Simple! Run a web of fiber optic cables spread evenly to locations all around the world. The speed-of-light time delay is pretty negligible, so that won't be an issue. Pipe them to your desired light fixture location. If you have placed your cables properly, you will have steady natural illumination at all hours of the day and night! Pending ( Read more... )

Why did Japan have a Cult of Death? Why was it considered meet to expiate one's sins by the act of self destruction ( Read more... )

I think the idea of cyberspace as geometry may be an artifact of our generation gap and as such misses the point. Once, did we wish to find each other, we must make plans, or tediously consult phonebooks and call switchboards to look up land-line phone numbers. Gradually we became able to contact individuals or perhaps even groups though cellular ( Read more... )

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061220/ap_on_sc/wolf_management
Hunt deer, and I'm not crazy about it, but it doesn't deeply bother me. Kill a wolf and I weep.

When you can look down at your hand and wonder if the bruises there are from rock climbing or sabre, life is not too bad.

Google is kinda the shining city on the hill of smart, do-good corporations these days, but it's just one company. Centralization is a little scary, for a lot of reasons. It would be nice it we had other Googles out there, much in the same way as we have multiple great research universities. Are there other companies that fit this bill?

And it's more an aspiration to than a got anyway.
This is a decent sample. Wikipedia also says interesting things.

Buddhism is nifty. I have heard several interpretations of the saying, "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him"; the one I choose to take here is that of, if you can recognize the Buddha as such, he must be a false Buddha. Similarly, if you meet the first cause walking down the road, you ought to kill him, since the cause of existence ( Read more... )

We examine the idea that songs exist as packages for short memes. Somewhat analogously to the structure of DNA, a given song is likely to contain a primary meme, or "chorus", which is repeated, and a significant amount of surrounding junk DNA, or "verses". The repetition serves to fix and ensure the reliable propagation of the meme, making it ( Read more... )

I had the thought earlier that the latest book by Steven Brust was so-so, and it was a relatively expensive hardback, but I was happy to have bought it anyway both because I did still enjoy it and I'm glad to be supporting one of my favorite authors. The idea that we like to 'support' people whose work we like is interesting to me. What if we ( Read more... )