Hat tip to Megan McArdle .

Microsoft is unveiling IE8, Internet Explorer 8, which has privacy feature for browsing than will hurt Google's main business: targeted search ads.

From the Financial Times :

Microsoft has unveiled its Internet Explorer 8 browser equipped with a privacy feature that could threaten the advertising model of web search rivals such as Google.

Crossposted at MLW

There has been a lot of talk recently about the “energy crisis”. I wonder if this is the same energy crisis we heard about in the 70’s? If it is then that means for over 30 years instead of solving our domestic energy needs, we have ignored them and allowed them to grow. In 1970 we were importing about 24% of the oil we used and the embargo back then threw our economy into a tail-spin, imagine what would happen today when we import about 70%. Rather than using the past 30 plus years to develop new or existing technologies to reduce or break our dependence on oil, we have elected to do something worse than nothing. Instead of our vehicles getting smaller and more fuel efficient during this time they have actually gotten larger.

Hat tip to Arnold Kling who cites a great thought experiment from unqualified reservations . This experiment is right up my alley because it forms part of the bedrock of my perspective on society, progress and governance. I've touched on this general area of thinking in the past in various conversations and in many forms.

Clean rooms are special environments designed to have less contaminants in the air than you find in everyday life. In some cases much less. Clean rooms are used for a variety of purposes most notably scientific research and engineering in the fields of biology and microelectronics. I'm most familiar with the latter and will focus on that (if anyone has experience with bio clean rooms please chime in in the comments).

a biotech clean room

this is the first installment of a science based weekly post intended to complement Brendan's weekend Art threads. While the topics are not intended to be strictly partisan, I hope to choose topics that have broader implications beyond mere knowledge of the physical action of the universe. Feel free to delve into the politics in comments. :)

Human Chimera

There are a number of metrics which are associated with the concept of identity. Your birthday (and consequently your age), dental records, fingerprints, retinal patterns, and so on, are considered part of a biometric signature that helps distinguish you from everyone else. Indeed they can be said to be the source of your identity, from a legal standpoint.

I took the liberty in creating an SC Folding@Home team .

For those of you not familiar with F@H, I'll let their FAQ do the talking. Essentially, you run a program that runs only when you are not actively using your computer. It does complex mathematical calculations involved in protein folding, which has applications in treating many diseases.

In the used-to-be-popular TV show Who wants to be a millionaire? contestants had the option of using an "ask the audience" lifeline . In the US version, the audience as a whole almost always indicated the correct response. The idea that by putting enough people together we can somehow aggregate their knowledge is a popular one, and certainly true on some level. On the other hand, anyone who has sat through one too many meetings about team building or has tried to convince a stubborn majority they've made a mistake knows that sometimes a whole bunch of people are just a whole bunch of wrong or a whole bunch of dumb =) Definitive proof below the fold...

In case anybody has any interest in how a real materials analysis laboratory works I thought I might write a short primer.

In TV and movies labs often have mystic special tools that can look at anything and tell you everything. If only life worked that way. In real life you have to use a variety of different techniques to look at different materials, different phases of matter, and to determine different kinds of information.

Both my parents worked in biofeedback in different ways. My father was a clinical psychologist at the Menninger Clinic (retired now). My mother works as an occupational therapist (similar to a physical therapist although a somewhat different focus). Since an early age I've been taught simple biofeedback techniques and the underlying psycho-physiological mechanisms. This diary is an explanation of the hows and whys on the topic.

I've known no small number of people for whom technology and technological innovation has, essentially, a religious element. Actually it is sort of surprising that I'm not that way myself. My first computer was a TRS-80 (the "trash-80"). In elementary school I wanted to be an astrophysicist. I love sci-fi. I work for a company whose work is based on Moore's Law. I'm trying to teach myself programming right now because I love the capabilities it brings. If anyone should be an adherent to the church of technology ascendant, it should be me.

But I'm not.

I have been traveling through Second Life checking out all the political sites and events, accumulating a lot of photos that I have yet to sort and categorize. But last night's meeting was well attended and FUN (after an hour plus of chat on the patio, we moved to the dancefloor and chatted some more), so I figured I'd just throw what I have ready so far into a slide show and post it. Lots more to come.

This slideshow version will stop if you run your cursor over it.

Some random resources and excerpts for a debate on whether NASA should send humans to Mars.

When dealing with an issue like greenhouse gas-induced climate change, productive discussion needs to stay focused on the practical questions: what is the general nature of the risk, and how can we mitigate the risk. Discussions of climate change often become sidetracked by non-productive investigations into the detailed nature of the risk, which are often initiated by individuals who are afraid that general recognition of risk implies that particular strategies/policies must be adopted. I hope to keep this discussion on track by starting with these two declarations:

Any student of humanity should be familiar with these "10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies ". This list comes from PsyBlog. While I'm generally disappointed with Internet science popularization, this blog seems like it provides a good entry point to psychological studies. Several of these studies are relevant to the topics we discuss here, but three were particularly interesting to me:

From David Freddoso :

Why do I live like this? It’s really just because I’m cheap as hell and way too busy to care about things like “being comfortable.”

I pretty much fall into the same category. Despite my ownership of a "Pave the Whales" T-shirt, I probably have a much lower "environmental impact" than many self-proclaimed "environmentalists."

Promoted by Brendan -- philosophical musings for a rainy Wednesday

Does free will exist, or is it merely an illusion? This is a question that has been debated for thousands of years. For most of this time, it was largely a philosophical question, but as human knowledge has advanced, it has become more and more a question of science as well.

The research into causes of homosexuality strongly suggests there is a genetic component involved in orientation. Given that it means that we can and will be able to exert a measure of control on incidence of homosexuality in what is most likely the very near future.

But what does that mean on a human level? What does it mean to determine a set of alleles that contribute to homosexuality and then be able to detect their presence within a zygote?

Take a second to really think about what you would do in each situation:

Promoted by Ender

Interesting article at the New York Times Freakonomics blog. They "asked a few smart people a very straightforward two-part question: What should the U.S. government be doing about global warming, and what should individuals be doing?" I think it's well worth a read. The reader comments there are next to useless, so perhaps we here at Swords Crossed might be able to generate a better discussion.

We often discuss the issue of ‘Climate Change’ on this site, but I for one always felt slightly intimidated by the science. The problem of where to find primers and reports I found to be one of the biggest obstacles in furthering my own understanding of this topic.

I have gathered in this diary some of the necessary studies for not only discussing this issue, but to comprehend the basics of the problem we are faced with. This diary will serve as a ‘wiki’ for our future debates and perhaps some fun recreational reading for that Fall vacation.

Feel free to add any other resources you discover in the comments below.

The space race between the US and the USSR was a source of national pride, led to important scientific advances, and spurred critical technological developments with widespread applications. Expansion on that frontier is currently stalled, since the costs to push towards Mars are (apologies) astronomical. There's a frontier closer to home that is almost equally unexplored, that offers the potential of enormous resources: the world at the bottom of the oceans. Our competitor in this race is Russia, and we're already losing.