Are there really ethical questions about bringing back extinct animals?

Earlier today I wrote about the possible de-extinction of the wooly mammoth. A quote that I used and that most people who wrote about the story used, bothered me but in the context of a news story I couldn’t really get into that. Professor Alex Greenwood, an ancient DNA expert from the Leibniz Institute for…

Of course Al Gore shouldn’t run for president, don’t be absurd

In recent days a lot of speculation about a potential 2016 run for the White House by Al Gore have surfaced. I don’t know where these rumors started, David A. Graham at the Atlantic has a rundown of some of the possible culprits. Wherever the rumors started, I have to believe that it’s an idea…

If it seems a lot of new robots are designed for ‘search and rescue’, there’s a good reason for it

If you read much robotics news, you’ll hear a lot about “search and rescue” applications. It seems to be the first thing that engineers mention when discussing potential uses for a new design. There is certainly nothing wrong with search and rescue, it’s a worthy application that will likely save a lot of lives. However,…

Pi day and May the 4th should both be official national holidays

There are lots of holidays; religious holidays, historic holidays, nationalistic holidays and miscellaneous others. For the 21st century, we should add Pi day and May the fourth and not just to celebrate pi and Star Wars. For the rest of the 21st century and for the foreseeable future, the things that are going to matter…

It sounds like Bill Nye has come around on genetically modified (GM) crops

I like Bill Nye, but it has bothered me for some time that he was anti-GMO. Nye has been a tireless defender of science when it comes to things like climate change and evolution. So it bothered me that he chose to cherry pick the science when it came to genetics. About 95 percent of…

Google considers ranking sites based on accuracy, Fox news isn’t happy

Last week a couple of Google researchers published a paper on the possibility of fact checking websites and ranking search results based on accuracy instead of possibility. Personally I’m thrilled with the idea. I’m tired of doing a search on Google and then having to sift through the pseudo science, myths and conspiracy theories. It…

There is absolutely no reason to fear extraterrestrial life

I like Elon Musk, I really do. I’m a fan of Solar City, Tesla, SpaceX and even the Hyperloop. However, Musk seems to have a new hobby which I am not a big fan of; giving people new things to be afraid of, almost out of thin air. Even without Musk’s help people are really…

Yes please! Google considers ranking pages by truthiness instead of popularity

Currently popularity is crucial to the way things are ranked on Google. The more people link to something, the more important Google’s search algorithm thinks it is. The problem is that the current method leads to a lot of bad information being rated really highly. A successful hoax will get linked to by people who…