ColinTheRobot.com

Due to some unexpected technical difficulties (most notably the death of my PowerBook’s hard drive), I will be taking a hiatus from updating the site for a little while. Hopefully everything will be up and running smoothly again around the middle of August or so. I might even get ambitious and redesign the site while I’m at it (and given the way things are looking, there’s a chance I might have to do that regardless). Have a great long weekend, and check back in a couple weeks to see how it all turns out.

An underground lake about the size of Lake Erie was recently discovered beneath the dry earth of northern Darfur. The debate over whether this will alleviate or serve to further aggravate the socio-political unrest in the region suggests that careful steps will be necessary to ensure the water is used to benefit residents of the region. Dubai is now the home of the world’s tallest tower. Upon completion of it’s construction next year, the tower will stand at a height of over 2,275 feet. South Korea is still negotiating the release of 23 hostages kidnapped by the Taliban on Thursday. The prisoners “were on a 10-day relief mission when their bus was hijacked at (more…)

Zeitgeist, originally a German expression that means “the spirit of the age”, literally translated as “time (Zeit) spirit (Geist)”. It describes the intellectual and cultural climate of an era (source: wikipedia). Zeitgeist is also the title of the newly reformed Smashing Pumpkins’ latest album, which was released last week. In contrast to the opinion of many that say this isn’t really ‘The Smashing Pumpkins’ because only two (Billy Corgan and Jimmy Chamberlin) of the four original members have reunited, I think the band still very much embodies the spirit they once had. The dynamic is different, and the occasional musical and lyrical contributions of James Iha will be missed, but Corgan was (more…)

North Korea began shutting down it’s main nuclear reactor yesterday, beginning a scheduled denuclearization which they agreed to in February of this year. Inspectors from the United Nations began inspecting the site and are preparing for the decommissioning and sealing of nuclear equipment on the site at Yongbyon, a process which is expected to take up to three weeks to complete. One of the largest and most powerful telescopes in the world, the largest when taking effective surface area of the main mirror (10.4 metres across) into account, was activated over the weekend atop a mountain on one of Spain’s Canary Islands. Over 20 years after it’s inception, the Great (more…)

Aliens, Amazonian monsters, insect intelligence, six new wonders, and mysterious glowing clouds. Last week (July 5th) marked the 60th anniversary of the infamous alien crash landing in Roswell, New Mexico. Enthusiasts and believers descended upon Roswell over the weekend for the Roswell UFO Festival. Legend has it that a large monster roams the forests of the Amazon, although a more likely explanation could be that the natives are just retelling stories of the ground sloths that inhabited the region over a thousand years ago. Myths of Mapinguary seem akin to that of Bigfoot, Yeti, and Chupacabra among others. Individual insects don’t possess much in (more…)

The journey into the unknown begins at home. A new perspective on what constitutes life could soon be applied to research here on Earth, out in our solar system and beyond. Greenland was once green after all. The discovery of “what is probably the oldest-known DNA from the ice at the base of the Greenland ice sheet” revealed a glimpse into the distant ecological past of Greenland. When Philip K. Dick dreamed of electric sheep, I doubt this is what he had in mind. Paying homage to the great science fiction writer, electricsheep.org is home to an open source screen saver which communicates with the computers of other users of the screen saver via the internet to create visualizations (more…)

As many Americans are enjoying the winding down of yet another Independence day, one American in particular is enjoying some undue freedom thanks to yet another example of good decision making to come out of the White House in recent years. The prospect of getting something for nothing seems too good to be true, which is why in this case I’m sure the immutable laws of physics will endure. Engadget has been covering the non-existent unveiling of Steorn’s perpetual motion machine, Orbo. My first trip to the movie theater since last summer’s release of An Inconvenient Truth proved to be an excellent choice. The silver screen adaptation of Stephen King’s 1408 was the (more…)