Nice quote on evolution’s “goals”

It’s a common misunderstanding that evolution has a “goal”. You see this most often when evolution is presented as a progression with human-kind as the end result. Evolution simply selects for organisms that are more well adapted to the current local environment; it does not select organisms that are further along the path to some “goal”. Mario Ageno, a professor of biophysics put it like this:

“The ideal of a bacterium is not to become a man, but to become two bacteria.”

New optical pointing device

Researchers at Philips have created a laser-based optical pointing device that would integrate nicely into small electronic devices. It’s kind of like a touch-pad, but instead of a “large” pad on which you slide your finger around, there’s a small contact point that you slide your finger over. A laser tracks how your finger moves. At first it could replace the “scroll buttons” found on most cell phones, or the “jog dials” found on some (these mechanical bits are always the first to go). You could also add it to PDAs for a more mouse-like interface.

Schematic of optical scrolling
Optical scrolling
Prototype device
Prototype device