The Smithian

An infusion of Sandy-related dollars from Congress will help the National Weather Service upgrade two supercomputers that are used in virtually all U.S. weather predictions. That, in turn, could close…an embarrassing gap between the primary U.S. and European computer models. The European model has…been more adept at forecasting the…intensities of major storms, and that pattern held last October when the European model projected the lethal westward turn by Sandy even as the early U.S. model showed it drifting to the east harmlessly, toward open ocean.

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…this ideology is a paradoxical fusion of the freewheeling sensibilities exemplified by the New Left hippies and the capitalistic drive of the neoliberal New Right, with digital technologies serving as the binding agent.

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A former AOL vice president is poised to become one of the Central Intelligence Agency’s top science and technology officers…she’s also been a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab engineer, a top spy, and a champion of open source software, too.

Dawn Meyerriecks.

Is it the future of the motorized wheelchair?

…skin-wearable circuits. They stick on your skin with a stamp. They…stretch and flex with the natural movements of your body, lasting about two weeks until they flake off…And since they’re in direct contact with the skin, they can integrate with you more seamlessly than the iPhone, Nike+ Fuelband or any other wearable product that’s been conceived to date.

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…a grand overview of the invention’s sweeping repercussions on America’s soul. Digging deeply into archives and old newspapers, Freeberg takes us on a captivating intellectual adventure that offers long-forgotten stories of the birth pangs of the electrical age that are amusing, surprising and tragic.

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…will be wired directly into [the] nervous system, which should enable movement through thought alone, along with the ability for the patient to actually feel what touches their mechanical hand.

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