It’s all there in the title, basically. “Experiments in Galvanism” is an art installation that consists of tank of mineral oil containing a dead frog … which has been rigged up with a miniature webserver, so that you can control the twitching of its limbs from anywhere in the world. [BoingBoing]
Contrary to the beliefs of the climate change denial lobby, “the scientists” have not closed ranks and conspired to defend one single point of view. Conservation scientist Jesse Ausubel has stirred up a hornet’s nest by asserting that renewable energy generation will take up too much space and end up destroying the very ecology its proponents intend to save, and that carbon capture and increased nuclear development are the way forward.
I guess that it’s only natural, now the majority of people concur that there is a climate change problem, that we find something new to disagree vehemently over – in the form of what to do about it.
One of the more drastic (and last-ditch) options is geo-engineering. Simulations seem to indicate that these somewhat science fictional scenarios of “hacking” the atmosphere to reduce global temperatures and sequester carbon dioxide in the process are quite plausible … as long as we can maintain the system for a thousand years.
The adoption of renewable energies should really take off when we’re able to print solar panels out at home, or simply paint them onto any solid surface. [Colony Worlds]
Futurismic readers with money to spare and a charitable mindset might like to make my year by buying me one of these nifty coffee-table-bookshelf combos to hold some of my home library. My book collection pales into insignificance when held up against the vast collections of rare and unique texts that affluent CEOs have stashed away … but some is better than none, especially as it seems that poor literacy is a strong indicator of early mortality.
RFID tagging is a much-hyped technology – so much so that a firm that specializes in implementing RFID systems is warning businesses not to fall for the hard sell, because it’s an overkill solution for anything but the hugest companies. That’s not stopping people from coming up with useful implementations for the tiny tags, though – Ocean City, New Jersey has grand plans to make beach management a breeze using RFID, as well as funding their municipal wireless project by charging tourists a small fee. [Meshverse Journal][Image by Hugo*]