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Category Archives: science
Al Qaeda images analyzed to reveal interesting info
Computer researchers recently made some interesting discoveries [Wired.com] by doing image analysis on Al Qaeda-published images. It turns out that they are able to detect which details in an image have been photoshopped or otherwise artificially manipulated. Apparently most of … Continue reading
Posted in current events, links, science
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Asymmetric warfare
Here’s a link to a very interesting article in the IEEE Spectrum on asymmetric warfare, explaining how our military focus on technology was crucial for success in the Cold War and Gulf War I but may have led to the … Continue reading
Posted in current events, links, science
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Thesis is DONE!!!
Well, I just got back from dropping my thesis copies off at the University binder’s. After passing my defense last Friday, most of this week has been spent finishing the details required to get it published.
Posted in links, science, stephen
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Notorious “unintelligent design” argument debunked
From Reasons to Believe: New work on the characteristics of an enzyme that plays a key role in photosynthesis provides an effective response to one of the most compelling arguments for evolution. Biologists point to seemingly faulty designs in nature … Continue reading
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A bit slow lately . . .
I just noticed that it’s apparently been almost a week since I’ve posted here. My apologies if you’ve been trying to keep up with what I post here. Suffice it to say it’s been a busy week, and in addition … Continue reading
Artificial AI: Amazon’s Mechanical Turk
This website is quite bizarre on first glance. It doesn’t do much better on second or third glance either, but it’s intended as a demonstration of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online service, which offers an interesting model for humans to accomplish … Continue reading
Posted in computing, science, web stuff
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“Random” book
How can a book of 600 pages literally contain absolutely no information? Here’s how. (In a technical sense, information is a means of quantizing a population’s deviation from randomness, so by definition a string of purely random data is completely … Continue reading
Posted in science, web stuff
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What was that about thin ice?
This is hilarious. “Unusually heavy snow and ice last year forced Dupre and Larsen to call off a similar mission, but they now plan to launch Project Thin Ice 2006.” I’m pretty skeptical about global warming in general, so I’ve … Continue reading
Digital chauffeur?
It looks like it may not be too long before self-driving cars are technically feasible. It’s probably too much to wish for to actually see something like this in production for quite a while though. For one thing, I suspect … Continue reading
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