3 posts tagged “sci&tech”

In an effort to keep up with Robert Llewellyn's CarPool series, I've created feeds for it on both DreamWidth (carpool_feed ) and LiveJournal (

bobbylewcarpool ).  If the links don't work, you can see the feed displayed on my User Info pages on either site.  You can also go here:  https://www.miroguide.com/feeds/9998 or to iTunes and watch them at your leisure.  If you're a RedDwarf fan, you'll be pleasantly surprised with some of his passengers.  If you're not, there's a variety of other guests in the passenger seat, including Stephen Fry, Prof. Brian Cox, and Nigel Planer. 

(The premise of the show:  Robert Llewellyn drives his guest passenger to a particular destination in either a hybrid car, or an electric.  During the drive, they talk.  That's it.  It works.)

This entry was originally posted at http://ivymcallister.dreamwidth.org/. LJers who don't have DW accounts can still comment there via OpenID.

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components — including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind. If we must look to religion to explain our moral sense, what should we make of the deficits of moral reasoning associated with conditions like frontal lobe syndrome and psychopathy? Are these disorders best addressed by theology?

This entry was originally posted at http://ivymcallister.dreamwidth.org/. LJers who don't have DW accounts can still comment there via OpenID.

The guys at MIT have come up with a far cooler identifier for our evil overlords to stick on the backs of our necks--Bokodes, which use light to encode information.

Bokodes "can hold thousands of times more information than their striped cousins and can be read by a standard mobile phone camera.

The 3mm-diameter (0.1 inches), powered tags could be used to encode nutrition information on food packaging or create new devices for playing video games. [...]

The Bokodes currently consist of an LED, covered with a tiny mask and a lens.

Information is encoded in the light shining through the mask, which varies in brightness depending on which angle it is seen from.

'For traditional barcodes you need to be a foot away from it at most [to scan it],' said Dr Mohan.

The team has shown [that Bokodes] can be read from a distance of up to 4m (12ft), although they should theoretically work up to 20m (60ft)."

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