Bye Bye Aibo
This robot, built by Boston Dynamics and funded by DARPA, is called BigDog. This is eye-popping: I am not a roboticist, but I am in part an engineer, and I have an eye for excellence in design and...
View ArticleQuasicrystals Are Chaotic
Thus I do declare. Why? First, a quasicrystal is something that… is orderly; it exhibits perfect translational symmetry (i.e. it can be divided by straight lines into a sequence of identical figures)....
View ArticleHeaps and Branches
I love discovering things that are assumed to be obvious or straightforward by practically everyone, myself included, but as it turns out aren’t. It reminds me of the great chasm that exists between...
View ArticleThe Shared Unconscious Mindspace
I can look up anything on the Web. (News flash!) I can do this for pure learning–and I do–but very often for confirmation of facts, beliefs, guesses or intuitions. I confirm all the time, virtually...
View ArticleShared Mindspace (additional)
Kinda wish I’d included this in my last post… an article from Discovery News, “The Web is Your New Memory.” FTA: The study authors tested this hypothesis by giving subjects a list of facts they were...
View ArticleLangton Labs
It was last fall, and I’d just accepted a new job in San Francisco. I needed a place to stay, but I hadn’t decided where I wanted to live in the city. I just needed a temporary place to crash, ideally...
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