…on Ray Kurzweil. Derek Lowe is optimistic, but not that optimistic:

I agree that we can overcome the major diseases. I really do expect to put cancer, heart disease, the major infections, and the degenerative disorders in their place. But do I expect to do it by 20-flipping-19? No. I do not. I should not like to be forced to put a date on when I think we’ll have taken care of the diseases that are responsible for 95% of the mortality in the industrialized world. But I am willing to bet against it happening by 2019, and I will seriously entertain offers from anyone willing to take the other side of that bet.

I hope (as I suspect he does as well) that he’s wrong, but fear he’s right. Still have to exercise and watch the diet. On the other hand, I do think we’ve already made pretty good strides on this front, and they may be sufficient to keep me going until whatever date needed.

My thoughts on the latest Reuters scandal (at least “Routers” has never used fake pics…) over at TCS Daily, and what it may mean for the future of press photography.

Two, actually. Voicemail systems for credit cards that insist you use voice, and don’t offer a keypad option.

But this one also bugged me. After giving me the confirmation number, it asks “Can I repeat that for you?”

The answer is obviously “yes,” and never going to be “no,” but that obvious grammatical logic would put me in an infinite loop. It irks me as a pedant. I wish it would ask instead “should I repeat that for you?” If it were a human, I would joke with it, saying, of course you can, but you don’t need to. But with a machine, it’s simply irritating.

Researchers have been able to tailor semi-conductors one atom at a time.

A quick non-conference post here: oil from plankton?

Pretty cool, if it works. It would be nice to put the mullahs out of business.

[VIa email from Billy Beck]

Rear-wheel drive is once again in ascendance.

[Via Kaus]

Firefox 2.0 is ready for testing.

…offered by Technology Review against Aubrey de Grey’s theses doesn’t seem to be going so well. At least for the skeptics:

The judges

Self-cooling beer bottles.

When I was a kid, I wondered why you couldn’t have some kind of CO2 cartridge built in to the bottom of a can that when released and expanded would suck the heat out of the bottle. But I never bothered to run the numbers on it.

That’s the way you’ll take away my fast forward on my DVR. This guy seems to be in denial over the loss of his business model:

“I’m not so sure that the whole issue really is one of commercial avoidance,” Shaw said. “It really is a matter of convenience–so you don’t miss your favorite show. And quite frankly, we’re just training a new generation of viewers to skip commercials because they can. I’m not sure that the driving reason to get a DVR in the first place is just to skip commercials. I don’t fundamentally believe that. People can understand in order to have convenience and on-demand (options), that you can’t skip commercials.”

No, of course not. No one wants a DVR to be able to skip commercials.