Tag: technology

Mirror, mirror

  Ever since the first caveman saw himself in a pool of water and became the first human in history to complain of a bad hair day, we’ve recognized that being able to see our reflection has its uses–and so we’ve made mirrors. A mirror is any object that reflects light rays in such a …

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The science of the midway

I realized early on that I was never going to have as much fun at the midway as some people do. I was seven years old, and the county fair had come to Tulia, Texas. The tiny midway only had a half-dozen rides, but I rode them all. Then, on the way home, I threw …

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Nuclear testing

With the explosion of “nuclear devices” (aka “bombs”) in the past couple of weeks, India and Pakistan have joined the “nuclear club,” and also, alas. brought nuclear weapons into the forefront of the news for the first time in years. So perhaps it’s time for a little refresher course on just how a nuclear bomb …

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Hackers and crackers

In the1983 movie WarGames, a teenager with a modem nearly triggered World War III. It was pure fiction, of course. Then, just last week, a group calling itself Masters of Downloading claimed it had stolen a suite of programs used to run classified US military networks and satellites from the Defense Information Systems Agency. Previously, most …

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Quantum teleportation

“Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life here!” How often have you wished you could escape unpleasant situations just by flipping open a communicator and asking to be instantaneously whisked away? (Using your cell phone to have yourself paged doesn’t count.) Well, teleportation of human beings–causing them to vanish in one location and instantaneously …

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Scuba diving

Now that winter has descended upon us in earnest, many Canadians are planning a trip south to Florida or the Caribbean, where they’ll bask in the warm sun, eat exotic foods–and maybe even try a little scuba diving. “Scuba” is a word in its own right now, but originally it was an acronym for “Self-Contained …

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Comdex ’97

Each year, more than 200,000 people descend on Las Vegas with more on their minds than gambling and Wayne Newton. They’re there for Fall Comdex, the largest computer show in the world (a.k.a. “Nerdvana”). This year’s Fall Comdex just wrapped up, and the one trend that stood out was the ongoing effort to change the …

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Golf technology

If I had to name two sports that are heavily technology-driven, I’d probably name auto racing–and golf. Auto racing is an obvious choice. But golf? Golf looks so simple. A player, a club, a ball, a hole. Player swings club, hits ball, puts it into hole. Where’s the technology in that? If you have to …

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Mir

I’m very much a child of the Space Age. I was born the year after Sputnik became the first man-made object to orbit the Earth, celebrated my 10th birthday on the very day that humans first set foot on the Moon, and turned 17 on the day that the first Viking lander set down on …

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Future cars

Like many other small boys, I was fascinated by cars, not least because my oldest brother was a bit of a car guy and subscribed to cool magazines like Car and Driver and Motor Trend. Every so often, one of those magazine (or other cool magazines like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics) would run an article on the “Car of the …

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Virtual reality

My first novel is coming out next month. Entitled Soulworm, it’s a young adult fantasy set mostly in Weyburn–sort of. For plot purposes, I moved the hospital of my fictional Weyburn up onto South Hill. With just a few words, I created an artificial reality, distinguishable from the real thing only by those who have …

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Y2K: the Year 2000 problem

The 21st century doesn’t actually begin until January 1, 2001, but for most people, January 1, 2000, seems more significant, just because of the change from writing 19 in front of the year to writing 20. That little change is even more significant for businesses that rely heavily on computers, because computers, too, are used …

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