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4 million
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1–2 minutes·
No comments on 4 million4,000,000! – the population of New Zealand reached 4 million today. New Zealand has a very nice statistics website which sets an impressive example for other countries (via MetaFilter).
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Adrian on Mars, part two
Are you going to be in or around Cambridge on the 29th April? If so, what better way to spend the evening than attending a delightful presentation by me on ‘The Human Mission to Mars’. I’ll be talking about why we should send humans to Mars, how we might do it and how much it’d…
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Dark Side
A Note to Parents about our Magic Wands at Alivan’s Wand Makers – “…an Alivan’s wand is only meant to stimulate your child’s growing imagination. Our company does not, in any way, support the dark side of magic. In fact, we completely discourage it.” I love this kind of stuff.
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About the Matrix
This article about the science of the Matrix (from /.) is interesting enough from a fan-fiction ‘well, it could work!’ perspective, but it is way off on some of the hard issues, namely the whole ‘quantum mechanics microtubules’ nonsense. It might be convenient to explain away consciousness because of magical quantum ‘fairy dust’ interactions, but…
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Stayin’ Alive
I generally see myself as being pretty informed when it comes to current events and recent history (I also consider myself very modest). So it’s always a surprise when the occasional gaping hole in my knowledge is revealed, e.g.: Adrian has initiated one of his usual ‘how the future will be so different and how…
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More on Cog
I just watched the DVD for Honda’s Cog advert, which you can order for free, and it has clearly been made with the same loving craziness and ingenuity that the advert enjoyed. There’s a ‘making of’ feature, about five minutes long, in which they interview the makers and show some outtakes. There’s also an ‘Illustrated…
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They just can’t help it
They just can’t help it – an article about the differences between the male and female brain by my old university psychology supervisor, Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen. Interesting and controversial stuff; I saw a lecture that he gave about this topic a few months ago (not via Metafilter – I read it in the Guardian myself…
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Adventure
The Future of Adventures – Kim Stanley gets it right again in this essay about the nature of ‘adventure travel’ and what it really means to have an adventure (via BoingBoing).
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SARS as a weapon
There is some talk on the Internet about SARS being a Russian or Chinese biological weapon. I am not particularly convinced, and I certainly don’t think it’s a helpful suggestion given that there’s plenty of worry going on at the moment. Of course it could be a biological weapon; there are plenty of research labs…
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Absolutes
Today I posted a thread in Metatalk (a part of Metafilter) complaining about useless images in threads. There I was, expecting at least some semblance of a reasonable response when what I actually found was a bunch of obscure replies full of non-answers and in-jokes. Their meaning is so opaque to Metafilter newcomers to be…
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