“It moved silently through the living[room] and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully….On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes,…
“Hence its note to Word Spy, an online dictionary that compiles and defines new words popping up in the media. At issue is this Word Spy entry: ‘google (GOO.gul) v. To search for information on the Web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the Web for information related to a new or…
Legendary scientist James Watson advocates therapies or screening to elimiate low-intelligence people from the population. That’s called eugenics, an ideology that the Nazis were happy to adopt for their own purposes. Watson also wants to breed prettier girls. Apparently, even the most brilliant scientists can say things that are not only stupid, but also racist…
“The cardiac unit at Derriford Hospital, the biggest hospital in the South West, is one of the most modern in Britain. It is equipped with three up-to-date operating tables costing about £50,000 each. | The tops of the tables slide on to the electronically operated base so that the patient does not need to be…
“That happened to Cornell University on Wednesday: It sent welcoming letters to 1,700 high school students who had submitted early-decision applications, including nearly 550 who had already been rejected in December. ‘Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!’ the e-mail letter began… Within a couple of hours the university followed with an ‘oops’ letter, admitting…
“Just as Icarus did not heed his father?s warning to stay away from the sun, NASA engineers ignored warning signs before and after liftoff that the shuttle was doomed to burn up when it re-entered the atmosphere. Like Icarus, they were guilty of hubris. | But the hapless engineers are not the only ones to…
The lone link on this page disappears when you try to click it. Actually, your browser automatically loads another page that is completely blank. That link is labeled “FAQ”. I’m sure the most frequently asked question on this page is “What the…!?” –DGJ —From the “I Don’t Get It” DepartmentPurple) Similar:How not to attract women…
“Similar-looking drug brand names can confuse doctors, nurses and pharmacists, causing patients to get the wrong medicine…. A patient confusing lente with Lantus could end up with his or her blood sugar seriously out of whack. Doctors insist that errors like these can be corrected if caught early enough.|The simplest way of fixing the problem…
“Media mega-star Oprah Winfrey?s announcement that ?I‘m back in the business of recommending books?but with a difference,? drew a standing ovation from an audience of America?s leading publishers… [T]he new book club will focus on literary classics because ?I cannot imagine a world where the great works of literature are not read.? Her hope, she…
“In this time of great sadness about Fred Rogers’ death, we understand that parents may be concerned about how to approach the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood series and our Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Website with their children. We here at Family Communications have given this a great deal of thought and have talked with our colleagues in…
“Newly disclosed e-mail inside NASA showed senior engineers worried a day before the Columbia disaster that the shuttle’s left wing might burn off and cause the deaths of the crew, a scenario remarkably similar to the one investigators believe actually occurred…. After intense debate — occurring by phone and e-mail — the engineers, some supervisors…
“The new building is planned to be taller than the trade center towers, which briefly stood as the world’s tallest at 1,350 feet. Libeskind’s tower also would surpass Malaysia’s 1,483-foot Petronas Twin Towers, the tallest buildings in the world.|The choice was made by a committee with representatives of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the Port…
This article will whip your head around a couple of times… take it slowly, and don’t stop until you get to the Looney Tunes references. “To mainstream researchers, Loebner is a self-aggrandizing fool and his contest is hokum: at best irrelevant and at worst a public disservice that encourages bad science….. [T]he closer one looks…
“Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA….|hink of DNA as software, and enzymes as hardware. Put them together in a test tube. The way in which these molecules undergo chemical reactions with…
“Margaret Bourke-White hung out of bombers to take pictures, climbed out on a gargoyle high atop the Chrysler Building to take pictures, was the first Western photographer to go to the Soviet Union, covered the dangerous days of India’s partition….Margaret Bourke-White was in love with the shapes of industrial design — the mechanical muscle and…
“The template system is also good for the audience. Apcar says that when readers come to a NYTimes.com multimedia project, it will look familiar to them — they will know how to navigate it. That’s not so for a news site that treats every multimedia project as an independent entity, not bound to existing practices…
“They aren’t videogames, after all; except for the occasional cut scene, we almost never use video. We use images rendered on the fly–and the images are the surface of the game, the interface, the cotton candy. The meat of the game, the heart of it, is in the underlying code. These are games that run…
“When the company receives a call from someone who’s clearly lost it — which can happen several times an hour — [psychologist]Chessin comes on the line to help the caller rediscover their happy place. Then the engineer returns to discuss the technical problem in detail.” —Psychologist Helps Victims of Data LossSFGate) At first I thought…
The article is worth reading, but I’m quoting from the “Procedures for Shuttle Bailout” box at the bottom: “Although no formal requirements or plans exist for crewmembers to bail out of the orbiter during uncontrolled flight, they may be able to do so under certain circumstances. The hatch jettison pyrotechnics do not require orbiter power…
“It’s time for a reality check. Hypertext is not, and has never been, all that. Electronic literature is a tiny field and mostly, no one cares about it, except for a handful of endlessly bickering insiders. Maybe 200 people in the world are even marginally interested in the academic arguments….From the outside, though, it looks…