- In a parallel universe, it’s still the 1990s and there was a Moore’s Law for the number of random pipes and hoses strewn across the landscape.
http://www.boredpanda.com/scifi-girl-robot-traveling-artbook-simon-stalenhag/ - China has rolled out (pun intended) a copy of the U.S. Stryker armored vehicle
http://www.janes.com/article/73292/norinco-rolls-out-vp10-8×8-vehicle-variants - Here’s a needlessly long-winded piece about the long, long history of Christian theologians, cult leaders and even Popes wrongly predicting Biblical Doomsday.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/aug/25/yearning-for-the-end-of-the-world - A survey of 150 people shows about 1/3 of them could hand-draw common corporate logos (for companies like Burger King and Starbucks) from memory, with disturbing accuracy. (I estimate it takes 100 – 200 repetitions of the same commercial before I become cognizant of whatever is being advertised).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4813514/Only-16-people-correctly-recall-famous-logos.html - Britain is repainting its Challenger tanks with a camouflage scheme similar to what it had for its West Berlin-based tank unit in 1982. What’s old is new, and visual concealment methods don’t seem to have improved in 35 years.
https://warisboring.com/new-urban-camo-wont-save-british-tanks/ - Medical micromachines were successfully used on lab rats to deliver antibiotic loads. I don’t understand why medical nanomachines get all the attention and hype when micromachines are more technically plausible and could do many of the same things.
http://bigthink.com/design-for-good/for-the-first-time-tiny-robots-treat-infection-in-a-living-organism - An analysis of the accuracy of Gartner Hype Cycles from 2000 to 2016 is an informative catalog of failures.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/8-lessons-from-20-years-hype-cycles-michael-mullany - Here’s an outstanding rebuttal to Kevin Kelly’s recent “Myth of a Superhuman AI” article. I’ve never heard of the author before, his blog only has three entries, but he’s written a very thorough and convincing treatise, all the more impressive since he didn’t write it in his native language (he’s Finnish).
https://hypermagicalultraomnipotence.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/there-are-no-free-lunches-but-organic-lunches-are-super-expensive-why-the-tradeoffs-constraining-human-cognition-do-not-limit-artificial-superintelligences/ - Geneticists have uncovered the chemical steps through which magic mushrooms produce their hallucinogenic agent, psilocybin. Large scale industrial production of it could be possible, because the world badly needs more drugs.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/95/web/2017/08/Magic-mushroomenzyme-mystery-solved.html - A reality check for lab grown meat.
http://gizmodo.com/behind-the-hype-of-lab-grown-meat-1797383294 - A video that clearly and simply describes the operation of Mazda’s new, high-efficiency gas engine, which operates like a diesel part of the time.
https://youtu.be/9KhzMGbQXmY - Scientists and inventors are dispensable, but great artists, writers and musicians are not. (A somewhat humbling thing to remember when debating the usefulness of a STEM vs. humanities education.)
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/tim-harford-review/#.WX-QCkibyHc.facebook
A blog about futurism, science, technology, and military affairs.