Category Archives: Humor

Things we find funny

Distractions and the Drexler-Smalley Debate

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I was still thinking about the pernicious effects of smartphones on attention when I wrote the comic. I have been trying to listen to more audio books instead of doomscrolling. I listened to “Deep Work” by Cal Newport and “Effortless” by Greg Mckeown over the last few weeks. There is an interesting tension between them. I agree with both. It takes deep work to make progress. It takes real, effortless recreation to recover from that deep work. Maybe I’ll write something about that at some point.

I posted a video this week about the Drexler-Smalley debate. The big question was “Can we make a nano-3D printer that can fabricate literally anything?” My PhD is in chemistry, and I have experience with using photolithography for microfabrication as well as building simple bio-inspired nano-machines. So I have some of the relevant background and context to explain this. I put the edited text-version at the end of this post.

I’ve collected a bunch of cool articles and links, too.

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Rereading the Diamond Age 25 years later

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Neal Stephenson published the Diamond Age in 1996. I read it while I was in high school (about 1997). I was hooked on the ideas of nanotechnology and post-scarcity presented in the novel. I earned my PhD in bioanalytical chemistry in 2008. I went into my field in some ways because of this science fiction novel. I wanted to learn how to analyze and then build the kinds of nano-machines that life is made of.

I decided to re-read it recently. I put up a video review, too. Continue reading →

Sad Gap and Coffee Comic

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I made a vlog today about how I address the Sad Gap. If you’re not a part of the nerdfighteria youtube sphere, I will explain. The Vlogbrothers have both talked about it recently (see Hank’s video or John’s video). The sad gap is the place between finding out about a problem and being in a position to do something – anything – about it. It’s possible to fall right into the sad gap and end up not actually doing anything at all.

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Bad Bird Puns and Good Links

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Whelp, my wife has COVID and I’m isolating to see whether I show symptoms. We relaxed the distancing/masking in my region and, predictably, cases are going up. We’re vaccinated and boosted, but Mrs. Allen still feels very sick. I’m fine so far, and I hope we can go back to being a happy couple of pigeons soon.

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My phone is eating my brain, also new video is up!

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I posted a video about chromatography, but first I want to talk about focus and cell phones. The comic is almost a verbatim conversation I had with my wife. It’s hard to escape my phone even for the time it takes to use the restroom. That can’t be good for my psyche.

I was thinking about doing a deeper dive on that, but it just doesn’t fit the theme of the blog/vlog any more. It fits better over at my other site, Student Pro Tips, but I have not updated that for a long time. Then I thought, maybe I SHOULD update that site and maybe add a video, too! Because I need more projects. I have not done that yet… we will see. [EDIT: I posted the video and blog post about this whole thing]

Research summary on the subject:

  1. There have been several meta-analyses and reviews on smartphone addiction and smartphone effects on cognition and learning.
  2. There’s a thing called Nomophobia now: “The term NOMOPHOBIA or NO MObile PHone PhoBIA is used to describe a psychological condition when people have a fear of being detached from mobile phone connectivity.”

All that from a comic.

Ok, about chromatography. Here’s the video.

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