Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Auto Industry Does Its Bit

Posted on January 11, 2017 by jlredford

I recently leased a 2017 Chevy Volt.   It’s a nice mid-range car with good interior space, a lot of zip, and is really quiet.   It’s even rather stylish: And it gets 75 miles per gallon in terms of CO2 emissions, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

When Modeling Goes Bad – “Weapons of Math Destruction”

Posted on December 10, 2016 by jlredford

The political modeling that I talked about in the last post now affects most decisions that institutions make with respect to individuals.   This is nicely described in in the recent book Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.   She has … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Weaponized Psychology Helped Elect Trump

Posted on November 20, 2016 by jlredford

The US has just elected a president who is an outright criminal – a man who cheats contractors, steals from investors, and assaults women. What on earth happened?  Everyone has a theory, but let me add one more – his … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Winningest SF Authors Are Women

Posted on October 31, 2016 by jlredford

The New Yorker recently published a charming interview by Julie Phillips of Ursula K. Le Guin.  It described her upbringing in a house full of myth and story headed by her father the great anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, her difficult relationship … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | 3 Comments

Assange is Winning

Posted on October 22, 2016 by jlredford

A colleague pointed me to a good New York Times article last week, Why Samsung Abandoned Its Galaxy Note 7 Flagship Phone, on the epic disaster of its exploding phones: After the initial reports that the lithium-ion batteries were catching … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

Best Demos Ever

Posted on September 1, 2016 by jlredford

Just this week a chip that I’ve been working on for the last couple of years finally came alive.   My colleagues put it on a board, loaded up the software, and it ran!   This was what the scene looked like: … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Airborne LIDAR: Cool or Creepy?

Posted on June 15, 2016 by jlredford

The Guardian recently published a fascinating story, Revealed: Cambodia’s vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle, about the discovery of huge city complexes near Angkor Wat.   The temples of Angkor are built of stone, but these structures are roadways or … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

How Space Science Might Have Gone

Posted on May 26, 2016 by jlredford

But for an accident of history, this is how space science would have been done: This is the launch a few days ago of the Compton Spectrometer and Imager, a soft gamma-ray (0.2 to 10 MeV) telescope designed to look … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Rebecca Leaf, Engineer Heroine from MIT

Posted on May 17, 2016 by jlredford

I recently came across a striking set of stories about leftist women who attended MIT.  The school has had female graduates longer than any other major US university (their first was in 1873), and they’ve done remarkable things.  It turns … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Homo Faber

Posted on April 10, 2016 by jlredford

Even the children of homo sapiens can’t resist making things.   While walking through the local park, Menotomy Rocks, I came across this: It’s been there for years.    Every kid who walks by feels an urge to add a stick.   In … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment