Record Cold

United Kingdom experiences its coldest December in 100 years.

The Future is Closer Than You Think

Michael Anissimov discusses the "Top Ten Transhumanist Technologies". All of them seemed like pipedreams only a decade ago. Now, to many in the know, most of them are all but inevitable, and sooner than most are prepared to believe.

Anyone who has compared the amazingly realistic graphics of today's electronic games or animated motion pictures to those of just a decade ago will have no problem believing this prediction by Anissimov:

Sometime in the 2020s, reality simulations will become so high-resolution and immersive that they'll start to get indistinguishable from the real thing.
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In the mid-to-late 2020s, I expect full-body, high quality haptic VR suits to be affordable to the average person in developed countries, obtained either from your local Wal-Mart or perhaps printed right out of a desktop nanofactory after payment of a fee. For more on this, here is one scientific paper, "Towards full-body haptic feedback".

Read the whole thing.

Those Amazing Stem Cells

Curing paralyzed monkeys with...stem cells. Truly amazing.

Do "Honey Traps" Really Exist?

Just ask Julian Assange.

Discover.com:

"Why Scientific Studies Are So Often Wrong".

Well, except the alarmist studies predicting the demise of humanity unless we restrict CO2 emissions. Those studies are, of course, spot on.