March 4, 2013
businessweek: jenniferdaniel: NEW MAP! The locations of 102 San Jose marijuana dispensaries and their happy tech neighbors. By: Allison McCann/Jennifer Daniel Silicon Valley is high on innovation. And pot.

businessweek:

jenniferdaniel:

NEW MAP! The locations of 102 San Jose marijuana dispensaries and their happy tech neighbors.

By: Allison McCann/Jennifer Daniel

Silicon Valley is high on innovation. And pot.

2:46pm
(Notes: 126)
  
Filed under: Technology Silicon Valley Marijuana Maps 
February 28, 2013
businessweek: Computer Interfaces: Tech’s Next Great Frontier Since the invention of personal computing three decades ago, how we interact with computers has remained about the same: monitor, keyboard, mouse. Monitors have gotten a bit bigger, keyboards are smaller, and mice are wireless, but today’s PCs at Best Buy (BBY)would still be familiar to a computer user from 1984. That’s begun to change, and today there’s an explosion of innovation in interface design, driven by huge strides in processing power, memory, and bandwidth. It started with the iPhone’s touchscreen and swipe controls. It picked up speed in 2010 with Microsoft’s Kinect, a camera and sensor array that lets Xbox players control their video game systems with gestures. Some of the most promising tech startups aren’t building social networks or e-commerce sites, but interfaces. (Photograph illustration by 731; David: David Silverman/Getty Images; Google Glass: Reuters) Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek

businessweek:

Computer Interfaces: Tech’s Next Great Frontier

Since the invention of personal computing three decades ago, how we interact with computers has remained about the same: monitor, keyboard, mouse. Monitors have gotten a bit bigger, keyboards are smaller, and mice are wireless, but today’s PCs at Best Buy (BBY)would still be familiar to a computer user from 1984. That’s begun to change, and today there’s an explosion of innovation in interface design, driven by huge strides in processing power, memory, and bandwidth. It started with the iPhone’s touchscreen and swipe controls. It picked up speed in 2010 with Microsoft’s Kinect, a camera and sensor array that lets Xbox players control their video game systems with gestures. Some of the most promising tech startups aren’t building social networks or e-commerce sites, but interfaces. (Photograph illustration by 731; David: David Silverman/Getty Images; Google Glass: Reuters)

Read more at Bloomberg Businessweek

1:22pm
(Notes: 191)
  
Filed under: Tech Technology 
January 24, 2013
New Evidence Suggests People Have Been Enjoying Chocolate in North America for 1200 Years Although the plant had a place of pride in Mesoamerican society, it is not thought to have traveled very far north. Archaeologists have searched for connections between Mesoamerican people and those who were living in the American southwest and have found few. Now, a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests that there might have been more exchange than previously thought. Their evidence? Chocolate. Well, not chocolate exactly, but traces of theobromine and caffeine (two compounds found in cacao) in bowls from an eighth-century archaeological site in Alkali Ridge, Utah. That chocolate would have had to have been imported from Mesoamerican cacao orchards, thousands of miles away. Read more. [Images: Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology/Harvard University via Science]

New Evidence Suggests People Have Been Enjoying Chocolate in North America for 1200 Years

Although the plant had a place of pride in Mesoamerican society, it is not thought to have traveled very far north. Archaeologists have searched for connections between Mesoamerican people and those who were living in the American southwest and have found few.

Now, a new study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science suggests that there might have been more exchange than previously thought. Their evidence? Chocolate. Well, not chocolate exactly, but traces of theobromine and caffeine (two compounds found in cacao) in bowls from an eighth-century archaeological site in Alkali Ridge, Utah. That chocolate would have had to have been imported from Mesoamerican cacao orchards, thousands of miles away.

Read more. [Images: Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology/Harvard University via Science]

3:48pm
(Notes: 86)
  
Filed under: North America History Food Chocolate Technology 
January 24, 2013
Women in Combat: History, Aided by Technology The Pentagon’s decision to end its ban on women-in-combat — a change announced, formally, this afternoon — is simply a decision whose time, in many, many ways, has come. But it is also, importantly, a decision that technological advances have made easier: more sensible, more practical, more impermeable to objection. While some will still make social and cultural arguments against women serving on the front lines — most of which will boil down to the idea that it’s hard for “bands of brothers” to coalesce when sisters are part of the equation — most other objections are now, or will soon be, preempted. And that’s in part because of technology. Read more. [Image: David Kamm, U.S. Army Natick Soldier RD&E Center]

Women in Combat: History, Aided by Technology

The Pentagon’s decision to end its ban on women-in-combat — a change announced, formally, this afternoon — is simply a decision whose time, in many, many ways, has come. But it is also, importantly, a decision that technological advances have made easier: more sensible, more practical, more impermeable to objection. While some will still make social and cultural arguments against women serving on the front lines — most of which will boil down to the idea that it’s hard for “bands of brothers” to coalesce when sisters are part of the equation — most other objections are now, or will soon be, preempted. And that’s in part because of technology.

Read more. [Image: David Kamm, U.S. Army Natick Soldier RD&E Center]

3:25pm
(Notes: 167)
  
Filed under: Women Military Combat Pentagon Technology History 
January 24, 2013

theatlanticvideo:

A Mesmerizing Time-Lapse of Stars Over the Eureka Valley Sand Dunes

“Armed only with boxed wine, firewood, and our DSLRs,” the filmmakers at Sunchaser Pictures trekked through Death Valley National Park to observe the Geminid meteor shower on December 13.

1:39pm
(Notes: 146)
  
Filed under: Video Astronomy Technology Science 
January 24, 2013

The Never-Before-Told Story of the World’s First Computer Art (It’s a Sexy Dame)

During a time when computing power was so scarce that it required a government-defense budget to finance it, a young man used a $238 million military computer, the largest such machine ever built, to render an image of a curvy woman on a glowing cathode ray tube screen. The year was 1956, and the creation was a landmark moment in computer graphics and cultural history that has gone unnoticed until now.

Using equipment designed to guard against the apocalypse, a pin-up girl had been drawn. 

She was quite probably the first human likeness to ever appear on a computer screen. 

Read more. [Images: Lawrence A. Tipton]

11:06am
(Notes: 806)
  
Filed under: Technology Science History Gender Women Culture 
January 23, 2013

When We Blew Up Arizona to Simulate the Moon

Thanks to a well-timed tip from landscape blogger Alex Trevi of Pruned, Venue made a detour on our exit out of Flagstaff, Arizona, to visit the old black cinder fields of an extinct volcano—where, incredibly, NASA and its Apollo astronauts once practiced their, at the time, forthcoming landing on the moon.

Read more. [Image: Venue]

3:58pm
(Notes: 419)
  
Filed under: Moon Astronomy Science technology 
January 18, 2013

Stealth Wear: An Anti-Drone Hoodie and Scarf

No, really, this garment might fool the infrared cameras mounted on drones.

[Image: Adam Harvey]

2:53pm
(Notes: 150)
  
Filed under: Technology Drone War Fashion Hoodie 
January 17, 2013
How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless Until around 250 years ago in the West, archaeological evidence suggests that most human beings had an edge-to-edge bite, similar to apes. In other words, our teeth were aligned liked a guillotine, with the top layer clashing against the bottom layer. Then, quite suddenly, this alignment of the jaw changed: We developed an overbite, which is still normal today. The top layer of teeth fits over the bottom layer like a lid on a box. Read more. [Image: Flickr]

How Forks Gave Us Overbites and Pots Saved the Toothless

Until around 250 years ago in the West, archaeological evidence suggests that most human beings had an edge-to-edge bite, similar to apes. In other words, our teeth were aligned liked a guillotine, with the top layer clashing against the bottom layer. Then, quite suddenly, this alignment of the jaw changed: We developed an overbite, which is still normal today. The top layer of teeth fits over the bottom layer like a lid on a box.

Read more. [Image: Flickr]

12:39pm
(Notes: 879)
  
Filed under: Food Humans Technology Health 
January 16, 2013
‘This Robot Is the Latest Weapon in the War on Birds’ […] A bird strike — sometimes also called a Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard, or BASH — remains a rare but destructive phenomenon. Which makes it one of those ironies that speak to the frailty of human technology: All the knowledge embedded in an aircraft — all the physical prowess, all the digital nuance — can still be thwarted by a coincidental collusion with birds. To the extent, per one estimate, that our feathered friends can cause more than a billion — billion, with a b — dollars’ worth of damage to aircraft in a single year.  But that could be changing: Bird strikes could soon become a thing of the past. Researchers in South Korea have developed a mobile device that uses a combination of tracking software, microphones, and lasers — yes, lasers — to detect birds and then scare them away from airport runways.  Read more. [Image: AP]

‘This Robot Is the Latest Weapon in the War on Birds’

[…] A bird strike — sometimes also called a Bird Aircraft Strike Hazard, or BASH — remains a rare but destructive phenomenon. Which makes it one of those ironies that speak to the frailty of human technology: All the knowledge embedded in an aircraft — all the physical prowess, all the digital nuance — can still be thwarted by a coincidental collusion with birds. To the extent, per one estimate, that our feathered friends can cause more than a billion — billion, with a b — dollars’ worth of damage to aircraft in a single year. 

But that could be changing: Bird strikes could soon become a thing of the past. Researchers in South Korea have developed a mobile device that uses a combination of tracking software, microphones, and lasers — yes, lasers — to detect birds and then scare them away from airport runways. 

Read more. [Image: AP]

1:19pm
(Notes: 33)
  
Filed under: Robot Hudson Flight Birds Technology 
Liked posts on Tumblr: More liked posts »