Richard Leis

Horror Writer & Poet

Month: July 2004

  • Cloning Cancer and Cures

    Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. Researchers have reset malignant tumor cells into stem cells [defunct link] that were then used to create mouse embryos, some of which successfully grew into healthy adult mice, according to a new study “Reprogramming of a melanoma genome by nuclear transplantation” published in the…

  • Shadows, Rings, and Mystery Hazes

    NASA yesterday released a new image from Cassini of the shadow of Saturn cast across its rings. While a wealth of images have been returned by Cassini in the past few weeks, only a relative few have been processed. The rest remain in raw format awaiting future processing. All images, raw and processed, are available…

  • Data Mining the Process of Aging

    Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. A lot of work has gone into mapping the human (and other species) genome. In the process, researchers learned that understanding the blueprint of life is much more complicated than categorizing specific genes. DNA and its composite genes are simply the software of life.…

  • The New Space Race is On

    Pack a pilot and enough weight and volume to equal two passengers into a privately-funded spacecraft, launch and reach a height of 100 kilometers, return safely and do it again in two weeks with the same ship – win US$10,000,000. The Ansari XPrize organization announced on Tuesday that on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 Burt Rutan,…

  • Gallery of Moons

    The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has returned first images of many of the planet’s moons. This first orbit will be Cassini’s longest, as Saturn and its moons are used to shrink the orbit down to something more science activity-friendly. In 89 days the spacecraft will make a close flyby of Titan. On its way out,…

  • Memory March

    Read Richard’s current thoughts about transhumanism and related fringe topics here. New.com today has an article about possible hard drive replacements. The laboratory technologies discussed promise larger capacities in smaller form factors than current memory technologies. Should these technologies reach commercialization, several tens of gigabytes worth of storage will become available in a block the…

  • The Fall of Atlantis

    The July 12, 2004 edition of “Coast To Coast AM with George Noory” focused on Atlantis. Like many other speakers before him, guest Michael Tsarion suggested an alternative history kept secret from the majority of humanity by powerful secret societies, governments, and the religious and scientific mainstream. His ideas are based on a literal interpretation…

  • The Current Nanorevolution

    Prince Charles and environmentalists warn of the possible dangers of nanoparticles entering the human body. Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley argue about the feasibility of “molecular manufacturing”. Recent science fiction novels warn of nanobotic swarms and gray goo that will devour the Earth. But where are we today? Is nanotechnology science fiction? The current state…

  • Progress Illustrated – Media Players

    Prior to the year 2000 and except for a few early adopters of new technology, most peoples’ music collections could be found in stacks of CDs. Around the year 2000 many people began to store all of their CDs on their computer’s hard drive. In 2003, the capacity of a hard drive was marketed by…

  • Further Out

    Let’s follow this one trend in technology further. So far, the devices discussed already exist, some as consumer products and others as laboratory models. After the device that records the audio and video of the life surrounding you, new families of devices will record your body metrics, such as heart rate and skin temperature. Currently,…

  • The Singularity Thirty Seconds From Now?

    Between 1996 and 2001, scientist of artificial intelligence and Singularity activist Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote and updated an essay entitled “Staring into the Singularity“. In the essay he narrows down the date of the Technological Singularity to anytime between thirty seconds from now and the year 2035. The specific date centers around the development of…

  • Disembodied Electronic Brains

    Contemporary humanoid robots may look cool, but these robots really do very little thinking. They simply follow specific and exact orders from a human operator with preset motions and activities. Sony hopes to address this issue by moving the robot brain outside the robot body. The robot will connect wirelessly to a supercomputing grid that…

  • Technological Singularity References

    The Technological Singularity, that near-term point in time (2030?) when technology advances beyond humanity’s ability to comprehend it, will not be comprised of a single trend or a convergence of a few choice trends. It is a black hole sucking in all progress and breaking all rules in the process. The technological singularity sits so…