I think Daughter’s just become one of my favorite bands. The latest single, released this week, is called Still. Their first album drops within days. I’ve listed to all the EPs – Smother, The Wild Youth, and His Young Heart multiple times.
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This technology definitely is lifted from the pages of science fiction, no pun intended.
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Users will be able flick through a document by bending the screen, or by joining screens together for a larger display. Each PaperTab will also be aware of other PaperTabs nearby, helping users keep track. Email can be sent by placing the device in an out tray or by bending the top corner of the display. The PaperTab can also store thousands of documents – obviating, its developers say, the need for stacks of paper or a traditional computer monitor.
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Imagine pinning up several paper monitors on you office wall, connecting them together, and having one large monitor.
The current trend of all phone and computer interface toward touch screens may end up being replaced by voice and gesture recognition. I’m not sure how many people will talk to their phone in a crowded subway or to their computer in a cubicle farm, but computers will become more part of human life, that’s a given.
Despite so-called stated intentions, politics finds a way to insert itself into science.
Putin’s Russia, Egypt’s Morsi, the list is endless. Not even America was immune to this, but at least it’s been more than 200 years since the Alien and Sedition Acts for the USA. Not so elsewhere in the world, as the case of an Egyptian TV host, Bassem Youssef, who dares challenge the self-proclaimed voices of authority. Many people believe their view is the only right one, but when those who ardently believe in this gain power, everyone else suffers, as they will wield the sword mercilessly.
With mere hours left remaining in 2012, news sites everywhere are reporting a fiscal cliff deal. You can bet the farm thus deal includes massive tax increases and zero spending cuts. And those new taxes? Why, the will go to new programs, of course. Like junkies on smack, politicians think only about the short term. They can always print more money, or quit tomorrow, right?
A little-known effort by the US government killed 10,000 people during Prohibition, when they poisoned industrial alcohol to prevent people from converting it into drinking alcohol.
This sounds almost too horrifying to be true, but is just one of many examples of humanitarians with guillotines. And the power of the State behind them.
Tim Powers fans rejoice! Subterranean Press is publishing a new, 21,000 word novella called Salvage and Demolition. Apparently the limited edition is already sold out, and no doubt the trade edition shortly will follow suit. The brief description sounds like classic Powers stuff:
Richard Blanzac, a San Francisco-based rare book dealer, opens a box of consignment items and encounters the unexpected. There, among an assortment of literary rarities, he discovers a manuscript in verse, an Ace Double Novel, and a scattering of very old cigarette butts. These commonplace objects serve as catalysts for an extraordinary—and unpredictable—adventure.
Some of my core TV memories from growing up in Zambia are Astro Boy, The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Thunderbirds. Though puppet shows seem corny and wince-inducing, Thunderbirds had cool space ships, action, and exciting stories. A couple of days ago the show’s creator, Gerry Anderson, passed away at age 83. I had no idea, though, that a live action movie based on his show appeared in 2004. If must have flown well below the radar.
Some science fiction ideas that became reality. The quantum teleportation remains the most intriguing one, and seems still in early stages.
