Department of "History Begins When I Was Born." Yesterday's News and Observer printed an AP report about the Christening of US...

In the 1980's I was in the computer industry, owning a small information technology company with a very small Defense contract. We commu...

May 23, 1943, the US Army tested a new secret weapon: incendiary bats. Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry exposed the whole story in a colu...

Norbert Wiener, a mathematician at MIT six decades ago, wrote down what we need to know about what he called "the new machine age....

A couple of years ago, I posted my thoughts about Robotics and Economics . My concern at that time was that economists, as they have histori...

Wind Energy And Cherry Point Two weeks ago the Pamlico County Board of Commissioners and the Pamlico County Planning Board had a...

During the Democratic National Convention, an evening was set aside to honor veterans and recognize their service to the nation. That's...

Yesterday a federal court jury decided in favor of Apple and against Samsung in a lawsuit over patents in the smart phone industry. The real...

When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, they achieved surprise by effective use of several techniques: 1. Failure to declare war in advance of th...

It's time for my annual rant observations about time. We have returned to Eastern "standard" time.  If it's standard, why ...

The Old Theater resounded this evening with music provided by the Borromeo String Quartet. The founder of the quartet and native of Durham...

The DSL link is working again. What a pleasure to be hooked up to the outside world.

A few days ago I mentioned that China is proceeding with an inherently safe nuclear reactor design called the "pebble bed" reactor...

Like most folks, I've been watching the TV reports of the disaster in Japan. I'm in awe of the courage and persistence of the nuclea...

My favorite economist, Paul Krugman, has just begun to address computerization and its effects on employment. Today's column addresses ...

About three weeks ago I called attention to the effect of computerization on jobs in my post at: http://mile181.blogspot.com/2011/02/robotic...

Ninety years ago, the Czech journalist and author Karel Capek introduced the word "Robot" to the world in his play, "R.U.R. (...