I think that one of the best ways for a fan to express themselves is through a personal license plate. I have an Isaac Asimov themed plate, and my wife has one dedicated to The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. Yesterday my mother-in-law was riding in her car when her husband spotted one of the coolest license plates ever with a decal above it to match. AT-AT is the perfect license plate befitting a true Star Wars fan. She promptly posted it on her blog, which was forwarded to me by my wife via StumbleUpon. I had to get the full story from the source, and when I did she said she’d send me all 3 pictures. Here they are…
I noticed today on my RSS feed for TheForce.net there was a news blurb about Luke’s prosthetic hand from Star Wars might soon become a reality. I tried clicking on the full article located at MSN but for some reason it didn’t come up for me. After a google search I found an article located on the IEEE Spectrum site that had more information. The prosthetic arm was nicknamed “Luke Arm” by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway. An interesting video found via Engadget shows the arm in use and explains the modular approach used in manufacturing. It looks like the project’s fate lies in the hands of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which has funded the first two phases. If clinical trials are approved, it is possible that veterans could have access to these as early as next year.
Tonight with my wife, I watched an interesting episode of Nova titled “The World’s Smartest Machine.” Romantic, right? You can tell we are a couple of geeks at heart. Being a huge fan of Asimov and his robot creations, I am continually amazed at the progress of robotics and artificial intelligence. As a kid I was playing chess as early as the 3rd grade. I’ve always thought of myself as a pretty good chess player. When I heard about a computer that supposedly could beat a world champion chess player, I was intrigued. Garry Kasparov battled IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in 1996 and won, however he eventually lost a rematch in 1997. Well, IBM is back at it, this time taking on Jeopardy. Nova takes us behind the scenes with the developers of “Watson,” the next step in AI. I was disappointed when the episode ended and it didn’t say who won. I didn’t realize until logging on PBS.org that the contest actually was taking place while I was watching Nova (on my media center PC). After some frantic Google searches, I eventually came across a Twitter feed with a link to a Youtube posting of the episode. This was not quite 2 hours after the episode aired! Isn’t technology great? I expect the Youtube post to be served a DMCA take down, so watch it soon if you plan on it. In addition to the episode at the end of this post, I’ve embedded the Nova preview and an humorous parody of the challenges Watson overcame during his development. I suggest watching the Nova episode first. If you are at all interested in AI, you must check these out!
There are two more nights to the match, airing Tuesday February 15th, and Wednesday the 16th. Be sure to check them out, along with some live blogging on PBS.org. I find myself rooting for Watson, not because I want to see humans defeated, but because I want to see humans capable of making something smart enough to do it. Who do you think will win? Who do you want to win?
Ok, so it’s been a couple months since I went to see Star Trek: Into Darkness, but I figure I should at least give it a brief review. I managed to go see it almost at the last showing before it got pulled from the theaters. If I had to compare it to the original reboot [Star Trek (2009], which it appears I never reviewed, I would say it was almost as good. There’s quite a bit of action, a little comedy, and just a sprinkling of romance. I did not really read anything about the movie ahead of time, so was a bit surprised when the identity of the terrorist was revealed. (more…)
