This is big. A computer program has successfully managed to fool a bunch of researchers into thinking that it was a 13-year-old boy named Eugene Goostman. In doing so, it has become the first in the world to have successfully… Continue reading

Listen to episodes of Welcome to Night Vale on podbay.fm. Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: If you have not given yourself the pleasure, go listen to some podcasts from “Welcome to Night Vale.” From Wikipedia: Welcome to Night Vale is a… Continue reading

A new report from the nonprofit research group In the Public Interest shows that outsourcing public services hurts middle and working class communities as well as workers. Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: Habibi noted that there was a growing body of… Continue reading

It converts chemical energy directly into electrical energy. Still, there hadn’t been a market breakthrough for the fuel cell. The systems were too complex. Now, Fraunhofer and Vaillant have developed a simple device for home use. Together with the heater… Continue reading

Self-folding sheets of a plastic-like material point the way to robots that can assume any conceivable 3-D structure. Programmable matter is a material whose properties can be programmed to achieve specific shapes or stiffnesses upon command. This concept requires constituent… Continue reading

Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: An interview with the author of a new book, The Newton Papers: The Strange and True Odyssey of Isaac Newton’s Manuscripts, which traces the mysterious and precarious history of Newton’s works–not only on science but a… Continue reading

Wireless networks are getting a big upgrade for the smartphone generation. Beamforming was part of 802.11n, the previous Wi-Fi version, but 11ac defines it in more detail, making interoperability between access points and end-user devices more likely. Separately, beamforming plays an… Continue reading

A court has been called to rule on whether a wealthy guru is dead or in a transcendental meditative state. Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: “…Maharaj’s family has filed a court application for further investigation and release of the body for… Continue reading

A core Jungian concept proposes that men develop their feminine side (anima) and women their masculine side (animus); this constrictive terminology confines us to rigid ideas of gender. However, Jung’s rediscovery of alchemical mythology, which uses imagery of the sun… Continue reading

Meet Sacculina carcini – a barnacle that makes a living as a real-life body-snatcher of crabs. Unlike most barnacles that are happy to simply stick themselves to a rock and filter food from the water, Sacculina and its kin have… Continue reading

Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: “…Central to the proceedings was an undercurrent of elite fear that the increasing disenfranchisement of the vast majority of the planetary population under decades of capitalist business-as-usual could well be its own undoing… “…Lady Lynn Forester… Continue reading

(Critical Review) George Siemens’ (2005) article “Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age” has sparked both innovation and controversy (Anderson, 2009; Kop & Hill, 2008; Bell, 2001)… Keith Wayne Brown‘s insight: A good first read for those wondering about… Continue reading