What, no flying cars yet?
Honda Motor Co., one of those car companies that doesn’t have to check with Barack Obama to take a leak, has found a way to connect a person’s thoughts with the operation of robotics in order to do things like open trunks.
Holy shindig!
Opening a car trunk or controlling a home air conditioner could become just a wish away with Honda’s new technology that connects thoughts inside a brain with robotics.
Honda Motor Co. (HMC) has developed a way to read patterns of electric currents on a person’s …

In 1961, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in which he set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the closing of the decade.  He is widely hailed for his vision and leadership for this.
In 1983, Ronald Reagan laid out plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative, which would be able to stop nuclear missiles from hitting the U.S.  The technology wasn’t quite there yet, like when JFK gave his speech, but Reagan was criticized much more.
Today, missile defense is becoming not only a possibility, but is turning …

So America has an addiction to foreign oil. Okay. So what? Politicians talk about the addiction like it’s as bad as killing babies. Global warming concerns aside, what’s so bad about oil that we need to stop buying it?
Here are some of the top complaints people have about oil:
1. We buy oil from the Middle East!
2. We’ll run out of oil soon, and then we’ll be doomed. DOOMED, I say!
3. I can’t handle these prices [as I make this gasoline …

A company called Aqua Sciences, based out of Miami Beach, can now harvest water from atmospheric moisture – essentially getting “water from thin air.”
Interestingly, although Aqua Sciences wasn’t directly funded through military contracting, it will find early uses in hydrating our troops in Iraq – where it will bring water transportation costs from $30 a gallon to $.30 a gallon.
Darpa gave millions to research companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to create a contraption that could capture water in the Mesopotamian desert.
But it was another company, Aqua Sciences, that developed a …

This post is a follow-up to Wednesday’s post, in which I talked about the possible effects of global warming.
One obvious effect already occurring that I didn’t mention was the growth of ethanol as a popular fuel additive.  Since ethanol is made from crops like corn, it’s driving up food prices all over the world, stirring up food riots, and causing many poor people to starve.
It sounds like I’m over-simplifying it, but I’m really not.  From the New Statesman (I added the bold font):
What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food …

So, apparently scientists are really close to creating what they call “artificial life.”  What does this mean exactly?  Basically, a synthetic cell of artificial life created out of the same materials in DNA – in other words, microscopic life, not mail-order blonde artificial life brides.
I bring this up because of two collective issues:  it’s important, and it might happen soon.  If this actually does happen in the time frame they say it will, what does that mean for humanity?  Here are my stabs at it:

Artificial life has the obvious moral …

Napoleon once said that an army marches on its stomach, but they didn’t have YouTube back then.  The U.S. army is blocking a bunch of sites (11, to be specific) from soldiers, including MySpace and YouTube.
Why, you might ask?  Well, apparently all the time soldiers are spending on the internet at those sites slows down network time.  Also, the army is trying to protect “information.”
In recent months, the Army and Iraqi insurgents have both been posting videos onto YouTube as mini-propaganda films that show their side winning out.  For example, …

Tacking on another notch in the “road until the Matrix movies comes true” chart, scientists have successfully been able to create a device that simulates half a mouse brain.
A mouse brain contains something like eight million neurons, each of which can form up to 8,000 neural connections to other neurons – meaning, in effect, even a mouse’s brain is vastly complex.
Luckily, we’re not that close to artificially intelligent robots – the mouse brain could only “think” at the rate of 10:1 as a real mouse brain.
My question: how do they …

Another study confirming the obvious was released Thursday, this time in Ireland. Apparently, if you send text messages like “wr R u?”, you’re not actually developing your language skills.
The report laments that, in many cases, candidates seemed “unduly reliant on short sentences, simple tenses and a limited vocabulary”.
I love technology, but I think one thing we ignore is that our reliance on it will only serve to dull our senses and skills. But then, why not ask the question: who needs an extended vocabulary anyway, if you …

Interesting story coming from UK’s The Guardian.  I like to make sure that I start out Mondays on a high note. 
According to Britain’s Ministry of Defense, in just 30 years’ time, everything that I described in the title will be occuring – and not only that.  Muslims will also be breeding at climbing rates as Europeans die off.
Despite the actual trends – European population decline and Muslim expansion (hey, at least they’re generally sticking to just reproducing.
Tales of information brain chips and robots are usually disappointing.  Most people completely overestimate …