ArchiveArticles
Researchers: Sense of Purpose in Later Life Lowers Dementia Risk
They believe that it helps the brain stay resilient. Fortunately, a wide range of activities have been found in various studies to provide that sense
Researcher: The Limits of Today’s Top Robots Are a Hard Ceiling
Don’t quit your job folding laundry. Those impressive-looking robots aren’t really there yet
Entrepreneur Hal Philipp: Perils of Success for Solo Inventors
He warns, when it comes to patents, “size matters.” Big companies command respect and are harder to cheat than lone inventorsHal Philipp’s inventions underpin automatic faucets, door sensors, and the capacitive touchscreens that made the smartphone era possible. In this podcast, he offers a candid field guide to turning ideas into impact. The discussion ranges from startup structure and venture capital to patent warfare, corporate brinkmanship, and the social aftershocks of the iPhone. Philipp is interviewed by Robert J. Marks and Bradley Norris. Engineering education Marks opens with a challenge to engineering education. Universities excel at training graduates for Boeing or Motorola, but seldom spotlight entrepreneurship as a viable path. Philipp agrees and then complicates the picture. If he could rewind, he says, he would “get a little more assistance,” likely allying with a larger organization to gain leverage. In Read More ›
AI: Tool or Companion?
Personalized AI systems only make sense in a friendless society.
What Kind of a “PhD-level Expert” Is ChatGPT 5.0? I Tested It.
The responses to my three prompts made clear that GPT 5.0, far from being the expert that CEO Sam Altman claims, can’t address the meanings of words or concepts
Monday Micro Softy 41: King David’s Sons’ Puzzling Inheritance
Solomon must figure out how to divide an oddly shaped piece of land equally among his brothers and himself
Religious Involvement Generally Predicts Better Mental Health
The signal that rises above the research noise is mostly positive. The question, in most cases, is what it points to
Why Don’t Near-Death Experiences Support One Belief System?
On the Truthful Hope podcast, Jacob Vazquez and Denyse O'Leary discuss the way people of different faiths see what they themselves recognize
When Physicists Clash Over an Allegedly Pointless Universe…
… we end up finding out how much current research appears to be an elaborate waste of public funds
The Time Machine (1960): The Evolution of the Future
Part 2: The movie portrays the Eloi — future humans — much differently from the film, probably because the script writers had different aims from those of H. G. Wells
In a Materialistic Universe, Literature Doesn’t Make Sense
Language itself is theological. It’s an ascent
Isn’t It a Bit Late To Try Retreading Eliminative Materialism?
Daniel Dennett was an eliminative materialist at a time when the idea that consciousness is an illusion sounded cool and daring. And the Big Explanation was just around the corner…
ChatGPT-5 Tries Out “Rotated” Tic-Tac-Toe. You Be the Judge…
They say that dogs tend to resemble their owners. Chat GPT very much resembles Sam Altman — always confident, often wrong
Wisconsin Bill Pending to Ban ‘Nature Rights’ Ordinances
Wisconsin State Senator Steve Nass argues that philosophically, the “rights of nature” concept is incompatible with America’s founding principles
A Biologist Struggles to Understand “Unscientific Wokeness”
Truth, for many people now, is based on social, emotional, or political needs. And major science publications are buying in
AI Is Impacting Our Culture — But Not As We Were Told To Expect
Okay, your boss is not a robot. Your doctor is not a chatbot. But here are some things that are actually happening that we might not have expected
New Find: Stone Tools From 1 to 1.5 Million Years Ago
The tools were found on Sulawesi, an island near Flores, where fossils of diminutive humans were found in 2003 — but they were not as old as these tools
Successfully Deciphering the Thoughts of Speechless People
The new technology may be a great advance for persons with disabilities but it raises serious issues about privacy once it gets into the wrong hands
Defending a Patent: Lessons from Tech Entrepreneur Hal Philipp
In Part 2 of a 3-part interview, Philipp — inventor of the modern touchscreen — tells Robert J. Marks and Bradley Norris about his struggles with AppleWhen we swipe a phone or tap a touchscreen, few of us realize how much engineering — and legal grit — underlies that simple gesture. In an interview with Mind Matters podcasting, inventor Hal Philipp traces the path from lone tinkerer to successful founder, and finally to weary veteran of patent warfare. Philipp, a key inventor behind modern capacitive sensing and touchscreens, delivers a sober message for innovators: invention is only half the battle; defending your invention can define your company’s fate. From Single-Point Touch to a Full Touchscreen Philipp’s early work focused on single-channel capacitive sensors — one-button touch or proximity detection. The breakthrough came when he generalized the idea into linear touch sliders and then into a circular Read More ›