From Ars Technica: Nobel Intent, a thought-provoking article on what the prevalence of computational science portends for reproducibility in science: Victoria Stodden is currently at Yale Law School, and she gave a short talk at the recent Science Online meeting in which she discussed the legal aspects of ensuring that the code behind computational tools… Continue reading Keeping computers from ending science's reproducibility
Roadmaps to Nanotech and AGI slides are here Josh [note — we know about the permission problem, trying to get it fixed][should be fixed now]
Glenn Reynolds, a past Foresight Director, writes some analysis of the recent special election in Mass.: Of course, what the GOP apparat does is less important nowadays than it was. As I noted before, there’s a whole lot of disintermediation going on here — Scott Brown got money and volunteers via the Internet and the… Continue reading "Lies don't work as well as they used to…"
Today is the last day of the free webcast of the 2010 Foresight Conference being held now in Palo Alto. The bandwidth coming out of the Sheraton is marginal, so the video may be low-res, but we will be posting high-res videos later, funds permitting (feel free to assist with this goal!). You can also follow the conference on… Continue reading Last day of free webcast of Foresight Conference on nanotech & AI
There’s still time to register, but if you just can’t participate in person this year, check out the free webcast of the Foresight Conference being held this weekend in Palo Alto. The bandwidth coming out of the Sheraton is marginal, so the video will be low-res, but we will be posting high-res videos later, funds permitting… Continue reading This weekend: free webcast of Foresight Conference
Two nanoparticles connected by a polymer will tend to be drawn together at finite temperatures (though not at absolute zero) because as the polymer chain explores the states available to it, there are many more tangled and balled up ones than stretched-out straight ones — even though there is no overt force pulling the chain… Continue reading Is gravity an entropic spring?
A round-up of commentary about the state of nanotech research, given the 50th anniversary of Feynman’s talk: Adam Keiper in the WSJ If this dispute over nano-nomenclature only involved some sniping scientists and a few historians watching over a tiny corner of Feynman’s legacy, it would be of little consequence. But hundreds of companies and… Continue reading Recent commentary
Foresight 2010 will be webcast live (free) at http://www.techzulu.com/live.html. You can also follow it at Twitter: #Foresight2010 I’ll be travelling (mostly standing in airpote security lines) between now and then. See you there!
Actually, the ominous part is all over, so relax. A week before the very first Foresight Conference, there was an earthquake — the famous 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The conference was moved from the Stanford campus to the Garden Court in downtown Palo Alto as a result. Now, just a week before our 2010 Conference,… Continue reading Ominous Parallels
Just for fun, imagine you could build a tower up to geosynchronous orbital height. If you stepped off the top floor, you’d just hang there, in orbit. If the tower you build is shorter, you’d fall, since (a) you aren’t going quite as fast, and (b) orbital speed is faster as you get lower. However,… Continue reading Towers and orbits
