October 16, 2004

X-PRIZE LEADER

takes over as head of the Feynman nanotechnology prize. Glenn Reynolds will love this story.

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July 26, 2004

WHERE

have all the cockroaches gone?

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July 19, 2004

MORE iPOD

for less money.

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July 15, 2004

KILL A TERRORIST

end global warming.

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June 29, 2004

Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Just say no -- the thing has an unfixed security hole of truly massive proportions. I've begun using Foxfire, which is free and very good.

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June 21, 2004

We don't need no stinkin' stolen money.

Free men using their own property fly into space.

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May 04, 2004

"The Hedy Lamarr Story".

Brought to you by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

If you don't know Lamarr's spectacular story, read about it here and here.

The BIG question: What contemporary actress could possibly play Lamarr? .. perhaps the most brilliant and beautiful actress to ever set foot on a Hollywood sound stage.

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April 22, 2004

Uncompetitive U.S.A. - science & engineering also-ran.

"I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-�-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers .. [Executives] pointed out that the percentage of Americans graduating with bachelor's degrees in science and engineering is less than half of the comparable percentage in China and Japan, and that U.S. government investments are flagging in basic research in physics, chemistry and engineering. Anyone who thinks that all the Indian and Chinese techies are doing is answering call-center phones or solving tech problems for Dell customers is sadly mistaken. U.S. firms are moving serious research and development to India and China.

Craig Barrett, the C.E.O. of Intel, noted that Intel sponsors an international science competition every year. This year it attracted some 50,000 American high school kids. "I was in China 10 days ago," Mr. Barrett said, "and I asked them how many kids in China participated in the local science fairs that feed into the national fair [and ultimately the Intel finals]. They told me six million kids."

For now, the U.S. still excels at teaching science and engineering at the graduate level, and also in university research. But as the Chinese get more feeder stock coming up through their high schools and colleges, "they will get to the same level as us after a decade," Mr. Barrett said. "We are not graduating the volume, we do not have a lock on the infrastructure, we do not have a lock on the new ideas, and we are either flat-lining, or in real dollars cutting back, our investments in physical science .. ". More TOM FRIEDMAN.

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April 09, 2004

Malaria.

The NY Times (!) -- "What the World Needs Now Is DDT".

The Times they are a'changin'.

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April 06, 2004

LCD vs. Plasma.

"LCD TVs are predicted to nudge out most competition in the '50-inches and smaller' category .. ". More GIZMODO.

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Cutting Edge Technology.

Coming to you from the engineering capitals of India, China and South Korea. Meanwhile, America is expending its treasure on post-grad work in Literature, Sociology, and Political Science, otherwise known as Advanced Anti-Liberal Studies. And in an not unrelated development, Americans in droves are turning their backs on the wealth producing fields of engineering and the physical sciences. What can we do to help the geeks in their losing competition with the freaks?

Here's a suggestion -- change the funding system of the university. And here is how. Combine the wealth producing fields of science and engineering into independent universities completely outside the control of the wealth consuming disciplines -- with absolutely independent funding structures. Just a thought.

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March 22, 2004

Nuke technology.

Developing the modern uranium centrifuge.

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March 09, 2004

TV.

If Christmas 2003 was all about dirt cheap DVD players, Christmas 2005 will be all about low cost big screen LCD TVs.

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February 10, 2004

Another reason to hate Microsoft.

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January 29, 2004

The Wikipedia entry on Friedrich Hayek is actually rather good -- far better than any short piece I've seen on Hayek from a commercial encyclopedia company. I corrected one glitch -- "catallaxy" had been misspelled. Tyler Cowen links to this fascinating story on the strange power and hidden logic of Wiki spontaneous cooperation.

UPDATE: Here's the Wiki entry on Web Blogging, via The Modulator.

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January 16, 2004

Charles Krauthammer on going to Mars. Krauthammer claims there are worse things we could be doing -- like, say, what we're doing right now.

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October 31, 2003

The invasion of the digital packrats:

Nearly 800 MB of recorded information is produced per person each year, or the equivalent of 30 feet of books, according to the report. Print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002, with 92 percent of the new information stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks.

To fully comprehend the size of 5 exabytes, the report explains, "If digitized, the 19 million books and other print collections in the Library of Congress would contain about 10 terabytes of information; 5 exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in half a million new libraries the size of the Library of Congress print collections."

Another powerful example of 5 exabytes is that it is the equivalent of all the words ever spoken by human beings ..

The PrestoPundit digital archive is down below there just to the right.

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June 30, 2003

Bush's folly -- Hydrogen. A look at the science tells the story:

At least one small benefit of the current interest in FCs [hydrogen fuel cells] is that even many scientifically illiterate enthusiasts now realize that hydrogen is not an energy source, merely an energy carrier. Unless we get some environmentally benign means of producing it by the electrolysis of water (that would require either exceedingly cheap photovoltaics or an entirely new generation of nuclear reactors) we would get it by using today's most practical method: steam reforming of natural gas. If you wonder how that would not lead to higher natural gas prices (and hence to higher oil prices as the two fuels are substitutable to a large degree) and how that would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, you have to ask true hydrogen believers for an explanation.

Moreover, hydrogen is an inherently poor choice for a transportation fuel because its uniquely high energy density depends on its liquefaction, i.e. storage under high pressure, or at least on its incorporation into metal hydrides to avoid bulky fuel storage in vehicles. And here's a curiously underappreciated fact given the litigiousness of this society: what would be the liability repercussions of distributing a fuel that now can be handled only by select personnel to hundreds of thousand commercial outlets? For these, and other, reasons -- all of which have been detailed in some excellent technical reports that have called recently for rethinking hydrogen cars -- we are not on the threshold of a new era dominated by FCs and hydrogen.

But try getting a television newsie or a politician to learn some basic science and technology -- I mean real stuff, not drug store pseudo-science techno blather, which is like a contagious disease in contemporary public discourse. It ain't happening.

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June 27, 2003

Who should bring wireless to the world -- entrepreneurs or the UN? Kofi Annan knows. And a BBC analysis.

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June 22, 2003

Microsoft lobbies California legislature to ease anti-SPAM regulations.

Meanwhile Matt Drudge comes out strongly in favor of the right to SPAM, telling of his own SPAM powered rise to fame and success on his KFI Sunday night radio show.

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June 16, 2003

"Why I Love Spam" -- Nick Gillespie

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June 15, 2003

TIME has some spam recommendations:

Outlook users might be better off buying a third-party program, and the market's flooded with them. Ella ($29.95) stands out for its simplicity .. it uses an adaptive engine to "learn" your preferences � what qualifies as junk, which messages are top priority and which can be put aside for later � and organizes your e-mail accordingly. QURB ($24.95) and Mailblocks ($9.95 a year) are also worth a look. Finally, there's a community project that attacks spam .. with a blacklist. For $4.99 a month, SpamNet checks your incoming mail against its own ever expanding database. The service's 475,000-plus members contribute by "voting" on what's spam and what isn't, using the BLOCK and UNBLOCK buttons that the SpamNet program adds to your Outlook task bar. Enough votes from individual members and a message is blocked for all. With thousands of reports coming in every second, it can be pretty effective.

And Virginia Postrel has this:

The combination of SpamAssassin at the server and Entourage's next to highest setting mostly works, except Entourage still misclassifies a lot of my NYT reader mail as junk.

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