Brian Jepson’s Weblog

Saul Kaplan kicked things off with a re-cap of the previous day. I appreciated his focus on the interactions in the hallways and reception afterward. This is the part of conferences that has always appealed to me.

He introduced today’s host, Walt Mossberg. Always nice to see a native returning home. Walt reminisced about the things that made Rhode Island great, such as fried dough. He invited Congressman Jim Langevin up on stage who opened the event and introduced his friend Dean Kamen as “an inventor and entrepreneur with a social conscience”.

Langevin mentioned that Kamen is currently working on a device to create potable water that will be the size of a steamer trunk. He challenged Kamen to invent a wheelchair that was more than a wheelchair; a true mobility device that did more than just moved around on four wheels… and then proceeded to show us Kamen’s invention, Langevin’s own wheelchair called the iBot.

Boing
Boing: “According the Independent Catholic News, the book, published
by the Catholic Truth Society, raises such questions as:
…

• Is Jesus Christ’s redemption valid for intelligent
  beings throughout the universe?
• or would other worlds have their own version of
  Jesus?…”

Philip K. Dick had a little bit of twisted fun with those two questions in
Rautavaara’s
Case.

Universe
Today: “Astronomers from Case Western Reserve University have
created the deepest, wide-view image of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies,
which shows the faint web of starlight that connects the different
galaxies together.”

It’s a stunning picture. You can find more,
including an explanation of the why there are things that look like Kirby dots in there,
at the CWRU Astronomy
Department’s site. Be sure to check out the video on that site as
well.