computers
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Afternoon Inquisition
AI: National Day of Unplugging
I’d like to claim there was no post yesterday because we were observing the National Day of Unplugging. Um, did you even know there was a National Day of Unplugging this weekend? “The National Day of Unplugging is a 24 hour period – running from sunset to sunset – and starts on the first Friday in March. The project is…
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Skepticism
Reminder: Skepchick Book Club on Sunday
Has it been almost a month already? Just in case you forgot to schedule it in your social calendar, this is a reminder that the Skepchick Book Club is this Sunday, June 17th, at 11 am, and we will be discussing The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer by David Leavitt. We have…
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Science
Debugging Grace Hopper
Do you know who Grace Hopper is? And that she has an entomological connection? I should give her the proper title–Rear Admiral Hopper. (A biography described her as “Admiral of the Cybersea.”) Hopper received a PhD in Mathematics from Yale University in 1934, which could not have been easy. She left a faculty position at Vassar to join the Navy…
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Scientists are not psychics
I was shown this picture recently: (click for larger picture in new window) It’s from a 1954 Popular Mechanics magazine. Some scientists at RAND made a model of what they predicted a home computer would look like 50 years later. Apparently that’s not true. It’s from a submarine. That explains the steering wheels. My friends and I had gotten to the point of…
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