Over 50 years ago the French scientist Allais observed:
“During the total eclipses of the sun on June 30, 1954, and October 22, 1959, quite analogous deviations of the plane of oscillation of the paraconical pendulum were observed…” – Maurice Allais, 1988 Nobel autobiographical lecture.
And back in 01999 NASA reproduced the experiment and the effect. . .   Read More

I have been following this interesting space craft-gone-long-term-science experiment for a while. Since being launched 1972 and 1973 the Pioneer 10 & 11 doppler based location measurements have drifted off their predicted paths . This is known as the Pioneer Anomaly and may tell us something new about physics and gravity once. . .   Read More

 Our own Stewart Brand has an essay in the current issue of Nature (subscription required) on integrating two disparate disciplines in order to solve our worlds largest problems.

To understand how our planet uses energy, we must integrate genetic data from microbial studies with satellite views of our planet.
Two vastly different but complementary projects. . .   Read More

I was recently reminded of this great prediction article by John Watkins published in the 01900 Ladies Home Journal.

Particularly interesting for how much it gets right and wrong, sometimes in the same prediction. Some examples of the 29 predictions:

There will be air-ships, but they will not successfully compete with surface cars and. . .   Read More

Alexa.com allows users to compare traffic to different websites through time according to reach, rank, and page views and using various levels of magnification. It’s fascinating to compare not only the quantity of traffic, but the shape of growth curves. For example, although Facebook is still slightly behind MySpace in terms reach (though it appears […]

Good Magazine ran an interview recently with a man they call The New Nostradamus. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses a mathematical model that is based entirely on game theory to predict the outcomes of political conflicts. He takes a very literal interpretation of the phrase “political science” and focuses his analysis strictly on issues of. . .   Read More

Author Margaret Atwood, perhaps best known for the near-future fable The Handmaid’s Tale, has invented a device called LongPen which allows writers to sign their works at a distance, replicating their hand movements. Says Atwood: It is the world’s first long-distance, real-time signing and handwriting device. … In other words, the LongPen is not an […]

This years winner of the National Watch and Clock Collectors People’s Choice award is a clock made of wood that uses a binary movement by David Holmes. It is a very cool design and a totally different take on the use of binary systems in a clock than Danny Hillis’.  You can see a. . .   Read More

  The German art group Robotlab has re-purposed an industrial robot to “hand” write a Martin Luther bible.  While in this instance there is not much feeling in the characters, one could easily imagine an algorithm that randomly introduces small errors to make it feel more hand made.  Wouldn’t it be great to be able […]

Genes of micro-organisms are being modified to create something new
 
The BBC reports on our upcoming seminar speaker Craig Venter’s recent advances in creating life. Attendees of Juan Enriquez’ illuminating talk “Mapping Life” also heard about this research and Venter’s success in “jump starting” life by injecting DNA from one cell. . .   Read More