“The only person who could ever miss with this gun would be the sucker with the bread to buy it.”– Peter (Ken Foree), Dawn of the Dead (1978) TrackingPoint, the Austin, TX-based manufacturer of high-end rifles for wealthy hunters has introduced its Precision Guided Firearm (PGF) to the public. Using technology based on the tactical […]
Archive | Science
Physics And Fetch Quests: A Slower Speed Of Light
Free from the MIT Game Lab, the PC game A Slower Speed of Light explores relativistic physics through a smaller and more localized (and familiar) medium: the fetch quest. [yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu7jA8EHi_0′] Using a “[c]ustom-built, open-source relativistic graphics code [that] allows the speed of light in the game to approach the player’s own maximum walking speed,” players […]
The Future’s Bright! The Future’s … What, Exactly?
Part two – be sure to read “The Future’s Bright! The Future’s Danish?” before you dive in. You’ll be glad you did. America is a great and blessed nation, abundant in natural resources, purple-capped mountain majesties, swaying fields of wheat, and whatever other romanticized notions you want to paint your wagon with. What it also […]
The Future’s Bright! The Future’s Danish?
Imagine a future. A near future where everyone has all the latest gadgets. One where iPhones fall from trees, MP3 players are rectally inserted at birth, and Disney monitors your children’s every movement via OnStar. Phones run for 12 hours at a time on a single charge and have cancer-curing batteries. American-designed hybrid cars get […]
My Un-teching Experience During Hurricane Sandy
As you may have heard, a hurricane hit the Eastern Seaboard this past week. Because the storm’s arrival was widely publicized, my family was able to prepare. We filled the car with gas, took cash out of the bank, made a trip to the grocery store for essentials such as canned goods, mini jars of […]
Hurricane Sandy Causes Stormy Weather Online
Hurricane Sandy, the massive storm that battered the Northeast yesterday, is estimated to have an estimated cost of about $20 billion worth of damage. Power is out for millions, known deaths are in the double digits (and likely to rise sharply after things calm down), public transportation is disrupted on an unprecedented level, the U.S. […]
One Poignant Picture For Man, One Giant Hold Pattern For Mankind
Science Fiction author Dani Kollin (The Unincorporated Man and associated sequels) managed to snag an amazing shot of one of the decommissioned Space Shuttles. Kollin was kind enough to allow us to share both his image and his thoughts here. Tho there were thousands of people, I somehow got this angle of the Space Shuttle, […]
My Recent Jetpack Moment
My friends like to joke that they’re bitter because it’s the 21st century and we don’t have our jetpacks. The 21st century is damn different from how it was portrayed in the media of our childhood; The Jetsons have a lot to answer for. However, “different” doesn’t mean bad. I made a recent long […]
NASA Goes To Mars, Then Back In Time
Many of us were glued to the computer last night, watching NASA’s latest Mars mission. The Curiosity, a new exploratory vehicle, was successfully dropped/flung to the Martian surface. Some have pointed out the interesting fact that Apple’s iPhone 4s is four times more powerful than the new rover. This has an additional cool factor too […]
Ultra-High Speed LED Light Communication Makes Its Commercial Debut
Last July, Dr. Harald Haas of the University of Edinburgh School of Engineering gave a TED Talk about what he called Light Fidelity, or LiFi. Haas said that the new technology, still in its infant stage, would revolutionize communications, replacing broadband-based WiFi with ultra-high speed over-the-air data transmission through LED lights. This wasn’t just a […]