The bang was big. In 16 July 1945, humans got to start using the power of the sun. First to fry people, but then – and this is not understood enough – with the hope (okay, maybe it was a bit of a fig-leaf) of the “peaceful use of nuclear explosions”. What's this, you say?... Continue Reading →
Beating nukes into plowshares
I thought I was cynical enough. Nope, not by a gazillion miles. Turns out both the US and the Russians were keen on using nukes for peace. Some of this I knew, but I didn't realise it was quite so extensive... "Project Plowshare was the overall United States term for the development of techniques to... Continue Reading →
The line from Stalin to Putin
This from the Big issue in the North 16-22 May Charlotte Hobson, author of The Vanishing Futurist was asked "Can you draw a line between Stalin and Putin? And she replied Varlam Shalamov, the great chronicler of Stalin's gulag observed that it was the mindset of the common criminals that dominated the camps - and... Continue Reading →
Thrashing thrashing
Ah, we have so many ways of distracting ourselves. Most of us do, anyway. I quite like this (though a brain is not a computer!) It is the same with a computer cache: there will be a hierarchy - from super-fast memory in the microprocessor itself all the way down to a hard drive (slow)... Continue Reading →
Video: What is absorptive capacity?
And here is the script that I more or less stumbled through. So, what is absorptive capacity? According to the seminal 1990 article by Cohen and Levinthal it's "a firm's ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends" Extending this, Zahra and George (2002) say it is... Continue Reading →
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