The fully automated future begins here.
Magnificent.
The robot apocalypse just got funky.
You might remember the incredibly informative blog post that I made a year or so ago regarding the awesome mule that has been developed by Boston Dynamics for no-doubt totally peaceful and helpful reasons (like carrying old ladies shopping bags). Well it’s finally been upgraded. BEHOLD:
Ok, actually that’s the prototype. But isn’t it adorable? I can totally imagine having this robot equiped with music speakers and a subwoofer and just having the best house parties. Here’s a video of the completed robot:
I’m an atheist… (but only technically)
Yes. It’s going to be one of those articles. I was originally not going to publish this, owing to the large number of blogs which have no doubt thrashed this topic to death. However, words are not free and, believe it or not, my time is actually worth something above £0.00 (The cost of a freddo to be exact). So enjoy. Or don’t. I certainly won’t hold it against you.
Exploding trains, fat men, and trollies. You might have seen this movie.
- I don’t get it
I’ve recently read an interesting article by a certain professor regarding the blockbuster movie “Source Code”. I saw the movie myself a few days ago and I must say it is rather good, in a “watch once, and maybe watch again just so you can see your friends’ reaction to the plot twist” kind of way. earlier in the year. It’s actually taken me THIS long to edit and publish this post. On a related note, I would warn of spoilers but it’s been so long you’ve probably all seen it already, discussed it and decided to never think about it ever again.
Anyway, for those of you who do still want to discuss Source Code, here’s my impression of it (after the jump).
What I believe but cannot prove.
So even though I rant on about climate science I suppose it must be pretty obvious that I’m not a climatologist. I also like to talk and write about evolution, but I have not personally seen the fossils I might talk about, nor have I been to the planet pluto. Nope instead, I must have faith in the science being done to accept the conclusions being made. Yes, you heard me, faith.
The Smurfs 3D: a Review
Denial is not just a river in Egypt…
So you climatologists are saying... that the future will be like Mad Max 2: escape from thunderdome? AWESOME.
There is one thing I know about global warming and that is this: It’s really really complicated. Like super complicated. It is a field that’s far too complex and wide-ranging for a non-specialist like me to get a hold of, mainly because I’m too stupid to understand it. So it’s with a healthy dose of skepticism that I listened to the Green Party leader state confidently, the other day, that “the science is settled” on man-made global warming, otherwise known as AGW.
Look at this!
I spent much too much of my university career engaged in a criminal neglect of proper journalistic standards. However, it’s not as if someone was paying me for writing sloppily… so it’s with great pleasure that I can announce that the BBC has published new journalism guidelines demanding it’s writers to cite their sources. EXCITING STUFF EH?
Space… it’s bigger than my university debt.
So how big do you think space is? Large? As big as a football field? Larger? How about the size of TWO football fields? Incredibly, space is even bigger than that. I know, it’s incredible.
So you might think that space is pretty sizeable, but unless you’re an astrophysicist/astronomer (or a colossal nerd who is obsessed with this kind of stuff) it’s hard to really get your head around the vast numbers involved. Afterall, how easy is it to visualise the difference between the numbers 1.9891×1030 and 5.9736 × 1024 ? Not much difference right? It’s just a couple of extra zeros! In fact, that’s the difference in mass between the Sun and the Earth. The Sun is 332,900 times more massive than the Earth. That’s a big difference!
You see, the problem we find is that once numbers get past the couple of thousand mark we can no longer visualise just how many of something there is and we simply see it as LOT. It is easy to see the difference in size between say, an object 2 metres long and something that is 15 metres in length because these are the kind of numbers we deal with on a day to day basis; It’s the difference in size between a person and a bus. However, once the numbers start entering the trillions and even quadrillions of metres (a lightyear is around 9.4 quadrillion metres) our sense of perspective is lost and we lose the ability to imagine what these numbers actually mean.
The Sun is 1989100000000000000000000000000 kg and the Earth is 5973600000000000000000000 kg and yet their comparative masses would be much better demonstrated with a picture.
Bear Grills…eati- wait. SINGING??
Not only does this video feature Bear Grills doing something that doesn’t involve eating mud/rabbit poo/his own shirt/etc it also features people singing. From around the world. It’s pretty awesome.
P.s. Dear UK TV,
can we please have our own dedicated science channel?
Thanks,
Olly M
