With these kinds of advances, we may have to come up with new anti-spam techniques.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
H+
A new transhumanist magazine. Looks interesting.
I’m Drooling
Amazon is having a power tool sale
Not that great for a survivalist, though, unless you can generate a lot of power. Let’s hope we’re not going back to hand tools soon.
Actually, I already have most of this stuff. I continue to be amazed at the cost, quality and innovativeness of tools since I was a kid. It has to have been a great contributor to national productivity, both professionally, and for the DIYers. And it wouldn’t have happened without China. Another reason to hope that the (newly isolationist) Dems don’t get full control of the government.
Innovation
Popular Mechanics has the top ten world changing technologies, with video, including the Mars Phoenix lander.
A Hundred And Ten
As Glenn says, we’re going to see more people living to be this old. And as a commenter notes, there aren’t very many people left who were born in the nineteenth century. My maternal grandmother would have been two years older, had she lived, but she died at the ripe young age of ninety eight, fourteen years ago (whereupon I became a full orphan, and next in line, having no longer any living ancestors).
Of course, I take these folks’ recommendations for a long life with a healthy bag of salt. Particularly when they recommend a life of celibacy. I think that it’s good genes, and good luck, more than anything else.
Driving Uninsured
Tom Jones, on the asteroid threat.
We really need to get moving on that spacefaring civilization thing. Unfortunately, it’s not going to happen under current NASA management.
Wear Your Seatbelt
There’s a reason that the flight attendant warns you to stay in your seat with belt fastened.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) today said an “irregularity” in one of the plane’s computers caused the dramatic altitude change yesterday that hurled passengers around the cabin.
I would have been all right, because I rarely get up during a flight. I probably would have had to change my undies, though.
But that’s also a reason that I’m always a little nervous on Airbuses. When you have a fly-by-wire system, you’re essentially putting control of the airplane in the hands (so to speak) of a machine.
SF For Voters
I’ve long thought that people who don’t read, or haven’t read science fiction are much more ill-prepared for the future. Well, in the near future, we have a presidential election coming up. Here are some suggestions for SF to read in preparation from some notable web pundits.
Is Usenet Dead?
Apparently not yet, but as far as my usage of it is concerned, it’s on life support. As the article points out, it doesn’t help that ISPs don’t support it properly. I gave up on AT&T once I realized that they’d outsourced it, and basically didn’t care whether it worked for their customers or not, and use GigaNews now.
Anyway, my biggest use of Usenet is sci.space.*, but I’ve cut way back on my participation there, because the signal/noise ratio has gotten so low, with many of the best long-time members of the newsgroups having gone to greener pastures (for example, Henry Spencer hasn’t posted there in many moons, which is a little ironic, considering that whenever I used to point out that Usenet was dying, he would reply that people have been predicting the death of Usenet for decades). It’s mostly loonytunes now, like Brad Guth and Ian Parker, and the Elifritz troll, with little substantive space policy discussion. I do think that the center of gravity of serious space discussion has shifted to the web, regardless of whatever else is still happening with NNTP.
Space Weather
We’re going to be hit by an asteroid tonight. The angle is such that it will just be a spectacular fireball. But it’s nice that we’re finally getting to a position from which we can predict these things. The next step is to be able to prevent them, if necessary. Too bad that almost nothing that NASA is doing is contributing to that, at least with the manned spaceflight program.