Archive for the 'Science and Technology' Category

Water on the Brain

18/01/2007

A Californian woman has died after taking part in a water-drinking contest
It just goes to show that too much of anything is not good for you. This isn’t the first time I’d heard this, apparently drinking too much in too short space of time overwhelms the kidneys, who can’t extract it fast enough, the [...]

Man on the Moon

12/01/2007

Following on in the space theme (gettit?), a ‘consortium of space interests’ has tabled some ideas for the UK to have it’s own mission to the moon. Not to land on it, obviously, but to slam some probs into it so we can get a better idea of what it is made of. [...]

The Return of Tomorrow’s World

6/01/2007

As I kid I used to watch Tomorrow’s World all the time, many of my friends still remember it (ask anyone in the tech world of a certain age if they remember when the Sony minidisc debuted and the person demonstrating it opened the player, removed the disc and put it back in without the [...]

Lack of Vision

3/01/2007

Wandering around the BBC site today I ran across an article about James Dyson, the man who invented the cyclone vacuum cleaner, and took on the entire industry in the process. Dyson is one of those home inventors and tinkerers that Britain is famous for and one who made good. The story is [...]

Wireless Power

20/11/2006

At last, the final cable may be removed. No need to recharge, or if you do, just move to an area with an induction loop and it’ll recharge you devices while they’re in your pocket. As the article notes, Nikola Tesla had come up with this idea a long time back, which is [...]

Shuttle Bug

18/11/2006

You remember all the fuss over the Y2K (Year 2000) bug where the world was supposed to end because computers wouldn’t be able to handle the change in year because all the programs were written with only a two number date format so a computer thought the 00 after 1999 was 1900 not 2000? [...]

Return of the Blimp

12/11/2006

I remember seeing some stuff about a German company trying to resurrect the airship (AKA zeppelins) several years ago, I think it was a TV show. The reason I bring this up is because there was an article in the BBC Online magazine last Friday about, you guessed it, airships.
It doesn’t really say much, [...]

The Silent Plane

11/11/2006

The BBC has an article on the invention of a quieter, greener plane developed by a group of British and US scientists based at the University of Cambridge and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There’s also a description of how it works.
Don’t hold your breath on it appearing though, many companies have a vested [...]

Measuring Speed

8/10/2006

It occurred to me today that with the world getting faster (Virgin Galactic were showing off their new passenger craft) we don’t seem to have many ways for covering the new description of speeds. For cars we go with miles or kilometres per hour, even aircraft use it. For fast aircraft we use [...]

All Hail Orion

21/09/2006

You may have noticed recently that NASA has announced the name of the craft that will form the backbone of the programme to return to the moon, they’re calling it Orion.
Most people are aware of NASA’s Apollo spacecraft that took part in their last lunar missions, they first delivered man to the moon. Orion [...]