The Browser - Science & Technology

A Man on the Moon

FiveBooks — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:06:03 +0000

By Andrew Chaikin

It’s a history of the Apollo missions, telling why we went to the moon, what happened when we got there, and why we stopped going after Apollo 17. I could not put it down

Authored by

Andrew Chaikin

Marcus Chown

Philip Plait

Note To Our Readers: RSS Feeds | Robert Cottrell | The Browser | 28 March 2013

The Browser — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 16:06:01 +0000

As part of our move to a new platform and new hosting today, we are consolidating our RSS feeds into a one full feed, to which you can subscribe at this address (if it's not live now it will be soon): http://thebrowser.com/feed

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In 2000, The Year Formerly Known As The Future | David Bauer | Medium | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:05:26 +0000

"You wake up at 7am on a wonderful morning in early 2000. Dreamy as you are, you grab your phone to check the news and your email. Well, the news is that no one has texted you while you were sleeping and that your phone doesn’t connect to the internet. Because, well, you don’t have a smartphone. Just like everyone else doesn’t"

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Graphene: The Super Supercapacitor

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:14:41 +0000

Beauteous Beasts | Emily Anthes | Aeon | 25 March 2013

The Browser — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:10:23 +0000

On the science and morality of genetically modified animals. "GloFish mark the beginning of a new age, one in which we can directly manipulate the genomes of our creature companions to make them more alluring. Now that biotechnology is giving us new ways to reshape animals, how far should we allow ourselves to go in the pursuit of animal beauty?"

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Chess And 18th-Century Artificial Intelligence | Adam Gopnik | BBC | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 09:27:17 +0000

Reflections on The Mechanical Turk, an eighteenth-century device which purported to be a chess-playing machine, but which worked by means of a human chess-player concealed inside the cabinet. The inventor, Johann Maelzel, "picked up chess players on the run, wherever he happened to be, as Chuck Berry used to hire back-up bands on the road"

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Chemistry Of Kibble | Mary Roach | Popular Science | 07 March 2013

The Browser — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 07:35:18 +0000

How do you get dogs and cats to eat dry petfood? Much as you get humans to eat Cheerios. Coat cheap pellets with chemical flavours. Cats love pyrophosphates: "Most of the difference between Tuna Treat and Poultry Platter is in the name and the picture on the label". Dogs are trickier. What smells good to them doesn't usually smell good to humans

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Brains Of The Animal Kingdom | Frans De Waal | Wall Street Journal | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 07:13:13 +0000

"We have grossly underestimated both the scope and the scale of animal intelligence. Can an octopus use tools? Do chimpanzees have a sense of fairness? Can birds guess what others know? Do rats feel empathy for their friends? Just a few decades ago we would have answered 'No' to all such questions. Now we're not so sure"

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Colin McGinn, on intelligence

The Browser — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 10:38:42 +0000

Colin McGinn, on intelligence

"Many machines are already smarter than us — at dumb things"

One Of Us | John Jeremiah Sullivan | Lapham's Quarterly | 22 March 2013

The Browser — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 07:21:27 +0000

Short essay on the problem of animal consciousness and its place in religious, literary, philosophical and scientific debate down the centuries. "The animal kingdom is symphonic with mental activity, and of its millions of wavelengths, we’re born able to understand the minutest sliver. The least we can do is have a proper respect for our ignorance"

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