Living as I do within 100 miles or so of Yellowstone National Park, its geological instability is very present to me. Loosely speaking, the volcano upon which Yellowstone sits erupts—on average—every 640,000 years. The last such megaexplosion was…just about 640,000 years ago. Statistically, we can expect another such megaexplosion any time now. Geologically speaking, “any time now” covers a lot …
Crossing Boundaries
Have you ever been in a situation where—despite all your best efforts—some circumstance completely beyond your control crept into your carefully constructed reality, changing things for the worse, or even just forcing you to take some action that hadn’t anticipated? I got to thinking about this as a general phenomenon this morning upon seeing this item that shows that half …
Miscommunication Potential
As is often the case, I find things in my daily perusal of things technical items that can have wider implications. Take this piece from the July 3, 2012 Wall Street Journal, which describes different approaches to using online communications channels, and the problems that result from the disparate styles and choices. I pride myself on my ability to communicate. …
Do I Really Need It?
A few weeks ago, I noted in this post that I’d had some difficulty with a new laptop computer, given by a long-time friend as a gift. I’ve been thinking about the outcome of the repair situation, and decided to use it to address a more-general issue. Since that post, I had two visits by an on-site technician. The gift …
The Urge to Merge
I come across all kinds of interesting things in the course of my daily activities. Take this item from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which describes how and why mosquitos aren’t just crushed when they collide with raindrops—which are many times more massive than the troublesome insect. Using high-speed videography, they demonstrated that mosquito’s strong exoskeleton and …
Expectations
Although the guidelines have been available to a subset of interested parties since 2011, it was not until late May 2012 that the broader community became aware of and accepted “…guidelines established by NASA to protect lunar historic sites and preserve ongoing and future science on the moon.” Designed to maintain the historical and scientific integrity of these historical sites—such …
Unintended Consequences
It seems that The Machines are much in the news lately. I’ve seen several articles on increasing uses for drones and other UAVs in domestic “security” applications, not to mention the prospects of arming them for bona fide warfare. On a much less violent front, we have this item from the Wall Street Journal, which describes how a seemingly innocuous …
Perceived Powerlessness?
The news in several places that the recently released movie, The Avengers broke the $1 billion mark for ticket sales (see here, for example) left me wondering, Why? What is it about this movie that has knocked earlier blockbusters (such as the Harry Potter canon) off their pedestals? I mean, I love a good movie, and may even set things …
What Would You Do If You Could Not Fail?
I came across this question recently via two different communications channels (Wired magazine and a YouTube video), both referring to the same person. That person is Regina Dugan, who—until March 2012—was director of the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, or DARPA. She left DARPA to move to Google, and faced lots of criticism for the way she allocated work to …
Functional Fixedness
What do a flock of starlings (known as a murmuration) and ferromagnetism have to do with each other? On the surface, probably nothing. Nothing, that is, unless you are a team of scientists with a perspective and approach that goes outside what their nominal area of study seems to call for. A team headed by William Bialek at Princeton University …