Busting The Intellectual Echo Chamber

You’re smart.  So is everyone else.  Mostly.  The problem with smart people is they like to talk to other smart people in really smart ways.  That has always bugged me.  Perhaps that is why I find this New York Times article from Nicholas Kristof so interesting.  In the article he calls outs the academic profession…

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Mike’s Facility Engineering Technology Forecast

As someone who has dabbled in a great many engineering disciplines and industries, I am most enamored with gadgets, gizmos and tech.  But I have also been in awe of designing and constructing amazing buildings and public works infrastructure.  Putting these two together is something I am really finding fascinating.  I am going to start…

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Tangoing With Robo-Termites

S.T.E.A.M. Power Podcast #37 22 February 2014 http://greenshoegarage.com/podcast/2014/STEAM_0037_22FEB14.mp3 Google Learns To Tango  |  YouTube* Harvard’s Robot Termites NASA/MIT Beam Us From the Earth to the Moon at 622 Mbps One Step Closer To Nuclear Fusion [Download] *Sorry, did not know that the Hangouts YouTube app didn’t push the video out.  Click this link to see…

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What’s Lost If We Don’t Have Net Neutrality

The freewheeling nature, anonymity and openness of the Internet is what has made it successful and a beacon for innovation.  It is democracy in “tangible” form.  It is the single greatest equalizer ever invented, not in the Robin Hood sense of taking from the rich and giving to the poor; but rather by giving everyone…

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Of Generalists and Specialists

General Omar Bradley was called the “Soldier’s General”.  He also, perhaps unwittingly, professed two great truths when it comes to leading technology teams. “We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.” “I learned that good judgment comes from experience and that experience grows out of…

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A Programmer, Scientist, and Engineer Walk Into A Bar

S.T.E.A.M. Power Podcast #36 9 February 2014 http://greenshoegarage.com/podcast/2014/STEAM_0036_9FEB14.mp3 Black Holes, X-Rays, and Heating the Early Universe CERN Plans for LHC 2.0 Tiny Numbers, Big Impacts What is MEMS? Materials That Perform Calculus With Light Graphene:  Electronics Savior or Not? Civil Engineering Goes 3D Miami’s First Underground Tunnel | Pics New 21st Century Jobs Need At…

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Grey Is The New Black

S.T.E.A.M. Power Podcast #35 2 February 2014 http://greenshoegarage.com/podcast/2014/STEAM_0035_2FEB14.mp3 Solar Winds Make It Rain Maybe Black Holes Aren’t So Black Looking At The Cosmic Web of Dark Matter 1+2+3+ Infinity = -1/12!?!?  Say what? Man’s First Landing on a Comet Engineer Disciplines Overview Arduino Screwshield (Wingshield) Thermistors | Electrical4U.com Thermistor Tutorial [Download] Check out our YouTube Channel and…

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Get Your Plot.ly On (Updated)

A few years back I was introduced to a web service called Pachube (pronounced Patch Bay) then became Cosm, then  becoming Xively after being bought by the folks behind LogMeIn.  Fundamentally Pachube, and now Xively is a service that let’s you collect data that comes from the “Internet of Things” into a single location where…

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The Cost of Being Efficient

“For every action there is an equal yet opposite reaction.” is a favored summary of Newton’s Third Law of Motion.  The actual wording is a bit more ‘wordy’.  But the paraphrase makes it easier to understand when you try to apply the law to not just interaction physical objects, but also to interaction of human…

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