Are we about to see a revolution in photography? If it works, I would expect prices to plummet eventually.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
DNA Synthesis Costs
…are dropping rapidly.
Spam
…hits the Kindle. It seems to me that this is the key:
Daffron of Logical Expressions said Amazon should charge for uploads to the Kindle publishing system because that would remove a lot of the financial incentive for spammers.
“This is why email spam has become such a problem — it costs nothing,” she said. “If people can put out 12 versions of a single book under different titles and authors, and at different prices, even if they sell just one or two books, they can make money. They win and the loser is Amazon.”
It would require a redesign of the Internet to eliminate free email, but it seems like Amazon could control this. Maybe they will soon.
Former Astronaut Bernard Harris
An interesting interview. He’s being a little too politically correct here, though:
…in the 21st century we need teachers who teach math and science to have expertise in math and science. So there needs to be an upgrade there, and refocus on how much we value those teachers. As you know, in this country, we don’t pay our teachers all that well. We need to rethink that.
The problem isn’t that we don’t pay teachers well, at least on average. The problem is that we don’t pay the valuable ones enough, and we pay the worthless ones far too much, thanks to the unions. We need to be able to adequately compensate the teachers who have actual useful knowledge to impart, and get rid of the ones who don’t. This would all start by eliminating the worthless, or to be more accurate, negative-value, “education” major.
Economic Ignorami
Such is the state of Obama’s America that a dismaying number of people think that banning ATMs would be good for the economy. It’s the new Luddism, led by the Ignoramus-in-Chief.
A Rare Fit Of Sanity On The Hill
The Senate has finally voted to end ethanol subsidies. So what will happen in the House? And conference? And will the White House go along?
The Hundred-Year Starship Study
Clark Lindsey has been covering the DARPA teleconference.
Hope For Michael Moore
A breakthrough: converting skin cells directly to brain cells, without a transition through stem cells.
Faster, please.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Now this is really cool — living lasers made from human cells:
Optical imaging labels can report on the molecular workings of tissues and cells in the body. Fluorescent protein tags that emit visible or infrared light are now common tools for studying cell biology in test tubes. But getting such light in and out of the body is difficult because light diffuses as it passes through biological tissues. Living lasers, if they’re made into practical systems, have the potential to change that. One can imagine having a hybrid living-nonliving medical implant under the skin that would beam out a stream of information about biomarkers in the blood, for example.
Not only that, but if it works with shark cells, it would be the solution to Dr. Evil’s long-time frustration.
Peak Oil
…isn’t likely to happen any time soon.
Unless, of course, we keep in power people who want to see it happen.
[Update a few minutes later]
The oil-fracking boom in south Texas.
That’s how you grow an economy. You produce stuff that (unlike, say, CFLs or high-speed rail) people actually want to buy.
NHow To Not Appear Crazy On The Internet
Good advice from Frank J. Some commenters over at Space Politics should read it.