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Category Archives: Uncategorized
“The Wright Brothers” and Thinking Straight
There are lots of reasons to love the story of the Wright brothers. They came from nowhere to solve the great problem of flight, one that had defeated so many others. They showed straight-up physical courage when flying these dangerous … Continue reading
The Singularity Will Be Built Out of the Same Old Stuff
I work in a field, semiconductors, that is the paradigmatic example of the Singularity. When people talk about technology zooming up the exponential growth curve, they’re talking about what I do. Since the field began in the early 1960s, there … Continue reading
Lead in Flint and RoHS
The scandal about lead in the Flint Michigan water supply reminded me of my own brush with lead issues. In the 2000s a program started up in electronics called the Reduction of Hazardous Substances, RoHS. It was intended to get … Continue reading
A Plug for Doomed Engineers
In the early 90s I began collecting stories of engineers who came to bad ends. That’s literally bad ends, as in executions and suicide, not just failed projects. My own career was at a difficult phase at that time, … Continue reading
When IP Escapes – the Sad Case of the Hoverboard
A few weeks ago my son was bothering me incessantly about hoverboards. People in his class were talking about them, so he just had to get one. The Amazon reviews were equally split between 5-star “This is the coolest toy … Continue reading
The Force Puts Me to Sleep
Even thirty years ago when I saw “Return of the Jedi” I thought “This concept is played out”. Yet another Death Star? Yet more walker battles? Endless scenes of hapless guys in useless white armor getting zapped? Another light saber … Continue reading
The Funniest Screenwriter of All Time
… is Woody Allen, according to the Writer’s Guild of America. They recently polled their members and came out with a list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays. Allen appears on it for 7 movies, more than any other person. Sounds … Continue reading
The Human Population of Space
… is currently about six. That is, if one adds up all the person-years spent in space by various crews, it comes to about six for recent years. In a previous post from 2010, “The Population of Space”, I had … Continue reading
Ceres: the Best Place in Space?
We’ve recently learned something extraordinary about the dwarf planet Ceres, something that might make it the most habitable place in the solar system outside of the Earth: It appears to have an icy mantle 100 km thick. That would give … Continue reading
SF Fail #1 – Bionics
Science fiction has failed in many ways, but I was reminded of one of its more egregious lapses, bionics, just the other day. I was talking to a coworker who turned out to be an Extropian. We don’t get many … Continue reading
A Niche in the Library of Babel 