Tag Archives: science

What's your favorite number?

Posted on November 14, 2005 by ian

We’ve all seen at some point in our lives that some numbers seem to have magical properties. Well it turns out that all numbers are special you just need to look a bit closer by consulting this awesome site. Turns … Continue reading →

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Driving you automagically

Posted on October 10, 2005 by ian

We’ve been car shopping lately since the 1995 Passat is starting to be less reliable than ever (which is saying a lot) and doesn’t cut it for travelling to the country with a dog or going to ultimate tournaments with … Continue reading →

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ID – Impugning Darwin

Posted on October 7, 2005 by ian

I’ve been watching the whole intelligent design (ID) controversy from the sidelines for some time with mixed feelings. My focus in university was evolutionary biology. I spent quite some time working in a laboratory for experimental evolution (working with microbes … Continue reading →

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Drowning New Orleans – A Modern Tragedy

Posted on September 1, 2005 by ian

While I don’t want to distract the reality and immediacy of the disaster in the New Orleans area, a friend pointed out this October 2001 article to me and it is hard not to reflect on our prescience of this … Continue reading →

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Put on your safety googles: a trip to Google's Labs

Posted on May 30, 2005 by ian

Just a suggestion… Check out the simultaneously useful and distracting Google Suggest: as you type the search field expands into a drop down list providing anticipatory or alternative searches and allowing you to see the difference in the size of … Continue reading →

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Code Vulnerabilities – a physics, semantics, or engineering problem?

Posted on November 15, 2004 by ian

Anyone who uses a personal computer (or who reads the paper) is aware that PCs are highly susceptible to a raft of problems that fall into the domain of “computer security”. Even my parents know that computers need to be … Continue reading →

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Computer Security and The Human Factor

Posted on November 7, 2004 by ian

I recently read The Human Factor by engineering professor Kim Vincente. This is an eye-opening book about the importance of “adapting technology to people” instead of “forcing people to adapt to technology.” The field of Human Factor Engineering has apparently … Continue reading →

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Infreemation and The Evolution of Memes – Rip, Mix and Burn

Posted on October 26, 2004 by ian

Why does “information want to be free”? I think the phrase is a good way of explaining to most people that information is really hard to treat like property. The cost of reproduction and transportation is absurdly low, thus it … Continue reading →

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Catching up on Interesting News

Posted on September 14, 2004 by ian

Technology Advances Sports Coverage Some of you may have noticed the innovative technology provided by the US Open coverage. Watching a few matches I was impressed by the computerized slow motion rendering of close calls that redrew the ball and … Continue reading →

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More cool news

Posted on September 12, 2004 by ian

Wired News: Better Science Through Gaming: Enormous quantities of data generated by automated techniques in genetics and proteomics have led to an unprecedented requirement for tedious data mining. Here is an interesting product, Genesifter, that makes the task more manageable … Continue reading →

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