Show Notes: Episode 14
This week we do what we do every week, talk some nerdy-ass shit.
This Week in Star Trek
As guest narrator for “Sci-Fi Spectacular,” the debut program on the Naples Philharmonic Orchestra’s 2011 Pops Season calendar, veteran actor George Takei[…] shared with the audience some of the groundbreaking elements of the 1966-69 television series “Star Trek,” which he credited to series creator Gene Roddenberry.
“During a time in which the civil rights movement was in full swing, the Enterprise’s chief communications officer, Lt. Uhura, was an African-American,” said Takei. “The Cold War was still far from over, and our navigator was a Russian. And with the war in Vietnam reaching a head, my character — Sulu, the ship’s helmsman — was of Asian descent. Back in the middle 1960s, this was almost unheard of.”
In Conversation Gives Back
We want to thank the fans. Here’s to Keven Poorman, Kacey Anne, Alex Sherfey, and Leisha Tagami.
You too can get a shout-out by reblogging the show, leaving a comment, writing a review, or suggesting a story.
Political Nerd
The House is moving its 520 websites to the Drupal open-source platform and the 93 freshmen members will get the new platform first.
A flexible Drupal hosting platform is now the preferred Web hosting environment for House websites, according to a Sources Sought notice posted online recently by Dan Strodel, chief administrative officer of the House.
Will Google’s Eric Schmidt recast himself as Google’s anti-antitrust man? Or will he take on a new career at middle age? The New York Post had this to say:
Sources say the outspoken chief, who broke the news that he’s passing the CEO title to 37-year-old co-founder Larry Page in a sarcastic tweet — “Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!” — has been consulting with CNN’s “Parker Spitzer” executive producer Liza McGuirk on developing a show featuring himself as host.
But was Schmidt ever really in control at Google? Gruber posted this Schmidt quote from 2009:
One day Larry and Sergey bought Android, and I didn’t even notice. Think about the strategic opportunities that has created. Sergey found Google Earth one day while he was surfing on the Web. And then he walked into my office and told me he bought them. And I said, “For how much, Sergey?” And it turned out to be a few million.
“Neutrality” — if it’s good enough for the core of the internet, isn’t it good enough for the edge? The biggest Internet providers say it is — and would love to have the government slap a few neutrality rules on Google, just to see how the advertising giant likes the taste of the regulatory bridle. But is it the same thing? NYU Law professor James Grimmelmann ran through eight main principles that underlie various ‘search neutrality’ arguments. He found every one of them ‘incoherent.’
Spiritual Nerd
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
Terrifying Military Tech
It’s the one of the most revolutionary — and one of the most chilling — weapons to come out of America’s decade of conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gorgon Stare, a new “all-seeing” camera system for aerial drones, is supposed to boost U.S. surveillance by an order of magnitude, by installing a hive of nine or more cameras under the wing of an Air Force Reaper drone. Gorgon Stare-equipped Reapers are meant to watch over a “city-size” area, while also simultaneously sending video feeds to dozens of “customers” on the ground.
Military analyst Winslow Wheeler, the 53rd Wing at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida revealed in a draft report dated Dec. 30 alleged problems like poor-quality video, glitches in the process for downloading video streams, and a small problem of the drone blinding itself with a laser.
The layout of the underwing pod puts it in the way of the Reaper’s nose-mounted ranging laser, meaning Reaper remote pilots could accidentally “lase” and blind their own cameras.
…cameras are ”marginally sufficient to track vehicles” but “not sufficient to track dismounts”
…imagery is “subject to gaps between stitching areas [where the camera images meet], which manifests itself as a large black triangle moving throughout the image”
…Gorgon Stare “cannot reliably find and track human targets; it has additional problems for moving targets, and the random location inaccuracy makes the system virtually unusable for prosecuting even stationary targets”
Video Games with Cord Blomquist
When you’re girlfriend won’t give the iPhone back because she can’t stop playing, you know you’ve found a game that isn’t just for gamers.
Nerds in Time
This week in 1935, the first can of beer was sold:
The first canned beer in the United States goes on sale in Richmond, Virginia. By the end of the year, 37 breweries follow the lead of the Gottfried Krueger Brewery.
The American Can Co. began experimenting with canned beer in 1909. But the cans couldn’t withstand the pressure from carbonation — up to 80 pounds per square inch — and exploded. Just before the end of the Prohibition in 1933, the company developed a “keg-lining” technique, coating the inside of the can the same as a keg.
Help In Conversation Grow
Review us on iTunes.
Nerd Rage
The Internet Makes You Dumb, You Jerk
Has high-speed Internet made you impatient with slow-speed children?
Do you sometimes think about reaching for the fast-forward button, only to realize that life does not come with a remote control?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, exposure to technology may be slowly reshaping your personality. Some experts believe excessive use of the Internet, cellphones and other technologies can cause us to become more impatient, impulsive, forgetful and even more narcissistic.
Pope Benedict XVI set out his views on social networking in a message entitled, “Truth, proclamation and authenticity of life in the digital age.”
He said the possibilities of new media and social networks offered “a great opportunity,” but warned of the risks of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.
“It is important always to remember that virtual contact cannot and must not take the place of direct human contact with people at every level of our lives,” Benedict said in the message for the Catholic Church’s World Day of Communications.
Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced changes over time in the brain’s grey matter.
Amishi Jha, PhD, a University of Miami neuroscientist who investigates mindfulness-training’s effects on individuals in high-stress situations, says, “These results shed light on the mechanisms of action of mindfulness-based training. They demonstrate that the first-person experience of stress can not only be reduced with an 8-week mindfulness training program but that this experiential change corresponds with structural changes in the amydala, a finding that opens doors to many possibilities for further research on MBSR’s potential to protect against stress-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder.”
