I’m a bit of a physics geek. Not that I can do the math. But I’ve always wanted to know how the world works, and physics is the very coolest science for that. The foundation. So I decided to find three bits of news in physics to put forward as a little gift for my fellow science geeks – a bit of how the world might work for the holiday season. Continue reading All I want for Christmas is some cool new physics
Category Archives: Today’s Tomorrows
Today’s Tomorrows – author and futurist Brenda Cooper on the thin fuzzy line between the future and the present.
The Future is Now: the Recession and the Steep Upward Slope
It’s a recession. The housing market is tough, the job market is worse, and the country is so sharply divided we’ll be lucky if anything useful happens in Washington D.C. in the next two years. Whole economies are backpedaling into austerity programs. This does not feel like a ride up the steep right-hand curve of the emerging technological singularity. But I think that’s where we are – in that place of so much change we can barely keep up, and in a time when many people are falling so far behind that they will never catch up. Continue reading The Future is Now: the Recession and the Steep Upward Slope
Cities and security: a Mexican story
For the last few months I dove deeper into topics I’d already covered. But this month I decided to do something else. At my job, I get the Homeland Security Newswire (I manage technology for a medium-sized local government). I keep seeing various articles that reference Mexico – the big country next door to the US that is in some danger of becoming a failed state; the one in the bloody middle of an honest-to-goodness drug war rather than an anemic War on Drugs. Continue reading Cities and security: a Mexican story
The Universe of 3D Possibility
Don’t forget that for the rest of this year, I’m revisiting topics, updating research, and chatting about possibilities. I hope you’ll add to the discussion. So, here goes:
There’s been a lot of 3D print in the news lately. There’s some cool things that are now easy to do – you can upload your designs at i.materialise.com (although I have to say, the “i” in front of EVERYTHING is as bad as the “.COM” behind every business’s name just before the .com bubble bursting. But I digress. i.materialise is catchy. I’m personally waiting for i.teleport). After you upload and pay, your new object is printed and mailed to you. You can drop by Shapeways.com for the same service. If you don’t feel like making your own designs, you can buy them from other people. I like the math art piece Interlocked Moebius.
So that’s how I decided to re-visit 3D printing – just in time for Christmas if you start planning now! I bet you could be the first in your family to design a Christmas ornament and have it printed. I might even have to try that this year… if I can find time. It sounds like math is involved. Continue reading The Universe of 3D Possibility
Camels and Bulls and Bar Talk: cloning revisited
Two-million-dollar cloned camels running races in the desert with robot riders. Makes you think of a science fiction story, huh? But that’s happening now. In an early version of this column, I wrote about the world’s first cloned camel, Injaz. I thought I’d check up on Injaz, and I learned about the world’s second cloned camel, and the hope that Bin Soughan will be a racing sensation (see the Al Jazeera YouTube video on cloned camels for more of the story).
In case camels weren’t enough, we now have a cloned fighting bull. At the risk of observing the obvious, cloned racing camels and cloned fighting bulls are all pretty masculine activities. This feels like cloning for profit and prowess rather than to make the world better. I mean, what will we be cloning next at this rate? Quarterbacks? David Beckham?
So that’s how I decided to re-visit cloning for this month’s column. Continue reading Camels and Bulls and Bar Talk: cloning revisited