Category: Uncategorized
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Our Founding Fathers–Eating
I have occasionally imagined a piece of historical fiction, a Rip van Winkle story where John Adams (a grumpy, wise, philosopher) or Ben Franklin (a gourmand, party animal, and scientist) or maybe Tom Jefferson (a million contradictions who liked liberty and revolution and food and wine and books and women of all colors) is dropped […]
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What Makes Anyone Think Physics is Not a Religion?
[I am sure this is not original, on so many levels, but my fingers are compelled to try to capture these thoughts. Forgive me.] At a fundamental level physicists appear to be deeply religious. Their Articles of Faith are something like this: There is order, This order can be understood by us, It is predictive, […]
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Android Car Radio?
They don’t seem to quite exist yet, but it looks like we are getting close to having nice Android car radios available. There are car radios with slide out screens, but the ones available domestically are proprietary software that I assume won’t be as good as Android and will cost a lot more for less. […]
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"Digital Quality" and "No Moving Parts": We Were Tricked!
It used to be that “digital quality” meant “high quality” because going digital was a way to do better what could be done with analog. Consider CDs, they often had very high quality sound. But we were tricked. Now a days “digital quality” is as crappy as the engineers and MBAs decide to make it. […]
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Late Show, with Stephen Colbert
I couldn’t be more pleased for Stephen Colbert’s being hired to follow David Letterman on the Late Show. Congratulations, sir. However some people are sad that Stephen Colbert’s character from The Colbert Report will not continue in his new job. I suggest they not worry. Colbert was plenty good on The Daily Show, when he […]
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Pebble Watch's Limitations: They are Key
Maybe it is supposed to be click-bait, or maybe Jared Newman (@OneJaredNewman) is sincerely confused. In his posting on time.com (http://techland.time.com/2014/02/17/my-problem-with-pebble-its-still-too-much-work/) he complains that the Pebble watch is too much work, and “Pebble’s new apps are no easier to reach than the phone in your pocket.”. He misses the point. The Pebble watch is not […]
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Deleted (?) Tweet I Like
@counternotions tweeted: I’m not smart enough to know why Windows collapsed, but I know in 2004 you couldn’t do business without it, but in 2014 you absolutely can. — http://twitter.com/counternotions/status/425839478838554624 Very interesting. It might not be completely true, but is it semi-true? Or maybe not quite yet. -kb
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Flies' Eye Security Cameras
Instead of pan and zoom cameras, cameras should be modeled on flies’ eyes. Multiple little fixed cameras with overlapping fields of view. Each camera is reasonable resolution (and cheap), the whole thing has very high resolution. No need to steer any motors. Stitching together the images in the camera might save data rates, better quality […]
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Mandela: I'm Honored to Have Been Alive While He Was
A man of strength, accomplishment, wisdom, and compassion. He certainly suffered, but he had some fun too, and lived long enough for many to consider him something akin to a living saint. He was controversial, at the peak of the struggle against apartheid, Ronald Reagan and the United States government considered him more a terrorist […]
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Bitcoin "Deflationary Spiral": Any worse than Berkshire Hathaway?
When economists say bitcoin is at risk of a deflationary spiral (people hoarding the limited supply, having little incentive to spend today but always waiting until tomorrow), I wonder whether they are missing two key points? Not a Monopoly Currency When a country has an isolated economy and single official currency, the model is different […]