Showing posts with label Pop Cultural. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pop Cultural. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Tuesday Two: Zit zapping

Tuesday Two

Zeno Zit ZapperUse NASA technology to zap your zits away with the new Zeno family of devices.(available discounted on Amazon.com) The iPod look-alike contains a heating element that is resistant to human oils and acids. With clinical trials showing 90% success rates, this may end teenage embarrassment one zit zapping at a time. No word on if there are plans to make a version that plays MP3s. Brains are usThere is an artificial intelligence that involves integrated planning. This allows an operator (human or fellow robot) to establish a telepresence that may be able to control remote units (for example, another robot) at great distances (another planet) to provide feedback (suggestions) about the instructions it is receiving. Who's controlling who?

Epoch-Fail

The Northeast Passage opens (backup link) because our planet is slowly getting hotter. But trade routes won't come easy if shippers want to travel across the Arctic Ocean. The planet hasn't thawed enough to sail north of Russia without the need for ice-breaker class ships along with a fleet of support ships to break up the ice that's still there. Pesky environment keeps getting in the way of progress!

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Tuesday Two: Robots and Bacteria


Tuesday Two

Robot Guard In robot news, Josh Lowensohn explores the Rovio, a $250 robot that acts like an internet controlled telepresence guard dog. Let's hope they never hook this thing up to Skynet. Terminator's primitive cousin has been born!
Yuk!  Bacteria! On the biotech front, the cleverly named Institute of Food Research made an announcement about genetically engineered bacteria that does what it is told to do just by eating a rare sugar called xylan. Sounds just tasty. I'll have two!

Epoch-Fail!

Tesla Motors has been trying to give themselves a lot of press. Their desperation lead them to submit a couple of cars to the British show Top Gear. Bad move! Well, let's be honest, an electric "sports" car that only has peak performance for a 100 mile radius before needing a 2 to ..umm 16 hour recharge? Well, Top Gear's review may not have been 100% fair, but they make some very important points. Here's the video.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tuesday Two: Snap Cracke Pop


Word First

Welcome to the first day of Fall 2009. I have something called Tuesday Two on a professional technical website that I maintain. I will be reposted some of those here from time to time. These will include brief showcases of two noteworthy inventions (maybe more sometimes, maybe less). In addition, I may also highlight an epic fail invention. Hmm, I don't know about that word epic fail. It's too much en vogue right now and will likely not be used in a couple years. Let me make up my own derivative.

I will sometimes highlight an epoch-fail invention. That's likely a safe term that won't get over used by the likes of G4 and other "we are cool gadget geeks" media outlets. Epoch-fail also out-does the term epic fail because even an epic is only a short period when compared to geologic time frame of an epoch. Epoch-fail inventions will be (in my opinion, as always) failures that can be registered in terms of how long the dinosaurs roamed the Earth, or when we last had a comet (or was it an asteroid, or huge broken-down alien space ship) smack into the Yucatan Peninsula.

Also, it should be noted that by "invention", I also mean innovation, device, gadget, idea or any other unique real world or conceptual imagining. Normally, I will stick to recent news, but don't be surprized if I honor the axle or deride the idea that UFO's helped Egyptians build the Pyramids.

Tuesday Two

Kindle saves the Earth!Kindle gets nod for living up to the hype. Recent study shows that it is indeed more environmentally friendly than paper books. This, combined with its new lower price should turn some green heads and open their pocket books.

We'll save Fido when Jesus saves you!Do dogs go to heaven? Regardless to one's beliefs, there is now a service available to take care of pets left behind once the Rapture happens. It's billed as,"The next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World"


Epoch-Fail

  1. This week's first Epoch-Fail award goes to the beloved iPhone 3GS, based on reports from France that suggest it is exploding and cracking without warning. Yikes!
  2. A second Epoch-Fail award goes to those who have been trying to link the good ol' meat and potatoes diet with bad things. Recent studies have not shown a link between meat and dairy products with breast cancer in women.
  3. Yet a third Epoch-Fail award goes to Bank of America for not cashing the check of a man who was born with no arms because he was unable to provide a thumb print.
  4. This week's final Epoch-Fail award again goes to Apple, but this one is directly granted to Steve Jobs for his alleged lie to the New York Times about why the new iPod Touch doesn't have a camera.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Cell phones and illegal telemarketer calls

It is illegal for telemarketer to call your cell phone. This is per the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991. That law prohibits solicitation calls where the recipient is charged for the call. This act has no expiration, so the protection of cell phones from telemarketers will remain intact until the law is changed (which is not likely).

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act is not the "Do Not Call" list. You do not need to submit your cell number to the "Do Not Call" list to have protection. "Do Not Call" list is legit, of course, that that is mostly for landlines, not cell phones.

The is an urban legend going right now right now online that is trying to scare people into submitting their cell numbers to a scam website. If you receive that email, do not go to the email's link. Do not forward that email on. It is an attempt to steal information.

The FCC wants anyone who has received a telemarketer call on their cell to report it to them here: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Jessica Alba proves she's smarter than Bill O'Riley and TMZ

Jessica Alba proves she's smarter than Bill O'Riley and TMZ in one masterful step. TMZ, of course, appears to me to be pretty lame to begin with, but Bill Riley (who often seems as though he just makes stuff up as he goes along...unlike TMZ which seems to simply report on what other people make up) yet again makes a fool of himself too and soundly puts himself in the same camp as TMZ! Of all people to call him out? Jessica Alba. Hell yeahs. This is a pretty funny read: http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.eonline.com/80980- Sometimes I think Bill is a product of the modern school system that he frequently bashes (of course, that school system didn't exist when he was a kid, but who's paying attention...certainly not him).

Monday, January 19, 2009

Hawaii Episode of No Reservations

I was watching the Hawaii episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. There it was, Ono Restaurant. I was actually at a restaurant featured on the Travel Channel. I don't know if that is a good thing or bad. Nowadays, from what I'm reading in recent reviews, you can't just walk up and take a seat anymore, unless you show up at odd hours. 

When I visited Hawaii in 2001 (a little over a month after 9/11), it literally took me three days to find an authentic Hawaii restaurant on Oahu. The one that I found was Ono. When I was there, I talked to the owner or manager (someone of authority) and told him that I was seeking out real Hawaii food and had so far done so without luck until I heard about his place. He sat me down and paraded dish after dish in front of me. The experience was very similar to Bourdain's experience on his TV show. My favorite dish was laulau, of course. I think I gained 5 pounds that day, which I have yet to lose years later. OK, slight exaggeration, but I think I did over indulge. 

I mentioned Ono in my Hawaiian vacation journal. I added that entry to my blog in 2005 here. I have a less than flattering photo of the front of the restaurant which I will keep private. From what I've reading, it no longer matches what someone would find when they arrive there. Ono is still very small, but the term "hole-in-the-wall" doesn't seem to apply anymore. Much like Bourdain, I recommend making at stop of Ono Restaurant.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

No on 8

I don't mean to turn my blog into a serious of videos and images, but this issue is important and needs to be considered. Please join me (and Dianne Feinstein) in voting no on prop 8!

Monday, April 28, 2008

GenPets, what are they?

Someone just sent me a link for this new product that is due on the shelves very soon! It's call Genpets.


Genpets ...Bioengineered buddies!


So, I wonder if they are editable? If so, you can donate them to a local food bank after they die and get a tax write-off for their amortized value.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Identification of years

How many people actually know that there is no year zero on the common Western (Gregorian) calendar. This creates logical problems that are hard to deal with in the lay population. Most people assume an understanding and use of zero. I would even catch myself thinking in terms of having a year zero had I not known a little more about our calendar than the average bear. Bottom line, on our calendar, the year 1 BC is followed by 1 AD.

Just as there is no year zero, there is not zero century. Our 21st Century is 2001 to 2100. The last year of the 21st Century is 2100, not the first year. That's fairly counter-intuitive. This does force me to think when I talk about periods in the 16th through 19th Centuries. It is very easy to think that 18th Century is the same as the 1800's.

So, there is no year zero, no matter how confusing that ends up being. Until we choose another calendar system, this will be a contentious issue.

Another point to discuss is how to identify years. The most common method for years counting backward is B.C., and A.D. for our current era (years that count forward). These two abbreviations refer a previously accepted date for the birth of Jesus Christ. It is now commonly agreed that if Jesus Christ did exist, his birth was more likely between the period of 8 and 4B.C. This means the start year of our calendar is pretty arbitrary, as it is not associated with any particular event. Yet, we still use terms that directly reference Jesus' birth. Alternative terms that have been proposed are BCE (Before our Common Era) and CE (our Common Era). This turns the arbitrary date away from being Christian centric, but in a way, it still attempts to enforce that old world calendar on others. I see BCE/CE used more frequently these days, but I do not believe it will ever become the norm.

To accept the arbitrary nature of our calendar and to establish some Information Age standard, those Europeans have come up with a supposed standard ISO-8601. This document is meant to be an international standard, but isn't really in common use. The problem with ISO-8601 is that is renumbers the years that count backwards. 1BC becomes 0000 and 2BC becomes -0001. Unless every history book ever written is updated to this new attempt to renumber the years, I doubt ISO-8601 will ever be in common use by anyone other than software programmers.