top || fun | art | media | issues | net | tech | science | history | search | shop
This page was initially drafted on 31 July 1998 as a selection of the best links from the Robot Wisdom Weblog archives. A few layers of refinement have been added since then, with the aim of gradually constructing a concise introduction to net.literacy on each of these topics. So stay tuned!
very exciting times bio nano robots human genome cloning life extension space hubble
Scientific inquiry into a given phenomena goes thru a predictable life-cycle, from the first stirrings of curiosity thru systematic observation, exploratory experiment, hypothesis formation, and formal experiment and publication.
Unfortunately, the final stage of formal experiment and publication has been misrepresented as the whole of science, so many domains are bogged down in utterly unproductive make-work, when they should instead be doing systematic observation and description... with computer-modelling being the ideal language for the description.
Almost everything to do with the brain falls into this category of make-work...
science magazines
archive search
Discover magazine seems to have one of the best archives on the net, but it's so horribly arranged (many layers of menus, no useful anchortext) that it can't be browsed. The current ToC
ABC has a nice section for science news
A critique of science journalism
And Jared Diamond's two books look good
science newsgroups
What's most needed, imho, is inventories of human behavior, even including movie cliches
A somewhat in-depth look at how alife "norns" added neural nets and genetic algorithms to virtual pets
Sheesh! No sooner is an alife marketed, than a subculture arises devoted to torturing them
I'm hunting around for more on norns, mostly via alt.games.creatures. FAQ
Here's the technical details of how norns' neural-nets work
A detailed report on the next generation of norns, Creatures 2
Conceptual Knowledge Markup Language aims to build a Cyc-like ontology in XML
The Media Lab has at least one clear original thinker (alife-centered): http://www.ventrella.com/
A huge collection of chatterbots of all types
And many other sorts of bots
Nifty alife robot 'ants'
Computer animation of human forms, with many (unspectacular) bulky demos
The AI program "Aaron" has gotten really good at painting
Quicktimes of Sony robot dogs
Cute experiments: http://www.ventrella.com/Ideas/grammar.html
Code for AI experimenters: Thought Treasure
Scriptable meta-boardgame engine:
http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/17001.html
NASA makes science fun. (Atom-smashers, on the other hand, make science stupid.)
Too bad NASA is a mess.
NASA Watch keeps an avid, irreverent eye on NASA
Al Gore's WholeEarthCam, Triana. Triana's homepage. NASA Watch disses Triana.
nine planets
A tasteful page of links to Hubble Space Telescope pictures and news
And a possible thrilling breakthru on the Gaia hypothesis
But here's a long Deja post that gives a much scarier insider's view of Mir
Simulation of a real "Deep Impact" asteroid hit
The animations are worth the wait
If this is a satellite photo, howcome I've never seen anything like it before?
The globe logo above is a real satellite photo taken at a point 35,785 km directly above China, latitude 47 N, and longitude 117 E.
Richard Dawkins' "Selfish Gene" is probably the most influential science book of the last quarter-century. Overview of debate Here's how selfish-gene theory looks at economic problems, and disease and medicine, ditto.
Overview of genetically-modifed-food technology: http://search.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=425826216
At last week's American Urological Association meeting in San Diego, the researchers revealed that they have now succeeded in growing an entire bladder in a culture dish.
Armpit aphrodisiacs
Here's a thorough save-yourself-a-trip-to-the-doctor site
Places you can swim with dolphins
The Nation asks whether caffeine is really okay for kids
SciAm looks at indoor, household pollution
The New Scientist has the definitive special report on Mad Cow Disease
And an interesting profile of Venter the genome pirate. Another
Deriving physics from "Fisher Information": http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19990130/iisthelaw.html
Cosmology overview: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/12_19_98/Bob1.htm
Deep theory, cool tech: spintronics
Fiendishly clever design for microchip med-lab
After a long, dumb flamewar, I finally got a decent intro to quantum dots
This cell represents a new design in solar cells and is very efficient, despite the fact it is made from inexpensive, poor electrical quality oxide semiconductor nanocrystals presently manufactured in huge quantities for the ceramic and paint industries.In the nanocrystal regime, the unit cell is present, yet the electronic states are strongly quantum-confined in three dimensions. The excited electronic states and the band gap variation with size can be quantitatively calculated with advanced theory.
A page of bonobo links
Living with talking chimps
Koko the gorilla chats on AOL
PBS's Nature finally told the bonobo-story straight: their only sexual taboo is mother with grown son
A linguist named Robin Allott is exploring the gestural roots of speech, and defending the relationship of sound and meaning
The Language Construction Kit (for artificial languages) looks cool
Here's 49 Eskimo words for snow
Yhe news in Latin
The 150-year history of pronouns without gender bias
pure math: sci.math, sci.math.research, sci.nonlinear, sci.chaos, alt.fractals, alt.fractals.pictures, sci.fractals, bit.listserv.frac-l
information and systems theory: bionet.info-theory, alt.info-theory, sci.systems, comp.simulation, comp.theory, comp.theory.dynamic-sys, bit.listserv.geodesic
physics: alt.sci.physics.new-theories, sci.physics, sci.physics.particle, sci.physics.research, alt.fusion
chemistry: sci.chem, sci.materials.ceramics, sci.mech.fluids, sci.polymers, alt.materials.simulation
space and planetary: alt.earth.system.science, alt.sci.planetary, sci.space.science, sci.astro, sci.astro.amateur, sci.astro.fits, sci.astro.hubble, sci.astro.planetarium, sci.astro.research
earth science: sci.geo.fluids, sci.geo.geology, sci.geo.hydrology, sci.geo.meteorology, sci.geo.oceanography, alt.mining.recreational
origins of life: bionet.biophysics, sci.nanotech, comp.theory.cell-automata, comp.theory.self-org-sys, comp.ai.alife
evolution: bionet.molbio.evolution, sci.bio.evolution, alt.co-evolution, bionet.population-bio, sci.bio.paleontology
biology: sci.bio.misc, bionet.microbiology, bionet.protista, sci.bio.microbiology, bionet.cellbiol, bionet.immunology, sci.bio.botany, bionet.plants
origins of cognition: sci.logic, alt.memetics, alt.minsky.meme.meme.meme, alt.fan.hofstadter, sci.math.symbolic, alt.info-science, comp.theory.info-retrieval
vision: comp.ai.vision, comp.graphics.algorithms, comp.graphics, comp.graphics.misc, comp.graphics.visualization, sci.image.processing, sci.med.vision, sci.optics
language: comp.speech, comp.ai.nat-lang, sci.lang, sci.lang.translation, comp.text, alt.sci.physics.acoustics
social behavior: alt.sci.sociology, sci.anthropology, sci.anthropology.paleo, sci.bio.ethology, rec.pets.dogs.behavior, sci.econ, sci.econ.research, sci.military.moderated, sci.op-research
human psyche:
alt.psychology.adlerian,
alt.psychology.help,
alt.psychology.jung,
alt.psychology.transpersonal,
sci.psychology.personality,
sci.psychology.psychotherapy,
alt.hypnosis,
alt.psychology.jung,
alt.psychology.nlp,
alt.psychology.personality
top || fun | art | media | issues | net | tech | science | history | search | shop
[Robot Wisdom home page] (Feedback)