Polymath's Guide to News and Ideas
An Infinite Loop in the Brain
SPIEGEL ONLINE : Wouldn't it be great to be able to remember everything? To see all our most important moments, all the priceless encounters, adventures and triumphs... READ MORE
Physics Makes a Toy of the Brain
SCIENCE BLOGS :To phrase the question more narrowly: can the statistical tools which physicists have developed to understand the collective motion of large agglutinations of particles help us figure out what our brains are doing... READ MORE
Intel evaluating new netbook concepts, form factors
ARS TECHNICA : Netbooks have been one of the major success stories of 2008, but recent comments from Intel indicate that the company isn't satisfied with current device form factors. Speaking at a Raymond James IT Supply Chain conference last week... READ MORE
Solar-powered sea slug harnesses stolen plant genes
NEW SCIENTIST :t's the ultimate form of solar power: eat a plant, become photosynthetic. Now researchers have found how one animal does just that...READ MORE
How We Will Die in 20 Years
FOREIGN POLICY : Everyone dies. The question is when and how. We can’t help you with the when, but the World Health Organization’s recently updated “Global Burden of Disease” report can give you a better idea of how... READ MORE
Simple audio annotations in Google Earth
DIGITAL GEOGRAPHY : While exploring the amazing new Ancient Rome layer in Google Earth I thought it would be useful for kids to be able to add “audio-bites” by way of annotation... READ MORE
Potentially Universal Mechanism Of Aging Identified
SCIENCE DAILY :Researchers have uncovered what may be a universal cause of aging, one that applies to both single cell organisms such as yeast and multicellular organisms... READ MORE
When Intelligent and Natural Design Collide
WIRED SCIENCE :On a recent flight to California, I found myself looking at man-made structures in the Nevada desert and wondering: did I really know, in a scientifically valid way, that they were artificial? Or was I simply resorting to the principles of Intelligent Design... READ MORE
Is Crime Contagious?
REASON : New York City was a mess in the 1980s. I know because I lived in the East Village for a good stretch of that decade. Fortunately, my apartment building was on the marijuana block (the crack block was two over)... READ MORE
Triple Helix: Designing a New Molecule of Life
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN :For all the magnificent diversity of life on this planet, ranging from tiny bacteria to majestic blue whales, from sunshine-harvesting plants to mineral-digesting endoliths miles underground, only one kind of “life as we know it” exists... READ MORE