Paul ⁽³³⁸⁾

I wonder if politicians are really stupid or if they receive instructions on acting like that once they're in some kind of seat of power. You may wonder why I ask this. If you do, you should pay attention to what politicians do and say for a change. Speed. A while ago here in the Netherlands they allowed people to drive faster on certain motorways. (US: freeways.) My first thought was: ah, they need more…

As found on Engadget: "Researchers want higher-resolution images of the Earth from space, but glass-based telescopes won't always be up to the job; eventually, the necessary hardware will be too bulky to lift into orbit. It's a good thing, then, that DARPA recently tested a ground-based prototype of its MOIRE (Membrane Optical Imager for Real-Time Exploration) folding telescope. Like the future spaceborne unit, the ground telescope replaces glass with a high-efficiency polymer membrane that weighs…

Have you noticed how screwed up the world is with its work ideas? More people have to work more and longer to get everything done, yet we're implementing more and more machines to do the work for us. Somehow this seems to be perfectly acceptable, especially when you consider the large number of unemployed people that still walk and sit around everywhere. There is something very wrong with this mental image.

I love being a nitpicker once in a while. It can happen with anything, and yesterday it happened with a song. This is the second song in a short time that made me laugh as there is something in the lyrics that's just wrong. Let me start with the first one, a Dutch song. I'll spare you the whole thing, it's a song about coffee and how wonderful it is to start the day one.

Poland's Blow Up Hall 5050: Half luxury hotel, half digital art installation Blow Up Hall: exterior (Photo: Loz Blain/gizmag.com) I'm here in Poznan, Poland – a town I'll admit I never knew existed until I bought my plane ticket. Which is a bit pathetic of me, since "Poznan" more or less translates as "the town everyone knows." Whoops, I guess I missed that memo. It's a typically charming European town with a gorgeous city square,…

Zothecula writes "What weighs 5.5 tons and has less computing power than your watch? A pioneering piece of computing history call 'Flossie,' the last operating ICT 1301 mainframe. The National Museum of Computing recently took delivery of the dismantled computer, which needed three moving vans to bring it to the museum's storage facility in Milton Keynes, UK. Rod Brown, custodian of Flossie for the past decade, said: 'Flossie has had an extraordinary life -- or…

Senior Drivers No Longer Need A Driver’s License My neighbour was working in his yard when he was startled by a late model car that came crashing through his hedge and ended up in his front lawn. He rushed to help an elderly lady driver out of the car and sat her down on a lawn chair.He said with excitement, "You appear quite elderly to be driving." "Well, yes, I am," she replied proudly. "I'll be 97…

As I thought last week: It's so dumb that you select an area of work and you're basically stuck with in, in the modern structure of things. When you have no idea yet of the real world and real life, you're to make choices that will rivet you to your future. You like numbers? Be an accountant or so. You like computers? Be a programmer. You like colours? Be a painter. Of course you know me,…

[Candida] Moss, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame, challenges some of the most hallowed legends of the religion when she questions what she calls “the Sunday school narrative of a church of martyrs, of Christians huddled in catacombs out of fear, meeting in secret to avoid arrest and mercilessly thrown to lions merely for their religious beliefs.” None of that, she maintains, is true. Surprised? You can read…