As the Rio Summer Olympics approach, the subject of sport, excellence, and cheating returns to the fore. With it comes discussion of what cheating in sport is and why it is bad, or not.
One important means for enforcing rules of conduct is to allow police to search for evidence of violations. Search can take many forms, as recent examples illustrate.
In the upcoming Rio Summer Olympics, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will be searching for evidence of gene doping. Gene doping is the insertion of genes into a body's cells in order to modify their behavior for the purpose of enhancement (as opposed to gene therapy, which is done to restore health).
With the approach of the Rio Summer Olympics, the role of technology in sport comes naturally to the fore. Many of those questions center on issues of enhancement.
The aptly named Product Design Studio of Japan has improved on an old piece of design, namely the hand loop grasped by straphangers on public transit.
The classic handle for someone standing on the bus, streetcar, or subway was a loop of plastic hanging from a bar overhead. This solution helps to prevent people from being knocked over by jolts experienced during normal operation but is not very comfortable to hold onto.
Pokémon Go is hard to avoid. Players wander the highways and byways, and the halls of academe, collecting Squirtles and the like.
Like any broadly adopted technological phenomenon, the game comes with trade-offs, that is, features that work to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others. As ever, opinions may differ about what exactly those are.
The New York Times reports that Funai Electric of Japan will cease production of its VHS VCR lines this August. After that, there will be no more producers of this venerable technology.
VCRs were first produced in the mid-1950s and cost $50,000 each! The first consumer versions were marketed in the 1960s but serious household use got underway in the mid-1970s with the so-called Betamax-VHS format war.
Toronto's City Council recently approved a plan to construct a subway extension in Scarborough, in the eastern region of the city. The decision riles many urban planners because it provides only one stop at a cost likely well in excess of $3 billion.
An alternative plan calling for construction of light rail transit (LRT) through the same section of the city would provide more stops, serve more people, and cost significantly less.
Myriad Genetics is perhaps best known for its ultimately failed defence of its patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes associated with elevated risk of breast cancer.
A new article describes another way in which the company has offended some cancer patients, namely by keeping details of their test results a proprietary secret.
It may not surprise you to learn that the Pokémon Go phenomenon continues to grow. As such, here are a few more items that may interest readers of this blog:
As a follow-up to Cam's post yesterday about the return (revenge?) of Pokemon, here's a few other bits of retro video game news.