun. What I did was write a little demonstration of a Turing Machine. Before there were computers,…

  • Science and Democracy Empower Each Other

    Dennis Overbye has a superb commentary in the NYT Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy that reminds me of the Mark Twain quote, “the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are brothers and equals.” Overbye writes: [Science], which has transformed the world in the last few centuries, does indeed teach values. Those values,…

  • Bayesian Probability Beat Somma’s Stochaistic

    Here I thought I was so cool coming up with “Somma’s Stochaistic,” the idea that science is inversely proportional to BS: Somma’s Stochaistic Now I find out somebody else all ready came up with it and expressed it my more elegantly in something called: Bayesian Probability. The equation for this concept looks like this: Bayesian…

  • Punxsutawney Phil Disproves Anthropogenic Climate Change

    THAT’S RIGHT!!! SIX MORE WEEKS OF WINTER!!! Where’s your Anthropogenic Climate Change now scientists??? Huh? HUH?? HUH??? Punxsutawney Phil says HUH!?!? Credit: alemaxale An you know what else??? It snowed somewhere in America last week. That’s right. IT SNOWED IN JANUARY SOMEWHERE IN AMERICA!!! In fact, as of my writing this, people are still without…

  • NEMO Science Center: Studio Bits & Co

    Aesthedes Work Station for Graphic Design (1982) This very small room, hidden in the back of NEMO, virtually ignored, was a little something for Information Science. It runs from the 1940s to the 1980s, bits of history people are going to cherish in the future. The more I get into Computers as my science, the…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…