A certain high school English teacher of my acquaintance (now retired) famously posited a definite inverse correlation between the intelligence of his female students, and the size of their breasts. Well, science is suggesting that this might have been a false conclusion. It was already known that men find curvy women more attractive and that they live longer. Now research… Read more →
Category: Science and Technology
Seam Carving You Can Play With, Plus More
Remember back in August when I was so delighted with the paper and demonstration video on seam carving technology? Well, now I can play with that technology. And so can you. Or, at least, you can if you use the Gimp, since the Liquid Rescale Plugin now puts that algorithm into it. (And why wouldn’t you be using the Gimp… Read more →
Making The Point With Art
I could write a dozen blog posts about living in the surveillance society, and not make the point as clearly as Michael Zoellner did by writing SurveillanceSaver. There’s nothing that will drive home the point that we’re in the midst of omni-surveillance like someone adapting some of the information flowing from that constant surveillance into casual artOK, maybe it’s a… Read more →
Maybe I should reconsider that whole law school thing
Well, that was a waste of time. Oh, and irony. (Of course there was already irony and detailed irony.) Read more →
The perils of the dark side
So, if you are the sort of person who has a fair bit of interaction with the shady computer underworld–you know where to find a download of anything, or a way to find a crack or a serial number for anything, etc, it is almost unavoidable that at some point you’re going to step into the crap and run into… Read more →
How to really feel like a 1337 4aXXor
Most of the time, when watching “hackers” on television, and in movies, I am usually quite harsh in mocking the appearance of their tools, and the Hollywood OS. The fact of the matter is that real programmers, and even more so real hackers, primarily work with the keyboardThey usually get this right, oddly. and character mode information…but not this!–this, however,… Read more →
A Targeted Miscellany
A Sunday link list, of things that made me think of specific people. For my lovely wife, to share with her radical feminist associates, is the story of the most famous pirate of all time. Especially the bits about the pirate laws governing female prisoners. And the end of the story. Also for her yet another story about people who… Read more →
Expose yourself to hours of great ideas
So, do you know TED? Not some dude named Ted; it stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Let me quote them on what it’s about: TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the… Read more →
Professor Membrane Strikes Again
And it’s time once again for our tour of interesting and weird science bits. This time out we start with the most science fictional story I’ve seen in a long time: methane ice worms! From the story: A team of university scientists using a mini research submarine on a NOAA-funded research cruise has discovered, photographed, and sampled what appears to… Read more →
My Inner Academic Nerd Is Gleeful
I am working my ass off. And, as with the entirety of my professional career, the stuff I’m working my ass off at is only very tangentially related to what I studied in school, and not related at all to what I specialized in. Just in case you didn’t know, the focus of my last couple of years of university… Read more →
A Weekend Miscellany
(You may not think it’s the weekend, but since I have Friday and Monday off, and my late night meeting with Australians is done, I am now into my weekend.) OK, let’s talk unexpected interpretations in cover tunes. Sarah Nixey covers Human League‘s Black Hit Of Space [via jwz]. Petra Haden covers Journey‘s Don’t Stop Believin’ [via Scalzi]. Ophelia Blitz… Read more →
A Wednesday Miscellany
For some reason I’ve been on a things-in-space-with-cool-pictures kick this week, so why stop now? Here’s a picture of the aurora australis, as seen from Antarctica: That’s one of two images from a post at Canadian hard-SF author Peter Watts‘ blog. Read the post for a higher resolution version, another picture, and a very disturbing mental image. Of course there… Read more →
Professor Membrane On: A Dead Supernova
“It’s time to move on, son! Real science… try it!” It’d dead. Dead, I tell you. Bad Astronomy drew my attention to the Eta Carinae stuff at Harvard’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory site. The Chandra site says this: Eta Carinae is a mysterious, extremely bright and unstable star located a mere stone’s throw – astronomically speaking – from Earth at a… Read more →
Professor Membrane Spotlight On: The Millennium Simulation
“Hooray for science!” Today we’re talking about the Millennium Simulation. I know this is an old story, dating as it does to 2005, but it’s got three different angles that appeal to my inner science geek plus a little something extra. You could start by reading a summary, or the Guardian article about the project, to get an idea of… Read more →
A little miscellany
This headline made me laugh. I often wonder if headline writers do this on purpose, as McDonald suggests, or not. I find this face averaging tool fascinating. It’s one thing to pick a few attractive faces, average them, and see that the resulting face is more attractive than the majority of source faces, but it’s a whole other thing to… Read more →
