The Smug Baldy Speaks

What do you look for in a wordpress theme? Here, I share some of my thoughts on this and other questions about themes and plugins.

Last July, I wrote in favor of bringing back the Congressional Office of Techchnology Assessment, or OTA. This was the non-partisan, scientific advisory body that was eliminated in 1995 by Newt Gingrich and other newly empowered republicans. As we now know, during the subsequent years, including the entire tenure of the Bush administration, [...]

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, believes that we’re entering a new age of scientific understanding that renders the “old” scientific method obsolete. The reason? We now live in an age where petabytes of data are available, and we can now use powerful computer and mathematical models to find heretofore unanticipated correlations.
This [...]

There’s a nice post on ArsTechnica today about the 2-year cost of the iPhone 3G. They compared the new iPhone 3G with other smart phones and calculated the TCO for a two year period. The upside - it’s not any more expensive than some other smart phones. The down side, over a [...]

In this video, Pablos Holman, a futurist and hacker shows how simple it is to steal RFID-enabled credit card information using an RFID reader he bought for about $8. RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are very hot right now as they allow companies to streamline their inventory systems. They’re also showing up in [...]

Today, Gizmodo is reporting on a new chip camera than can take 3D pictures. (see the original story on cNet). They speculate that the new technology could show up in digital camera in the near future, and may be potentially useful in medical sensors, and face recognition applications.
That may be so, but roughly half [...]