Google kills 'NanoRobot Infection'

I just received this e-mail:

from Google Video Support
to: howardlovy@gmail.com
date: Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 9:20 AM
subject: Google Video Content Identification

Dear member,

This is to notify you that your video "Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection" from your Google Video account has been disabled because it has been identified by our Content Identification tools as potentially lacking the necessary copyright authorization for use on the Google Video site. Content Identification is a program that analyzes similarities in audio or video between user videos and a library of reference content provided to us by copyright owners. When a video matches a reference file, that video is automatically disabled.

Darnit, and it was a great clip from "The Office." Oh well. In the end, Google will getcha. I just hope they don't kill my clip of Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien talking quantum physics

New Catchphrase in Congress is not nano [video]

The U.S. House recently passed a new bill reauthorizing the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Now, it's the Senate's turn to work on similar legislation.

Click on the video above, or go here, to see some of the at-times tense debate swirling around this legislation.

Backgrounder
Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien talk quantum physics
'Transhuman cybersomething crazy ...'
HP teaches us the 'n' word

Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien talk quantum physics

Back, by popular demand, Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien discuss quantum physics.

Backgrounder
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos
NanoVlog
Space Elevator: The Music Video

Future Fowl

In South Carolina, Clemson researchers are using nanoparticles to develop healthier chickens. There's really nothing else I need to say here. I'll let the chickens do the talking. Enjoy.

Backgrounder
'Star Trek' warps nanotech news
'Transhuman cybersomething crazy ...'
HP teaches us the 'n' word

'Star Trek' warps nanotech news

This report from a Canadian TV station rates a Star Trek NanoWarp Factor of 4 (in a scale I just invented based on the number of times "Star Trek" is mentioned in a single nanotech news story).

The video alongside the news story does not mention "Star Trek" even once, which means one of their news writers decided that Web readers will understand the story better if they sprinkled in a few "Star Trek" references. It's an annoying distraction, since as TV news stories go it actually does a competent job of outlining the hopes and fears of nanotech.

As a former TV Web writer for WDIV Local 4 in Detroit, I understand the attempt to make a connection with the reader. But somebody should inform the writer that the Web no longer appeals only to "Star Trek" geeks, and has not for a number of years.

In fact, if you haven't noticed, local TV news audiences are disappearing. And you know where all your viewers are now? They're getting their news on the Web, where they can find in-depth, substantive stories.

Oh, and this blog post rates a Star Trek NanoWarp Factor of 5.

Backgrounder
Antediluvian NanoBots
NanoBots control the horizontal and vertical
NanoBots are Needed

Penn State's Little Recruiting Video

My daughter's a senior in high school and has already chosen a college. I don't know how many of these videos she's had to sit through. Penn State's Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization (say it five times fast, and you've passed half the entrance exam) has a recruiting video out on YouTube. Students, feel the nano love. Parents, grip your wallets. Enjoy.

Backgrounder
NanoVlog
Jim Carrey and Conan talk quantum physics: Part III
Welcome, Rice University students

Lorax Economics And Nano's New Name

Here's a piece of dialog that was in the TV version of "The Lorax," (click above, or here), but not in the book that I read to my kids.

The Once-ler: Well, what do you want? I should shut down my factory, fire a hundred-thousand workers? Is that good economics, is that sound for the country?

The Lorax: I see your point. But I wouldn't know the answer.

Excellent, cutting-edge stuff! Pure greed vs. pure innocence. And, as is usually the case, the villain is a great deal more interesting than the hero. That dirty ol' Onceler has thought about the issues, while the one-dimensional Lorax cannot see the forest for the trees.

Here's another excerpt:

The Lorax: I'm sorry to yell, but my dander is up! let me say a few words about gluppity-glupp. Your machinery chugs on, day and night without stop, making gluppity-glupp, and also schloppity-schlopp! And what do you do with this left-over goo? I'll show you, you dirty old Once-ler man, you!

Well, today, that very same dirty old Onceler man -- who, remember, is driven purely by the profit motive (forget about the end of the book, where the Onceler sees the error of his ways) -- could today become a "cleantech" entrepreneur. It's not that he feels bad about the gluppity-glupp and schloppity-schlopp, it's just that different times call for different methods of making profit.

However, just because the Lorax has the megaphone right now does not make him any less naive and unaware than when he could not answer a simple question regarding economics and labor back in the 1960s. The herd stampedes toward cleantech from nanotech and every other tech, yet the profits will come to only a few -- and even then, most likely to the biggest Oncelers on the block and not the small entrepreneurs.

After that, some elements of nanotech will be ready for prime time -- such as the new materials and technologies that will power our cars more cleanly and will clean up the leftover schloppity-schlopp. It will be confusing, since the Loraxes and other self-appointed watchdogs of the environment have already convinced many that nanotech is actually dangerous and polluting. So, nanotech might be sold by any other name, since the ol' nano prefix has run its course in this cycle.

How about this for a new "nano" name? "Thneed!"

After all, everybody needs a Thneed.

Backgrounder
Son of McMonkey McBean
Cleantech's the new nano; nano's the new dot-bomb

'Transhuman cybersomething crazy ...'

Warning: Do not sip your coffee and watch this video at the same time, unless you'd like to give your desk a wide caffeine spritz.

I have seen the future of science journalism and her name is Madeline Minx. Here, she interviews Ben Goertzel, research director for the Singularity Institute. This is Episode One of her video podcast, The Minx Mandate

HP teaches us the 'n' word

Hey, kids. What are some of the things "n" is for? Well, "n" is for "nemployed" (without the "u," since we're talking about me), "n" is for "navel contemplation" and, of course, as Hewlett-Packard informs us in the entertaining video above, "'n' is for Nanotechnology."

Backgrounder
Jim Carrey and Conan talk quantum physics II
Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection
Kids grill scientist dad (with ketchup and mustard)

The anti-idiot box

Where can you find hot new videos featuring Structural Evolution of the Protein Kinase–Like Superfamily? Why, at SciVee TV, of course. Careful, though. It's still in Alpha. It crashed my system twice. I guess you need a quantum supercomputer to run some of the videos. Still, a great idea that can be built upon.

My plural marriage with Utah students

My contribution to higher education for the coming semester: My rescue and reposting of a video clip of Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien teaching drummer Max Weinberg a thing or two about quantum mechanics has made it onto the syllabus for Physics 3740: Introduction to special relativity and quantum mechanics at the University of Utah. Not bad for a former English and Journalism major.

Backgrounder
Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection
Welcome, Rice University students
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos

NanoTube: 'Infest Wisely'

A "lo-fi sci-fi no-budget" feature in seven episodes, "Infest Wisely" makes you wonder whether the nanotech future will be hard to swallow. Enjoy.

Backgrounder
PBS station gives us nanoriches
NanoVox
Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection

PBS station gives us nanoriches

KQED-TV goes on a Nanoquest and comes up with pages and pages of great information, video and photos. Watch, enjoy, learn.

Backgrounder
Info in a nanoshell
NANO on NewsHour

Jim Carrey and Conan talk quantum physics II

I see that a great many readers are searching for a clip of Conan O'Brien and Jim Carrey chatting about quantum physics. I posted the clip a few weeks ago, courtesy of YouTube. But I see that NBC has pulled the plug. So, I've saved it onto my own server. Click above or here to download the clip. Enjoy.

Update 12/7/08: The video can now be found here.

Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection

From NanoBot

Kids grill scientist dad (with ketchup and mustard)

Bethany and Alex Maynard: The Woodward and Bernstein of the nanotech age? Watch (.mov 20.1MB) how they grill their dad, Andrew Maynard, chief scientist with the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Zombie nanobot warfare

This video really needs no introduction or explanation. Just enjoy.

Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos

I have not picked up any more nanobot inferences on ABC's "Lost," but in a recent episode Josh Holloway's character wisecracked, "I say Pasadena." I am not certain of this phrase's cultural meaning, if there is one, but since Sawyer's comment appeared to be random I could only conclude that it was intended as a message for me.

"Why not Pasadena?" I ask myself. For that matter, "Why not Lansing?" where business editor at the State Journal would have been a perfectly respectable alternative.

So, as the multiverse's parallel Howards who made different choices (or who ended up rolling Heisenberg's and Bohr's dice slightly differently) toil away in Lansing and Pasadena, I feel today like Schrodinger's cat: both alive and dead.

Speaking of dead, all this is just a wordy lead-in to a clip of one of the best television scenes of all time. It's from a recent episode of "The Sopranos." There are many elements to this short, minute-and-a-half scene, but it does more to bring quantum physics to street level than any book I've read on the subject. To me, it ranks up there with the "Chuckles the Clown" funeral on Mary Tyler Moore.

Enjoy the video above. Now get the fuck outta here.

Space Elevator: The Music Video

Backgrounder
If we had government by Google ...
The business of imagination
Got the world on a string

NanoVlog

Blogging? That is so early '00s. In 2005, we vlog. A portion of this video might not be office- or family-friendly.