Ten more stories that deserve some attention:
Space-elevator tether climbs a mile high - science fiction is becoming science fact with the help of nanotubes and air balloons. Would you ever pay for a 65,000 mile elevator trip into orbit?
The Flying Luxury Hotel - this is not your grandpa’s blimp. This bad boy is on steroids, a cruise ship floating in the air. And it moves a helluva lot quicker, 174 mph with a capacity crowd of 250. Not too shabby.
Ad-Supported Free Books Arrive - apparently the mega-publisher HarperCollins (you probably used their text books growing up) is now experimenting with offering books online for free, albeit supported by ad revenue. Welcome to the 21st century (see the Digital Library section as Macmillan is doing something similar).
Opening up iTunes U - so despite the hoopla surrounding free educational podcasts from Apple, they are making it very difficult to virally promote individual lectures (no copy/paste function). Can someone else capitalize off of this short-sightedness?
Time Right for Gaming Journal? - why was this not around when I was a kid? First GuildHall, now an actual journal. Next you’ll be telling me thousands of people make a career of playing games online. Craziness.
Since higher education is my pet project of late: Credentialism. Rejoinder. Left-field thoughts.
If Robots Ever Get Too Smart, He’ll Know How to Stop Them - I wrote about this book at the end of last year and this is an interesting follow-up interview with the author.
Intel wants super 3G in every PC - there are a lot of news releases lately (including a super spiffy IBM wireless chip) but this one is in the here-and-now, hence my enthusiasm towards its uses.
639-Year Concert Lets Loose 2nd Chord - post modern music still sucks. So its new allure is extreme elongation. Perhaps they will be splattering paint on house-size canvases to make up for their lack of skill. Or maybe they can get some real training.
“The most toxic place on earthâ€? - not quite, but pretty close. Similar to Thomas DiLorenzo’s “Why Socialism Causes Pollution,” apparently the Aral Sea suffered much of the same fate at the hands of a militaristic Statists.
Ironic quote of the day: Congressman: Yahoo, Google, Cisco Systems, Microsoft are “agents of repression” — cause you know, these firms bombed and invaded China.