Blimps reemerge

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 | science & the future | No Comments

Yay, according to The Underwire, blimps are making a comeback!

[Article: Designers Reenvision Blimps]

see also my old post: Whales of the Sky

A Great Campaign Slogan

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 | politics, science & the future, transhumanism | No Comments

The World Transhumanist Association (WTA), whom I’m a member of, is currently voting for their new board of directors. And while reading all the candidates’ statements, I’ve stumbled across this great, simple, memorable campaign slogan, written by candidate Tyler Emerson:

“I get shit done.”

How can you not vote for a candidate like this? If you agree on the shit, of course.

Bees Feign Mass Death to Keep Us Ignorant

Thursday, September 13th, 2007 | humor, insect conspiracy, science & the future | 2 Comments

You might have read the headlines which float around the science blogosphere for a year now: Bees are dying out in large numbers in the US, an epidemic that is spreading to other parts of the world as well.

The New Scientist suspects that a virus is at least partially responsible for the mysterious mass exodus. Don’t be fooled by this propaganda. The militiary-industrial-insect complex wants us to lull us in sweet ignorance about the fact that the bees’ ethereal bodies are merely leaving their chitine shells to merge with the queen mother ships.

I’ve told you before: They are coming.

[Read related Honeyjar post: I Welcome Our Insect Overlords]

Networked Superheroes

Thursday, September 6th, 2007 | pop culture, science & the future | 2 Comments

If scientists run out of reality, they start researching fiction. And find interesting things!

[New Scientist: Why Superheroes Always Win]

Surveillance

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007 | culture, science & the future | 1 Comment

Cory Doctorow, co-editor of BoingBoing, wrote a good piece on the future of surveillance in Forbes magazine. I especially like the explanation why Japanese people wear surgical masks in the subway:

I once asked a Japanese friend to explain why so many people on the Tokyo subway wore surgical masks. Are they extreme germophobes? Conscientious folks getting over a cold? Oh, yes, he said, yes, of course, but that’s only the rubric. The real reason to wear the mask is to spare others the discomfort of seeing your facial expression, to make your face into a disengaged, unreadable blank–to spare others the discomfort of firing up their mirror neurons in order to model your mood based on your outward expression. To make it possible to see without seeing.

[Read the article]

Drive Safely

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | science & the future | 3 Comments

Years ago, a friend and study colleague of mine wrote a paper on the effects of safety measures on how people’s safety behavior. Interestingly, the more safety gadgets people use, the unsafer they act.

Let’s say you have an old car without ABS (anti-blockage system), which makes you more prone to lose control of your car on a wet road. If you decide to upgrade and buy a car with ABS, the knowledge that you have the ABS safety feature will make you go faster and more reckless on wet roads. In the end, ABS doesn’t make you safer – it only makes you get quicker to your goal. Same thing with airbags: The knowledge of having airbags in your car will make you drive less safely than if you didn’t have them Cognitive psychologists call this the risk compensation effect: If you have the impression that something makes you safer, you will invest less energy in safe behavior.

Risk management theory differentiates between probability (”how likely is it that I get hit by a car crossing the road?”) and impact (”if I do get hit by a car, what damage would it do?”). From that perspective, if the risk compensation effect hits, people affected by it trade a lower probability (”if I have ABS, I’m less likely to lose control over my car”) against a higher impact (caused by a higher velocity).

Now for the fun part. In a recent study by the University of Bath (UK), it has been demonstrated that the risk compensation effect doesn’t only affect how safely we behave towards ourselves: It also impacts how safely we behave towards others. According to the study, car drivers are less cautious around cyclists wearing safety helmets; they compensate the safer behavior of the bikers (wearing a helmet) with their own more reckless driving around those bikers.

The only way around the risk compensation effect would be to hide safety features. In other words: Cars should have ABS, but drivers shouldn’t know about it; bicycle helmets should be invisible. Good luck convincing a marketing department of that.

Predictions from a 1900 Ladies Magazine

Friday, April 20th, 2007 | science & the future | No Comments

Bubbles stumbled across this amazing list of predictions, published in “The Ladies Home Journal” of 1900. It is absolutely stunning how accurate some of these predictions are – even though mosquitoes and roaches are still alive and well, and the pneumatic tube shipping system has never really taken off.

[read the article]

PS: For the sake of usability, I’ve decided to no longer use outside links (i.e. links in a new window). Hope you like that.