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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| Museum delists Pluto as a planet |
| 1:29:56 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source NY Times 40 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The American Museum of Natural History in New York City has taken Pluto off of its list of the solar system's planets in its exhibit in the Rose Center for Earth and Space. Instead they list only eight planets, with Pluto classified "as one of more than 300 icy bodies orbiting beyond Neptune, in a region called the Kuiper Belt". This is at variance with the practice at nearly every other planetarium as well as the International Astronomical Union, which still classifies Pluto as a planet. |
| Interestingly enough, it's the children who find Pluto's absence particularly conspicuous. |
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| "I'm a cyborg and I love it" |
| 3:50:45 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in medicine / source Salon 51 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| In this excellent and well-written essay, the author describes how her life has changed ever since she was permanently attached to a computer-controlled portable insulin pump. Rather than making her feel dehumanized, she finds that the technology makes her feel more liberated and human. |
| She has a wonderfully optimistic perspective on the role of technology in improving human lives! Personally, I look forward to the eventual development of cybernetic enhancements to our bodies and minds. |
| read 1 comment |
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| The tricks that win clicks |
| 8:20:37 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in internet / source BBC News 154 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| In the fierce competition for traffic, websites are engaging in a variety of semi-ethical and unethical tricks to generate more page views. The article discusses some of these techniques including invisible text, meta-tags, page hijacking, and fake "bridge pages". |
| Their description of the one of the techniques used to fool Inktomi and Google is essentially the same as the one Diana wrote about in her "Scamming Google" article. |
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| Neuro-theology |
| 8:46:11 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source MSNBC 62 hits / 0 comments / 1 e-mail |
| Using advanced brain scanning techniques, some neuroscientists are coming to the conclusion that our brains are hardwired for religious experiences. In their upcoming book, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, they write, "The human brain has been genetically wired to encourage religious beliefs... As long as our brain is wired as it is, God will not go away". |
| If this is true, does this mean that religion will always be with us, or could an atheistic-but-still-spiritual belief system ever become the dominant philosophy in a culture? |
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| Mechanical taster passes cheese test |
| 9:29:55 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in inventions / source Nature 16 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Using a new technique known as "proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry" (PTR–MS) Italian food scientists have developed an "artificial nose" capable of discerning subtle differences in the smell and flavor of mozzarella cheese just as accurately as human experts. The device "could distinguish milky aromas from olive smells, for instance, and correctly picked out the only one of eight mozzarella samples prepared using citric acid." |
| Pretty amazing. Too bad they haven't gotten it to work yet for wine tasting. I'd love to see a version that could generate snooty-but-accurate reviews like a pretentious wine critic. ("A laughable rose, with just a hint of impertinence...") |
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| Desktop Black Holes To Resolve Physics Contradictions |
| 11:52:51 am mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source UniSci 85 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: "Physicists in Scotland are planning pioneering experiments to create tiny, artificial black holes in the laboratory which will be able to suck in light or sound waves." Experiments on these black holes will then be used "to resolve some of the conflict between general relativity and quantum theory". (I recall reading somewhere that these were optical analogs of black holes, and they don't generate the same steep gravity wells as real black holes.) |
| Once one person has a desktop black hole, then everyone will want one. Then someone will demand a laptop version as well... |
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| Cheap disposable cell phones |
| 1:01:38 pm mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in inventions / source Register 133 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Randice-Lisa Altschul has invented a cheap $10 disposable cell phone made of paper. Pictures are available here. According to the article, her business philosophy is: "I'm going cheap and dumb... In monetary terms, I want to be the next Bill Gates." Also in the pipeline is a paper laptop computer (!) |
| I think it's a pretty cool device. However, some people have criticized her idea as lame on this discussion thread. |
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| An Ode to "Doom" |
| 2:13:48 pm mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in games / source CNN 131 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| An interesting retrospective on "Doom" and how it has forever changed computer gaming. (Link from WebPageProject.) |
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| Hacker Offered Job in Bulgaria |
| 3:19:01 pm mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in security / source AP News 27 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The President of Bulgaria has offered a job to the unknown hacker who broke into his official web site last week. In an interview he said, "I'll offer him a job in my office without any hesitation. He is obviously very talented because he broke into the site without damaging any information". |
| Let's just hope the secret police doesn't catch him first! |
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| Become a stool donor |
| 6:43:30 pm mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in medicine / source Sydney Morning Herald 140 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| I kid you not. I had no idea this was an accepted medical procedure. (Link from NerdPerfect.) |
| Anyone who wants more details can read the original article from the American Journal of Gastroenterology. |
| read 1 comment |
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| Free the quarks! |
| 9:58:50 pm mst / 22 January 2001 found by paul / filed in science / source NY Times 43 hits / 0 comments / 1 e-mail |
| Up until now, free quarks have never been observed by particle physicists. Scientists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven hope to change that soon with experiments "to create not just a few free quarks, but a soup of thousands of them." If successful, the experiments may shed light on such fundamental questions "as the origin of mass and weight in the universe and the nature of empty space itself". |
| The RHIC site also has a link to a pretty good free online book on elementary particle physics aimed at the intelligent non-physicist. |
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