A couple of remarkable flying machines. At White Sands, the solar powered Zephyr has just set a new world record for unmanned continuous powered flight. And in Germany, they’ve demonstrated a 200 kph winged jetpack, the Gryphon, which can carry a pilot, oxygen, and 20kg of gear.
Now, if we could just combine these and get [...]

In keeping with my current fixation on bad logic from professional thinkers, I was delighted to find Robin Hanson of George Mason University on Cato Unbound running some excruciatingly poor arguments about public health spending. He’s another associate professor, like Jonathan Haidt, which makes me wonder if there is a certain pattern developing here. [...]

Squidsquatch. A new interview every day. A single question. The subject one day becomes interviewer the next.
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Nick Evans: As you’re one of the most prolific authors about, what do you do to take a mental break from writing, editing, and the business of being a writer [...]

Squidsquatch. A new interview every day. A single question. The subject one day becomes interviewer the next.
← No previous! | All squidsquatch | Next →

Chris Lawson: Nick, you’re a biotechnology reporter. What’s the difference between biotech in the real world and biotech in fiction?
Nick Evans: Time and money, fundamentally.
In fiction, technology tends to be [...]

The Edge, which normally contains exceptionally interesting and well-reasoned argument, has posted a piece of intellectual tripe of such cognitive incompetence that one wonders how author Jonathan Haidt thinks his way out of bed in the morning.

Lynnette Shelley has a gallery of celtic-inspired artwork. Scroll down to “Tentacle.” Fantastic piece of work.

Watching the footy tonight I was privileged to view the latest public advertising campaign from our federal government. The campaign is for the new NetAlert program to protect children from online stalkers and other e-criminals. The main plank of the $189 million NetAlert campaign is an internet content filtering program. Now, protecting children from online [...]

With apologies to Randall Munroe at xkcd, who is today apologising to Robert Frost.
Addendum 9 Sep: The more I look at this, the less it works. It’s a tribute to Munroe that it’s almost impossible to get him right even when it’s mostly stick figures and information-logic humour.