M Thomas Apple Author Page

Science fiction, actual science, history, and personal ranting about life, the universe, and everything

Quantum downloading the brain

April 16, 2019
MThomas

scientists-quantum-material-download-brain-1200x630

The research is in early stages, but it invokes ideas like uploading brains to the cloud or hooking people up to a computer to track deep health metrics…

Hm. This sounds like an idea for a cool science fiction

Ah.

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https://futurism.com/the-byte/scientists-quantum-material-download-brain?fbclid=IwAR0gsFggMSQ6RF-poI8QV5rNGpko5HylTbuZyCOM_Uxh0LhV5hnFkUv2xgw

Sea Levels Are Rising. Time to Build … Floating Cities?

April 6, 2019
MThomas

At the core of Oceanix City is a 4.5-acre hexagonal floating platform that is meant to host up to 300 people. 

Hmm, where have I seen this before….

And just think, to accommodate all of Manhattan, we only need to make…uh…

another 5,549 of them!

Compared to convincing the powers that be that climate change is real and we’re all screwed…piece of cake!

— Read on www.wired.com/story/sea-levels-are-rising-time-to-build-floating-cities/amp

The Race for Your Face: Recognize this?

April 4, 2019
MThomas

Face

The Chinese government uses facial recognition for large-scale surveillance in public CCTV cameras, both to catch criminals and monitor the behavior of all individuals with the intent of turning the data into a score. Seemingly harmless offenses like buying too many video games or jaywalking can lower your score. China uses that score for a sort of “social credit” system that determines whether the individual should be allowed to get a loan, buy a house or even much simpler things like board a plane or access the internet.

Yeah. That’s a real advantage for human rights and democracy. And when the hackers get involved, it’ll lead to an entirely new definition of the term “face lift.”

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/facial-recognition-apple-amazon-google-and-the-race-for-your-face-facebook/?ftag=CAD-04-10aac3a&bhid=100000000000000000000000000831528

Gateway now includes Canada, eh

April 3, 2019
MThomas

_105864206_gateway_orion_approaching

Now that Trudeau has agreed to help out, if anything goes wrong we can always “Blame Canada!”

No, no, it’s a joke, alright, eh. Sorry, sorry.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47426798

Black holes, Hawking radiation, and quantum physics: Feeling dense yet?

March 8, 2019
MThomas

Modern physics dictates that, after being consumed, information about this matter should be forever lost to the universe. But a new experiment suggests that there might be a way to use quantum mechanics to gain some insight into the interior of a black hole.

Black hole sun / won’t you come / to drive away the rain? 🎶

www.space.com/black-hole-information-paradox.html

Why bother looking for aliens? Because we’re probably not all that smart

March 5, 2019
MThomas

[A]n obvious obstacle to identifying our neighbors is the tendency to limit our imagination to what we already know. But this should not necessarily remain the case in the future.

Frankly, I think it’s high time that somebody invent the warp drive so that the Vulcans will finally notice us.

blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/are-we-really-the-smartest-kid-on-the-cosmic-block/

Enter the Dragon! It’s a new mating ritual?

March 3, 2019
MThomas

“Attachment was made to a new type of mating adaptor on the ISS’s Harmony module. ”

Yes, we’ve matured so much as a species that we still insist on resorting to sexual metaphors to describe intricate technological details on our space vehicles.

But anyways, good for Space X and NASA. Now let’s hope other companies get into the act so we can kickstart this whole expand and populate the galaxy thing.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47430432

The Stainless Steel Musk Strikes Again!

January 23, 2019
MThomas

He described the concept as a “stainless-steel sandwich” that can “bleed water…fuel” through tiny holes on its surface to keep it cool as it enters the Martian atmosphere at breakneck speeds.

screen shot 2019-01-23 at 2.17.40 pm

Not sure, but I don’t think there are a lot of people who want to travel to Mars inside a sandwich…

www.inverse.com/article/52605-starship-spacex-elon-musk-stainless-steel

The Great American Rake Off

November 20, 2018
MThomas

Just gonna post this here for posterity…

On “En”

March 29, 2016
MThomas

DSC00976I’ve been meaning to add a personal essay page to my web site for stories that didn’t seem to fit into any neat categories. The immediate impetus is an essay that was recently “rejected” by my former graduate program’s in-house literary journal…probably because it’s an essay and not a short story (I posted elsewhere an article about the quirkiness of the English-speaking world’s insistence on an artificial separation of “fiction” and “nonfiction”).

Rather than wait up to half a year to see whether I could get it published online in a magazine (most of which seem to only publish US-centric, “woe is me” or “OMG look at THIS” sensationalist drivel) I thought that at least I could share it here…

The essay is “En” (縁), a topic that Asians (particularly those in Confucian-influenced societies) know a lot about. I first encountered the concept as a teaching assistant in Gojo High School, Nara, about 15 years ago. Almost like a previous life. Maybe it was…

Check it out here.

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