| Thursday, November 21, 2002 |  |
| Public Autopsy |
 Public autopsy held in London. The controversial German doctor Gunther von Hagens, who previously caught some criticism for his anatomical exhibition Body Worlds, carried out the first public autopsy in many years, despite threats that he would be arrested. I applaud what he's trying to accomplish. I think it is very useful to show people how the human body works, in a dynamic and educational manner, and to get over our revulsion. Incidentally, I attended a couple of autopsies once. It was very educational, but didn't exactly strengthen my respect for modern medicine. I had imagined it to be a very precise science, sort of like clockwork repair. But it reminded me a whole lot more of a butchershop. I'll spare you the details here.[ Science | 2002-11-21 17:09 | 8 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Back Up Your Life |
 MyLifeBits is a project where engineers are trying to develop a way of storing all of your life in a database. Well, it sounds like a piece of vaporware, and they're mainly talking about just storing all your photos, all your videos and all your letters in one place. What I'd really like is *everything*, automatically recorded and neatly indexed and searchable. Of course there are few searches I'd rather not do, like "my most embarrassing moments", but there's a lot of useful stuff I'd like to remember more effortlessly without having to go around thinking about it. Anyway, curiously, the idea of storing your life in an infinite digital storage place, and the idea of hypertext, was proposed in the 40s by Vannevar Bush, George W's grandfather, who was a visionary electrical engineer who ended up running a lot of America's black projects at the time, first being part of the atomic bomb project, and later being a member of Majestic12.[ Technology | 2002-11-21 17:09 | 2 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Sensors Everywhere |
 A Forbes article talks about the interesting possibilities in having sensors everywhere. You know, tiny little devices that power themeselves from solar or kinetic energy, and that are wirelessly networked data gathering points. There are a lot of problems in the world that can be avoided if there is a sensor watching for it. Polution, structural failures, traffic, crime, weather. The problem, of course, is that there are also power hungry governments who'd love to point these things at you and I, to catch us in doing something they don't like.[ Technology | 2002-11-21 21:58 | 0 comments | PermaLink ] |
| Cr8 |
 I have this domain cr8.com which I feel particularly attached to, but I haven't figured out what to do with it yet. And, if you don't get it, it is supposed to sound like "CREATE". First of all, 3 letter .com domain names are very desirable, but very hard to come by. Not everybody gets the Create thing at first glance, and some people argue that it should be cre8, but I don't think that's as cool. I have gotten quite a few inquiries from other people who thought it was cool, who wanted to acquire it from me. But I jumped through some hoops to get it myself, so I don't let go of it easily. I'm still searching for the right thing to put behind it. Something about creativity or creative endeavors, obviously. A creative portal of some kind. Or a creative company or organization. I have cr8.it and a few other variations as well. Anyway, I'm just fishing for good ideas. Btw, on the subject of useless trivia, my shortest domain is b9.bz and my longest is supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.org, closely followed by idontknowwhattodowithmyself.com[ Diary | 2002-11-21 21:58 | 4 comments | PermaLink ] More > |