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Dr. Samuel Says
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Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 06 January 2009 |
Hello from fabulous Las Vegas, where I've settled in to await the dizzying pageant that is the Consumer Electronics Show. Las Vegas is my favorite place in the world, for the first 48 hours. It's fun to indulge all your vices simultaneously. I can usually commit all seven cardinal sins within about an hour and a half. After a couple days, though, I find I lose my stomach for it and need to head for more wholesome pastures. Des Moines, say.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 06 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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Tuesday, 30 December 2008 |
Here's an interesting statistic for you: According to a Pew Research Center study, 40 percent of Americans now rely primarily on the Internet for national and international news. That's compared to 35 percent for that old standby, the newspaper. Sad, somehow, isn't it? All those plucky newsboys and cranky editors out there, staring at a bleak future.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 December 2008 )
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New Toys
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Wednesday, 10 December 2008 |
Traditionally, I spend my Wednesday mornings calibrating the centrifuges and filing for patents. I'm losing focus a bit lately, though. I talked the bosses here at Dyscern World HQ Labs into springing for a PlayStation 3, and I'm terminally hooked on Fallout 3 . Best. Game. Ever. I kind of have a thing for post-apocalypse scenarios. Hence, my collection of underground bunkers at undisclosed locations worldwide.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 10 December 2008 )
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Weirdness
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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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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 02 December 2008 )
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New Toys
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Tuesday, 25 November 2008 |
As a dedicated man of science, I never miss The Simpsons, which is -- quite empirically --- the greatest TV show ever. So I'm almost positive this was a joke onthe show many years ago. At some point, Homer got so fat he couldn't use his fingers to dial the phone, so he got a widget to cover his fingers with smaller finger extenders. Am I remembering this right? Someone help me out.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 25 November 2008 )
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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, 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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Last Updated ( Thursday, 20 November 2008 )
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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, 14 November 2008 |
I occasionally feel the compulsion to fill this space with some educational content for the young people. Science is, of course, the most exciting of all endeavors, and I lament that recent generations have found it somewhat unfashionable. The trick is to make science relevant and compelling for the youth of America. I've proposed to publish a weekly formula for high-yield explosives you can assemble in your bedroom, but the Powers That Be here at Dyscern have nixed the idea.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 14 November 2008 )
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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, 12 November 2008 |
A while back, I wrote about how disease specialists were using massively multiplayer online games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft to model potential disease outbreaks. This is a riddle the Center for Disease Control has been trying to crack for decades; how to best and most accurately track the spread of outbreaks.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 12 November 2008 )
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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, 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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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 05 November 2008 )
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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, 30 October 2008 |
'Ello guv'nor, or whatever, from glamorous London. I'm in town for the annual Stuff Live international gadget show. I love this town. So much history! Last night, in the spirit of the season, I took the London Ghost Tour and logged some interesting ectoplasmic readings on my Zuul 3000 EMR detector. Also: London Bridge is, actually, falling down. Good thing I had my portable seismometer with me. I've already alerted Parliament. Why I keep doing favors for these guys, I'll never know.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 30 October 2008 )
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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, 24 October 2008 |
A few years ago, when everyone was carrying a cell phone in one pocket and a digital music player in the other, it was clear what had to happen next. And it did. And the iPhone and its competitors hit the market. And it was good.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 24 October 2008 )
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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, 17 October 2008 |
A report out of Europe this week warns that millions of children and teenagers could suffer permanent hearing loss from setting the headphone volume on their digital music players too loud. This is a familiar warning, of course, but now there are some hard numbers coming in, and they're pretty scary.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 17 October 2008 )
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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, 15 October 2008 |
Hard to believe, but twenty-five years ago this week, the first commercial wireless call was made. That's right -- the cell phone is 25 years old. How things have changed. What was once a very expensive toy for yuppies is now more or less ubiquitous. I even got my Dad using one, and he's about as rabid a Luddite as you're likely to find. He has exactly one TV is the house, an old cathode-ray cabinet-style box, which he uses as a workbench in the garage.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 15 October 2008 )
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Bidness
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Friday, 10 October 2008 |
In terms of corporate culture, Google is known to be a pretty freewheeling place. I did some contract work in the Ann Arbor office a few years ago, and was suitably impressed. The atmosphere is very laid-back indeed, and creativity is encouraged. I particularly enjoyed the Extremely Casual Fridays tradition, in which employees work the whole day in their underwear. Well, I did, anyway. Come to think if it, that was more of a personal tradition than an office policy.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 October 2008 )
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Arts & Science
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Written by Dr. Samuel Centralia, Ph.D., D.D.S., Esq.
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Monday, 06 October 2008 |
Grandpa, circa 2055: Why, when we were kids, we played our video games with a console and a TV set! We didn’t have no fancy holographic displays or biosoft wetware! We used a control pad, with buttons – and we liked it! If you were really lucky, you might have a plastic dance pad on the floor! And our games came on compact discs – in a box! With booklets! None of this brainwave molecular ethercasting! You kids today are spoiled rotten…
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Last Updated ( Monday, 06 October 2008 )
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