Soccer Ball Generator
Awesome! Jessica Lin and three other female Harvard University students—Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar—created sOccket to produce a soccer ball that generates cheap, clean, off-grid electricity when rolled. The sOccket ball captures the energy from impact that is normally lost to the environment when the soccer ball is kicked, dribbled, or thrown and [...]
Grand Challenges for Engineering
With input from people around the world … an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Now their conclusions are revealed on this website. From urban centers to remote corners of Earth, the depths of the oceans to space, humanity has always sought [...]
TCGs are for fun, not pain
I’m really enjoying the preview material for the upcoming Marvel Superstars TCG. They sound like my kind of guys. …I’d like to lay down two rules everyone should try and follow: #1: TCGs are for fun, not pain. Throw elbows at will and play to win, but remember this is a community. This is not [...]
On Science, Society, and Democracy
Science is best viewed the way we view democracy: Democracy is the best way for societies to organize themselves and make decisions in ways that respect and protect individual rights and freedoms. Science is the best way for society to understand the world around us and ourselves. Science and democracy serve each other and neither [...]
The Myth of the Meritocracy
Intelligence is a process, not a fixed, gene-determined, thing. This process begins very early on, before we can even really see it, and we therefore often confuse these early, invisible stages with some sort of innate giftedness. Then we test kids and report the results as innate differences — this one is gifted, this one [...]
Alternative Inspiration
Most of what I’ve learned about trading card games (outside of playing them) has come from reading the fantastic “Making Magic” and “Latest Developments” columns at Magic: The Gathering Online. However, I’ve recently found the writing for the upcoming Marvel Superstars trading card game to be a nice addition. Magic is no doubt the granddaddy [...]
A Proud TWiST Superfan
There’s a fun link at the This Week In Startups Blog of ways to identify a TWiST superfan. Here are the ones I qualify for: you know the sponsors without even thinking Thank You @DNAMail, @Ustream, @WebSpy, @PowerVPS, @Bing. Jason has mentioned your name in show more than once. you remember the Deadpool. you’ve listened [...]
