Tag Archives: review

Nuclear Fusion Fuels – Where will they come from?

This post is also a video! Click here to watch.

I know you’ve seen lots of people say “fusion is limitless energy forever and it’s just around the corner. A brighter future will soon dawn for everyone.” I think that hype is maybe not ideal. I do this thing where I read the news like I’m watching lottery drawing – maybe today will be THE DAY and all the problems are SOLVED. I think that’s setting myself up for disappointment. Instead, I took a look at some technical problems and how far along researchers are to solving them.

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A Deeper Look at Systems Biology and Aging

Why do we need Systems Biology to help science slow or stop aging? That would be the most profound medical breakthrough since antibiotics. I think systems biology is the key and I spent the last month learning about how it relates to aging research, and I’ve tried to summarize my thoughts here and in a YouTube video (which you can check out at this link). So: what even is Systems biology?

Imagine we have a little miniature world, like a terrarium.

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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

Crows, Zoey Ashe, and other Novels

I’ve been making friends with the crows at work. This week, one of them did the clicky rattle call at me. I think it might be a friendly sound? I think most of their communication is body language, but it’s cool when they vocalize at me.

I just finished the second in Jason “David Wong” Pargin’s Zoey Ashe series. I put off reading it because of the title, Zoey Punches the Future in the Dick. It’s embarrassing to even talk about the book thanks to the title. I’m just going to call it Zoey Ashe 2. I aksi made a video review about it. It’s my second Sci-Fi and Mixology video.

Something in Zoey Ashe 2 stood out to me: Zoey is serious about the responsibility that comes with wealth. She inherited a huge fortune in Book 1. At one point in Book 2, Zoey gets her people to fix a squeak in her air conditioning system. It costs twenty-six thousand dollars. She freaks out. She knows that, before she was rich, that much money would have changed her life. And she just spent it to fix a squeak. And the money didn’t come from reputable businesses, either. Twenty six thousand dollars represents a few percent profit on a lot of human misery. She is struggling to come up with something to do about it.

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