Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Yes, it is almost Olympic time, so obviously I have no idea what could have possibly inspired a team of researchers led by Dr Carl Heneghan of Oxford’s centre for evidence-based medicine to look into the claims made for sports related products. The BMJ has their study and it is entitled “Mythbusting sports and exercise products“. … Read more
There is an article in which Skype founder Jaan Tallinn claims …”Machines are becoming so intelligent that they could pose an existential threat“. Really!! OK, lets take a look. The article is in the Sidney Morning Herald . Claim: “Jaan Tallinn argues human-driven technological progress has largely replaced evolution as the dominant force shaping our … Read more
About one week ago a whole new batch of web suffixes were made available and so the opportunity to screw up has been extended. Supposedly as part of this process a UK-based internet registrar highlighted their top 10 disasters and suggested that unless you think carefully about it, you might end up attracting a very different, unwanted audience. (Yes OK, … Read more
Pirate Bay has been formally blocked in the UK by all the ISPs (BT, O2, Sky, Virgin Media etc…). They have done so for legal reasons, a High Court ruling in April directed them to do so. So now of course nobody can access the Pirate Bay from the UK and so their UK traffic … Read more
Obayashi Corp., headquartered in Tokyo, has unveiled a project to build a space elevator by the year 2050 that would transport passengers to a station 36,000 kilometers above the Earth and transmit power to the ground. Wow, sounds cool … ah but hold on, lets cast a bit of a skeptical eye over this. Who? … Read more
IBM Research scientists have successfully demonstrated the ability to store one bit of information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms. Now that is truly impressive, because today’s disk drives use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information – so yes, there is indeed a considerable degree of scope to leverage … Read more