Death by Risk Aversion

I really liked this blog entry. It describes how risk aversion can stifle innovation at big companies and it mostly blames middle management. It can be hard to tell if a middle manager is protecting the company from your fantastic but risky idea or whether he is just protecting his job.  The are some nice [...]

The Triumph of Technology over Good Taste

I was pumping gas for my car today at a Sunoco A+ Mart. There was a sign above the pump advertising Gulliver’s Hyperbean Coffee, a special blend with twice the caffiene. It seemed appropriate that it was being sold at a gas station. It is more fuel than food.

Get Free Phone Calls

I, Cringely is discussing the NSA wiretaps this week in his column. He has some interesting ideas about what the NSA might actually be doing, but I really liked the end of the column where he tells the story of some nuns who got free phone service when their phones were tapped.
“Here’s one more tidbit [...]

Imported Content from Blogger

WordPress.com introduced a new import utility that grabs posts and comments from other blogging sites and adds them to your wordpress.com blog. I tried it out today and brought over my blogger.com posts. It worked quite well, but did not bring over my photos. I have deleted those posts since they do not make any [...]

Gmail Gets a Delete Button

I learned today that Gmail has gotten a delete button. Google has said since they introduced Gmail that you never need to delete anything. They have argued that when you combine the large amount of storage that Gmail provides with their excellent search tool , that it does not make sense to throw any email [...]

Am I Learning Some Biology?

Serendipity

As soon as I had posted my entry on Science in the News, I went off and checked my favorite blogs. I found a comment on an entry that reminded me that I should check out lablit.com. I did and I found this essay on science communication.
At a time when climate change and the [...]

Science in the News

Since I have started blogging, I have increased the amount of time I spend reading about science in newspapers and on news websites. I have also been reading on topics outside my area of expertise, and I have come to realize that it is very hard to understand from a newspaper article or web posting [...]

Catholic Church and Intelligent Design

The Catholic Church has not been in the forefront of religous groups who have opposed evolution, but recent comments have been to say the least ambigous. Today there was a report in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano that endorsed the ruling in the Dover, PA intelligent design case. The Church is uncomfortable with the attempts [...]

Can Gamma Ray Bursts Be Used to Measure Dark Energy?

I have previously mentioned an article on a new measurment of dark energy. It was in the Washington Post so it obviously did not present many details. I finally had some time to dig around a little, and I found that the author, Bradley E. Schaefer, has been studying gamma ray bursts for several [...]