Reality™ Blog

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  A Petition for Free Online Access of Taxpayer-funded Research
  By Samuel Arbesman, wired.com

  Sci­ence is cumu­la­tive. But to be truly cumu­la­tive, we need to be able to read and under­stand what has come before us. And this comes down to an issue of access.

  Many sci­en­tif­ic papers are locked away behind pay­walls. But the fed­er­al…

  05/23/12

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  Darpa, Venter Launch Assembly Line for Genetic Engineering
  By Katie Drummond, wired.com

  The military-industrial com­plex just got a lit­tle bit live­li­er. Quite lit­er­al­ly.

  That’s because Darpa, the Pen­ta­gon’s far-out research arm, has kicked off a pro­gram designed to take the con­ven­tions of man­u­fac­tur­ing and apply them…

  05/23/12

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  Masdar: Abu Dhabi’s carbon-neutral city

  These driverless vehicles are guided by magnetic sensors, powered by solar electricity, and they stop automatically if an obstacle appears. They are programmed to go where you ask.

  05/22/12

• Michael Molitch-Hou presents his new guidebook, entitled “Why-to: a short and helpful guide to motivate one’s pursuit of activities either a. previously not pursued or b. pursued so regularly that no one knows or remembers why they’re doing them in the first place”, to the MFA writing students at CalArts.

  05/22/12

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  The Future of Stuff: Vending Machine That Prints in 3-D
  By Tim Maly, wired.com

  No mat­ter how fast postal deliv­ery gets, noth­ing beats the imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion of push­ing a but­ton on a vend­ing machine and hav­ing your pur­chase tum­ble down into the deliv­ery box. The Chi­nese live crab dis­penser and Art-O-Mat…

  05/22/12