Biology is a long-standing fascination of mine, for many, many reasons. One such is evidenced by some photos here, which just left me dumbstruck—not an easy task, I assure you! As with all such things, it got me wondering about the application of such phenomena in personal and professional settings, thinking in terms of how things are either hiding in …
Obfuscatory Jargon
As a practitioner of several arcane technical and scientific arts, I do my share of using jargon; indeed, I often appreciate hyperpolysyllabicsesquipedalianism. In the proper setting, precise terminology conveys something very specific to my audiences, so I understand how useful such jargon can be. I have to scratch my head, however, when I come across such terms as “controlled flight …
Assumptions
Take a look at this short video called, appropriately for this post, Assumptions: Entertaining, to be sure. But there’s more here than entertainment. As much as I try to avoid it, I find it virtually impossible not to go into a situation without preconceived notions or assumptions. Such poor going-in positioning may have to do with the person or people …
Perspective
I’m sure you’ve heard some version of the old phrase, “not being able to see the forest for the trees”. There are many such aphorisms, so—clearly—one’s inability to see big pictures owing to focus on details is not a new phenomenon. I came across an inverse view of this recently. A two-gigabyte image of Mt. Everest and its environs recently …
What Controls You?
Much as I am loath to admit it, I must acknowledge that I’m not always (or even usually) in conscious control of my own behavior. I strive to bring forth my best, but there are times when my response to a given situation just seems, well, over the top, and usually in a negative way. Other times, I find myself …
Should It Be Done?
If you’ve been following these posts, you know I’m a technophile. Over time, I’ve become interested in technological utility in addition to loving technology for its own sake. That’s why when I found this, describing the provision of information from a car’s computer onto the windshield, I found myself stopped. I faced a conundrum: While understanding how the information presented …
Art vs. Reality
I’m a long-time fan of science fiction. Hard science fiction. This means made-up stories that are based in the physical reality as we know it, or within reasonable extrapolation of the boundaries thereof: Magicians, trolls, witches, warlocks and vampires need not apply! (Oh, I enjoyed The Tolkien Trilogy ‘way back when, but that’s not sci-fi.) One of my favorite activities …
More Signal, Less Noise
News this week included a report that planet-searchers have found a “super-Earth” orbiting a star just 42 light years from “regular “(but still impressive) Earth. [Given that distance, Bob Murphy, a colleague and friend, has suggested that we name the planet “Douglas Adams”, author of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which that number has keen significance as the “Answer …
Overdesigning
SpaceX has done it again, albeit with a bit of difficulty. They launched a Falcon 9 rocket with a Dragon module to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). The launch itself was perfect off the pad, but just about 90 seconds into the flight, one of the vehicle’s nine engines malfunctioned. The Dragon docked successfully with the ISS today, but …
Memories and (In)Accuracy
About four or five years ago, I found myself issuing caveats to others when describing something I remembered—or thought I did. The caveat was usually along the lines of, “I think I remember”, or “I’m not sure if I remember this or just think I remember this.” Call it the onset of entropic consciousness, or just aging, but there it …