You can’t be the cool kid on the block until you have a badass social network profile. Whether you like using Facebook, Twitter, or something else along those lines, you need to have something funny to put on your profile. You can use whatever you want, but I love making conceited statements that are so corny, they’re funny. You may be in the same boat. Lucky for you, I have compiled a list of some of my favorite statements so you don’t have to do any searching. Yes, I’m that nice. You can thank me later. Here are some social network status updates you could use for your accounts…

1. Even if you’re “not into farts,” you’d be pretty psyched about what I just did.
2. Every so often, I like to go to the window, look up, and smile for a satellite picture.
3. I am not a morning person. By which I mean that in the morning, I am not a person.
4. I don’t get many compliments, so I was surprised when the phone company called up to say I had an Outstanding Account.
5. I don’t like to think myself as ‘Special’ I like to think myself as limited edition
6. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I say.
7. I got 99 problems but a… umm… this will be graded on a curve, right?
8. I have an athlete’s ability trapped in a dumpster’s body.
9. I have the same body I’ve always had. Adjusted for inflation, of course…
10. I hope I’m the last guy on earth — I wanna see if all those women were lying to me.
11. I only make mental bets. Now, I’ve lost my mind.
12. I refuse to swallow my pride. The last thing I need in my diet right now is more empty calories.
13. I style my hair so it looks like I just had sex, because I can trick myself when I look in a mirror, because I’m stupid.
14. I try to live every day as though it were my last, and who wants to do laundry on the last day they’re alive?
15. I understand the concept of cooking and cleaning but not how it applies to me.
16. I wanted to kill the sexiest person alive…But suicide’s a crime
17. I’d let you talk more, but you’re not as interesting as I am.
18. I’m a humble person, really. I’m actually much greater than I think I am.
19. I’m a magician when it comes to pretending I’m scratching my nose when someone catches me picking it.
20. I’m glad I was diagnosed with OCD because now I have an even 100 problems.
21. I’m in that awkward phase of the day between never drinking again and noon.
22. I’m multi-talented: I can talk and piss you off at the same time.
23. I’m not paranoid, but everyone thinks I am.
24. It matters not whether you win or lose: what matters is whether I win or lose.
25. I’ve had to give up reading books. I find it takes my mind off myself.
26. Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I’m right about everything.
27. Men think of sex every 7 seconds but woman think of me every 2
28. My biggest problem is that I believe almost everything I tell myself.
29. My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
30. No, I’m not weird. I’m a limited edition.
31. When they have pot belly dancing at the Y, sign me up.
32. While having never invented a sin, I’m trying to perfect several.
33. Without ME, it’s just AWESO.

Test out the options above and see if your friends like any of them. I know mine have gotten a kick out of a few of them. As long as you don’t have some stiff police officer friend that only laughs when the boss tells him to, you should get a ton of success from come awkward yet hilarious profile quotes like the ones listed above.

Video game development is one of those information tech careers that everyone knows about but no one really knows how to get involved with. Since PlayStation, Nintendo, XBOX, and other game consoles aren’t going out of style any time soon, you might want to get involved with this career if you have a passion for three dimensional development. To start your career as a video game developer, you will need to get a degree program related to the field. This will give you all the tools you need to work with an employer in the future. Here is a look at the degree programs you might go through so you can plan for the awesomeness to come.

Common Degrees in Game Development

There are several careers to choose from when you want to work in game development. Those may include:

• Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science
• Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications
• Bachelor of Arts in Game Art and Design
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Game Design
• Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interactive Design and Game Development
• Bachelor of Science in Game Design
• Bachelor of Science in Game Development
• Bachelor of Science in Computer Science
• Master of Arts in Game Design
• Master of Computer Science & Engineering
• Master of Fine Arts
• Master of Science in Design

These degrees will all cover different materials, yet they seem to provide the same information in the end. All you really need from your degree is a set of skills to pull from, and you can get that with any of the options listed above. You just have to pick the one you like the best and go for it.

Popular Courses for Game Development Degrees

While the curriculum may be slightly different from one degree to the next, the core information remains the same. If you want to make sure you are going to enjoy your career, you will need to consider the classes you will pass through in college. Those classes may include:

• 3D Content Creation
• Artificial Intelligence
• Calculus and Trigonometry
• Data Structures
• Design Fundamentals
• DirectX
• Engine Development
• English Composition
• Ethics and Psychology
• Game Networking
• Game Planning and Architecture
• Game Preproduction
• Historical Archetypes and Mythology
• Interpersonal Communications
• Linear Algebra
• Machine Architecture
• OpenGL
• Operating Systems
• Optimization
• Physics
• Programming
• Public Speaking
• Real Time Animation
• Rules of the Game
• Software Architecture
• Software Engineering
• Structure of Game Design
• Structure of Game Production
• Windows Programming

Typical Pay Rates for Game Developers

If you manage to work with a really well-known game development company, you could stand to make a ton of money in this profession. There are many different factors that will play into this, but for the most part, you can make good money as a video game developer. Here is a look at how your pay may change throughout your career:

• Less than 1 year of experience: $23,839 – $81,703 per year
• 1-4 years of experience: $33,682 – $72,040 per year
• 5-9 years of experience: $45,141 – $95,208 per year
• 10-19 years of experience: $60,402 – $109,262 per year
• 20 years or more of experience: $48,000 – $140,000 per year

If you have a passion for video games and want to innovate them in the future, a degree in game development is calling your name. Give it a look in the next few weeks and see if it is something you want to do. If so, you can start looking for schools right away.

The first Windows Operating System, Windows 1.0, appeared on the consumer market in 1985 and it has been followed since by 11 newer versions. There are a number of problems for consumers when this happens. When Micro Soft was working on “Long Horn” the company made a great number of promises. These promises came in two categories. By introducing the Aero System the company would be changing the way in which users visually react to the desk top and a promised new file system would make the system much more user friendly. The problem is however that while the company had good intentions the new filing system does not solve any real problems and let´s face it, Aero is just eye candy. Now we have a new version of Windows, Windows 8, expected to hit the shelves this year and the truth is, we can expect much of the same. Windows 8 will concentrate mostly on eye candy and multimedia than it will on functionality.

There is one new aspect of Windows 8 that is very appealing however is the use of “Metro-Style” programming to give users touch screen capability. The problem with this is that in reality a while a touch screen will appeal to a laptop or tablet user it would actually be both inconvenient and unhealthy for a PC user. Using a touch screen on a PC monitor will force you into rigid positions and put your eyes much closer to the monitor, potentially causing future vision problems. Metro-Style programming focuses much more on code than on candy and Windows 8 will be much more functional, with many more choices, than Windows 7. If you just spent $200 on a new OS though you might not want to go out and spend another $200 on Windows 8 but, especially if you are a PC user you might want the same functionality.

Software engineers world wide have not been sleeping on the job however. There are apps on the market that will give users as much, or even more, functionality than Windows 8 will, and you can buy all of them for less than a new OS and with much less hassle installing. Xplorer2 for instance lets you uses multiple panes for easy file copying ( like Windows XP), has tons of keyboard shortcuts, allows multiple tab browsing and unparalleled searching capabilities. This app only costs $30 and will easily replace Windows Explorer. Fences and Divy, about $32 together, allow you to gain complete control of your desktop and Bins, for only $5 will do the same for your task-bar. This means that you do not have to spend vast sums of money every few years to have a great computer experience.

The news seems to be full of horrible stories about children being assaulted, kidnapped, abused and even killed, by strangers roaming our neighborhoods. While the media in the United States tends to exaggerate many problems, there is a real and present danger to our children. The good news is that while there is no magic bullet, no guaranteed protection, we can use technology to help keep a good close eye on them at all times. The introduction of GPS technology gave us one of the best tools to do this but many companies are introducing new technologies raise the bar significantly higher. The following items are just a few on a long list of new child safety devices.

In today´s fast paced world many parents have taken to using GPS tracking technology in their children´s cell phones to keep track of them, some even going as far as to use the GPS in their teenagers automobile. They now have these tracking devices in things like book bags and even clothing. Toddler Tag, manufactured by BrickhoursSecurity.com is an excellent example of this and retails for about $40. The Tag is meant for very small children and a 56db alarm will notify a parent if the child wanders too far from the base unit. You can also trigger the alarm to signal the child if they wander out of sight. You can also use this tool to track your child´s movements in crowded places like Malls or amusement parks.

If you are a working single parent and your child arrives home from school before you come home from work it is good to know that they are home safe. The Schlage LiNK Wireless Keypad Deadbolt Starter Kit will send you a text message when the keypad is used to open the door. Using this with a nanny cam and iPhone will allow you to keep an eye on your kids while you are at work. You can also use your laptop or PC or even iPhone to lock or unlock doors in your home fitted with the system. The system itself costs more than $200 and there is a monthly fee of about $10 but this system gives you a great deal of control over your home whether you are there or not.

Cellphone tracking services are easy to find. Most of the large cellphone service providers provide at least some coverage. Sprint for instance has its Family Locator service, which will cover up to four (4) different cellphones for only $5 per month. The Verizon service will locate anyone on its Family Share Plan and also give you location based alerts when you kids are home or out of bounds. Finally AT&T, always the most expensive of the bunch, charges $9.99 a month for only two people and cover only five people for $14.99.

In amusing conclusion, gone are the days when you had to inspect your children´s toothbrushes to make sure they are brushing and making your feel like a police officer. The Toothbrush Tracker, made by GreenGoose.com contains sensors that will determine when the brush is being used. The brush will send a signal to a WI-FI router and then to an app that you can download to your iPhone, with Google´s Android to follow sometime next year with an app of their own. There are so many different tools like this that we cannot possibly include them in our limited space. You can buy tools to monitor you cars speed while your child is driving and tracking and teaching tools for your pet as well.

When Abraham Maslow developed his hierarchy of needs nearly 60 years ago he was attempting to define human behavior in the most basic of terms. He wanted to show that everything we do is done to meet just a few basic needs. These needs are survival (food, air, water, shelter), love and belonging, satisfaction and a sense of achievement. But researchers in the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology discovered that the world has changed. The Internet, according to their polls, is considered by 30% of college students and young professionals as important as food, air, and water. These young people had come from 14 different nations and were all in their 20´s and more than half stated without reservation that the Internet was so integrated into their lives that they simply could not exist without it.

This is not the only study that found more and more people are considering the Internet to be an integral part of their lives. The London Science Museum also conducted a poll, this time with 3,000 respondents ranked #1 Sunshine, #2 Internet Connection, #3 Clean Drinking Water, #4 Refrigerators, and #5 Face-book the top five, completely ignoring food and air. We can live with sunshine and the Internet but air to breath and food to eat are not as important as Face-book? Answers to questions like this are usually one of the first indicators to a persons having at least some level of Internet addiction. A person does not even have to have a computer to be addicted to the Internet. Most smart-phones and tablets and notebooks are all functional Internet devices that can do most of the same thing full sized PCs can do.

If you find yourself spending more time online than most people, especially if you do not work online, you might want to try to schedule periods of the day to be online. Put aside maybe two hours a day for answering emails, checking messages and getting any shopping or studying you have to do. Keep in mind that most of the time we spend online that is simply wasted time is answering instant messengers. 84% of college students say that they are interrupted at least once during a study session if their computer is left on with messengers logged in. If you find yourself cheating on this schedule than you might have a problem and should seek professional counseling. The Internet is a wonderful productivity tool and you can have a great deal of fun with it. But it also can lead to addiction and being careful is the best way to protect yourself.

The trend toward smaller and smaller computers might have reached its inevitable end when Linux released the Raspberry Pi, a credit sized computer that is rumored to be able to fit into an Altoids tin. Linux has managed to design a tiny device that still has the capability to perform many of the same jobs that a desktop PC or laptop. The Pi is great for students because it allows them to work unobtrusively, without disturbing the lecture, while carrying all of their data in their shirt pocket or purse. Not only does it leave room for many other things, but at the low price of $35 for the top of the line model, this device might just be a college students dream, especially anyone in programs like software engineering and web design.

The device was designed as primarily a teaching tools for budding computer programmers. The groups that sponsored its development, the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and Broadcom, say that their mission is to “promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing.” The computer comes with Deben 6.0 and LXDE desktop and Midori browser with various programming tools. Because it runs on QUMU the Pi is portable to several other platforms. While not currently available the Foundation plans to open an App Store that would allow users to freely exchange programs.

But all is not butterflies and rainbows with the Raspberry Pi. The device only allows 256mb of RAM for model B and half that for model A, and must be booted with an SD card. You must also have an external power source and if you want to use both a keyboard and mouse you will need to purchase the Pi model B or use a USB hub. The A model only comes with one USB port and the B only comes with two. Also model A does not contain an Ethernet port while model B does and the only way to get wireless support is to use a dongle. But the ability to use the device as a multimedia device is very attractive. Both video and audio are HDMI supported and there are a number of other productivity tools, like document writers and spreadsheets that can be used as well. The device can be attached to a television set or watched independently. All in all, for such a low price, this device promises to be competitive with any other mini-computer on the market and its educational features make it all the more attractive.

When the nation began its quest for space during the Kennedy administration, it took the entire nations resources for nearly a decade to simply put two men on the moon for a few days. This program was initiated by Kennedy and followed through by Johnson and the dream was realized about 6 months into the Nixon Administration. When Nixon did achieve the White House however the funding for NASA started getting slashed dramatically until the Space program essentially died before the end of the Ford Administration, ending 12 years of Republican rule. One of the last promises of George W. Bush was that the United States would see a manned mission to Mars before the year 2025 yet the first thing he did was to cut funding for the Space Shuttle program. A rational person might as how the infrastructure necessary to support such an endeavor as a maned Mars mission is to be built without a space shuttle.

The idea that space can be conquered by one nation acting alone is silly. The United States experience should be all we need to understand this basic fact. Our entire resources for a decade put gave two men a three day stay on our own satellite. The moon is a mere 1/80^th of the distance to Mars and a gravity well much stronger, making leaving the surface much more difficult. Before a manned surface expedition to Mars could be mounted, with any chance of success, a large space station containing several hundred support personnel would be needed and a base on the moon that would support the Station would be essential. Using the same level of resources as was used during the 1960´s, and with the cooperation of the European Union and Japan, both of whom have proven to be excellent space partners, could get the job done in less than 20 years. Of course the governments would have to stop financing wars and begin supporting education but a rational world would see the benefits of space exploration over nation-building.

President Obama has already ended one war that was a drain on the world economy and is planning to end the second one by the end of his second term. He has also fought tirelessly to increase education spending in America´s school. The same Republicans however who began the huge cuts to both NASA and education during the 1970´s and 1980´s are still fighting spending on these programs while at the same time fighting to keep the wars going in Afghanistan and start another in Iran. The President is also encouraging an International Space Program that would not only foster cooperation but would, within two generations, begin supplying much needed resources to our tired planet.

Space exploration is and must be the future of humanity. As a species we are dying in our own poisons and taking a great number of other species with us. We have an over crowded planet with religious fundamentalists insisting on ending both contraception and abortion and our resources are finite. Acting in a responsible Conservatives see cooperation with other nations as “anti-American”. In today´s world, with a population of more than billion people, such isolationism will not work. The planet has grown up and American conservatives need to realize that American “exceptional-ism” if it ever really existed in the first place, has been dead since the end of World War II.

In the United States more than 16% of the population is Hispanic yet less than 11% of the US population actually speaks Spanish, leaving more than 5% of American Hispanics who do not speak the language of their parents. This is not to say that the Spanish language is soon to be extinct, far from it. But 2000 years ago all of Europe spoke Latin, which is now a “dead” language, which means that while it is still used it is never used in spoken conversation. Languages thrive only when they are spoken and can grow and change. The language of a people speaks of their heart and soul and keeping all of our languages as alive and in use as possible is very important to our advancement as a people. An excellent example of this is the Navajo language. During World War II the American government used Navajo “code-talkers” in all of their communications to prevent the Japanese and Germans from understanding what was being said. When Europeans arrived in the “New World” there were more than 300 Native languages but today that number has dropped to 175 and some of these remaining languages are spoken by less than 1000 people.

While there are many scholarships and grants offered to linguistic students who are majoring in the more prominent languages, Native American language groups, like Algonquin, Inuit and Cherokee are mostly ignored. While there are a few available, these groups are severely under represented. One excellent example is Siletz Dee-ni, once widely used, is possibly only spoken fluently by one man, Alfred “Bud” Lane, and the language has been labeled “moribund” but the linguistic community. Lane began a crusade several years ago to change this horrible loss by fighting to reintroduce the language to the Siletz Valley public school system, giving students two days a week of classes, and the program is beginning to see a great deal of success. Joined by K. David Harrison of Swarthmore College´s Linguistics Program, the pair have assembled an online talking dictionary that contains nearly 15,000 words and obtained a sponsorship from the National Geographic´s Living Tongues Institutes for Endangered Languages.

The group feels that if we lose these languages we lose a great deal more than words. Ideas and vital scientific information can also be lost. According to Harrison the Native people have a great deal of knowledge about self sufficiency, plants, animals and spirituality and our relationship that simply cannot be translated into the predominant languages, like English, Spanish or Portuguese. These languages, because they developed in isolation from the rest of the world for thousands of years, also have different patterns, that can only be used to describe things like foods and social traditions. The hope among linguists like Margaret Noori, professor of Linguistics at the University of Michigan and fluent speaker/writer of Ashininaabermowin language, spoken by the Ojibwe people in the area, is that these talking dictionaries can be used with other endangered languages as well.

Human beings have been fascinated by their hair for millennium. Hair styles have defined entire cultures and today hundreds of billions of dollars are spent each year in the West for hair care and hair care products. The barber pole has all but disappeared from the American landscape but with the disappearance of each barbershop a dozen “Super Cuts”, “Hair Masters” and styles of every type appeared, flashing with neon signs and bright pastel colors. But even with our fascination with hair, many people are not aware that there is an entire science dedicated to the study of hair. But fewer yet would expect that this branch of science would make a discovery that would translate a benefit to the computer graphics and animation industry.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge in the UK have discovered a way to predict the exact shape of a ponytail under different conditions. Using what is known as the “Repunzel Number” they are able to determine the exact shape of the pony tail depending on its length and the thickness of the individual hairs. The Rapunzel Number is a number that is used to calculate the effects of gravity on hair relative to its length. Researchers added the effects of hair thickness, stiffness and average waviness to this number and came up with the answer. They also consider how a bundle of hair is extended by the outward pressure that arises from collisions between the component hairs. Cambridge Professor Raymond Goldstein said in a Reuters interview that their work had the potential to affect several other fields as well.

Along with giving programmers and graphic designers a solid formula to work with when creating realistic human avatars for game and chat rooms this finding also allows for a potentially greater understanding of the structures of materials made up of random fibers as well, such as fur and wool and even synthetic fibers. This would be an excellent tool for forensic scientists to use when they are analyzing crime scenes. This is also another tool that can be used in computer animation to make the clothing of characters look more realistic as it move around the body.

While Goldstein and Ball will not formally introduce their findings until the meeting of the American Physical Society until the end of February, Goldstein told Reuters that “Our findings extend some central paradigms in statistical physics and show how they can be used to solve a problem that has puzzled scientists and artists ever since Leonardo da Vinci remarked on the fluid-like streamlines of hair in his notebooks 500 years ago,”

The idea of smart clothing is not a new one. Researchers began nearly 20 years ago with inserting microchips and sensors in clothing. These garments were found to be somewhat lumpy and inconvenient however, so scientists tried embedding nanoparticles capable of carrying and electronic current but failed to make the material durable enough for wearable clothing. But according to Maksim Skorobogatiy, a physicist at Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada, the dream of smart clothing is not only on the horizon, but it it just around the corner. Skorobogatiy assembled a research team in true Bill Gates style. Instead of hiring people who were experts in certain fields, he hired people who had excelled in fields that were very complex. Like Gates, he understood that if a person was smart enough to handle advanced physics and mathematics, zeroing in on smaller fields would be easy for them and because they were not bogged down with preconceptions. i.e. they could think outside of the box.

Skorobogatiy´s method seems to be working. While changing inflexible electronics into soft, flexible fibers is not walk in the park, this unique team has been able to create fibers that are durable but are also capable of being used in such things as touch screens and even batteries. The thing is that these fibers are capable of transmitting far more than electricity, but will be able to carry data as well, allowing the possibility of integrated smart-phones, music players and even computers that you can fold up and put in your pocket. This total blending of the hard and soft features of electronics is still a ways off the first clothing that will allow you to control things like connected music players or adjusting the heat or a/c by swiping you car seat, are right around the corner.

Dr. Skorobogatiy says that their end goal is to make clothing that will serve these functions yet be so unobtrusive that users never notice that they have them. They want the clothing to not only be completely self-contained but able to charge itself. No one wants to have to plug their Levi´s in at night to recharge them. These researchers are not only working on creating multi-touch screens, batteries, but also microchip sensors that can monitor your health without you noticing and that will warn you of potential problems. This is a product that could have profound impact on the medical industry alone as more people are able to monitor their own health and get care before the problem becomes fatal, creating a larger demand for registered nurses and medical technicians, but lessening the need for extended care and trauma workers.

The fibers created are optical that have the ability to carry both television and Internet signals. The material is put into a molten state and long, thin, polymer-based fibers are drawn out of it. According to the Journal of Smart Materials and Structures, in an article published in January, the initial fibers have produced a cotton “touch-pad” that has the same touch capability as a tablet computer. They have also been able to create battery strips, based on the lithium battery architecture, that can be woven into clothing fibers. The only problem the lab foresees is the possibility that some clothing makers will not want to take risks on a product that is so novel. The entire project is still in its beginning stages and a great deal of development has to be done before we will have “handkerchief “ computers. But even at a worst case scenario we can expect to see a great number of these products on the market within the next decade.

The blog does not usually deal with politics but sometimes the borders between politics and technology blur a bit. Some excellent examples are the development of nuclear technology, first to win the Second World War and then to keep pace with the Russian and Chinese development of nuclear weapons. Another good example is President Kennedy’s push to land a person on the Moon. Finally we have the controversy that began during the Bush administration about stem cell research. The first two cases are examples of American politicians using technology as a way to pull Americans together for positive reasons and while nuclear science has had a negative effect on the world it also allowed us to prevent both a continuation of World War Two and an expansion of Soviet power in Europe.

The space program however, when it actually existed, was able to give not only Americans, but also humanity itself, so many benefits that it is sometimes hard to count them. Without the space program our current communication abilities would be impossible, the World Wide Web and Internet would not exist and a great deal of scientific and medical research would have been impossible without access to zero gravity conditions. The space program is responsible for our weather forecasting, which saves literally thousands of lives and property damage and our understanding of our planet and our sun has been greatly expanded. Even two of our most important national monuments, the Statue of Liberty and the Golden Gate Bridge, are being protected by coatings invented to protect launch pads from corrosion by heat and humidity.

Politicians will use science and technology for political purposes. Bush did it with stem cell research, using it as a dividing issue to please Evangelicals. The medical potential of using stem cells as repairable therapies is unquestioned. The entire Bush argument was based on the lack of definition about when consciousness begins in a human embryo. Bush banned most stem cell research but President Obama reversed the ban when elected. This week however, Candidate Newt Gingrich raised the bar on mixing politics and technology to an insane level. In a recent speech the ex-Speaker promised to not only have a base on the moon populated with thousands of people, but that he would make the Moon the 51^st US State and do it before the end of his second term.

This statement is not only patently ridiculous but is also extremely offensive and divisive. But then we have come to expect patently ridiculous and offensive statements from Republicans during the last two generations. Because of the huge cuts made to NASA, including scraping the Space Shuttle program, made by Republicans since 2000 guarantee that we could not place any permanent base on the moon, let alone one with several thousand people (13,000 are required for Statehood), within a decade without the assistance of the rest of the world and if the rest of the world contributes it is unlikely that they will approve American Statehood. During the 1960´s the budget for the space program was, on an average, 3.65% of the Federal budget. This budget began to drop significantly during the Nixon years and today is only 0.60% of the budget now.

The Greek philosopher Plato said “Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.” Humanity is dying in its own poisons, to paraphrase science-fiction author Robert A. Heinlein and if we do not either control over population or expand outward, our finite resources will dry up and we will cease to exist. The idea of a colony on the Moon is not a new one. Robert J. Oppenheimer posited this idea and presented many different ways to accomplish this base and space stations that house thousands of people and are self-supporting. Humankind has the capability to do this, and do it in a short period of time, but the very idea that it can be accomplished by one nation is delusional, at best. Hillary Clinton told us several years ago in her book that it “takes a village” to raise children, but it the case of gaining a foothold on the Galaxy it will take all of our villages, towns, cities, states and, of course nations. Space exploration is not a job for only Americans. It is a project that can be used to bring the world together and has nothing to do with Gingrich´s statement that our planets only satellite should be exclusively American.

In 1980, while being interviewed at a trade show Microsoft founder and software guru Bill Gates is supposed to have said “640K ought to be enough for anybody” , while referring to RAM, or operating memory. Gates probably never actually said that (and still denies saying it), but in 1980 no one would have thought that there would be PCs with up to 8GB of RAM and in RAID 0 systems up to 20 terabytes in passive hard drive storage. There is probably no application available today that would run on as little as 64k of RAM. Computers need to be faster and have greater data storage today if they expect to be able to run the highly graphical and math intensive programs that are in nearly everyone’s computer today. Senior software engineers will tell you that even small programs have thousands of lines of code and other programs have tens of millions of lines of code. The development of hard drives for passive storage has come a long way since the time when they could only be used in sterile environments. Today the largest hard drives are 4 terabytes and there are 1 terabyte hard drives that can be carried in a coat pocket. The Hitachi GST was the first 1 terabyte hard drive and was launched in 2007, just four years ago.

Information is stored in binary fashion with each bit, a 1 or 0, needing millions of atoms of space to store it. If you want to represent the letter Z, for instance, you would need 8 bites of storage space. According to researchers at IBM Research in California that is about to change. According to Andreas Heinrich, one of the lead researchers, the neighbor bits of information which are at the same atomic spacing as atoms have, allowing them to be much more closely packed. He said that he would need, at most, 12 atoms to store one bit of code or less than 100 to store a byte, or 8 bits, which is one symbol, like the letter Z. Right now it takes nearly 500,000,000 atoms to store the same amount. If Dr. Heinrich is correct we will soon be looking at hard drives with more than 100 times the current capacity of the largest drives currently on the market.

Heinrich´s thinking is definitely out of the box. Hard drives currently use ferromagnetic principles to store data and this works well because when you use ferromagnetic materials the spin of the atoms align with each other, which provides the magnetic field, each bit having its own magnetic field. While it is these fields that hold the data together, the fields also push against each other and use up a lot of possible data storage area. Instead of using ferromagnetic principles however, Heinrich has decided to put his money on antiferromagnetism. Researching magnets for data storage he and his team decided that they needed to find the boundary between the boundary of quantum and classical behaviors in atoms. It was at this boundary that they could find enough rational order to begin to use it as a data storage medium. The researchers needed to use a scanning electronic microscope to accomplish the task because these devices allow them to actually manipulate atoms.

Some recent new advances in brain science and increased understanding about how the brain works indicate that we may be close to actually being able to increase the IQ potential of a fetus, followed by increasing the IQ of children and adults. But some researchers are raising the possibly important questions about how this ability will effect individuals and society in general. What can a society of hyper intelligent people do. When many people consider this they generally picture a Utopia vision of paradise but that is not only not the case, the possibility is rather remote.

We can start by considering increasing intelligence will affect individuals. In reality, while a person with a 50 point higher IQ would be capable of earning a great deal more money, this does not guarantee a better life or happiness. Increasing intelligence without increasing wisdom can lead to personal disaster for many people because intelligence and ethics are two entirely different things. The jury is out whether having an increased perception of the world would do more harm than good and there are some people for whom ignorance truly is bliss.

But how would increasing everyone´s IQ by fifty points affect society. There would be both positives and negatives if everyone became this much smarter. People would become healthier and much more active, living longer and consuming more resources, increasing over population problems. While crimes like burglary and petty theft property crimes would certainly decrease financial and computer crimes would certainly increase and people with criminal psychologies get smarter and harder to catch. Industrial criminals will be able to attend Master´s Degree online programs, be harder to catch when polluting or trading falsely but would be much less likely to pollute cheat and we would be smarter enough to be able to create the technology that will be able to deal with most of these problems.

The first breakthroughs are expected before the end of this decade, said professor emeritus at UC Irvine Richard Haier. He said that for the very first time in human history science is on the frontiers of being able to actually increase intelligence. He said that while this promises enormous potential for the Human Race, these advances need to be handled responsibly. Haier is a neuroscientist who has conducted several studies in increasing human intelligence as well as studies of the effects of such increases and his findings are supported by other studies in the same area conducted by other Universities.

There is simply no comparison between a modern office workplace and one of 50 years ago. Technology has completely changed the way we work and in many cases, where we work. Modern technology has enabled us to increase our productivity several hundred percent during the last decade. Our computers, i Pads and smart-phones allow us to remain in contact with people across the globe 24/7 for free. But the Universe is all about balance and with all of the benefits modern technology there are negatives in equal proportion.

One of the largest problems comes from distraction. Our computers and smart phones allow us to be in contact with co-workers and business associates but they also offer things like Face Book, MySpace, YouTube and others. One recent survey conducted by America Online found that workers waste nearly 3 hours of each day in social networks or watching episodes of their favorite television show. Surfing the Internet is the biggest time waster and is responsible for 44% of total work time lost, followed by socializing with co-workers, which is about 25%.

But another problem is the sheer number of distracting devices. Not all workers spend their day in front of a computer monitor but most workers have smart-phones and things like I Pads. This amount of connectivity not only keeps them surfing the Internet but it leads to over multitasking. Multitasking is usually highly prized but too much multitasking can easily lead to lose of focus. This means that while you can accomplish many different tasks at one time the quality of your work is sure to suffer.

But some workers are already having problems with privacy issues and invasions of personal space. Some companies are actually addressing the problem however. The Volkswagen corporation recently agreed with Union leaders to limit and emails related to work being sent after the executive was off work.

But for the lower ranks in many companies there is yet another problem. The national unemployment rate in the United States is nearly 9% but if you have at least an Associated Degree this number drops to 4.4%. One of the reasons for this is because someone with at least two years of college will be easier to train. 95% of jobs in the United States require knowledge in computers and higher technology and a solid education is necessary. The problem is however that older workers seldom have college degrees. Only 28% of the American workforce over 25 years old has a College degree and with the new cuts to education that are sure to come during the next few years, this number will be even lower. Many older workers are seeking enrollment in the best online schools, just to play catch up as companies downsize and cut older workers first.

There are a number of resources online that will teach you how to avoid the distractions and prioritize your day. There are other resources that will allow you to easily increase your marketability by increasing your education and understanding of modern technology. Increasing your education will not only protect your current job but will put you in line for advancement and a much higher earning potential. College graduates not only have the lowest unemployment but earn 25% more with simply a two year degree.

Every year the media is full of articles about new technologies coming soon. These new advances promise an easier life, more jobs in areas like software engineering careers and computer technology or criminal justice or medicine. But at the same time these articles hit the presses there will be other articles telling us that we have reached out technological limits and anything “new” is really just modifications of an old idea. The fact is however that while many new innovative ideas are simply extensions of existing technology there are in fact a great number of completely new paradigms, like stem cell research and DNA profiling that are completely revolutionizing the way we look at the Universe and our place in it. But the problem is that the more we learn about technology and our world the less clear the lines seem to be between the old and the new.

The possibility of new technologies have been decried for millennium, beginning with Roman engineer Julius Sextus Frontinus in 10 A.D, who said “Inventions have long since reached their limit and I see no hope for future developments.” One has to wonder what his reaction would be if he were dropped into a consumer electronics store, a modern hospital or the Cape Canaveral during a satellite launch. Frontinus was not the only well known scientist in history to echo this belief. In 1899 the Commissioner of the United States Patent Office said that “Everything that can be invented, has already been invented.” This was said well before the invention of the television, the airplane, CAT Scanners and MRI´s and personal computers that allow us to communicate on a global scale. In 1878 the chief engineer of the British Post Office said “The Americans have need of the telephone but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

Today we go to the movie theater that has the best sound system but in 1927 H.M. Warner, President of Warner Brothers, said “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, said that there was room in the world for maybe five computers and today we see a world with literally billions of computers and our society would literally disintegrate without them. The leaders of most of our industries all claimed that new technologies would never be accepted at all by society, from 20^th Century Fox to Xerox and even Bill Gates, who claimed that PC users would never need more than 637kb of memory as late as 1981.

When new technologies fail it is often because of either an over estimation of the inventors abilities or because of politics. Arthur C. Clark however formulated his “Three Rules of Prediction” that can be very easily used to determine just how much of an impact eventual technologies will have. The rules are as follows:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is probably correct. But when he says something is impossible, he is probably incorrect.
2. The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is completely indistinguishable from magic.

Authors and scientists like Clark and Robert A. Heinlein successfully predicted our move into space decades before the first rockets left the earth and Clark predicted the development and wide spread use of the Internet as early as 1977 and now nearly 20% of the students in the United States are attending online colleges and Universities and obtaining great educations without ever having to leave home. We can watch movies, listen to music and chat with friends or business associates in Hong Kong for free.