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Weirdness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 19 November 2009 |
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Doc Sam’s 15 Second Theater presents radically distilled dramatic works for dissemination via various communication modalities. Or: My concession to the American attention span. In this week's edition, we present...
Doc Sam’s 15 Second Theater: If the Blackberry 9500 Hit Stores Prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 12 November 2009 |
Alternative energy initiatives are rather trendy these days, what with our impeding environmental Armageddon and all. I’ve been doing my own research of course, here at Dyscern’s Underwater R&D Complex and Post-Apocalypse Bunker. Not a lot of people know this, but the Apple iPod can actually be converted to a perpetual motion machine. For you scientifically challenged out there, that means it can actually generate more power than it consumes.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 29 October 2009 |
I am always cheered when I see signs of governmental initiative. Too often, bold proposals are dragged down by bureaucracy and general political inertia. Or weak-willed naysayers. Or, in this case, sanity.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 29 July 2009 |
As loyal readers are aware, I sampled several careers before settling into my current R&D post here at Dyscern World HQ Labs. CIA analyst. Fashion model. New Zealand Poet Laureate. This sort of thing. For many years, I dabbled in the theater. I had a few plays produced Off Broadway in the 1940s. Well, Off-Off Broadway. Actually, if I am to be completely honest, the technical term would be Off14 Broadway.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 15 May 2009 |
Taking the train into work today, I spent some time flipping through the latest USPTO patent applications, which I like to do between Soduku and calculating pi a few thousand more digits. Keeps me on my toes, you know. Some might find browsing patent applictions tedious, but I find it can be quite rewarding, if you don't mind the rather wooden prose style.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 30 April 2009 |
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In William Gibson’s seminal cyberpunk novel Neuromancer, computer viruses were more than just malicious bits of invisible code. They were terrifying three-dimensional AIs that darted through the Matrix like monsters. The famous Chinese icebreaker program used in the novel is described as a kind of chrome wasp, viciously penetrating data networks and replicating, hivelike, as it devoured information.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 |
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As loyal readers will know, before I took over operations here at
Dyscern World HQ Labs, I piloted several top-secret research projects
for various government agencies and multinational corporations. Hence
the army of CIA and corporate espionage assassins on my tail, and my
subsequent use of aliased personas and secure underground bunkers.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 25 February 2009 |
So I was skimming the International Journal of Astrobiology this morning -- I like a little light reading before breakfast -- when I came across this fascinating report. It seems researchers at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland gets all the best scientists) have constructed a detailed computer model of a synthetic galaxy much like our own Milky Way.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 23 January 2009 |
Another great example of better living through technology: As they do every year, videogame industry titan EA Sports today announced the winner of the Super Bowl as predicted by their flagship football simulation game, Madden NFL 09. Using each team’s projected roster, and up-to-date player statistics, EA pitted the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals in a Super Bowl simulation game. Pittsburgh fans will be happy to hear that the Steelers pulled out the victory by a final score of 28-24, giving the team an unprecedented sixth Super Bowl title, and their second championship in four years.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 02 December 2008 |
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I always admire initiative among the young people, particularly when it comes to Internet pranks. So I find this inspirational: At the extremely orchestrated, extremely annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in NYC, those rascals at the Cartoon Network managed to Rickroll a crowd of millions, both in person and via the live broadcast on NBC. If you're not familiar with the concept of Rickrolling, there's a good primer here.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 20 November 2008 |
Faithful readers are aware that my stalwart Doberman guard dog, Copernicus, often gets us in trouble here at Dyscern World HQ Labs. He's forever nosing around into the experiments and knocking things over. But great scientific discoveries often result from accidents. Just ask Rontgen. Or Fleming.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 05 November 2008 |
I understand there was an election of some sort recently? We haven't been getting much outside news lately. We're in lockdown here at Dyscern World HQ Labs. My faithful guard dog, Copernicus, chewed through some power cables and shut down the cryofreezer, releasing a cloud of retroviral farandolae spores. Now the lab monkeys are mutating every 45 minutes, and none of us can blink for some reason. It's always something around here…
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 26 June 2008 |
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Counted them up today, and realized I now have four PCs and three Macs
in the main office here at Dyscern World HQ. All are in various stages
of decay and disrepair, and some are quite old indeed. The real
artifact of the collection is a Macintosh 128K, which still works,
barely, and which can still occasionally beat me at Risk.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 29 May 2008 |
A couple of update items this week. You will remember our discussion from a few months ago regarding monkey-controlled robots. Well, believe it or not, they're back in the news. This time, in an apparently unrelated study, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have once again attached electrodes to monkey brains and wired them up to robots. Must be an emerging field.
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 22 May 2008 |
Clicking around, looking for various solar powered gadgets (they make lovely gifts during the wedding season), it occurred to me that one could easily operate an entire retail store offering only solar powered equipment. I figured I ought to google this up before jumping into another hastily-considered entrepreneurial project. Good thing I did, as several dozen such stores already exist, most in the Southwest, predictably.
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