Santa Claus. Kwanzaa-bot. The Hanukkah zombie. Icons all.
But I guess the question on most people's minds are, do we need them?
By them, I mean symbols. Symbols of our holidays and our culture, of our society, of who we are as humans. Many would argue that in the year 2008, we're above such silly and cartoonish images. We should be about logic and reason.
But I would say not. Such symbols are apart of who we are. They may not be embraced by all, but to deny their place in our culture would be ludicrous.
Humans are social animals, and much of our culture comes from story telling. Whether the story is still applicable in today's world doesn't matter. People don't say that the Greek story of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods and bringing it down to man is a story that should be gotten rid of, just because we know how to make fire and acknowledge that is only a story.
Modern myth and fantasy are crucial to our society. Not everyone will always believe, but those who do truly appreciate the mythos for what it is. It is a story to help us as humans, and give us insight into ourselves and our nature.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Time to make titanium
Titanium. One of the elements of the periodic table. A valuable metal used for many different things, due to it's strength and light weight.
But what most people don't know is why titanium so valuable. It's not that rare of an ore, in fact it's probably more common than some other metals. What makes is so valuable is because it's hard to melt it down successfully. Titanium has to be melted in an oxygen free environment or else it will catch fire during the process, getting it into a vacuum to melt it down is what's expensive.
But there's been a method found to melt titanium successfully that you could do at your own home, though it is not recommended.
The process is known as thermite reduction, a method commonly used for welding train tracks. Essentially, it is just a reaction between iron dioxide and aluminum that yields a liquid version of that metal. So the theory was to swap the iron dioxide for titanium. But in the intended reaction, there is not enough heat released to melt the titanium.
So a solution was found in the form of additional aluminum(powdered) and calcium sulfate(drywall plaster) to add additional heat to the reaction to successfully melt everything. You also need to add some ground fluorite powder to protect the titanium from the oxygen during the reaction. Oh, and all of this should be done in an old flower pot.
Will I ever do this? Probably not. Am I excited knowing that I could? Extremely.
http://www.popsci.com/node/30347
But what most people don't know is why titanium so valuable. It's not that rare of an ore, in fact it's probably more common than some other metals. What makes is so valuable is because it's hard to melt it down successfully. Titanium has to be melted in an oxygen free environment or else it will catch fire during the process, getting it into a vacuum to melt it down is what's expensive.
But there's been a method found to melt titanium successfully that you could do at your own home, though it is not recommended.
The process is known as thermite reduction, a method commonly used for welding train tracks. Essentially, it is just a reaction between iron dioxide and aluminum that yields a liquid version of that metal. So the theory was to swap the iron dioxide for titanium. But in the intended reaction, there is not enough heat released to melt the titanium.
So a solution was found in the form of additional aluminum(powdered) and calcium sulfate(drywall plaster) to add additional heat to the reaction to successfully melt everything. You also need to add some ground fluorite powder to protect the titanium from the oxygen during the reaction. Oh, and all of this should be done in an old flower pot.
Will I ever do this? Probably not. Am I excited knowing that I could? Extremely.
http://www.popsci.com/node/30347
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
This house was made for walking
MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the finest schools in the nation. The students there have a long and prestigious history of creating new and innovative technology, but they have just made something that I personally was impressed by. The built a house. A house that walks.
The house itself, while small in size compared to a stationary home, has many of the basic luxuries of the modern home. It has a kitchen, working toilet, a bed, and even a stove that burns wood. So a single person could live quite comfortably in this home by themselves it seems, but it might not yet be the best place for your family of four.
The house's mobility is quite astounding, being engineered to walk as fast as the average person, about 5km/hour. MIT says that this will encourage nomadic excursions for people, and to show them that a house is more than just a place you come back to after a trip, the house can now go with you.
This to me something straight out of the land of imagination, and dropped into reality in the best possible way. In time, if we continue down this line of thought and creation, it may only be years until we have other and more efficient kinds of mobile houses. The time has come to redefine what is a mobile home.
http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2008-11/house-walks
The house itself, while small in size compared to a stationary home, has many of the basic luxuries of the modern home. It has a kitchen, working toilet, a bed, and even a stove that burns wood. So a single person could live quite comfortably in this home by themselves it seems, but it might not yet be the best place for your family of four.
The house's mobility is quite astounding, being engineered to walk as fast as the average person, about 5km/hour. MIT says that this will encourage nomadic excursions for people, and to show them that a house is more than just a place you come back to after a trip, the house can now go with you.
This to me something straight out of the land of imagination, and dropped into reality in the best possible way. In time, if we continue down this line of thought and creation, it may only be years until we have other and more efficient kinds of mobile houses. The time has come to redefine what is a mobile home.
http://www.popsci.com/gear-amp-gadgets/article/2008-11/house-walks
Friday, November 7, 2008
How to catch an atom
Atoms. The building blocks of life. Everything and anything is made of up atoms, whether they be individual atoms, atoms, or strings of atoms bonded together, molecules, these microscopic marvels are constantly being studied by scientists to further our knowledge of what they are capable of.
One such field of research is that of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are rays that come from space, from various sources of radiation, the closest to us being the sun. Scientists are currently capable of freezing the atoms found in the rays by exposing them to at temperatures near absolute zero, but unfortunately, under the freezing conditions scientists cannot fire beams of electrons at the same time to see how the atoms will react.
It seemed that this would continue to be a problem for scientists, until one day scientist and guitarist Andrew Murray came up with an idea and switching the type of current used in the magnetic coils used by scientists to hold the particles in place. He got the idea from his guitar amplifier, which uses an alternating current (AC) in its coils, where as the scientists were using a direct current (DC) in theirs. By using an alternating current, the transition time is much smoother for the scientists and they can now successfully fire beams at the atoms.
It seems like such a simple solution, and I wonder why no one thought of this before Mr. Murray. For someone who knows only basics about electronics and related things, changing the current type isn't a terribly deep idea. I'm glad Mr. Murray thought of this, and look forward to seeing what information comes from this research.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15135-rock-guitarists-amp-becomes-a-trap-for-atoms.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
One such field of research is that of cosmic rays. Cosmic rays are rays that come from space, from various sources of radiation, the closest to us being the sun. Scientists are currently capable of freezing the atoms found in the rays by exposing them to at temperatures near absolute zero, but unfortunately, under the freezing conditions scientists cannot fire beams of electrons at the same time to see how the atoms will react.
It seemed that this would continue to be a problem for scientists, until one day scientist and guitarist Andrew Murray came up with an idea and switching the type of current used in the magnetic coils used by scientists to hold the particles in place. He got the idea from his guitar amplifier, which uses an alternating current (AC) in its coils, where as the scientists were using a direct current (DC) in theirs. By using an alternating current, the transition time is much smoother for the scientists and they can now successfully fire beams at the atoms.
It seems like such a simple solution, and I wonder why no one thought of this before Mr. Murray. For someone who knows only basics about electronics and related things, changing the current type isn't a terribly deep idea. I'm glad Mr. Murray thought of this, and look forward to seeing what information comes from this research.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn15135-rock-guitarists-amp-becomes-a-trap-for-atoms.html?feedId=online-news_rss20
Friday, October 31, 2008
The magic mouse
Have you ever wished that your mouse would work on any surface? I know I have. Some tables and desks are just problematic, especially if you don't have a mouse pad. Well, the answer is now here, and it is known as the Explorer.
Microsoft recently changed the way that a mouse works and made it better. Man I love innovation. Most mice function by using a red LED or laser light to take thousands of pictures of the shadows cast by the surface and then analyze the difference between the shots. The down side is that this doesn't work for some surfaces.
What Microsoft has done with their Explorer is use a blue LED, evened out with a diffuser, such that you get a larger spread of light taking pictures and reflecting light off more surfaces allows the mouse to run on just about anything. One classic non working mouse surface is carpet, due to all of the individual fibers, well the Explorer can pick reflect off of those fibers and run perfectly. This is yet another example of the innovation we need.
http://www.popsci.com/node/24533
Microsoft recently changed the way that a mouse works and made it better. Man I love innovation. Most mice function by using a red LED or laser light to take thousands of pictures of the shadows cast by the surface and then analyze the difference between the shots. The down side is that this doesn't work for some surfaces.
What Microsoft has done with their Explorer is use a blue LED, evened out with a diffuser, such that you get a larger spread of light taking pictures and reflecting light off more surfaces allows the mouse to run on just about anything. One classic non working mouse surface is carpet, due to all of the individual fibers, well the Explorer can pick reflect off of those fibers and run perfectly. This is yet another example of the innovation we need.
http://www.popsci.com/node/24533
The magic chair
Ever feel uncomfortable sitting in a chair? Perhaps it is a hard, uncomfortable plastic chair. Perhaps not. Maybe you have very nice and comfortable chair, that is cushioned, but still puts a kink in your back. Well, not there is a chair for you.
Herman Miller, the creators of the Aeron office chair, have just designed a new chair, the ultimate chair. This chair will a create custom fit that goes along with the shape and contour of each individual's body, by the use of 94 coils that individually bend to the shape of the person. The "springiness" of each coil is also different, each one different based upon where it is in the chair. Some in the lower part of the chair are more relaxed, like where the top of your legs rest, so that the chair does not inhibit movement at all, where as the lower back area is stiffer so that it offers support.
I wish I had a chair like this. I could definitely use it. This is the sort of innovation we need in the world. Take something people use every day, a desk, a hat, a spoon, a shoe, even a chair, and make it better so that it is easier to use.
http://www.popsci.com/node/24579
Herman Miller, the creators of the Aeron office chair, have just designed a new chair, the ultimate chair. This chair will a create custom fit that goes along with the shape and contour of each individual's body, by the use of 94 coils that individually bend to the shape of the person. The "springiness" of each coil is also different, each one different based upon where it is in the chair. Some in the lower part of the chair are more relaxed, like where the top of your legs rest, so that the chair does not inhibit movement at all, where as the lower back area is stiffer so that it offers support.
I wish I had a chair like this. I could definitely use it. This is the sort of innovation we need in the world. Take something people use every day, a desk, a hat, a spoon, a shoe, even a chair, and make it better so that it is easier to use.
http://www.popsci.com/node/24579
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Turned away, turned up dead...
On October 24th, in Tokyo, Japan, one of the most industrialized and modern cities in one of the most most technologically and economically advanced nations of the world, a woman died. A woman dying is not odd, nor out of place for Tokyo, or any other place in the world, but it is the circumstances in which this woman met her death that are truly sad.
A pregnant woman went to the hospital. She was complaining of headaches as well as vomiting. The first hospital she went to, and would later be admitted to, Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital, claimed that initially they could not admit her because there was only one doctor on duty at the time. She would get the same reply from the next six hospitals she would go to.
After she was finally admitted, it was decided that the woman's child should be removed via Caesarean section. After the child was safely removed, the woman then entered brain surgery to try and remedy her illness, where she died of a brain hemorrhage.
Now, we do not know that if she had been admitted sooner, she would have lived, but when hospitals in one of the richest cities in the world suffer from understaffing, there is something larger here that is quite wrong. I can only hope that the deceased mother's child has a good life and never learns of the fate of its mother.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/24/Turned_away_pregnant_woman_dies/UPI-12561224821036/
A pregnant woman went to the hospital. She was complaining of headaches as well as vomiting. The first hospital she went to, and would later be admitted to, Metropolitan Bokuto Hospital, claimed that initially they could not admit her because there was only one doctor on duty at the time. She would get the same reply from the next six hospitals she would go to.
After she was finally admitted, it was decided that the woman's child should be removed via Caesarean section. After the child was safely removed, the woman then entered brain surgery to try and remedy her illness, where she died of a brain hemorrhage.
Now, we do not know that if she had been admitted sooner, she would have lived, but when hospitals in one of the richest cities in the world suffer from understaffing, there is something larger here that is quite wrong. I can only hope that the deceased mother's child has a good life and never learns of the fate of its mother.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/24/Turned_away_pregnant_woman_dies/UPI-12561224821036/
Nintendo DS gets an upgrade
The Nintendo DS is the number one selling video game system in the world. Why? It is fun, portable, affordable, and just about anyone can get into at least one of the many different kinds of DS games.
In order to stay competitive in the portable device market, a market which they had control over for many years until Sony came out with the PSP, Nintendo has finally taken action by upgrading their newest portable device the DS(dual screen).
The new, DSi, adds new features not only to a Nintendo device, but for any portable gaming device. These new features include: a camera, a MP3 player, a SD card slot, and remote access to Nintendo's network to purchase and download new games. It should also be noted that this is Nintendo's first system of any sort to incorporate features that are not related to the playing of the game.
So if you love Nintendo, the DS, and want to have a few extra features, this is the thing for you. The DSi is expected to be out early in the first quarter of 2009 for roughly $180.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/new-nintendo-ds.html
In order to stay competitive in the portable device market, a market which they had control over for many years until Sony came out with the PSP, Nintendo has finally taken action by upgrading their newest portable device the DS(dual screen).
The new, DSi, adds new features not only to a Nintendo device, but for any portable gaming device. These new features include: a camera, a MP3 player, a SD card slot, and remote access to Nintendo's network to purchase and download new games. It should also be noted that this is Nintendo's first system of any sort to incorporate features that are not related to the playing of the game.
So if you love Nintendo, the DS, and want to have a few extra features, this is the thing for you. The DSi is expected to be out early in the first quarter of 2009 for roughly $180.
http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/new-nintendo-ds.html
Monday, September 29, 2008
Well, there goes the stocks...
So, the stock market basically took a bullet to the chest today. The DOW Jones, which is the broadest measure of the stock market, dropped almost 778 points today. This equates out to $1.2 trillion, the first time ever it has gone past $1 trillion. This is also the biggest single day point loss ever.
Essentially, this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in the economy. With all the comparison of the current economic recession to the Great Depression, things may be coming more and more real. The Great Depression started with the stock market failing, and with the now lowest point drop ever, things aren't looking so good for the future.
I'm no economist, but I can say that things have been better before. I can say this because I've seen it. Growing up during the 90's with Bill Clinton as the president, and growing up during one the greatest periods of economic growth in American history, seeing the economy go into a slump shows that things aren't exactly the best they could be.
Original Article http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories
Essentially, this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in the economy. With all the comparison of the current economic recession to the Great Depression, things may be coming more and more real. The Great Depression started with the stock market failing, and with the now lowest point drop ever, things aren't looking so good for the future.
I'm no economist, but I can say that things have been better before. I can say this because I've seen it. Growing up during the 90's with Bill Clinton as the president, and growing up during one the greatest periods of economic growth in American history, seeing the economy go into a slump shows that things aren't exactly the best they could be.
Original Article http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Filters are for coffee, and now, the internet
A recently formed lobby of somewhat respectable names in the world of technology and other things, AT&T, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Viacom, and Songwriters Guild of America, have grouped up to become a new tech lobby called Art+Labs, with the intent of asking internet service providers to, "manage and expand their networks to defend against net pollution and illegal file-trafficking which threatens to congest and delay the network for all consumers."
They all of course have their own individual gains for forming this lobby. NBC and the Songwriters Guild want to be sure that they receive payment for the usage of their programs and songs, AT&T wants to reduce peer-to-peer traffic, and Cisco will get business by producing the filtering software.
This is a story that caught my as an avid internet user. I'm somewhat conflicted on this topic, because while I support some parts, I'm opposed to others. I'm all for reducing net pollution to end congestion and to increase overall speed and usability. On the other hand, I'm a big fan and supporter of peer-to-peer file sharing, I feel that it's an important step in advancing the way we use the internet.
In the end, I'm not sure how much support will be gained by this lobby, as the internet is still a fairly new form of media, and how exactly it should be regulated, if at all, is still kind of unknown. I personally feel that we should have as much freedom with it as possible, it's up to the users to make it as it should be. It shouldn't have to be policed and regulated.
Original article http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/entertainment-l.html
They all of course have their own individual gains for forming this lobby. NBC and the Songwriters Guild want to be sure that they receive payment for the usage of their programs and songs, AT&T wants to reduce peer-to-peer traffic, and Cisco will get business by producing the filtering software.
This is a story that caught my as an avid internet user. I'm somewhat conflicted on this topic, because while I support some parts, I'm opposed to others. I'm all for reducing net pollution to end congestion and to increase overall speed and usability. On the other hand, I'm a big fan and supporter of peer-to-peer file sharing, I feel that it's an important step in advancing the way we use the internet.
In the end, I'm not sure how much support will be gained by this lobby, as the internet is still a fairly new form of media, and how exactly it should be regulated, if at all, is still kind of unknown. I personally feel that we should have as much freedom with it as possible, it's up to the users to make it as it should be. It shouldn't have to be policed and regulated.
Original article http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/entertainment-l.html
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