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Dr. Samuel Says
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Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 26 June 2009 |
Back when I was an undergraduate at Harvard, we didn’t have the technology available to students today. Papers were written by hand, or laboriously pecked out on manual typewriters. No overhead projectors or PowerPoint presentations, either -- just cranky old tenured professors with chalk, blackboards, and dubious leftist politics.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 26 June 2009 )
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Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 28 May 2009 |
In the interest of research, I recently convinced the Powers That Be here at Dyscern to outfit the labs with latest in console gaming technology. I like to track emerging trends in graphic engines and game design, and the rhesus monkeys like to play Fallout 3. Something about the destruction of the human race seems to delight them.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 28 May 2009 )
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Weirdness
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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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Last Updated ( Friday, 15 May 2009 )
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Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
Through a complicated set of circumstances -- involving off-track betting, Interpol, and a briefcase full of Krugerrands -- I recently agreed to babysit my five-year-old nephew Farnsworth for a week. (Don’t ask -- family name). He’s already wrecked several ongoing experiments here at Dyscern World HQ Labs, and somehow managed to leave a juice box in the hermetically sealed nanocluster chamber.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 06 May 2009 )
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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, 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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Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 April 2009 )
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Weirdness
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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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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 08 April 2009 )
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Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 01 April 2009 |
I suppose it was inevitable. Microsoft this week announced that it would be discontinuing its Encarta product line, effectively bringing to an end the decades-long multimedia encyclopedia wars. The winner? Wikipedia, of course, which is now the destination for approximately 97 percent of Internet encyclopedia queries.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 01 April 2009 )
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Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 18 March 2009 |
It feels like I’ve been writing about this story for 10 years. Wait a sec, let me check my notes. Hmm. Actually, I have. The cutting edge tech guys have been presaging the death of ink and paper since at least 1994. According to these reports, filed over the last decade, newspapers and magazines will be supplanted by the Internet, and portable devices, and eventually by crazy sci-fi devices like foldable electronic displays.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 18 March 2009 )
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Weirdness
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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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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 February 2009 )
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Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 11 February 2009 |
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Everyone has a weakness, and mine is spatial thinking. Also, bad Italian horror films. And a particular variety of narcotic neurostimulants you can only get out of Switzerland. But these are stories for another time -- let’s get back to spatial thinking.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 11 February 2009 )
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Rants
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 06 February 2009 |
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Among those given to a certain low-level but persistent paranoia, the
expanding use of radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology is
just one more cause for alarm. Initially developed as a method for
inventory tracking and management, the technology is now being used in
various ID and passport systems. RFID tag systems basically use a
combination of integrated circuitry and radio waves to enable data
storage and tracking of things. Or people, as we shall see.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 06 February 2009 )
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Smart Design
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 29 January 2009 |
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Sometimes I feel I’ve missed my calling. Although I’ve had several rewarding careers over the decades -- astrophysicist, MLB shortstop, Interpol director, this sort of thing -- I’ve always dreamt of being an architect. As George Costanza has taught us, pretending to be an architect is every young person’s dream.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 29 January 2009 )
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Weirdness
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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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Last Updated ( Friday, 23 January 2009 )
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Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
Still sleeping off my hangover from the Consumer Electronics Show. Not from booze -- I gave that up after the infamous MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab Tequila Incident of 1992. No, instead I got caught up in all the 3D TV excitement. Predictably, the show was rather tame this year due to the economy, and 3D TV was among the few recognizable hype spots. Unfortunately, sideband frequencies in 3D throughput tend to trigger my acid flashbacks. I just woke up. In Reno. Again.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 January 2009 )
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Rants
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Thursday, 15 January 2009 |
Still sleeping off my hangover from the Consumer Electronics Show. Not from booze -- I gave that up after the infamous MIT Nuclear Reactor Lab Tequila Incident of 1992. No, instead I got caught up in all the 3D TV excitement. Predictably, the show was rather tame this year due to the economy, and 3D TV was among the few recognizable hype spots. Unfortunately, sideband frequencies in 3D throughput tend to trigger my acid flashbacks. I just woke up. In Reno. Again.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 15 January 2009 )
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