Tag Archives: Science-and-Technology
Haeckel’s Problematical Phylogeny
I’ve had the beginnnings of this post hanging around backstage here since the early summer. Today, the handsome cephalopod illustration above showed up on FFFF, and so (in the absence of any compelling alternative) tonight, Ernst Haeckel, this is your … more…
The inner life of the cell
Bruce likes the proteins sitting on a raft of cholesterol; I like the zipped up protein microtubules (above). This video is a rich source of outlandish terminology, containing a truly enormous number of words unlikely to be useful in any … more…
Sagan’s animated evolutionary line
The classic diagram of evolution from the Cosmos TV series, first broadcast 1980. UPDATE: Another clip from Cosmos, A Thousand Years of Darkness is also strongly recommended. If Carl Sagan was alive today, they’d have him on a no-fly list. … more…
Intel Inside: musical meanings in an ad and a jingle
Here’s an example of one of the ways that YouTube should be genuinely valuable: in decoding and deconstructing propaganda. This particular instance, a thirty second ad for the Pentium processor from 1995, examines the jingle especially closely. (via Madame Lévy)
Carbon-based paper has extravegant promises made on its behalf
It’s Super Paper! — Berardelli 2007 (725): 2 — ScienceNOW Researchers have developed a remarkably simple way to convert ordinary graphite particles into very thin but superstrong sheets that are tougher than steel and as flexible as carbon fiber but … more…
Leon Theremin
I’ve been browsing the Wonderland of Knowledge again — the twelve-volume children’s encyclopedia, published 1934 which was the source of the Two Stags image that I believe is still the most-visited post in this blog’s existence, and also of the … more…
Creepy Robot News: BigDog Walks Abroad
Wired Blogs: Gadget Lab Walking robots just moved on. This one is very creepy indeed, and just wait till you see what happens when the guy tries to kick it over. UPDATE. I should have thought of this an hour … more…
Möbius strip unravelled
news @ nature.com – Möbius strip unravelled – Mathematicians solve 75-year-old mystery of infinite loop’s shape. It’s been so long since I had a maths story in here, I’d almost forgotten I did them. A couple of mathematicians at UCL … more…
Tesla’s Tower
Damn Interesting » Tesla’s Tower of Power “In this system that I have invented, it is necessary for the machine to get a grip of the earth,” he explained, “otherwise it cannot shake the earth. It has to have a … more…
Freeman Dyson: Our Bio-tech Future
Freeman Dyson, in The New York Review of Books, prophesies affordable candy-coloured baby dinosaurs you can design and incubate yourself. You know, for kids. Will the domestication of high technology, which we have seen marching from triumph to triumph with … more…