Free Republic

Peter Kreeft, a philosophy prof at Boston College, has the charism of talking across normally impenetrable borders, so, he's a Christian who talks to Atheists, and respects them. He's criticizing George Lucas' 'Star Wars' philosophy. This is at a podcast at http://peterkreeft.com/audio/44_star-wars/peter-kreeft_star-wars.mp3 queued to about 23:05. He's talking about classifying magic, technology, religion and science, in terms of either a structuralist or a functionalist, a static or a dynamic perspective. The ordering of the list of 4 things above is an attempt to be agnostic about which of the 4 things are put into pairs.A standard, static-structuralist arrangement is for...

Breitbart News technology reporter Allum Bokhari appeared on the Liz Callaway show on TALK 94.5 FM WTKN last week, to discuss revelations in his upcoming book, #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase The Trump Movement and Steal The Election, which features interviews with insiders from Google, Facebook, and other companies. A source close to Google and other tech giants has said that the book, which lifts the lid on Big Tech’s four-year plot to undermine the Trump movement and influence the election, will “shake the foundations of Silicon Valley.” “The things I’ve heard from my sources inside Silicon Valley is...

With COVID here to stay, at least for the near term, retailers are reevaluating their digital strategies and in-store experiences—and that means more than rolling out new safety protocols. Brands and retailers must take a holistic approach to design relevant, safe, and enjoyable retail tech solutions that reflect consumers’ preferences and behaviors. The phrase “new normal” is overused but spot-on: COVID has accelerated changes in consumer shopping behavior, and those changes aren’t going anywhere. According to McKinsey research, the pandemic has contributed to a surge in e-commerce, a decline in discretionary spending, and a preference for trusted brands. These trends...

Nano-diamond self-charging batteries could disrupt energy as we know it Here shown as a small, circuit board mounted design, the nano diamond battery has the potential to totally upend the energy equation since it never needs charging and lasts many, many years NDB California company NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. They will offer higher power density than lithium-ion. They will be nigh-on indestructible and...

Like it or not, the U.S. is already fighting an economic and technological cold war against China. While we should aim to eventually return to the optimism and promise of a broad China/U.S. partnership, the time for that is not now. This is a major challenge to our country, and we must do everything we can to avoid losing our economic leadership. By now, we all know the rivalry in 5G and AI, part of China’s $1.4 trillion technology commitment. Less attention has been given to an equally consequential struggle: who will control our future global financial systems. The power...

While this column isn't about the threat posed by Transformers, it is about a robot apocalypse that's going to ravage the Midwest. I know, I know, the last thing you want to hear about right now is another imminent doomsday -- aren't global warming and COVID-19 and murder hornets and measles and the ever-present specter of thermonuclear war and the possibility of hyper-intelligent toilet lampreys enough? Well, it's likely you haven't heard too much about this particular apocalypse because it's not a sexy blood-and-guts kind. Instead of armies of Terminators hunting down handfuls of survivors for their sweet sweet spinal...

Northwest of beijing’s Forbidden City, outside the Third Ring Road, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has spent seven decades building a campus of national laboratories. Near its center is the Institute of Automation, a sleek silvery-blue building surrounded by camera-studded poles. The institute is a basic research facility. Its computer scientists inquire into artificial intelligence’s fundamental mysteries. Their more practical innovations—iris recognition, cloud-based speech synthesis—are spun off to Chinese tech giants, AI start-ups, and, in some cases, the People’s Liberation Army.

Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) already has some of the most energy-dense electric vehicle batteries available, with the company's Model S able to travel over 400 miles on a single charge. Now it looks like Tesla's vehicles will be able to travel even farther, as a report from Reuters details Panasonic's (OTC: PCRFY) lans for future improvements. Over the next five years, Panasonic is planning to increase energy density by 20%, while also having cobalt-free batteries available in the next two to three years, according to Reuters. The 2170 cells that will be receiving these improvements are currently found in Tesla's...

A growing number of places of worship around the world are employing robotic priests, who can recite prayers and even comfort worshippers experiencing spiritual crises Religions around the world are evolving as technology progresses, and now some faiths are relying on "god robots " to spread the good word. Back in the Middle Ages, Christian "robots" of a kind were fashioned to perform the religious pageantry of the Easter and Christmas rituals. In the 16th century, a mechanical monk was created by a Spanish clockmaker that incredibly remains fully functional to this day. The automaton beats his chest and raises...

Tissue engineering has seen a surge of interest in recent years. Traditionally, it involves seeding cells onto biocompatible “scaffolds”, which biodegrade once tissues have assembled themselves into 3D organs. However, more flexible, scaffold-free approaches are also emerging, which enable cells to assemble themselves without the need for structural biomaterials. To do this, researchers use techniques including removable supports, and guiding forces from acoustic and electrostatic fields. One particularly promising approach involves magnetic levitation, through which strong field gradients can precisely guide tissue cells into place. To achieve strong enough gradients, however, cells must be suspended within a paramagnetic medium containing...

A schematic showing lithium battery with the new carbon nanotube architecture for the anode Credit: Juran Noh/Texas A&M University College of Engineering Cell phone batteries often heat up and, at times, can burst into flames. In most cases, the culprit behind such incidents can be traced back to lithium batteries. Despite providing long-lasting electric currents that can keep devices powered up, lithium batteries can internally short circuit, heating up the device. Researchers at Texas A&M University have invented a technology that can prevent lithium batteries from heating and failing. Their carbon nanotube design for the battery's conductive plate, called the...

Toward the end of his new book, The Return of Great Power Rivalry, Matthew Kroenig offers sensible if tentative advice for responding to China’s ambitions for technological leadership: U.S. government investments in basic science and R&D have been critical in past technological breakthroughs, including nuclear power and the Internet. . . and the United States could do more to invest in the technologies of the future. Democracies are often slow to build consensus for a problem, and that helps them to avoid mistakes. But when a national consensus is achieved, they can mass resources toward a problem just as...

Small metal injection molded (MIM) parts are common in firearms, but the decades-old process for lower-pressure components may be short-lived if the latest figures from 3DEO are any indication. The Los Angeles-based company, which specializes in high-volume metal 3D printing technology, experienced 600-percent growth in revenue from 2019 to 2020, with orders increasing 394 percent during the same period and staff increasing by 172 percent to meet that demand. It now has 25 engineers working on research and development. 3DEO is barely four years old, and although its products are usually taken for granted by most enthusiasts, firearm manufactures have...

With an estimated 224.3 million smartphone users in the U.S. and an estimated 2.1 billion smartphone users worldwide, it’s likely that you own a smartphone. But as you’ve spent thousands of minutes scrolling through social media or browsing the internet, did you ever wonder where your smartphone came from? Did you ever think that the device which demands so much of your attention could have been made by a slave?

Google has removed a popular Indian-developed app from its Play Store that promised to find and remove Chinese apps from smartphones. The search giant confirmed to Gadgets 360 that the app, which was called “Remove Chinese Apps,” was removed for violating its Deceptive Behavior Policy, which prohibits software from encouraging or misleading users into “removing or disabling third-party apps.” Remove Chinese Apps had grown popular in India. Reuters reports that it had amassed over five million downloads since late May, and was the top trending free app in the country. The app worked by scanning phones for Chinese apps like...

115 years ago, divers found a hunk of bronze off a Greek island. It changed our understanding of human history. One hundred fifteen years ago, an archeologist was sifting through objects found in the wreck of a 2,000-year-old vessel off the Greek island Antikythera. Among the wreck’s treasures — beautiful vases and pots, jewelry, a bronze statue of an ancient philosopher — was the most peculiar thing: a series of brass gears and dials mounted in a case the size of a mantel clock. Archeologists dubbed the instrument the Antikythera mechanism. The genius — and mystery — of this piece...

Care and feeding of Software Defined Radios We will cover the various kinds of antennas available to optimized your SDR radio for different types of spectrum monitoring. We will also explain why RF filters are necessary on most SDR's and when Low Noise Amplifiers help, and when Low Noise Amplifiers hurt reception.

NASA’s top executive concentrating on human spaceflight, Doug Loverro, has resigned just a week before the scheduled start of a milestone space mission. Loverro became NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration and operations last December, and was playing a leading role in NASA’s Artemis moon program as well as preparations for next week’s launch of a SpaceX Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station. That mission, set for liftoff on May 27 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is due to send NASA astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the station for a stay that could last...

Capella Space announced May 13 that it signed a deal to provide synthetic aperture radar to the U.S. Navy, even though the company has yet to put a satellite on orbit. SAR creates images with radar, meaning it can produce images regardless of the weather or lighting conditions. SAR satellite constellation will be able to collect sub-0.5 meter imagery, capable of identifying various types of aircraft or vehicles at ground level.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has been in discussions for several years with both TSMC and Intel to build advanced chip manufacturing plants in the U.S. and extract U.S. supply chain needs from China and southeast Asia. It appears his efforts, and the emphasis on global supply-chain shifts from President Trump, are getting results. According to numerous media reports Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is likely to announce this week they will build an advanced chip manufacturing facility in Arizona. A manufacturing facility for advanced 5 nanometer chip manufacturing is a steep investment decision costing around $10 billion. This shift in...