That's no Moon! That's a space station!

Okay, so the one on the the top left is really Mimas, one of the inner moons of Saturn. The thing on its right side that looks like the Death Star's weapon is an Impact crater named Herschel.

Battlebots: Patent Infringment edition!

iRobot, makers of the Roomba are suing Robotic FX, claiming that the company's Negotiator tactical robot is a ripoff of iRobot's military packbot. iRobot also claims that robotic Fx's founder, a former iRobot employee, violated nondisclosure and noncompeting clauses of his contract. The best part of the story (which you can read by clicking on the post's title) is the part where iRobot demands that all existing Negotiators be turned over to it "for destruction". I say if you're gonna destroy robots at least make it interesting. Let's put the packbots and negotiators in an arena, arm them to the teath and may the best robot win!

R2-D2 spotted in Berkeley

Back in the spring the USPS dressed mailboxes across the country as everybody's
favorite astromech droid. I figured they would be long gone by now but as of last week Artoo was still faithfully accepting may. fittingly, he occupies the same block as a comic shop And The Other Change of Hobbit science fiction book store.

Roads? Where we're going we don't need Roads

One last Back to The Future post and I'll let it go... promise. Just as The BTTF ride is about to go dark things seem a little brighter for the Delorean. It seems that partly due to the films the car has gained a small but loyal following. How loyal? Loyal enough to make a Texas company mull building new ones. Click on the Title to read the story. Sounds cool but I think I'll wait until flight capabilities and Mr. fusion come standard.

Back To The Future: The Ride

In honor of the soon to be late ride I present the video. Maybe if you fullscreen it and rock back and forth in your chair it will be just like the ride!

Back to no future!

The blog is back, just in time to mourn the closing of the Back to the Future Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood. The ride goes dark after Labor Day to make way for a Simpsons ride. Click on the title for the news. Okay, I like the Simpsons, and yes Back to the Future the ride is getting a bit... dated but is it really smart to replace a 14 year old ride with a new one based on an 18 year old TV show? and a Fox one at that? Maybe Universal should base a ride on one of there hits of the past year or so... Oh wait, they don't have any!

The doctor is on-line!

A London hospital is testing a tele-presence robot which allows doctors to make rounds and see patients from a remote location (say, home or the golf course or... maybe a call centre in Bangalore). Okay, first the bedside manner goes... now docs don't even have to come to the bedside! The question is will patients line up to sbe seen by a moblie tv screen? Given the state of the English health service... probably. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4555555.stm

Inventor of the K ration dies at 100

Obituaries often make for intersting reading. Not only did the guy develop the "K" ration during WWII, he even found a use for Conscientious objectors, as subjects in one of the first controlled studies of starvation. After the war he was among the first scientists to sutdy the link between cholestral and heart disease. Since he lived to be a 100, maybe he knew what he was talking about. He was also Lon Chaney's nephew.

Inventor of the K ration dies at 100

Obituaries often make for intersting reading. Not only did the guy develop the "K" ration during WWII, he even found a use for Conscientious objectors, as subjects in one of the first controlled studies of starvation. After the war he was among the first scientists to sutdy the link between cholestral and heart disease. Since he lived to be a 100, maybe he knew what he was talking about. He was also Lon Chaney's nephew.

One place in Europe We're still Appreciated

Not that I'm planning a trip to Europe anytime soon but if I do go, I might make a side trip to Bastone.

Snakes! why did it have to be snakes?

Last year I read a stow aobut how nile monitors were turning up in the Everglades, apparently now its Burmese pythons popping up. Well, on the upside, at least the the alligators have something new to eat. click on title for the article.

The xprize is over. Long live the X-cup!

Looks like the folks behing the x-prize are trying to turn it into an annual competition.http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/05/spaceshipone.race.ap/index.html

SpaceshipOne claims X-prize

Well, it's over. Spaceship flew successfully this morning winning the X-prize. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/10/04/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/index.html
Mad props to Alien for sending me the story.

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

Trouble down on the ant farm

We hear lots of stories of native species getting crowed out by exoctic "invasive" species. Here's one where local bugs got the better of a museum's prized colony of army ants. And shame on those enytomologists for not understanding how badass dermistids are. They work in a frick'n natural history museum whe dermistids are both a tool for cleaning bones and a meance because the eat nearly everything else. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/10/02/MNG4M92UQC1.DTL

X-prize: One down, one to go!

SpaceshipOne made the first of two planned flights towards the X-prize. It was successful but a bit scarier than planned. Hopefully the can do something about that roll before Monday. http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/09/29/spaceshipone.attempt.cnn/index.html

Space... Virgin Territory?

Just a few days ahead of spaceship one's try at the x-prize Richard Branson has announced the formation of Virgin Galactic a company which plans to liscense the spaceOne technology to take tourists into space by 2007. Wonder if each seat will have its own tv screen. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3693020.stm

Building a better cockroach

So now even cockroaches need to worry about being replaced by robots! http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2004/09/16_full.shtml For a bit more detail and some cool viedo clips go here http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2002/09/rfull/rfull.html
and to think... a lot of this work is going on 3 floors above me! That's cool as long as none of the roaches (robotic or biological) escape.

Robot menace!

As long as the concept of the robot has been around there are those who have been fearful of it. robots could steal our jobs, take over the planet, exterminate the human race or even.... beat us at poker? Yep, with the rise of on-line poker comes the suspision that not all the players are human
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6002298/