Articles about Science&Technology
Notes From the Hard-Hat Tour of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Resistance is futile. Photo by James Williford
As promised, here is intern James Williford’s dispatch from the Perot Museum of Nature and Science:
The Newest Cube To Come to Dallas
By James Williford
“A large cube floating over a landscaped plinth.” That’s one of the phrases that the public relations folks at the new Perot Museum of Nature and Science chose to describe the building that, over the last two years, has risen out of the ground in downtown Dallas. “Plinth,” the informational packet handed out at today’s media tour helpfully explained, means “roof” — at least, according to whatever dictionary the Perot PR team relies on, that’s what it means. So we’re to imagine this rather severe-looking, 170-foot-high, 180,000-square-foot hexahedron hovering just above its 4.7-acre site next to Victory Park. Yes, hovering.
Pics of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science
Intern James Williford will be along a moment to give us a full account, but here are a couple photos from today’s hard-hat tour of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science. I can tell you two things, though, right here: 1) Construction continues apace. They will have their certificate of occupancy probably sometime in April, and the early 2013 estimate for the official opening is easily within reach. And 2) this place is going to be awesome.
Tech Wildcatters Named in Forbes’ List of 10 Hottest Startup Incubators
I’m about two weeks late to this, so I apologize. But Dallas’ own Tech Wildcatters was named on Forbes‘ list of 10 Hottest Startup Incubators. You know Tech Wildcatters and its co-founder Gabriella Draney from this DCEO article. It’s great to see a local tech-based business get some kudos.
SMU Goes Hunting for Geothermal Energy With Help From Google
With a grant from Google.org, SMU researches have mapped the country’s potential for geothermal energy. The results are getting some national play. Hello, East Texas.
My Son’s New Love: Siri
Jordan (the shadowy figure out front), with his buddy, Nate, outside the Knox Street Apple store last night.
I’m worried about my son. It’s not just because he camped out all night at the Apple store on Knox Street, so he could be among the first to buy the new iPhone 4S this morning. It’s because Jordan, who’s 17, has apparently fallen in love with Siri, the phone’s new voice-activated personal assistant.
All day he’s been babbling meaningless questions and requests into his phone: “Siri, how old is the earth?” “Siri, can you wake me up at 4 p.m.?” “Siri, what is the weather like in Chicago?” “Siri, tell me a joke.” (”Two iPhones walked into a bar …,” Siri replied.)
I keep thinking he’ll get bored with it, but after his latest question, I’m not so sure. “Siri, I love you,” Jordan said. “Will you marry me?” Answered Siri, who claims to be genderless, “I think we should just be friends.”
Leading Off (10/3/11)
Peter Gent, North Dallas Forty Novelist, Dies: The former receiver for the Dallas Cowboys who penned the behind the locker room door exposé of football’s rough and tumble youth, North Dallas Forty, died Friday. He was 69.
Perry Tries to Downplay Racist Name of Family’s Hunting Camp: So who had a worse weekend, Tony Romo, who threw three interceptions to lay the ground for the worst collapse in Cowboys history, or Rick Perry, whose family’s hunting camp, we learn, has been long known by a racial slur? Perry spent much of the weekend denying the report.
UT Southwestern Professor Shares Nobel Prize for Medicine: Bruce Beutler, who will soon rejoin the faculty of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine along with Frenchman Jules Hoffman and Canadian Ralph Steinman for their work on immune system defenses. His most important discoveries were made, in part, during a previous stint at UT Southwestern, when he discovered a molecule that plays a role in the nervous system’s first line of defense against disease.
Sitting Will Kill You
Tim standing at his computer.
We all know that sitting will kill you. Some of us took the news a little more to heart than others. Here’s Tim with his new super desk that raises and lowers as he stands and sits. He’s not going to start out standing all day. He’s done research. He has to ease into it. Though it makes me a little nervous to sit next to someone who’s standing all day, it’s way worse for Laura, who sits across from him. Her reaction to seeing this? “OH, NO!” And his response? “I look at you less.”
University of Texas at Austin Scientists Create Schizophrenic Computer
So UT-Austin scientists have a computer with a neural network, nicknamed DISCERN. That sentence should send chills (of excitement and absolute terror) down your spine.
These scientists decided, for kicks I guess, to see if they could get their little electronic monster to suffer the symptoms of schizophrenia. According to this Forbes blog post:
What they discovered is that, like the schizophrenics, the DISCERN program had trouble remembering which story it was talking about, and got elements of the different stories confused with each other. The DISCERN program also showed other symptoms of schizophrenia, such as switching back and forth between third and first person, abruptly changing sentences, and just providing jumbled responses.
Have they cracked the code of determining why Skynet will turn against us?
TWU Research: Eat More Blueberries
In today’s installment of overblown science news sure to be misrepresented by media outlets nationwide (including here):
A researcher at Texas Woman’s University in Denton has found that the high polyphenol content in blueberries could help fight obesity. So, local grocers, get ready for a run on your produce sections as people embrace a berry-heavy diet.
Let us hope that no one takes this too far and ends up like poor Violet Beauregarde:
What In Heck Happened to David Brooks?
OK. So after reading the DMN’s Sunday Q&A with him and Liz’s interesting interview yesterday and after attending his DMA Arts & Letters Live talk in Dallas last night, I’m still not sure what the hell David Brooks is talking about with his new book, The Social Animal. The conservative scribe, described by one Dallas CEO as “the only New York Times columnist I can read without throwing up afterward,” was characteristically smart and modest and funny and insightful, for awhile. But then, he started talking up this new book that apparently describes new research on our emotions and our “unconscious” minds, and how it has the potential to change U.S. politics for the better. At least, I think that was his point.
Brooks rocketed to fame with 2000’s Bobos in Paradise, a hilarious and prescient look at America’s new bourgeois-bohemian elite. And last night, in a prelude to the Social Animal discussion, he was at his old best scattershooting at the Bobos: How, for example, it’s OK for them to drive a “luxury” car like a Volvo or a Saab–”so long as it’s from a country that’s hostile to U.S. foreign policy.” Then, unfortunately, he launched into this long discussion of some woman named Erica–apparently this is a character he made up for the new book–who was empathetic and purposeful and who used her emotions to … do something sort of important with her life, but it wasn’t really clear what it was.
Amy Chyao Will Be Obama’s Guest Tuesday
This month’s Person of Interest is Amy Chyao, a very smart 16-year-old. Though she thinks teaching herself chemistry isn’t a “big deal,” I do. And though she doesn’t consider herself a genius, I do. (And I’m not gonna lie, I was a little intimidated while interviewing her, especially when she started talking about nanotubes.)
Now comes word that Chyao is going to sit in the same box as Michelle Obama at Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. I’m sure she realizes that this is truly a big deal.
Fonality moving HQ from Los Angeles to Plano
In the most recent issue of D CEO, a massive 50-page editorial package showcased the DFW technology industry and explained why the area attracts so many companies in that realm. Now comes word that Fonality, a high-tech communications company out of Los Angeles, is moving its headquarters to Plano.
Coincidence? I think not.
According to a PR rep, Fonality aims to do for business communications what companies such as SalesForce.com and NetSuite has done for the customer relations management space: move it to the cloud. It’s funded by Draper Fisher Jurveston, Intel Capital, and Azure Capital Partners. Fonality has created 75 jobs here since August. Its new HQ is at 5601 Granite Pkwy. in Plano.
Map of the Day: Dallas Lags in UFO Sightings
C’mon, people. We can do better than this. Get your eyes off the ground. Look up at the sky. And believe.
The Tea Party: A New Organizational Model
What makes the Tea Party unique, argues Jonathon Rauch in the National Journal, is not its politics, but its leaderless organizational style. Its model is based not on a political tract but on a business book called The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations. The spider, like almost organizations, has a head; crush the head and you kill the spider. The starfish has no head; its arms have their own minds. Almost all organizations have heads. The Tea Party does not — and in that lies its strength.
Organizers in Dallas are setting up a tea party in every ZIP code. “If the beauty of the tea party is decentralization,” says Ken Emanuelson, a member of the Dallas steering committee, “in large metro areas like Dallas, the decentralization needs to go well below the metro area. It needs to go down into the neighborhoods. We go to our neighborhood groups, and we get our agenda from them.” Asked how many neighborhood tea parties exist in the Dallas area, another citywide coordinator replied, “I don’t even know.”
What makes the Tea Party so befuddling to politicians, lobbyists, and operatives like Karl Rove, Rauch writes, is that there is nobody to negotiate with. So it is hard to figure out how to co-opt it. Moreover, it is a harbinger of things to come — in politics, in business, in social networking.
I think we are just beginning to understand how radically the internet is changing the norms of society. This is going to be fascinating to watch.
Preston Hollow People Talks to One Half of Crime-Recording Couple
On Good Morning America tomorrow, you’ll be able to see Vincent Hunter discuss how he captured footage of two thugs breaking into his Royal Park Estates home using iCam. (Hunter then posted the footage on YouTube.) Preston Hollow People’s Claire St. Amant got Hunter’s wife, Janet, on the horn today for a preview.
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