Wisdumb: Smart and Not-So-Smart

The line between science and science fiction is getting blurrier and blurrier everyday… but this real science story is perhaps a leap ahead of most SF: Programmable Matter Research Solidifies.

Wow.

Skeptic.com has a great article entitled Vaccines & Autism A Deadly Manufactroversy that completely explains away all the BS that Jenny McCarthy has spouting about Autism and vaccines. I used to like Jenny and I thought her tv show was extremely good and very overlooked. I even read one of her baby books (Belly Laughs: The Naked Truth About Pregnancy and Childbirth) because my wife liked it so much - and I thought it was decent. It was funny and well written. It was a little lacking in hard details and solid information - but it wasn’t billed as a medical book. It was just her story about her pregnancy.

Anyway, I don’t like her giving medical advice on TV, radio, magazines, etc. Really, look at her and ask yourself if you should listen to clear medical science or her. These people don’t like her as well: Jenny McCarthy Body Count. I don’t know if the numbers they portray are correct or not - but I agree with their point that Jenny is part of the problem.

I feel the same way about Suzanne Somers too. How much unfounded exercise equipment can be created, sold and hawked on TV? Why do people keep buying it? I don’t know, but I blame Suzanne for starting the craze. Actually, I think Jane Fonda probably started the craze, but her product was a legitimate excercise and I don’t remember branching out into all sorts of other silly products.

Newsweek has a nice article demonstrating what a nutbag she is and discounts all her BS medical claims as well - and slams Oprah a little too, which is nice. Once again… I believe the picture of her endorsing the Thighmaster should be all you need not to take medical advice from her.

Lastly, just so I don’t come off as a woman hater - I pretty much hate Tony Little and Kevin Trudeau as well - I just haven’t come across anything recently about either of them.

Robert Furchgott, the nobel-prize winning scientist, died at age 92 on 5/19/2009.

[WARNING: JOKE ALERTS] 

A closed casket ceremony was planned for his funeral. Unfortunately, this was not possible for obvious reasons.

   OR

Instead of flying the US flag at half-mast in his honor…

The holy grail of the search engine technology is to basically create what people can do on Star Trek. Just speak out loud something like “Computer, to reach Rigel V in less than 12 minutes, what warp speed must the Enterprise travel” and have the computer respond “4.7″.

Well, two major players are well on their way to [pun alert] making it so. The one I just learned about is called Wolfram Alpha. It doesn’t have a public version yet - but I have requested to become a beta tester. I’ll let you know if they grant my request. BBC Story.

The other tool has been live for a long time. Check it out: START, the world’s first Web-based question answering system.�

All I can say is “wow.” The religious blinders are screwed on incredibly tight on this one:

Developed for “National Security” and other war-like purposes, this crazy-powerful satellite-like camera system would pay for itself in no time if they rented it out to TMZ, People magazine, etc. Just imagine, Britney, Brangelina, the whores from the Hills, they could never get away. Of course, you don’t need a 1.8 gigapixel camera to see Kim Kardashian’s ass from 15,000′.

A Wired article details the Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008. As I read about amazing medical breakthroughs, new supercomputers than can perform more than a quadrillion operations per second, exciting new environment and energy related items, what is the item I am most intrigued by? New carbon nanotube technologies that can create incredibly light and strong materials such as a paper that is stronger than steel.  Why does this impress me so much? Because it means we are that much closer to being able to create an actual Iron Man suit!

UPDATE: I think this breakthrough - wireless electricity - certainly deserves to be on the list.

Incredible story about some new, fairly scary, and quite amazing technology being developed in Japan. It is the first step to mind-reading, recording dreams, and possibly even a type of mind-to-mind telepathy.

It has been awhile since I posted about robots… so, check these guys out: Boston Dynamics. Will robots rise against their creators and take over the world within my lifetime? I don’t know, but if they do and we try to fight back and find out we can’t knock them down by kicking them - much of the blame will fall squarely upon the shoulders of Boston Dynamics.

I have watched quite a few of the TED:Ideas worth spreading videos, and everyone I have seen has been great. This one in particular, on particles, is especially good: