My web digest

2011-06-11T18:31:00.005-04:00

The picture is not Photoshopped and is dead serious.

2010-09-17T18:17:00.003-04:00

Many organizations have been making predictions for a peak in world oil production between 2010 and 2015, followed by a decline. This could bring profound changes in global markets, the balance of power and political upheaval. Check out this article in Der Spiegel, this article based on a seminar by the president of Petrobras, and this article in The Guardian.

2010-09-15T19:29:00.001-04:00

Interesting article in The Guardian on China's new drive to guarantee access to raw materials in Brazil.

2010-07-10T13:02:00.003-04:00

Two curious inventions: Roper's steam-powered motorcycle (1869- bottom) and Daimler's gasoline motorcycle (1885- top).

2010-07-09T10:37:00.003-04:00

An interesting, personal review of Douglas Hoftadter's book, fittingly titled "Gödel Escher Bach: An Endless Geek Bible". This book is one of the only three "Further Reading" suggestions I gave at the end of my popular science book on quantum computing.

2010-07-04T00:10:00.000-04:00

There is actually a clock called QuantumGravity.

2010-05-20T14:36:00.000-04:00

A big, scary step for science: the first synthetic life form.

2010-05-12T09:51:00.002-04:00

China is suffering a wave of attacks of deranged men on kindergartens - reminds me of the high-school shootings in the U.S., minus the guns.

2010-05-08T23:30:00.002-04:00

I've just learned about commonplacing - the act of taking down quotes, poems, pieces of news in a commonplace book, a kind of personal scrapbook. This was common in England and the U.K. in the 17th century, but somehow died off since. The first thing I thought when I read about these was: these are just like blogs! Wikipedia tells me this analogy has (of course) been pointed out before.

2010-04-04T18:57:00.002-04:00

Watch experimental short videos by Cyriak on Youtube.

2010-02-20T22:33:00.002-05:00

A new chapter of the story of the man of Flores: apparently they may have arrived there over a million years ago! They'd be something like preserved australopithecus (ci?), having lived in Flores as late as about 17000 year ago.

2010-01-20T18:03:00.002-05:00

I'm in Zurich.
On a curious form of film cult, in this case of The Big Lebowski.

2009-08-08T12:10:00.001-04:00

Chirac reveals that Bush pleaded with him about invading Iraq on the basis of faith:

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

Read the rest of this article.

2009-06-13T11:14:00.002-04:00

In the spirit of boy scout badges, check out the Science Scout badges. Some which I may claim:

The “Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah, I’ve got a radio gig” badge.

The “quantum mechanics… I soooo get it” badge.

The “science deprives me of my bed” badge (LEVEL II).

The “non-explainer” badge (LEVEL I)- Where the recipient can no longer explain what they do to their parents.

The “I will crush you with my math prowess” badge.

The “has frozen stuff just to see what happens” badge (LEVEL III).

The “destroyer of quackery” badge. (In which the recipient never ever backs down from an argument that pits sound science over quackery.)

2009-06-11T10:27:00.001-04:00

An interesting essay in The Edge about necessary changes in the model of university teaching.

2009-05-17T16:47:00.003-04:00

Fold-it @ home is a game that lets players try to find lower-energy configurations for folded proteins. This may have applications in drug design among other things. The game has already revealed a 13-year-old protein folding prodigy, and has resulted in results that beat what PhD-holding biochemists have achieved.

2009-05-08T21:21:00.002-04:00

A funk song video made out of many different youtube videos, very funky!

2009-05-04T21:15:00.001-04:00

A report on a fire in an underground coal mine that has been raging for half a century. Such fires are common, very hard to extinguish, and produce enormous amounts of CO2.

2009-04-24T16:06:00.003-04:00

Just last night there were raised fears of a pandemic of swine fever in Mexico city - universities, schools and kindergartens were closed for the day, and bosses were asked to be tolerant of absences today. There are an estimated 1000 cases and 45 deaths reportedly caused by the virus.

2009-04-14T21:36:00.001-04:00

On a solar cooker that can be put together for US$5.

2009-03-26T21:03:00.002-04:00

Brilliant people: a profile of Freeman Dyson in the NYT, and an essay by Terry Tao on how a ship can sail faster than the wind.

2009-02-04T21:43:00.000-05:00

Kyrgyzstan has been the victim of a strong cyberattack.

2009-01-25T09:27:00.001-05:00

Check out this beautiful set of photos from an abandoned shipyard.

2009-01-23T17:23:00.004-05:00

The first ipod? [via Boingboing]

2009-01-17T16:13:00.002-05:00

I've read a couple of books by Roberto Bolaño recently, and recommend him. Read here about his last book.

2009-01-13T19:26:00.002-05:00

Here are some techniques that induce allucinations with simple tricks.

2009-01-11T10:41:00.003-05:00

The probes Spirit and Opportunity go on exploring Mars, 5 (Earth) years after arrival. Their projected longevity was just 3 months.

In mid-2007 one of Spirit's wheels got stuck, so Spirit has been dragging it since. This, together with dust accumulation on the solar panels, has restricted somewhat how much it can wander.

Opportunity, on the other hand, is thriving. As summertime approaches with its solar energy bounty, it is set to do a 15 Km overland trip to an interesting crater named Endeavor. Good luck!

2009-01-10T21:45:00.003-05:00

Today I've been reading about low-tech refrigerators - electricity-free, they can keep food up to 10oC lower than ambient, using evaporation as the cooling mechanism. First I bumped into this piece of news about a young English woman and her invention; then I read up about Zeer pots, used throughout Africa. They're an adaptation of an ancient design. In northeastern Brazil the local people use similar earthenware jars to keep water fresh.

Later on I found this old design also based on evaporation, called an absorption-gas refrigerator. The Icyball was designed in 1927, and run on anything combustible. Part of it is heated, which in turn keeps the other side close to 0C for a day or so. This design has been improved recently, to run on non-toxic liquid (the original used ammonia). Check out a short video about this invention.

2009-01-05T16:45:00.001-05:00

Frozen soap bubbles (via boingboing)

2008-11-28T12:15:00.001-05:00

Stick figures in danger. (via Michael Nielsen's blog)

2008-11-28T08:02:00.002-05:00

An article claiming that the U.S. finantial crisis bailout has already cost "more than the Marshall Plan, Louisiana Purchase, moonshot, S&L bailout, Korean War, New Deal, Iraq war, Vietnam war, and NASA's lifetime budget -- *combined*! ".

2008-11-13T18:15:00.000-05:00

Where do large science machines go when they die?

2008-11-02T13:02:00.001-05:00

On the current state of affairs in Iceland, post-bank-meltdown.

2008-11-02T12:29:00.001-05:00

Seven leading U.S. authors reflect on Bush's legacy.

2008-10-18T19:52:00.001-04:00

A set of beautiful microphotographs.

2008-10-18T11:21:00.001-04:00

An example of an (almost) unreported change: incandescent light bulbs are being banned from Europe in 2010.

2008-08-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

Rapping about CERN's LHC.

2008-07-27T20:08:00.001-04:00

Check out this video in which logic gates are made using toppling dominoes.

2008-06-16T15:18:00.001-04:00

This start-up company modified E. Coli so that it digests wood chips, straw and other such materials to produce oil.

2008-06-03T21:36:00.001-04:00

A 1968 video with "the first public use of a mouse, as well as examples of cutting, copying, pasting, teleconferencing, video conferencing, email, and... hypertext."

2008-05-27T20:56:00.000-04:00

This is a great video mashup of Fred Astaire dancing to Michael Jackson.

2008-05-05T09:52:00.000-04:00

A list of links to AI success stories.

2008-04-12T12:00:00.003-04:00

A paper showing how computers can make automated scientific discovery of new drugs. This is much more straightforward in maths, where computers can prove theorems. My computer routinely does that - but the theorems are not very interesting.

2008-03-20T13:11:00.002-04:00

Lablit is a site which dedicates itself to reviewing/praising realistic depictions of scientists in literature. Listen here to a podcast with the scientist responsible for it.

2008-03-15T23:00:00.001-04:00

An interesting interview with VS Naipaul.

2008-03-15T18:18:00.001-04:00

John Gray's essay against the "secular fundamentalists" Amis, Dawkins, Hitchens and colleagues.

2007-10-28T15:17:00.000-04:00

Some people are building and releasing high-altitude ballons with cameras, communication gear and sensors. Seen here the result of one such launch: pictures and films taken from near-space, at an altitude of about 30 Km, where the sky is black and one can see that the Earth's curved.

2007-10-23T09:58:00.000-04:00

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called Trash Vortex, in an area in the Pacific where mostly plastic garbage accumulates due to sea currents. The area is around the size of Texas, with about 6 Kg of plastic for each Kg of plankton.

2007-10-02T14:30:00.000-04:00

My colleague Scott Aaronson is in a funny, and very unexpected, position. He got a text about quantum mechanics plagiarized and used in a commercial in which two fashion models discuss quantum mechanics (!!), just before hitting the catwalk. That's so funny!

2007-05-17T14:37:00.000-04:00

There's a strong suspicion that Russia is behind a three-week wave of cyber-attacks on Estonia. If true, this would be the first such attack ever from a nation-state against another.

2007-04-24T08:54:00.000-04:00

10 steps that could turn the U.S.A. into a fascist state, and how some of them are being taken by the Bush administration.

2007-03-31T21:47:00.000-04:00

A free collection of short stories. Very short indeed: 6 words each. Hemingway's:
"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

2007-03-29T20:46:00.000-04:00

An article in The Guardian about how cheap, acessible, open-source rapid prototyping machines can, in perhaps 10 years, create a new industrial revolution.

2007-03-20T14:14:00.000-04:00

An article in New Scientist about the strange new properties of a little-known crystal. In its pure form, it may be a new state of matter, a so-called string-net fluid. There's some relation to anyons and topological computing, in case you're an expert in such things...

2007-02-23T20:40:00.000-05:00

The Cremaster film cycle by visual artist Matthew Barney has impressed me. Check out some material on it at the Gugenheim Museum website.

2007-02-23T07:30:00.000-05:00

The company Virgin Galactic has been set up in Britain to take tourists to the edge of space. It hopes to offer flights starting in 2009, costing about £10^5 per seat. It's also partnering with NASA to develop cheaper alternatives, which may be used to train astronauts as well. Their spaceship is based on SpaceShipOne, the first private spaceship to go into space.

2007-01-23T07:05:00.000-05:00

Worrying news about a deadly strain of tuberculosis arising in South Africa - 98% fatality rate, airborne, death within 2 weeks.

2006-12-17T15:54:00.000-05:00

A list of 50 English-language films which deserve to be seen, but for one reason or another have been neglected so far.

2006-12-14T08:20:00.000-05:00

Google now has Patent Search, a simple front-end for searching among 7 million U.S. patents.

2006-12-03T15:49:00.000-05:00

A diet with radical calorie restriction is known to prolong life in many organisms. This reporter has been investigating the story, talks to people who follow it and has been doing it himself for 9 weeks now.

2006-12-03T09:06:00.000-05:00

An article on status anxiety, stress and chronic fatigue.

2006-10-29T17:10:00.000-05:00

Michel Houellebecq writing about H. P. Lovecraft, a writer he greatly admires.

2006-10-21T11:16:00.000-04:00

A profile of Edward O. Wilson, remarkable entomologist and writer. His mission now is to convince the religious in the U.S. to support science in preserving biodiversity in the planet.

2006-10-21T11:04:00.000-04:00

An article on the controversial potential link between diet defficiency and criminal behaviour.

2006-10-09T23:03:00.000-04:00

A list compiled by The Observer of the best English (and Commonwealth) novels in the last 25 years. I've enjoyed reading about 10 of them.

2006-10-07T20:29:00.000-04:00

An essay about the economy in Second Life.

2006-09-12T17:22:00.000-04:00

Polyphasic sleep: 2-3 h of short naps a day, instead 8 ininterrupted hours. Seems like a hard schedule to adapt to.

2006-09-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

On the accidental discovery of a "miracle drug" that's been effective in bringing back to life some patients in deep coma.

2006-08-29T19:31:00.000-04:00

Biomimicry: using ideas from nature in engineering. See the velcro here? An article about biomimicry in energy production.

2006-08-21T23:07:00.000-04:00

More about the controversy surrounding the Hobbits from Flores Island.

2006-08-03T09:39:00.000-04:00

This guard dog was fed up with all the attention paid to these teddy bears - what did they have that he didn't? So when his handler was a bit distracted he destroyed all of the teddy bears, worth tens of thousands of dollars.

The dog seems very pleased in the picture.

2006-07-22T18:50:00.000-04:00

Here's an evaluation of the current situation in Afghanistan, by the most senior British military commander in the country. It's disheartening - the poppy production is at an all-time high, the country situation is "close to anarchy" and the violence has killed 700 people over the last few weeks.

2006-07-08T10:36:00.000-04:00

Lots of films of American nuclear tests were recently declassified, and are available on-line.

2006-06-11T10:44:00.000-04:00

An interview with Ann Coulter, high-profile right-wing American polemicist. Extract:

"Some of Coulter's more charming opinions are that the country would be better off if women couldn't vote, that in December 2001 America should have attacked France, and that the death penalty should be brought back everywhere."

2006-06-05T21:18:00.000-04:00

A few random results from leisurely web-browsing:

A Lego difference engine.

The strange but compelling site of visual artist Esao.

GNU radio is a multipurpose software controlled radio that can record digital TV, all FM radios simultaneously, GPS signals, etc, all under an open-source license.

2006-06-05T18:17:00.000-04:00

A delightful site I found: the Museum of Unworkable Devices. It's pretty thorough!

2006-05-29T14:21:00.000-04:00

The story of forced migration out of the island of Diego Garcia, so that it could be sold to the U.S., who built a military base there.

2006-05-24T16:46:00.000-04:00

A witty article in The Guardian, from the reviewer who demolished The da Vinci Code (the book), writing about the film. Quote:
"Has our culture now created a sort of genetically modified turkey - the critic-proof product?"

2006-05-23T18:17:00.000-04:00

A conference of synthetic biologists is discussing guidelines for the creation of new life forms. Some disturbing advances happened in 2002 when the polio virus was reconstructed from scratch, and last year when the 1918 flu virus was reconstructed from frozen body remains.

2006-05-09T17:54:00.000-04:00

The annual Webby awards indicate a list of web sites worth visiting.

2006-04-29T19:34:00.000-04:00

Archaeoacoustics: the study of how one might recover sounds inadvertently recorded while a brush painted a canvas, or a stylus was working on clay. This may seem far-fetched, but some serious (or less serious) proposals have been floating around for a while. Check this site for a review of the hoaxes and real possibilities.

Other structures may be designed to create auditory effects, now or in the past. Check this article about it. Some examples are the steps in ancient American pyramids and some modern sculptures. Hear the chirped echo from an ancient temple in Teotihuacan, Mexico:

2006-04-22T19:21:00.000-04:00

This is an ambigram: try looking at it upside down. I had never heard of those, but there are many homepages dedicated to ambigrams...

2006-04-18T08:17:00.000-04:00

This guy wants to do a series of trades, starting with a paper clip and ending up with a house to live in. Now he's already got a house to live in for one year in Arizona.

2006-04-05T19:38:00.000-04:00

Laboratory-engineered bladders have been successfully transplanted back into patients.

2006-04-04T16:27:00.000-04:00

Gary Younge in The Guardian on whether there's a "new McCarthyism" going on in U.S. academic institutions.

2006-04-01T11:25:00.000-05:00

An essay by Ian McEwan on the tradition of literary science writing.

2006-03-26T18:19:00.000-05:00

This is a cool video - a live Bunraku matrix-style ping-pong game.[via monochrom]

2006-03-24T10:18:00.000-05:00

A strange gallery of pictures using some old techniques, to spooky effect. [via boingboing]

2006-03-23T12:03:00.000-05:00

An cool article by a Norwegian professor giving reasons why a high school student should choose to take Maths.

2006-03-21T09:12:00.000-05:00

A review of a book called "The evolutionary origins of belief", by Lewis Wolpert.

2006-03-14T17:12:00.000-05:00

On how to use genetic algorithms and user feedback to create or choose objects with elusive qualities, such as beatiful pictures.

2006-03-10T12:16:00.000-05:00

This is a picture of the Z-Pinch device at Sandia National Labs. It's basically a huge capacitor, used for researching problems such as this.

2006-03-06T08:11:00.000-05:00

Amnesty International points out in a report that 14000 people are detained without trial (à la Guantánamo) in Iraq.

2006-03-04T15:26:00.000-05:00

A physicist improved an algorithm used for biological imaging - and it now also solves sudoku puzzles easily.

2006-02-13T11:00:00.000-05:00

On the huge construction works going on in Dubai.

2006-02-01T09:14:00.000-05:00

Justin Williams is opening up an exhibition in London of what he calls "mathematical photography"".

2006-01-27T05:58:00.000-05:00

Have a look at birth rates in Europe, where 2.1 per woman is considered to be population replacement level:

Ireland 1.99
France 1.90
Norway 1.81
Sweden 1.75
UK 1.74
Netherlands 1.73
Germany 1.37
Italy 1.33
Spain 1.32
Greece 1.29

An article in the Guardian discusses the problem in Germany.

2006-01-25T07:42:00.000-05:00

An article on what would happen should China reach current U.S. levels of resource consumption. China has recently surpassed the U.S. in absolute resource consumption.

2006-01-24T08:23:00.000-05:00

An article analyzing the second big wave of immigration into the U.K.

2006-01-24T08:19:00.000-05:00

On a controversial proposal to reclassifly chimps under the genus Homo, based on DNA studies. Curiously enough, that was the accepted classification between 1775 and 1816.