PNC Robotics Club Rebooted
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
April 17, 2012
Perhaps especially on commuter campuses, there’s a depressing tendency for grand, exciting plans for clubs and activities to just sort of evaporate as the year goes on. I hoped that wouldn’t be the case for the PNC Robotics Club – an organization created in the fall of 2011 by freshmen... Read More
Astonishing Mini Drones
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
March 28, 2012
Farhad Manjoo writing in Slate has a terrific breakdown of what appears to be the next big thing in robotics — tiny, hovering, swarming robots capable of astonishingly precise maneuvers. The future applications of this technology are mind boggling, and as the Manjoo points out in a quote... Read More
PNN Investigates: Is Bigfoot in Northwest Indiana? (No)
Ronald Taylor, Senior Sasquatch Correspondent
March 27, 2012
“I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me. There’s a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside.” – Mitch Hedberg I’ll state my biases up front.... Read More
The Big Migration
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
March 1, 2012
It’s a scene reminiscent of some mass congregation of wildlife at a waterhole in the African Savannah – only it takes place an hour south of PNC. Thousands of warbling, gangly sandhill cranes rise from the surrounding woods and land in sheets on a grassy expanse of land as the evening sky... Read More
TV Review: Delocated
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
February 14, 2012
Warning: may contain spoilers! Delocated is a dark comedy series currently entering its 3rd season on the Adult Swim programming block. It centers around a conspicuously-disguised, dim witted egotist who’s “hiding out” in the federal witness protection program. He also happens to be the... Read More
“Movies reimagined for another time & place…”
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
February 3, 2012
Illustrator Peter Stults creates an impressive array of posters for more recent movies if they’d been made in the past. My personal favorite: Go here to see the whole list. [via Collider.com]
Gravity Defying Carbon Nanotube Fibers
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
February 3, 2012
You may have heard rumblings about carbon nanotubes being the next big paradigm shifter in science and technology. This surreal video demonstrates how strangely they can behave. The fibers together look something like a malleable wisp of black smoke that doesn’t diffuse. Here’s... Read More
PNC Robotics Club Hopes to Create Killing Machine
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
January 27, 2012
A new PNC club is aiming to design and build an expensive, militarized battle-robot that will fight other robots in a national competition. It might seem extremely ambitious — even unrealistic — but Drew Holt, president of the PNC Robotics Club and Team, seems to have the bona fides... Read More
Scientifically Engineering a Haunting
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
November 1, 2011
The planners of next year’s haunted trail might want to take note: all it takes are certain types of imperceptible “low frequency vibrations” to instantly create a sense of terror in a person’s mind — along with hallucinations of ghost-like specters. These “infrasounds”,... Read More
Apparently, You’re Not Supposed to Put Two Spaces After a Period
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
November 1, 2011
This is one of those things that I feel should have been brought to my attention much earlier than now: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html
Burn Notice: A PNC Chat about Spontaneous Human Combustion
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
October 24, 2011
On Nov. 15, as part of PNC’s Social Sciences Colloquium series, Dr. Michael Lynn will give a talk about the bizarre phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion in 18th century France. PNN sat down with him to talk about how thinkers in the Age of Enlightenment attempted to scientifically... Read More
Coming Soon to PNC: Gmail, Robots, and a New myPNC Interface
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
October 12, 2011
The Purdue North Central Student Government Association (SGA) convened on Monday Oct. 3. Special guest Dan Burns, the Vice Chancellor of Information Technology at PNC, announced several major changes that are planned for the campus technological sphere. Most notably, campus email accounts... Read More
PNC Professors to Discuss Economic Issues at Open Forum
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
September 14, 2011
There’s an old Simpsons episode where Lisa becomes desperately hysterical upon receiving her first “B”. The website TV Tropes has a name for it when an anxious perfectionist is devastated by a less than perfect grade. Anthony Sindone seems to suggest there’s... Read More
Student Government Plans for Fall Semester
Ronald Taylor, PNN Staff
September 2, 2011
The Purdue University North Central Student Government Association (SGA) convened on Monday, August 22, 2011 at 12:00 p.m. in the Library Student Faculty building, room 60. The Representatives discussed several student events, activities, and initiatives that are scheduled for the coming... Read More