Samizdata

In the days before accurate timekeeping, determining your longitude was an extremely difficult task, requiring extremely accurate timekeeping. The British Admiralty expended enormous resources and considerable sums of money on the problem until it was solved by John Harrison in 1761. These days, we just turn on electronic devices and communicate with satellites.

This is particularly useful when, as this afternoon, one is in a place where one couldn’t possibly discover the longitude any other way.

The Royal Greenwich Observatory no longer exists as an institution, having been abolished in 1998 (after moving its last astronomical faclities away from Greenwich in 1957), and the observatory buildings are today part of the National Maritime Museum, which has its main facilities in the former Greenwich Hospital buildings at the bottom of the hill below the observatory. I provide a picture merely because the view is nice.

Alas, the statue at the top of the hill does not seem right. The statue is of General James Wolfe, who captured Quebec City for the British in 1754. Whilst I do not begrudge Gen. Wolfe his statue, it seems wrong, for two reasons. Firstly, why is the statue in pride of place in Greenwich, a place of great maritime heritage, a General rather than an Admiral. Secondly, given the history of the place, there is another figure who to me should be the man standing there. → Continue reading: Satellite navigation is a wonderful thing

I quite like iTunes, finding the ‘look and feel’ better than any other music players for both my Mac and PC… however I made the mistake of upgrading to iTunes 7 the other day and found its ugly, laggy and above all the sound quality was dire with crackling and buzzing sounds clearly audible.

Looking on the internet I see I am far from the only person this has happened to. How Apple could release such a pox ridden piece of software is a marvel. Avoid at all costs until it is well and truly patched. I have gone back to the previous version with which I am entirely happy and will probably stick with it for some time now unless I can find an alternative player that I like.

Reading the cyberpunks in the 1980s or watching Cronenburg’s eXistenZ, provided visions of a noir future where brain computer interfaces were commonplace and you could jack into cyberspace, virtual reality, or whatever hyped up term was collecting reputation dust. In the current world of information chop suey, it is hard to detect truly important developments. Here is one.

Harvard scientists have moved closer to an effective neural interface with engineered silicon nanowires “that detect, simulate and and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.” They are able to attach a non-invasive wire to a single nerve cell as a hybrid synapse and allow signals to travel between wire and cell. The next step in the research programme is the development of larger scale contacts between wires and nerve cells. As Charles Lieber, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard speculates:

This work could have a revolutionary impact on science and technology,” Lieber says. “It provides a powerful new approach for neuroscience to study and manipulate signal propagation in neuronal networks at a level unmatched by other techniques; it provides a new paradigm for building sophisticated interfaces between the brain and external neural prosthetics; it represents a new, powerful, and flexible approach for real-time cellular assays useful for drug discovery and other applications; and it opens the possibility for hybrid circuits that couple the strengths of digital nanoelectronic and biological computing components.”

(Hat tip: Betterhumans)