WELCOME
Thanks for coming to visit my website. I write about science, technology, foreign affairs, and other subjects.
Follow me on Twitter: @kkakaesDrones and Aerial Observation
I edited and wrote part of a short book published by New America in July 2015 and freely available online, about how drones are being used in new ways around the world. It's meant to be useful to people who want to fly drones.The Pioneer Detectives
I published a short book with The Millions.
It's the story of the Pioneer Anomaly, a long-standing mystery. The book is short and fun—the length of a novella—but also, in the words of Amazon's reviewer, "powerful and sad". If you've got any curiosity about how NASA works behind the scenes or why scientists believe what they do, I think you'll enjoy the book.
It is available on Amazon as a Kindle Single and also on Apple's iBooks.Drone Wars
I wrote a chapter on the long history of drone technology going back to the early 20th century in this edited Cambridge University Press volume.
Warp Factor
1 April 2013
An investigation
The saga of a NASA scientist who claims to be on the verge of faster-than-light travel.
[Popular Science]
The end of the “La-Z-Boy era” of sequential programming
20 March 2013
What comes after Moore’s law?
The challenge of parallelism.
[Zocalo Public Square]
Can We Teach Computers What “Truth” Means?
26 February 2013
It’s harder than it sounds
How artificial intelligence can inform ideas about logic.
[Slate]
Why Didn’t We Know the Russian Meteor Was Coming?
15 February 2013
We’re getting better at spotting potentially dangerous objects, but this one was too small.
A pocket history
[Slate]
The book of primes
5 February 2013
A new largest prime number
And the significance of primes to mathematics.
[Slate]
CAPTCHA and the alternatives
31 January 2013
May it not rest in peace
Combatting spam and what it means to be human.
[Slate]
Alzheimer’s and space travel
3 January 2013
Does radiation cause Alzheimer’s?
We don’t really know, and it’s not clear how it affects space travel.
[Slate]
Baumgartner’s leap
4 October 2012
What the record-setting skydive means for space exploration
And why it’s good news.
[Slate]
Learning Math From Software Is Like Learning Parenting
Skills From Second Life 29 June 2012
Skills From Second Life 29 June 2012
Math education technology does not promote real understanding.
A follow-up.
[Slate]
clips, Computer Science and Mathematics, Science, Science and Technology, Science Policy and Technological Culture, Technology
tags: Calculators, Conrad Wolfram, constructivism, Education, Evan Weinberg, Graphing Calculators, Math Education, Mathematica, Paul Karafiol, pedagogy, Promethean, Robert Talbert, Science Education, Stephen Wolfram, TIMSS
Why Johnny Can’t Add Without a Calculator
25 June 2012
Technology is doing to math education what industrial agriculture did to food: making it efficient, monotonous, and low-quality.
How and why graphing calculators, educational software, interactive whiteboards and the like undermine actual learning in elementary, middle and high schools.
[Slate]
clips, Computer Science and Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy and Space, Science, Science and Technology, Science Policy and Technological Culture, Technology
tags: Calculators, constructivism, Education, Graphing Calculators, HH Wu, Longfellow Middle School, Math Education, NCTM, pedagogy, Promethean, Science Education, Slate, Smart Board
What Economists Get Wrong About Science and Technology
17 May 2012
The failures of trying to quantify research’s effects on the economy
And why they matter.
[Slate]
“Privatizing” Space
16 May 2012
Companies Shoot for the Stars, but Uncle Sam Still Pays the Bills
Why the false dichotomy of public versus private isn’t the real story with SpaceX’s launch. What really matters is competition.
[Zocalo Public Square]
Why Computers Still Can’t Translate Languages Automatically
11 May 2012
DARPA’s search for meaning
How researchers are trying to use semantic information in machine translation.
[Slate]
Is Science Really Moving Faster Than Ever?
3 April 2012
Why talking about the “pace of technological change” is a meaningless, counterproductive generality.
Part 1 of a debate on Slate with ASU’s Dan Sarewitz.
Part 2 is here>>.
[Slate]
The Nucleus of the Digital Age
3 March 2012
A review of George Dyson’s “Turing’s Cathedral”
In pursuit of hydrogen bombs, a math genius and a brilliant tinkerer in Princeton developed the modern computer.
[Wall Street Journal]
The Death of the Research Works Act
28 February 2012
Scientists’ Victory Over the Research Works Act Is Like the SOPA Defeat
Darrell Issa and Carolyn Maloney withdraw their support from a bill which would have limited public access to scientific papers.
[Slate]
The Other Academic Freedom Movement
11 February 2012
How scientists broke through the paywall and made their articles available to (almost) everyone.
Why extremely profitable scientific publishers lack a future, and why this is good for science as a whole.
[Slate]