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French thinker Baudrillard dies
"He argued that spectacle is crucial in creating our view of events - things do not happen if they are not seen." So how can I be sure he's actually dead? At least we got video of Saddam, feMars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
"Simultaneous warming on Earth and Mars suggests that our planet's recent climate changes have a natural—and not a human- induced—cause, according to one scientist's controversial theory." WProfessor Resolves Einstein's Twin Paradox
"First suggested by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago, the paradox deals with the effects of time in the context of travel at near the speed of light." Interesting stuff - could changeWhy, Singularity, We Scarcely Knew
"This Thursday evening [Vernor] Vinge will challenge his own idea for the first time: 'I have some plausible, non-singularity scenarios that get us into a human-scale world with long time horizonCosmic Rays, Not Human Activity May be Accelerating Climate Change
"Henrik Svensmark [...] believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which is responsible for much of the globalWomen have played major role in history -- from the start, authors assert
"Of greatest import in this book is the idea that women have always been major players – not simply baby-machines who tended to the children, rustled up roots, collected nuts and berries and reliDoes evolution select for faster evolvers?
"...bacteria and viruses constantly exchange transposable chunks of DNA between species, thus making it possible for life forms to evolve faster than they would if they relied only on sexual seleMax Tegmark’s Multiverse
"Max Tegmark views our universe as one among many possible mathematical structures, and he believes that all mathematical stuctures are indeed manifested physically, though only a minority contaiOf Fermi and Slow Probes
"Some day alien civilizations may pick up television or radio signals from Earth. But does this mean they’re likely to visit us? Danish researcher Rasmus Bjork (Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen)Red Dwarf Flares and Habitability
"Only recently has the idea of habitable planets around red dwarf stars taken hold. But it’s a fascinating one, especially if you take a look at the potential window for life to develop on such wQuantum Physics
way to teach quantum mechanics leaves a blow-by-blow account of its discovery to the historians, and instead starts directly from the conceptual core -- namely, a certain generalization of probabilityGeoethical Principles
Jamais Cascio revives his geoethics article; it will be updated in the coming weeks.Dumbness of Crowds
Community. Wisdom of Crowds. Collective Intelligence. The new emphasis on net-enabled collaboration is all goodness and light until somebody gets an eye I poked out. Is it merely a coincidence that ApPendulums, Predators And Prey: The Ecology Of Coupled Oscillations
"[the] behavior of coupled oscillators---long a fascination of physicists and mathematicians---also can help biologists seeking to understand such questions as why some locations overflow with plGalactic Baby Boom Influenced Life on Earth
"Some 2.4 billion years ago [...] cosmic rays started pouring onto our planet, causing instability within the living. Populations of bacteria and algae repeatedly soared and crashed in the oceansThrough the city at nearly the speed of light
"Driving at nearly the speed of light? Impossible in real life, but feasible in a computer simulation: A tour through the city centre of Tübingen illustrates what we should see when moving at sucWhen Two Minds Think Alike
"From this and other observations, we've formulated the "assortative mating theory." Its central idea is that both mothers and fathers of children with autism [...] share a common charaThe Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine
to be read in detail laterThis is the Spime Theory Object.
"I'm slightly embarrassed that I've created such a crude, raw prototype of a diagram, but really, I'm repairing my ignorance as fast as I can." Pictorial evidence of Bruce Sterling's thinkinBattle for supremacy made us intelligent
"...research supports the 'Machiavellian intelligence' hypothesis, which suggests that competition at a social level - and the ability to manipulate others for personal gain - is what drove an exEconomics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention
"...the problem that occurs when people focus too hard on the idea that economics is the study of resource allocation in the presence of scarcity. That only makes sense when there's scarcity -- a
