February 2011
0 posts
January 2011
27 posts
2 tags
Woman Speaks First Words in 10 Years After... →
Remember: we live in the future. A future where we can transplant larynxes and lungs and livers and hearts from person to person. That’s not too shabby, really.
2 tags
Medical Engineering →
Most people, when diagnosed with a heart valve malformation, take whatever implant the doctor wants to give them. Tal Golesworthy, on the other hand, decided that he could do better, and designed his own. He received his implant in 2004, and since then, 23 others have benefited from his design.
1 tag
Guo Gangtang →
Guo Gangtag’s child was kidnapped in 1997. Since then, he’s been hunting through China, trying to find his missing son. He hasn’t succeeded- but his quest has returned 7 other missing children to their families.
One tragedy has prevented seven others.
1 tag
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
You probably don’t like brussel sprouts very much. Most people don’t. I don’t. They’re sulfurous and bitter, they’re usually served boiled or steamed, or worse, fresh out of the microwave. They represent everything that our inner child hates about being forced to eat vegetables.
Right up until you roast them. My wife and I fight over roasted brussels sprouts. We...
2 tags
Anecdotes that probably aren't true, but should be
I heard online from a person who claimed to know the actor Ruben Blades who used to go drinking with Raul Julia in NYC in the 60s. Yes, I realize exactly how tenuous that sort of provenance is, but the anecdote joins the many that I’ve gathered over the years- stories that have no real evidence, but are plausible, and most important- awesome.
In any case, the anecdote:
Raul and Ruben were...
2 tags
Hearing "The Latest Exo-Planet"
When I was young, the idea that we could identify planets orbiting distant stars was a “someday” sort of thing. “Someday, our telescopes will be good enough, our techniques will be refined enough, that we’ll be able to find other planets.” Back then, we only knew of the other planets and planet-like objects that orbited our Sun. We all assumed that there were other...
2 tags
News Like This →
Dubai police have confirmed they uncovered a gang of dealers who were selling electric stun gun kits, for up to £5,000, across the region. These were then being fitted inside the robot jockeys, which cost between £130-£200, that in recent years have largely replaced child jockeys, traditionally used in camel racing, due to humanitarian concerns. The electric shocks could be administered by remote...
2 tags
Hearing "The Latest Exo-Planet"
When I was young, the idea that we could identify planets orbiting distant stars was a “someday” sort of thing. “Someday, our telescopes will be good enough, our techniques will be refined enough, that we’ll be able to find other planets.” Back then, we only knew of the other planets and planet-like objects that orbited our Sun. We all assumed that there were other...
2 tags
Being Lazy
I didn’t write an awesome thing yesterday. I was feeling lazy. Sometimes, you just need to slack off. Which, BTW- I’m writing this at work. Ahhhhhhh…
1 tag
Confirmation Bias →
People do, and believe, incredibly stupid things. This is true of everyone, at various points. There are no exceptions. The question then becomes: why? The beautiful thing is that we can explain why, within certain limits, anyway. And because we can explain why, we can start to take steps to route around these flaws in our thinking.
Confirmation bias in one of many hard-wired features of our...
2 tags
Genetic Hammers →
“When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.”
Evolution can be viewed as a search algorithm; it attempts to explore the space of “all possible organisms” without wasting time on organisms that aren’t very successful. But it can’t just start anywhere- for a new species to evolve, it must descend from an existing species.
The result...
2 tags
3 tags
Sourdough
A got some sourdough starter from a friend at work. For those who have never worked with sourdough before, your starter is basically a culture of yeast you keep in your fridge and feed from time to time. When you want bread, you take it out of the fridge, feed it a bunch, and let it ferment for a few days.
So why is it awesome?
Well, when you are letting it ferment, it produces goo....
2 tags
The Past Decade was Pretty Good →
When we look back at the past decade, it’s easy to spot all the things that were wrong. From the War on Terror to problems in the banking sector, it does raise the question: did anything good happen in the past decade?
Charlie Stross tackles that question, and provides a quick summary of a handful of the improvements in the world- from controlling diseases to changes in the global economy,...
2 tags
2 tags
You Aren't In Control →
Who decides whether or not you sign up to be an organ donor? You? Or the person who designs the form? Who decides which option you purchase when choosing between a set? You? Or the person who slipped the ringer in to weight the options?
We are not the masters of our own souls; our brains have biologically wired biases that we can counter only when we know we’re looking at them.
I’m...
2 tags
Motocross Dinosaurs →
“Uh-huh,” the owner said. “Or maybe you figure humans shoot each other all the time, but if someone turns up ripped in half the cops are gonna start lookin’ for dinosaurs.”
Tark carefully pounded the counter. “There used to be a time,” he said, “when gun dealers would actually sell people guns! A time … called America. I miss that...
2 tags
When Murder Moves In
I don’t mean that literally, obviously. When I say “murder”, I mean “a murder of crows”. Not only is that one of the best names for a group of animals (followed closely by “an unkindness of ravens”), but it’s one of those sights that can be incredibly dramatic in the right conditions.
For a time, I lived in Troy, NY. A cute little victorian...
2 tags
When win and fail can't be distinguished →
This young lady is having so much damn fun, I can’t help but think that this is awesome. Step one to success: enjoy whatever it is you’re doing, and you’ll be better than 90% of the folks that are already doing it.
2 tags
2 tags
When it snows up
Perhaps I’m easily amused, but I love looking out the window and watching snow “fall” up. Something about the way the wind hits my office building lifts the snow and creates an illusion of warped reality.
Garbage Day
When you have something you need to get rid of- things that rot, things that are broken, things that should simply go away, you most likely cart that stuff out to the curb once a week, or perhaps drop it off in a nearby dumpster when it’s convenient. And then, someone comes around and takes it away. And it’s gone.
We rarely consider the value of this service, but for most of human...
3 tags
2 tags
The Undercity →
Cities are living, breathing things. The city surface- streets and buildings- is the skin of the city. And beneath that skin pulses a massive circulatory system that conducts people, power, and waste around the city.
As cities grow and age, that infrastructure changes. Old tunnels are sealed up and forgotten. New tunnels are built, and eventually forgotten in turn. Cities like New York keep...
2 tags
The Holiday Week at Work
I always seem like a little bit of a hero at work when I volunteer to work the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. It gives others the opportunity to get their last days of vacation in before it all expires, and everybody likes to take off during the holidays.
Well, everyone except me. Because the holiday week is the greatest- nobody is there, nothing specific needs to be done....
A New Year
Everyone loves the new year. For no real reason at all, we think of it as a new beginning. I like it so much, I celebrate it twice- once in January, and once on April 1st.
Sleep in and sleep it off today, kids.
December 2010
19 posts
2 tags
Being the Last Person on Earth
This is a holiday week for most people. This means the office is nearly empty, and it also means the city streets are nearly empty.
And sometimes- they’re completely empty. During my commute into the office, I hit these stretches of utter silence- no people, no cars, no dogs or birds, just me and seemingly vacant buildings. For a brief moment, it’s like being the last person on...
2 tags
Anna and Susanna Lister →
Anna and Susanna Lister were only about 15 and 13 when their father put them to work making scientific illustrations of his comprehensive database of all known shells. His Historiae Conchyliorum was one of the great achievements of natural science in the 17th century, and Charles Darwin would later cite the text during his own research on natural selection.
1 tag
A Good Night's Sleep
Going to bed and waking up refreshed is easy to take for granted. It’s not until you find yourself blearily going about your day, slightly confused and barely conscious, a zombie, that you really know what you’re missing.
For whatever reason, I’ve been in that state for over a week now. I look forward to some good quality sleep.
2 tags
Information and Energy →
Entropy is a fascinating thing. Back in the days of steam engines, scientists realized that the hot steam that drove the engines would always contain some energy that couldn’t be put to useful work. Steam engines (and all engines, machines and devices) have an inherent inefficiency.
Even worse- this unusable energy had a tendency to spread. If you have a box full of gas, eventually, every...
2 tags
The Bunnies of Okunoshima →
Once upon a time, Okunoshima was Japan’s secret stockpile of chemical weapons. Today, it is Japan’s secret stockpile of bunnies.
I think we can all agree that this is far more useful.
1 tag
3 tags
Not doing much at all for Christmas
For some people, Christmas is a big to-do. I’ve been involved in those sorts of Christmases, and I have to say- nobody actually seems to be enjoying it. If you talk to them in the weeks before or after Christmas, they’re full of nothing but cheer and optimism, but when you talk to them close to the holiday, they’re nothing but bundles of stress.
Growing up, my memories of...
1 tag
2 tags
Festivus
It started as an inside joke for one family, and eventually grew into a much bigger joke thanks to its appearance on Seinfeld. While the Solstice is the true winter holiday, celebrated in every culture, Festivus is a great compromise between that and the more fondly remembered Christmas.
The decorations are simple, but most important: it gives us all the one thing we really need to do. Air our...
2 tags
When it goes smooth
Today, I had a big server upgrade. I’m a programmer, not a server admin, but somehow, I was put in charge of the upgrade. I rehearsed the tasks repeatedly, and found all sorts of stumbling blocks, problems, and things I didn’t really understand.
We budgeted a 12 hour outage window, with the hope that it would be only six- the process started at 11AM, and we hoped to be done by 5PM.
...
3 tags
Approaching Albany, NY from 787N
Many people appreciate the spectacle of the Fort Pitt tunnel. Far fewer seem to share my thoughts on the best approach to the Albany skyline. In part, I’m one of the select few that really appreciates Empire Plaza as an architectural statement. It’s dramatic and austere.
The Empire Plaza exit off of 787N is part of this tangled mess of interchanges all piled up on each other. When...
1 tag
Approaching Pittsburgh through the Fort Pitt...
I love living in cities. I love skyscrapers and the sense of drama that’s held in a good city skyline.
Pittsburgh has one of those sorts of skylines. And it’s never better than when you come up from the South through the Fort Pitt tunnel. For those unfamiliar to the area, directly south of the city is Mount Washington. The side of this “mountain” facing the city is little...
2 tags
Dinosaurs and Superheroes →
Like peanut-butter and chocolate, these are two great tastes that taste great together.
2 tags
Rescue Geeks →
Young Katie was teased at school because she carried a Star Wars water bottle and “Star Wars is for boys”. Her mother was disappointed by this, and mentioned how sad it was on her blog. The Internet agreed, and the outpouring of support came in the form of notes from the actress that plays Amidala in the animated “Clone Wars” to piles of schwag from ThinkGeek.com.
“You realize how, if you want...
3 tags
2 tags
The Insanity Virus →
Would you think that multiple sclerosis and schizophrenia are related diseases, caused by the same virus? I wouldn’t, but evidence is mounting that this is true. And even more than that- this virus doesn’t enter the body via infection. The virus implicated in the disease lives in all of us, nestled away in our DNA. In some cases, this latent DNA gets activated, and our body begins...
2 tags
Tool Use in Humans →
I couldn’t post this without the human capacity to use tools. Whether those tools are non-physical, like language, or mechanical, like discussed in the linked article, our tools define us. In fact, I would argue that the primary trait of “humaness” is our ability to plan ahead and use tools to control our environment.
And what’s fascinating is that scientists have found...
2 tags
Phoning it in a bit longer
Today’s awesomeness? Phoning it in a bit longer. Over the past few weeks I’ve been collecting a few terribly awesome links. In lieu of real content for my first week back from vacation, you’ll get a week’s worth of awesome (to me) links.
I did have a wonderfully relaxing vacation. The bad news is that I’ll be returning to an exceedingly busy office for the next...
2 tags
Tin Toys →
I always adore these Japanese robots. The article provides some fascinating background on their cultural history and relevance.
November 2010
22 posts
4 tags
2 tags
Vacation
With Thanksgiving coming up, and a week’s vacation scheduled for the following week, I’m going to take the next two weeks off. This couldn’t be better timed, because after the past few weeks at work, I’m completely burned out.
Vacation is the awesome thing of the day for the next two weeks.
3 tags
Super Mamika →
A few years ago, French photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he suggested that they shoot a series of outrageous photographs in unusual costumes, poses, and locations. Grandma reluctantly agreed, but once they got rolling, she couldn’t stop smiling.
The real bonus: not only was she a dress-up...
1 tag
Construction Begins on America's First Spaceship... →
It’s not a personal jetpack, but I’m pretty convinced that we’re living in the future.