Bacteria still rule: Great Long Now seminar by Craig Venter (and Bonus!)
I finally got to listen to the Long Now seminar by Craig Venter. And, wow, was it great. If you’ve been a regular reader of mine, you know that I think Ve...
Category: Science
Old calculators and future steampunk
Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Cambridge Originally uploaded by blackbeltjones Heh. My Dad also had some of these types of clunker calculators. Uh, I...
Michael Arrington gets sequenced: His 23andMe DNA Results
I haven’t been paying much attention to 23andMe. I heard about them, but have yet to dig deep into what they are up to. To me, it’s bringing genetic...
The turkey and the butcher
Just wanted to get this little ditty out: I was listening to a very interesting Long Now seminar by Nassim Taleb, about his insight into randomness, predictabil...
Great essay by Kevin Kelly on Human Identity
Kevin Kelly has written a great essay on the current challenges to human identity, challenges from tech, society, and new knowledge. I think this ties a lot int...
Thoughts on the Journey of Mankind
A Long Now post pointed to a cool animation showing the migration of humans over the past 160,000 years, since modern humans arose in Africa. There’s a lo...
Well, what do you know? Craig Venter going to Harvard as a visiting scholar
My wife pointed out, once more, a link to something on Venter (link below to blurb). I wonder if she wants me to work with him. [Nope, irrelevant inference.] An...
Entropy is over-rated. Long live Complexity! (Bonus: The Venter)
Does everything tend towards Entropy? One of the first things we learn in chemistry is that everything tends towards entropy. How can that be? Whereas Steven Jo...
On the balance of top-down and bottom-up
Kevin Kelly is on of the founders of the Long Now Foundation, which you all know I am pretty fond of. He wrote an article (link below) recently on the balance o...
Notes on notes of essays someone else never wrote
I’ve heard a lot about Matt Web through those closest to him, but never really met him. Matt is half of an interesting and insane design duo, Schulze &...