Category: Technology
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Yet another car ride in which I betray my inner geek.
6YO: Do you like robots, Dad? MARK: Robots are pretty cool. 6YO: If I invented a robot, I would invent a robot that would write messages. MARK: There are already robots that can write. 6YO: Really? ME: Yes, they’re called “plotters.” (Sighing, as my memory takes me back to freshman year.) I love plotters. They’re…
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How does a CO detector work? Maybe you’d better not ask us.
The 6yo asked about the “smoke detector” mounted low on the living room wall in our new house. You know, the one that emits a piercing shriek when you press the test button, conveniently located at toddler eye-level. “That’s a carbon monoxide detector.” Mark explained that it will go off if a certain poisonous gas…
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7 myths about the Challenger explosion.
"It didn’t explode, the crew didn’t die instantly, and it wasn’t inevitable." Are your twenty-year-old memories accurate? One of the best articles on the subject was written by Edward Tufte, author and designer of several beautiful and elegant texts on the visual display of quantitative information. The same material appears in this book. His story: …
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Science, philosophy, technology.
Good post on why we don’t need "intelligent design," by MrsDrP over at Marriage is a Vocation. I’m going to keep an eye on that one, as she and I seem to be interested in similar stuff. I noted in the comments that science, philosophy, and technology are three separate fields of human intellectual achievement,…
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They should get a better machine.
I decided to Google myself — the blog, actually — and Google’s black box chewed up "bearing blog" and spit out this link for No.2: Nicolas Chaunu, carrying the project Emob, "the effective, dynamic elearning and deeply humanized", informs us of the creation of a bearing blog on the elearning. The corner of the e-learning…
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Cool new technology saves girl from drowning.
Check out the lifesaving technology featured in this story from the UK: The system was fitted to the Bangor pool in March 2003 at a cost of £65,000 and involves eight overhead and four underwater cameras. The Poseidon technology can detect movement, trajectory and texture of underwater objects. It then compares images to a database…
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And you get a free car wash, too.
I laughed at this, from Asymmetrical Information: Department of awful headlines Experimental Hybrid Cars Get Up to 250 Mpg. 250 MPG!!! Wow!! How do they do that?! Ummmm . . . by charging the car’s batteries off the electric grid. On this headline’s logic, I am inviting investment my new idea for a car that…
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The hipster PDA
There are times when I slip into the worst gadget-centered materialism. This morning, no doubt spurred by Ann Althouse, I caught myself wondering if I should buy an iPod. Further examination revealed the following motives: I am ashamed that I haven’t regularly listened to music since my first son (now 4) reached toddlerhood and we…
bearing blog 