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Future Scholars Discover Trove of Early-21st-Century Correspondence: OMG!
Our Valentine’s Week of Letters is drawing to a close today. We have celebrated the beauty, durability, and deep sentiment of the hand-written word, and we have lamented the impending loss of it now...
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Google Glass is Almost Here: Zombies Unite, Everyone Else – Look Out!
Nearly a year ago, we wrote about the concept development of Google Glass, which is basically a wearable computer with a little viewer that hangs in front of one eye. At the time, Google put out an...
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A Personal Story From Joan Larsen: Remembering Steve Jobs
By Joan Larsen Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. - Steve Jobs On the corner of Huron and Michigan Avenue on Chicago’s Miracle Mile lies Steve Job’s two-story APPLE store,...
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Ovarian Cancer Wake-Up Call
Read this NYT article. It could save your life. Suppose you have just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. This is a disease which is usually caught late, with a poor prognosis. You’re scared, you...
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When Health Care Isn’t the Healthiest Option
Why do we routinely sentence doomed patients to more pain and suffering and degradation of the quality of their remaining life? Last year, we noted the story of Amy Berman, who was diagnosed with a...
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Google Street View: Sometimes the Joke is on the Viewer
“Google Street View Shows Two Horny Lovers Going At It in Dressing Room,” blares the headline. The article is accompanied by a screen capture of the alleged act in question. My goodness, we are so...
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Surveillance Cameras: Good or Bad?
While some argue against a creeping Big-Brother-like atmosphere, surveillance cameras undeniably help solve crimes. Neil Richards, writing for CNN, argues that our camera-happy authorities pose a risk...
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Colonizing Mars: Like Going on a One-Way Trip to Hell
I had a nightmare once that I had died and gone to Hell. There wasn’t much to the dream; Hell consisted of a dungeon-like construction, and every soul was chained in a little alcove in the gloom....
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Cyberpunk is Coming… Count Me Out
Cyberpunk, until now, has been a fictional genre usually set in the near future “where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and...
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On Fools, Reality and Failure to Protect One’s Children
Bad “science” and stupid decisions are bad for kids’ health Last week, we talked about the folly of relying too much on prayer instead of science to save children from horrible, but often curable,...
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Historymaker: Astronaut Valentina Tereshkova
Fifty years ago, Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova became the world’s first woman in space. She was 26 years old, from peasant stock; her father was a tractor driver who died on the frozen Finnish...
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If You’re Uploaded to a Cyber-Existence, Are You Still You?
Ever since seeing the transporter on the original Star Trek, I have wondered: if your molecules are disassembled here and an exact copy of you is reconstructed somewhere else out of other molecules,...
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Xbox One, by Big Brother
Think the NSA collecting your personal phone data is an intrusion? You might want to reconsider that Xbox One purchase. Video gaming in your living room is just awesome these days! Take something...
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Are Americans Too Stupid for Diesel Cars?
Lila is the happy owner of a Volkswagen diesel car. Last year, I received a letter from Volkswagen; it was basically a reminder to only put diesel fuel in the vehicle (duh!) and included some helpful...
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Combat Global Warming: How About Fake Ice Floes at the North Pole?
Lila’s cockamamie idea: so crazy it just might work. This summer, just like every summer for the past decade, the North Pole has a lake on it, as Eric Levenson reports for The Atlantic. Check out...
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Disembodied Meat: Really, WHY?
After some thought about it, I’m on the “con” side of lab-grown “cultured beef.” At least for now. On Monday, there was a public taste-test of a $330,000, lab-grown, cultured beef burger. By all...
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Dr. Eric Topol’s Vision: Your Phone as a Portable, Individual, Digital...
Sometimes, the best innovators, the ones who make the biggest leaps in progress, are not those who make an original invention, but rather, those who fully grasp what can be done with that invention in...
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The Hunt for Immortality: Just Stop
Achieving actual, biological immortality – or even just a relatively modest increase in average human lifespans – would be an unmitigated disaster. Once again in the news, we see stories of scientists...
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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Controversial Portrait
Powerful men are not portrayed as sexy beefcake. Why should a powerful woman (or any woman who wants to be powerful) allow herself to be photographically portrayed as “sexy”… or maybe that question...
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Endlessly Interesting Davis-Monthan Air Force Base
Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Tucson, Arizona, has history. Its opening ceremonies were conducted in 1924 by none other than Charles Lindbergh. It has history for Lila, too: its mission is “to...
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