There are so many things going on in the world and I have so little time to peruse and ponder them all. I’m reminded of the lyrics from Brain Damage on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album (you should also take the time to listen to Dub Side of the Moon by the Easy Star All-Stars):

[…]
The lunatic is in the hall
The lunatics are in my hall
The paper holds their folded faces to the floor
And every day the paperboy brings more
[…]

I saw Pink Floyd play this live at an open-air concert in 1975, and now I can hear the words and music rattling around my poor old noggin (which, in turn, reminds me of Noggin the Nog, which was a cult classic from the golden age of British children’s television).

But we digress. My chum Jay Dowling has been sending all kinds of nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia my way, so I thought I’d briefly share some of these links with you so I can stop worrying about falling behind.

  • Artificial intelligence (AI) can identify the song you are listening to by reading your brain waves. [Read More]
  • New electronic-based system is capable of providing on-the-spot testing for COVID-19 in just 10 minutes. [Read More]
  • Retro radio marches on from office entertainment to deep space communications. [Read More]
  • We knew it was coming — the latest version of Spot the robot dog is now armed. [Read More]
  • Speaking of arms and robots… On the one hand (which appears on the end of an arm… get it?), researchers at Columbia Engineering’s Creative Machines Lab have managed to build empathy into a robot. [Read More] On the other foot, an international team of researchers conclude that we wouldn’t be able to control a super-intelligent AI (even if it was empathic). [Read More]
  • Can anyone wrap their brains around the amount of internet bandwidth that’s consumed each and every second? For example, one movie streamed for 1.6 billion minutes in just one week on Disney+ [Read More]
  • How about the recent experiments that demonstrate real-time control of a rat’s brain (does anyone spring to mind?) [Read More]
  • Holy Spock! How would you like to own a set of the World’s first bi-directional translation earbuds? [Read More]
  • Do you remember the Zune, which was Microsoft’s flagship MP3 player? Well, even though it’s been a decade since this little scamp was canned, these dedicated fans are keeping it alive. [Read More]

I fear we’ve barely scratched the surface of the topics I wish to talk about, but at least the ones mentioned here will keep you occupied for a while. More coming soon… watch this space…

Actually, while I have your attention, I’m hoping to make more people aware of my columns, so I’d very much appreciate it if you could use your social media channels spread the good word to your family, friends, and colleagues by means of this link: CliveMaxfield.com/CoolBeans