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.
Red Rover: Inside the Story of Robotic Space Exploration, from Genesis to the Mars Rover Curiosity by Rogers Wiens
12 May 2013
A Review
When does NASA take risks? How it’s still possible to improvise, and what it’s like to run a scientific instrument on Mars.
[Washington Post]
Eyes in the sky
3 May 2013
What the rise of the helicopter tells us about the future of domestic drones.
How to think carefully about the spread of drones.
[Slate]
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, 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, 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]