Category Archives: Technology and Society

Humor, Technology and Society, Weird

From Ban Ki-Moon

8 Comments

This is my favorite spam scam so far:

Attention:

How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family? You may not understand why this email came to you. We have been having a meeting for the passed 7 months which ended 2 days ago with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS.

This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATIONS have agreed to compensate them with the sum of USD $850,000 (Eight hundred and fifty thousand United State Dollars Only), This also includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc.

We found your name in our list and that is why we are contacting you, this has been agreed upon and have been signed.

You are advised to contact Mr. Bret Wilson of BLAKWOODS INTERNATIONAL BANK UNITED KINGDOM, as he is our representative in Malaysia, contact him immediately for your payment of USD$850,000 (Eight hundred and fifty thousand United State Dollars Only)which way you need the fund to be delivered. So he will send it to you and you can clear it in any means of your choice.

You are advice to get in contact with Mr, Bret Wilson and provide him with below information.

Full Name:
Address:
Telephone Number:

Person to Contact Mr. Bret Wilson.
Email: bretwilson@secretarias.com

Thanks and God bless you and your family, Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Fund.

Making the world a better place.

Regards,
Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
UN Secretary General.
This E-mail and any attachment are confidential and intended only for the use of the individuals or entity named above and may contain information that is privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this E-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this E-mail in error, please notify us immediately by return E-mail or telephone and destroy the original message.

I’ll be sure to do that.

Technology and Society

Ten Technologies

44 Comments

…that should be obsolete, but aren’t.

I’ve previously discussed the landline fallacy. If you don’t understand why people like landlines, you probably haven’t used them much, and are clueless as to what good phone service is like.

With regard to the turntables, the digital-converting ones I’ve seen a) have a vinyl lathe for a cartridge and b) overcompress the music when they convert. Fortunately, there are still a few surviving manufacturers of quality cartridges, and my audio equipment still has audio inputs. And they’ll take away my Conrad Johnson tube preamp when they pry it from my cold dead stereo cabinet.

Social Commentary, Technology and Society

No Self Esteem

3 Comments

I would find this to be a pretty big incompatibility. I had no idea that Robin Hanson’s wife was so opposed to cryonics:

“You have to understand,” says Peggy, who at 54 is given to exasperation about her husband’s more exotic ideas. “I am a hospice social worker. I work with people who are dying all the time. I see people dying All. The. Time. And what’s so good about me that I’m going to live forever?”

First of all, it’s not about living “forever.” It’s about living as long as you want to live. What’s so bad about you that you don’t want to do that?

If I were him, I’d be very worried about her fidelity to my wishes, if he goes first.

It’s a very interesting article with insight into the transhumanist subculture, by Kerry Howley.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Grazing Dinosaurs

33 Comments

Wow. Am I unimpressed with ESA’s plans for a new rocket:

Multiple designs for a two- or three-stage rocket with cryogenic, solid-fueled and methane/oxygen main stages will be studied not only for their performance, but also for their long-term operating costs.

While no decision has been made, the early design work will focus on a vehicle that would add or subtract strap-on boosters to lift satellites weighing as little as 3,000 kilograms and as much as 7,500 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, the destination of most telecommunications satellites.

Unlike the current Ariane 5, the next-generation launcher would, under the preliminary designs being investigated, launch one satellite at a time into geostationary orbit, not two as typically is the case with the current Ariane 5.

And this huge breakthrough in launch technology will be available in only fifteen years.

Between 1945 and 1960, we went from the DC-3 to the 7407. Between 1955 and 1970, we went from Aerobees to moon landings. And between now and 2025, the Europeans want to develop yet another expendable rocket. I guess they learned the lesson of the Shuttle. It was the wrong lesson, but at least they learned a lesson, right?

Education, General Science, History, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

An Interesting Google Ad

15 Comments

This looks like an interesting course:

Have you ever wondered: How do various scholarly discourses—cosmology, geology, anthropology, biology, history—fit together?

Big History answers that question by weaving a single story from a variety of scholarly disciplines. Like traditional creation stories told by the world’s great religions and mythologies, Big History provides a map of our place in space and time. But it does so using the insights and knowledge of modern science, as synthesized by a renowned historian.

This is a story scholars have been able to tell only since the middle of the last century, thanks to the development of new dating techniques in the mid-1900s. As Professor Christian explains, this story will continue to grow and change as scientists and historians accumulate new knowledge about our shared past.

I and others actually tried to condense this story down to something that can be told in forty-five minutes or so at the dinner table, which we tell on Moon Day (coming up two weeks from today, on the forty-first anniversary of the lunar landing).

What was really interesting, though (and what mindless stereotypers on the left will find boggling) was that it was a Google ad at National Review…