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Author Archives: jlredford
Secret Paths
Like most people, I bumble through each day doing pretty much the same things. For instance, I work in a generic office park and like to go for a walk at lunch to a cafeteria in a nearby building: This … Continue reading
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A Failed High-Tech Gamble
Ten miles north of Boston is the National Historic Site of the Saugus Iron Works, site of the first heavy industry in the country. It’s a pretty spot, and a great place for a picnic, which my family took advantage … Continue reading
Hubble and the Triumph of ROI
A few days ago, April 24th, was the 20th anniversary of the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope. arsTechnica celebrated with a nice article here, from which I will shamelessly lift this famous picture: This patch of the sky is … Continue reading
Out of Body Experiences
In one of those Hollywood coincidences, two recent movies, “Avatar” and “Surrogates” made use of the idea of remote-controlled bodies. In “Surrogates”, people had robot bodies that were so much better than real ones that no one went out in … Continue reading
Amping up the SF in “Avatar”
The last post noted how Avatar’s director and writer, James Cameron, left off a key piece of info that would have explained a lot of mysteries in the movie – that unobtanium was a room-temperature superconductor. We’re still left with … Continue reading
Fixing the SF in “Avatar”
One of the bizarre things about the “Avatar” movie was that no explanation was ever given for why Evil Corp wanted to plunder the Edenic moon Pandora. They were supposed to be after some mineral with a joke name, unobtanium, … Continue reading
The Awesome, Yet Easily Controlled, Power of Nature
io9.com recently posted a nice set of pictures here, of Niagara Falls being shut off for maintenance in 1969 by the Army Corps of Engineers. Here’s what they looked like from Prospect Point when off: And here’s what they look … Continue reading
Bike MPG
It being officially spring (albeit with so much rain that even the ducks get depressed), I broke out the bike and bopped around a bit. There’s a nice rail trail near me (the Minuteman Bikeway) that covers about 2/3 of … Continue reading
Spacy music from an actual space pioneer
There was an interesting article in the Boston Globe today, “Symphony in J Flat” , about a local clarinetist, Amy Advocat, who is learning a strange new tuning, the Bohlen-Pierce scale. This is a scale where every octave is 3 … Continue reading
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Another local industry – political ambition
So I was looking at lists of presidential candidates from recent elections, and was struck by the number of candidates from my small and somewhat out-of-the-way state, Massachusetts. It looks as though MA is tied with New York and California … Continue reading
A Niche in the Library of Babel 