Dude records practically every waking moment of his first child's life. Then he maps the data so you can see where and when his son first heard a word and how it was used and when his son first said it and when his son gained mastery. Amazing stuff.
http://www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word.html
#ted
Originally posted on Google+ · February 8, 2013
So, in Japan they have wood planing competitions. Yeah. They're planing sheets of wood that are around the size of a red blood cell. However, what's more amazing to me is that that device is sensitive enough to measure down to 9 microns.
Originally posted on Google+ · February 8, 2013
There are in nature neither rewards nor punishments, there are consequences.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#quote
Originally posted on Google+ · February 5, 2013
One of my favorite quotes of all time is the one in the below image, which I've shared on G+ before. I just came across another quote along the same lines from the estimable Charles Darwin.
Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science
Charles Darwin
#quote
Originally posted on Google+ · February 5, 2013
Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery. Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.
R Scott Bakker, Neuropath
#quote
Originally posted on Google+ · February 5, 2013
I had some good ideas for some posts today while I was driving around. And now I can't think of any of them.
Instead I'll post a few quotes.
Science is the only news. When you scan through a newspaper or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same sorry cyclic dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness, and even the technology is predictable if you know the science. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly.
Steward Brand, Whole Earth Discipline
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
Johannes Kepler
#quote
Originally posted on Google+ · February 5, 2013
Now this is the kind of legal officer I'd like to have on my side.
For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever.
"We basically took a look at this situation and said, this is bullshit," said Cheng in an interview with Ars. "We saw that if we paid off this patent holder, we'd have to pay off every patent holder this same amount. This is the first case we took all the way to trial. And now, nobody has to pay Soverain jack squat for these patents."
Originally posted on Google+ · January 27, 2013
Celestial navigation has guided man around the world for several thousand years. A new study suggests it could also be guiding dung beetles.
Looks like crap to me.
Originally posted on Google+ · January 26, 2013
About a minute in to this video taken from the lunar rover you kind of get a first person view of what it's like to drive around on the moon.
The weird thing to me is that because the moon is so much smaller than the earth it almost feels like you're going to drive off the edge of the moon!
H/T to Robert Krulwich for pointing this out.
Originally posted on Google+ · January 25, 2013