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An interesting treatise on anonymity in the Internet age. How much surveillance is too much? How much freedom from it is excessive? If we don't think these questions through for ourselves, somebody else might come up with answers that aren't palatable.
Qwan Wen and Dmitri B. Chklovski, two theoretical physicists, have constructed a model that explains why vertebrate brains typically contain both gray matter and white matter. The gray contains local networks of neurons, wired by dendrites and mostly nonmyelinated local axons, while the white contains long-range axons that implement global communication via often myelinated axons.
So what? In this study, Wen and Chklovski postulate that brain functionality benefits from high synaptic connectivity and short conduction delays—the time required for a signal from one neuron soma to reach…
Jon Iverson got the following email from one of our heroes, the Electronic Freedom Foundation's (EFF) Fred von Lohman.
"I think your readers (and Mr. Fremer) might be intrigued that several independent record labels are now offering free MP3 downloads to those who purchase vinyl copies of albums. As someone who has recently rediscovered the joy of vinyl, but have been a bit stymied by the complexity of getting those tunes on my iPod, this strikes me as a decidedly good idea. For more details, [click external link]."
One of my most pleasant memories from living in Santa Fe was cruising the back road to Albuquerque to visit Brian Damkroger for the first time in John Atkinson's classic Mercedes ragtop. Naturally, it started to rain and we had to pull off the road and wrestle his roof back onto the car. All this Mercedes mechanical sophistication and we still have to do this by hand? I thought.
Volvo's new C70 has a hard-top retractable that looks too complex to last, but what do I know? Here's footage from this week's Detroit Auto Show.
Sleep inertia is a wonderful phrase, one I'm sure to add to my personal lexicon. "We found the cognitive skills of [some] test subjects were worse upon awakening than after extended sleep deprivation," researcher Kenneth Wright said. That's because in some of us, the cortical areas responsible for problem-solving take longer to wake up than other parts of the brain—as much as 12 hours, in my case.
Of course, being cats, Huckleberry and Bagheera said it to my luggage, not me.
"It's a romantic amp," he says. "Just right for you."
I smile. "I'm really excited about this, J-10. After all, it'll be my first kiss with tubes. But, I must confess: "I'm also a little bit nervous about it. I mean:
It'll be
my first kiss
with tubes!
Evidence that a Black Hole leaves a dent in space-time "just like a dimple in one's favorite spot on the sofa."Right, that's precisely the homey metaphor that immediately occurred to me. Isn't anybody else alarmed by alterations in reality as we perceive it? i mean, it is all about me, isn't it?
Honda made the best commercial ever. Now it has made one that's almost as good. Call it a concerto for Civic and chorus.
That's what a newly discovered 1763 copy of an earlier map is said to "prove." Has anybody else out there read Kim Stanley Robinson's alternative history The Years of Rice and Salt? It's a good 'un.