Tag Archives: science

Countless other words . . . had simply ceased to exist

“As we have already seen in the case of the word free, words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other … Continue reading

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Reconstructing visual experiences from brain activity

Despite its length and hard-to-pin-down clunkiness, I always liked Until the End of the World, Wim Wenders’ rambling near-term sci-fi film about (among other things) the psychological impact of a technology that enables the recording and playing back of one’s … Continue reading

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Incredible archive of 19th century scientific illustrations from the Challenger expedition

The Challenger expedition was an ambitious scientific mission that sought to catalogue the geology and biology of the world’s oceans. Among other achievements, the expedition managed to scoop up bizarre life forms from the deepest parts of the ocean, including … Continue reading

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Why Nick Bostrom hopes SETI finds nothing

From Technology Review: The next decade might see a Mars Sample Return mission, which would use robotic systems to collect samples of Martian rocks, soils, and atmosphere and return them to Earth. We could then analyze the samples to see … Continue reading

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White Sands NM V-2 rocket, 1946/11/21 (1946)

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Powers of Ten (1977)

Powers of Ten is a 1977 short documentary film written and directed by Charles Eames and his wife, Ray. The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). … Continue reading

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