Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Elvish on Jun 29th, 2004
I Am Bored, a site where you can lazily click on random new and marginally interesting stuff when you’re bored, has picked up my Elvish-in-Ten-Minutes page. According to their ratings page, I’m the second most highly rated page (3.6 out of 4 stars) right now, just two notches above Dwight’s Amazing Cat Collection of funny [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 28th, 2004
Here in Boston, we have an ambient weather display built into the skyline: the old Hancock building (not to be confused with the sleeker newer Hancock tower by I.M. Pei) has a beacon atop it that changes color with the weather. There’s even a little rhyme to help you remember how it works.
Steady blue, clear [...]
Given America’s problematic relationship with Muslims, I wanted to learn more about Islam. Karen Armstrong’s book filled the bill nicely. It’s a readable and sympathetic view of Islam. Armstrong goes out of her way to correct many of the negative biases that Western readers bring to the topic. She points out that fundamentalism, for example, [...]
Posted in Biology on Jun 20th, 2004
I’m off for a vacation this week, but here’s a good parting shot: EETimes (that is, Electrical Engineering Times) covered a biology conference last week. That must be a first. What conference was it? Synthetic Biology 1.0. Why does EETimes care? Here’s what they have to say.
A small group of about 300 attended the Synthetic [...]
Posted in Books on Jun 19th, 2004
Naipaul writes unflinching and often unflattering stories about his travels in Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. This book was written in the late 1970s, around the time the Shah was deposed and the American embassy in Tehran was overrun by student radicals. Despite its age, the book feels like it could have been written last [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 17th, 2004
The last time I bought a car, I thought I was pretty well-informed by reading from sites like Edmunds.com and KelleyBlueBook.com (both have the obligatory Ten Steps to Buying a New Car: here and here). I read the buying guides, collected the data, and learned all my lines before the day of the big showdown [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 13th, 2004
Many years ago, say in the 1970s, science magazines didn’t have nearly as much to report as they do these days. Popular Mechanics in particular always seemed to be hyping silly cover stories, stories that bore no relation to things that were likely or economically worthwhile, like a hotel on the moon or a personal [...]
Posted in Books on Jun 12th, 2004
Peter Hopkirk’s book describes the back-and-forth intrigue between Russia and Great Britain in the cold war for Central Asia. The parallels between this 19th century power struggle and the 20th century battle between the Soviet Union and the US are uncanny. In both cases, Afghanistan functions as the “roundabout” of Asia, gating the flow of [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Jun 10th, 2004
You may never have heard of RSS aggregators before, but someday you will, although eventually I’m sure they’ll have a sweeter name. If you’re the least bit of an information junkie, read on. Bloglines may well be the place for you to jump in and see what the fuss is all about.
I have complained in [...]
Posted in Books on Jun 8th, 2004
We hear often of the great adventures but not the flawed ones. We know of Shackleton’s astonishing second voyage to the Antarctic but not his fatal, aimless third. The French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps attempted to build two great canals. He succeeded wildly with Suez and failed utterly with Panama. In this excellent book, David [...]
