Month: February 2008

  • American military giving Iraqi soldiers 165,000 M-16's.

    In a move that could be the most enduring imprint of U.S. influence in the Arab world, American military officials in Baghdad have begun a crash program to outfit the entire Iraqi army with M-16 rifles. Imagine if, after defeating Japan in WWII, the U.S. military trained every Japanese soldier in our military tactics, and…

  • Iranian students riot: “We do not want the Islamic regime”

    It happens every day on the streets of Tehran: a police squad grabbed a young woman for dressing immodestly. But this time, the young woman fought back, and a crowd defended her and attacked the police. Thanks to cell phone video, the Internet, and brave Iranian citizen reporters, Ardeshir Arian is able to tell the…

  • Nokia nanotech phone concept

    According to a University of Wisconsin-Madison study, 71% of Americans believe that nanotechnology is immoral. Here is a video and photos from Nokia portraying some of the features of a nanotechnology-enabled concept phone. In terms of its scope, the design is very anachronistic, but it does demonstrate some current and near-term applications. Here is a…

  • Drew Carey on Private Highways

  • Fauxography – how the media buys Hamas' lies

  • Momenta PC concept

    A year ago I wrote: A number of researchers are working on video cameras integrated into clothing or eye-ware that can record a 24/7 video stream from the wearer’s perspective. They predict that an entire lifetime of such recordings will be able to fit into a small device within 10 years.. Here is a design…

  • Ignorant creationists accidentally vote for evolution

    The creationist ignoramuses on the Florida Board of Education officially upheld evolution yesterday when they voted to approve “the scientific theory of evolution” as the “the fundamental concept underlying all of biology.”  Presumably, they thought that the inclusion of the word “theory” is a slight to science – demonstrating an utter ignorance of the scientific…

  • A Short Course in Brain Surgery

  • How the World was Wired

    If you’ve heard about the recent submarine cable outages, you might enjoy reading this fascinating 1996 article by science fiction genius Neal Stephenson on the first world-spanning fiber-optic network.  It includes some background on the brilliant and daring 19th century inventors and entrepreneurs who created the first world-spanning communications networks.  I’ve been reading it for…