Autism news: Many have noted that a "cure" for autism might deprive the human race of its most valuable innovators, in The Role Of Evolutionary Genomics In The Development Of Autism Prof. Crespi notes "The imprinted brain hypothesis underscores the viewpoint that the autism spectrum represents human cognitive diversity rather than simply disorder or disability. Indeed, individuals at the highest-functioning end of this spectrum may have driven the development of science, engineering and the arts through mechanistic brilliance coupled with perseverant obsession." On the other hand those same qualities routinely lead to social ostracism of autistic "geeks." Now perhaps a technological fix, a "social prosthetic" on the horizon? Lastly, two books from autistic authors: Do-si-do with Autism is a children's book about living with autism by Sarah Ann Stup, and Urville by Gilles Tréhin is an exploration of his meticulously imagined fictional city. See this profile of the author, including commentary by his father.
DRM sanity: discussion of how DRM technology fails in practice . Then knock me over with a feather, first Sony's Blu-ray and Universals' HD DVD have actually backed away from a draconian "anti piracy" (aka "screw the customer") capability of HDCP. These moves make great sense. Now people might actually be able to watch their Hi-Def movies on their Hi-Def monitors!
Space stuff: "missing
link" moonlets found orbiting Saturn. NASA
releases new maps of Jupiter, for example here is the cylindrical
map. Talk about an unusual perspective: Eclipse
Photographed by Space Station Crew. First pictures from the Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter. More Shuttle problems: Investigators:
Launch put public at risk and NASA
probing mishap, damage to shuttle fuel tank.
Synthetic biology: following up on coverage
here last
December on syn-bio: Delving
into the meaning of artificial life and Virtual
Virus is First Simulation of an Entire Life Form.
Independent games: the Independent Games Festival was
held at last week's GDC
in San
Jose. The IGF is to independent game what festivals like Sundance are
to independent film. Nimble and innovative game development teams take
the
risks that big game publishers will not, and so come up with great
ideas: The
2006 Independent Games Festival Finalists. At our house last
weekend, kids and parents had lots of fun working through the whimsical
logic puzzles of Professor
Fizzwizzle.
Technobits: commercially available this year: Holograms Break Storage Record --- ajaxWrite a web-based word processing app similar to Writely --- Jell-O Fix for Spinal Cords --- neutrinos have mass --- this is amazingly cool: Prime Numbers Get Hitched. (even ignoring the uncanny Douglas Adams twist that the third moment of the Riemann zeta function turns out to be 42!).
