2012 Jun 1, 4:57
“From his first months in office, President Obamasecretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment
facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons, according to participants in the program.”
security politics iran nuclear virus 2010 Feb 18, 4:59"At TED2010, Bill Gates unveils his vision for the world's energy future, describing the need for "miracles" to avoid planetary catastrophe and explaining why he's backing a dramatically different
type of nuclear reactor."
ted bill-gates video environment energy 2009 Apr 7, 11:58
This past week I finished Anathem and despite the intimidating physical size of the book (difficult to take and read on the bus) I became very engrossed and was able to finish it in several orders of
magnitude less time than
what I spent on the Baroque
Cycle. Whereas reading the Baroque Cycle you can imagine Neal Stephenson sifting through giant economic tomes (or at least that's where my mind went whenever the characters began to explain
macro-economics to one another), in Anathem you can see Neal Stephenson staying up late
pouring over philosophy of mathematics. When not
exploring philosophy, Anathem has an appropriate amount of humor, love interests, nuclear bombs, etc. as you might hope from reading Snow Crash or Diamond Age. I thoroughly enjoyed Anathem.
On the topic of made up words: I get made up words for made up things, but there's already a name for cell-phone in English: its "cell-phone". The narrator notes that the book has been translated
into English so I guess I'll blame the fictional translator. Anyway, I wasn't bothered by the made up words nearly as much as some folk. Its a good thing I'm long
out of college because I can easily imagine confusing the names of actual concepts and people with those from the book, like Hemn space for Hamming distance. Towards the beginning, the description
of slines and the post-post-apocalyptic setting reminded me briefly of Idiocracy.
Recently, I've been reading everything of Charles Stross that I can, including about a month ago, The Jennifer Morgue from the surprisingly awesome amalgamation genre of spy thriller and Lovecraft
horror. Its the second in a series set in a universe in which magic exists as a form of mathematics and follows Bob Howard programmer/hacker, cube dweller, and begrudging spy who works for a
government agency tasked to suppress this knowledge and protect the world from its use. For a taste, try a short story from the series that's freely available on Tor's website, Down on the Farm.
Coincidentally, both Anathem and the Bob Howard series take an interest in the world of Platonic ideals. In the case of Anathem (without spoiling anything) the universe of Platonic ideals, under a
different name of course, is debated by the characters to be either just a concept or an actual separate universe and later becomes the underpinning of major events in the book. In the Bob Howard
series, magic is applied mathematics that through particular proofs or computations awakens/disturbs/provokes unnamed horrors in the universe of Platonic ideals to produce some desired effect in
Bob's universe.
atrocity archives neal stephenson jennifer morgue plato bob howard anathem 2009 Mar 23, 9:41"So heres my trip to Chernobyl in pictures." Nice photo of the tree growing through the floor next to the chair. The whole set is like Fallout 3 but there's plants. Didn't realize plants could do
well in such a situation.
via:swannman photo history science nuclear russia chernobyl 2009 Jan 8, 5:45"It is a newly opened high-security data center run by one of Sweden's largest ISPs, located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city... The bunker was designed to be able to
withstand a near hit by a hydrogen bomb." Wait, you mean it can't take a direct hit? Lame.
sweden photos design datacenter underground bomb technology 2008 Dec 29, 2:20"But the most accurate account of the bomb's inner workings-an unnervingly detailed reconstruction, based on old photographs and documents-has been written by a sixty-one-year-old truck driver from
Waukesha, Wisconsin, named John Coster-Mullen, who was once a commercial photographer, and has never received a college degree."
via:swannman bomb atom-bomb atomic-bomb history goverment nuclear physics security research science 2008 Feb 11, 7:49Thanks Itrasbiel! FTA: "The site must be marked. Aside from the legal requirement, the site will be indelibly imprinted by the human activity associated with waste disposal. We must complete the
process by explaining what has been done and why. "
via:Itrasbiel future science time art nuclear government nuclear-waste 2008 Feb 2, 5:52NPR audio on: "The nuclear power industry wants a $50 billion safety net for new plants, but the old question of dealing with nuclear waste remains a problem. "
npr audio nuclear-waste radioactive-waste article 2008 Feb 2, 5:51FTA: "The purpose of the warning sign is to deter intentional or inadvertent human intrusion or interference at the site and to effectively communicate over the course of the next 10,000 years (the
projected duration of the volatility of the waste) that t
art sign warning radioactive-waste nuclear-waste 2008 Feb 2, 5:49A story of a program to bury nuclear waste that remains dangerous for 24k years and the associated challenges.
future science time art nuclear government nuclear-waste 2008 Feb 1, 9:47Those warning signs for the future (from the past). I'm actually looking for the article about creating a nuclear warning sign that can survive our society collapsing
future sign signs warning-sign warning image humor geek nano internet scifi science singularity technology flickr
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