Much has been said and written about Mr. Obama’s distressing record on civil liberties. Many have gone so far as to argue that he’s worse than his predecessor, that he has assumed powers that are strictly forbidden by the Constitution, that he has begun acting more like a king than a president. These critics have a mountain of objective data
Read moreI owe my medical provider money. I think. I had some tests run and my insurance doesn’t cover it all, so I owe a few extra bucks. I’m trying, as hard as I can, to pay the bill. And for all I know, I may have already. But I can’t prove it. My first instinct was to pay online. Boy
Read moreSally Ride, the first American woman in space, is dead at 61.
Read moreWatch the two TED talks below. The question, which represents 100% of your final grade, follows. First, Nick Hanauer in 2012.
Read moreEvery once in awhile we will, for a variety of reasons, pick out a word that has positive connotations and proceed to flog that motherfucker to death. Like “engineer.” Engineer is a word with a meaning. From the Oxford: Pronunciation:/ɛndʒɪˈnɪə/ noun person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures. – a person qualified in a branch of engineering, especially
Read moreMy doctoral dissertation addressed what I called the “Frankenstein Complex.” So guess why this story bothers me. Today, a scientific journal published a study that some people thought might never be made public at all. The paper describes experiments that suggest just a few genetic changes could potentially make a bird flu virus capable of becoming contagious in humans, and
Read moreThe uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of robotic and 3D computer animation, which holds that when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers. The “valley” in question is a dip in a proposed graph of the positivity of human reaction as a
Read moreLegendary amplifier maker Jim Marshall is dead. April 5, 2012 | 8:54 am Jim Marshall, who was known as “The Father of Loud” for designing the amplifiers that became ubiquitous in the rock world, has died at 88. We talk about the guitar gods, the screaming vocalists, the idiot drummers, the groupies, the stylemakers, the partiers… We don’t often pay
Read moreOkay, maybe not yet. But we’re definitely getting there. Check out today’s two-part gotcha. Part 1: Back in 2008 I wrote a piece called “The Smartest Shopping Cart That Ever Lived,” a glimpse into the near-future of GPS meets RFID meets customer relationship management meets intelligent supply chain meets nosy retailer shopping experience. I invoked Minority Report in doing so –
Read moreThe more I watch modern politics (and economics and the culture wars and science “debates”) the more it all reminds me of pro wrestling. You know how it goes. Tough match, back and forth, both the good guy (the “face”) and the bad guy (the “heel”) getting their licks in, and then at the decisive moment either the heel “accidentally”
Read moreCase 1: In 1997 a prominent scientist made a bet with a colleague over a complex black hole issue that physicists were trying to figure out. This bet was very public and given the egos involved in the field of advanced quantum science, the stakes were huge. Case 2: In a climate-related thread on S&R, a “skeptic” was asked point-blank: “What
Read moreI hope you made the time to read Wufnik’s post from Friday. Entitled “Surrounded by people ‘educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought,’” his analysis of our culture’s “active willingness to be deceived” represents one of the iconic moments in S&R’s history. If you didn’t see it yet, go read it now. In addition to the questions the
Read moreI never imagined I’d be blogging on Apple issues, but here we go. In anticipation of getting a new iPad2 I migrated my MobileMe over to iCloud. It’s hard to have a definitive idea of what a new service is going to do until you get your hands on it in earnest, but I had read about iCloud, asked some
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Of course I’ve overpoured a drink, dumbass. Every bartender has overpoured a drink.
Read moreI’ve been thinking about how modern society explains various phenomena, everything from simple everyday questions to the grand complexities that vex the lay thinker’s ability to make sense of a confusing world. More and more, it’s become clear that we’re relying on Fuckem’s Razor, the little-known Medieval principle of implausibility. I’d like to take a moment to explain this theory
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lullaby pit 