Touchy Feely

Here, MG Siegler argues that Apple's product line signals the push towards the end of real buttons. It would seem, based on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad (not to mention rumored touch remote and multi-touch enabled mouse) that Apple certainly finds buttons annoying.

While it may be hard to imagine right now, eventually there will not be physical keyboards. Apple’s tablet may well be the first product that will get users accustomed to this idea. And yes, as I said, plenty will bitch. But eventually, technology will improve, and virtual tacile feedback will improve, and there will be no need to take up so much surface area on any device with physical keys that really serve no purpose.

Wouldn't that be neat. Only Siegler completely forgets that Apple's market is entirely commercial. Apple computers are not used by government entities, and iPods and iPads are certainly not used on nuclear submarines as control interfaces. Nor should they. The tiny little electromechanical parts inside the keys of a keyboard are just about foolproof, and can take a beating. You can, to a certain degree, drop your keyboard, spill food on it, have grimy hands type on it, cover it in a thick plastic sleeve to protect it, and generally abuse it. Industrial computing simply cannot stand up to delicate and pretty OLEDs with resistive touch interfaces, and its stupid to think that they someday will. Not to mention the cost of multi-touch tech makes it really only feasible for cute little handheld devices. The cost of the iPad proves this math.
Perhaps Siegler is just getting swept up in all the iPad hype. It wasn't too long ago that tablet PC's were going to revolutionize computer, and their sales are flat. It wasn't too long before that that another set of touchscreen computers was set to emerge, and then we coined the term "gorilla arm" and they died. Touchscreen tech is not new, its not even remotely new.
Apple's desire to use touchscreens on all their products may, I predict, cause an upper limit to the size of the devices they can profitably sell. The iPad is nearing this limit.

If you don't believe me, go to Walgreen's digital photo center, and spend an hour editing and ordering photos at the kiosk, which features a vertically mounted touchscreen. Within the first few minutes, your shoulders will begin to complain. By the end, they will hate you...and you will hate touchscreens.

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It will make it easier to round them all up...

California voters will get to decide weed legalization.


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Deep Thought

Yglesias hyperblogging is taking its toll on his health.


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The Mythical "iPad"

I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the iPad before I wrote this. First off, long-time readers know I am by no stretch of the imagination a fan of Apple products. I find Apple computers hokey and difficult to use, adding blase color schemes, like the well known eggshell white or the silvery metallic does nothing to entice me. Apples operating system and hardware design make it difficult to mod your product, and it seems you pay an extra 20-30% just for the name "Apple".

When the iPods emerged, I laughed them off. Mrs. TAE bought an iPod with video for $399, I bought a logitech mp3 player for 39.99 that had more storage capacity than I needed. And my device was smaller. And my wife only watched one video so far in the 4 years she has had the iPod video.

When the iPhone came out, I was skeptical. My best friend got one and every time I asked him to do something, he'd tell me that the iPhone couldn't do that. Sidescrolling through pictures was neat, but I never really saw what the big deal was. And being locked to Verizon, I really didn't have a choice. Not that I wanted one. For lo and behold, here came the Droid, the John Hodgman to the iPhone Justin Long. The Droid ran on Verizon's network, came with sick features, and basically seemed the answer to my "how can I have an app-driven phone without buying that Apple garbage" question. So I got one and I love it. I love that I have every mp3 I've ever illegally downloaded on it and it has tons more space. I love the 5 megapixel camera. I love the one-hour long video I could take. I love the Android 2.0 OS.

One electronic device market into which I have not gone is the ebook. Amazon's Kindle really went crazy, you could basically read any book anywhere, a la Jean Luc Picard. I guess I would like to have one, but honestly I don't have time to read books, I have a job, am busy keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle, a 2-year-old, a busy wife, and an exercise regimen. I have two books at home right now, Borges' Labyrinth and Penrose' Emperor's New Mind, and they aren't getting read very fast. So I just can't justify coughing up 300 bucks for a Kindle.
Much less $830 for an iPad. That's my biggest problem with this new device.

Freddie deBoer says it best; Apple products are status symbols and this overpriced device, which basically is a less-capable iPhone on growth hormones, stands at the top of the current pyramid of Apple products you buy to use at a coffee shop with free wi-fi so you can look like someone with enough money to sit at a coffee shop and use overpriced Apple products that you really don't need. Meanwhile, people starve to death in Africa. How's that venti cup of Sumatra blend treating you?

Why I won't buy one: no Flash, GPS only comes on top end model, no USB port, no camera, no keyboard, 4:3 screen ratio means no widescreen video, no HDMI output, no multi-app functionality, LED screen means burning eyes...Apple's promise of OLED sure turned out to be vaporware, still no open access (requires AT&T like always), and last but not least, clearly not toddler-proof.

However, I must say this: I am glad for Apple's iPod. Like the iPhone, I know that as Apple boldly and expensively leads the way in handheld electronics, soon a cadre of similar devices will emerge that I can afford, and actually do the things I want. A Google tablet is already rumored, and if the sheer bodaciousness of my Droid vs. the iPhone is any indicator, then I'm going to put down my deposit for the Google tablet now. I suggest you do the same.


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Haiti

A youth minister in Haiti helping doctors writes to a friend of mine:

I accompanied a small team of doctors to a hospital in Les Cayes that said they needed help. When we arrived, we were met by absolute choas. The rooms were full; the lobby was full of patients on beds; the doctors were exhausted; the nursing staff had been working round the clock for over a week; there were 50-60 people in tents outside that hadn't even been checked yet - some had been there for over a week awaiting care. The hospital workers literally cheered when we arrived; some even shed tears.

Work began immediately. I worked with another guy, Mitch, to speak to those outside the hospital, make small diagnoses, and determine an order or urgency. Praise the Lord for filling in the gaps of my French speaking ability, More than one Haitian chuckled at my attempts, but they loved the help and we were able to ascertain the problem with all those outside!

From there, urgent surgeries began and ran all day. Some of our doctors operated on one patient after another for hours without a break. At one point, I translated while a young girl had her leg amputated below the knee. It was easily the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. More than that, she has no family remaining - they all perished in the earthquake or in its aftermath. I will never forget that experience.

As the day ended, we were told by the staff that by the time we returned tomorrow, there would be 100-150 new people waiting outside the gates to be checked and treated. According to them, the injuries that have been arriving have gotten worse with each passing day.
Tomorrow appears to be bringing more of the same as we continue to attempt to meet the medical needs of those who have been displaced from Port au Prince.

What's worse than all of this is the emotional hurt that these courageous people are dealing with. Most - if not practically all - have experienced the loss of family. Its heartbreaking to hear their stories. The people need so much more than merely medical attention - they need love and they need in the worst of ways.

Pray for rest and focus. Pray for the doctors to be steady, wise, and prepared for the task at hand. we'll be down in the hospital by about 8:00 tomorrow morning and will work until the sun goes down and we can no longer see.

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President Obama Reads TAE?

It has become clear to me in the last 24 hours that President Obama reads my blog. Sullivan noted that Obama likes reading off-beat blogs, and if you did a web search for "the abstracted engineer" this site is the first that pops up. Why else would the Obama Administration, which just as recently as last year earmarked 19 billion for NASA, do a 180 and start slashing NASA programs that TAE has time and time again ranted about.
It was late last year that I went on my most recent diatribe about NASA, and their $2.3 billion folly of the decade, the Mars Science Laboratory. Earlier last year, I argued that NASA has become no more than an economic stimulus vehicle, more on this later. Here, I explained that reexamining meteorites that may or may not have come from Mars is interesting, but an epic waste of tax dollars. And that was just December!
Back in November, NASA announced (based on a single data point) that the Moon was a significant source of water, which I pointed out was actually announced by India in September.
Back in October, when the "NASA report" came out, I identified several problems, including the fact that NASA's abusive disregard for fiscal restraint, their inability to set realistic goals, and the fact that the report was coauthored by no one directly opposed to continuing human spaceflight. The most fun I had in October was dissecting Fred Guterl and Eve Conant argument for space privatization...and pointing out that North Dakota's GDP is not significantly higher than NASA's annual budget!
Also in October I wrote a defense of NASA, against myself really, and pointed out that their mission statement is brilliant...if only they actually followed it!
September: It's Time To Replace NASA
August: 600 million dollar flood toilet.

You get the picture. The point is, my day is very bright, knowing that President Obama, with whom I do not always agree, is making smart choices. See, I'd love for NASA to have a huge, massive budget. But not NASA as it exists today, a lobbyist-controlled, bureaucratic bog of tax waste and fiscal irresponsibility. Pulling the plug on very expensive, pointless missions like a repeat Moonshot is fiscal conservatism, dare I say it. If Obama sticks with this, and gets his budget passed without ballooning the NASA allocation, I will laud his efforts.

But President Obama's brilliance may be two-fold; he plans to refocus NASA on atmospheric research. Climate change skeptics would be happy to know that publicly available, peer-reviewed, credible data was being gathered by Americans to help settle the debate. And NASA is good at collecting data, and they have the facilities already to launch, monitor, and deorbit satellites. In a way, they may be the single best organization on Earth in terms of readiness for space-based atmospheric data gathering.

Of course, Obama sending a message to Congress that they can't use NASA for their-district-pork means a fight is coming over this. Those of us with sense should stand with the President and his (still hard to say this) sound fiscal strategy.


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Budget Cuts

Oh boo hoo.


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Visualizing E.T.

New Scientist has a short piece discussing what interstellar life might look like. For example, they note the obvious truth that intelligent life will almost certainly be an omnivorous or carnivorous species. However they completely miss the reason for this:

"Predators tend to be more intelligent," says evolutionary biologist Lynn Rothschild of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. "They have to do more moving around to outsmart the other guy. You don't have to be terribly intelligent to grab a leaf of lettuce."

One would think that an evolutionary biologist would be aware of the greatest predator species in the history of the planet, Tyrannosaurus rex, who was at or near the top of the food chain for millions of years, yet had a cerebrum the size of a walnut. Or perhaps an evolutionary biologist would be aware of a group of animals that have dominated the aquatic food chain for hundreds of millions of years, also known as "sharks", who have brains so small that they are hard to find during dissection (for example a 950 lb shart has a 1.2 ounce brain). And one would assume an evolutionary biologist would know of the "gorilla", a super-intelligent (smart enough to learn sign language) herbivorous creature that lives peacefully in jungles throughout Africa.

Being a predator does not, in any way, require a species to be intelligent, or even more intelligent than their prey. It only requires them to be better at killing their prey than their prey is at escaping death.

Rather, the reason extra terrestrials are likely to be omnivorous or carnivorous is simply that "meat goes farther" in the sense of nutritive power. For example, lions eat one meal every several days, whereas ungulates in the same ecology must eat almost constantly to survive. Matt Ridley, in his pivotal "Guns, Germs, and Steel" argues that the human species liberated itself when it became intelligent enough to hunt in excess of its nutritive minimums, i.e. when food was aplenty, we had time to sit on our butts and dream up better ways to hunt. And then we hunted even more efficiently, which freed up even more time, etc etc until you end up with a society where only a small percentage actually are food-gatherers and the rest engage in civil activities like clothes-making, security forces, and food-preparation.
And so that would be why extra terrestrials would have meat in their diet - they had to have protein to get over the hump.

This all assumes, of course, that E.T.'s home planet contains biology that follows the evolutionary rules to which we have grown accustomed here. It could be that on an alien planet, the plants contain huge amounts of protein, and the herbivorous species that grow big enough or grow defense mechanisms adept enough to outpace predators become the dominant species on the planet, in which case E.T. might arrive on Earth in the form of a cud-chewing brachiosaurus.


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Football - Well-Rested or Great?

Am I the only one, who in week 14 after the Saints posted their first loss, lamented the loss of the possibility of two 18-0 teams meeting in the Super Bowl, guaranteeing that the Patriots would not have the most single season wins in the history of the NFl and the 72 Dolphins sole perfect season would be over? Having clinched their division, bye, and home-field, they basically rolled over for the next three games, finishing 13-3. The Colts did essentially the same one week later, and finished 14-2.

But what ho! In what 'shroom-induced dream would these two teams have been the ones to luck their way into the Super Bowl? And now, I bravely look back with 20-20 hindsight and ask: why don't NFL teams ever play for undefeated?
In college football, undefeated is everything, because it has major bowl implications. But the NFL has this idea that once you have clinched the easiest possible path to the Super Bowl, you should rest your players. This may be a good strategy; although it has backfired time and time again for the Colts, this year it appears to have worked for both the Colts and Saints.
Nevertheless, as the tired argument goes: "who is better? Peyton Manning or Tom Brady?" Typically this is a good debate, arguing stats, number of SB victories, strength of supporting cast, etc etc. But what if the Peyton side of the argument included "only quarterback to ever go 19-0"? I think that Peyton's legacy would be secure; who could argue with a perfect season in the modern football era? Or who could argue Drew Brees and the 2009 Saints weren't one of the greatest teams ever, if their charmed season had been perfect?

And why wasn't the NFL front office begging the Colts and Saints to keep winning through the end of the regular season? The chance at two teams, 18-0, playing for perfection in a Super Bowl would virtually guarantee the highest viewing audience ever! A guarantee for audiences to witness history! Were I in the NFL front office, I'd have been dreaming up some sort of massive cash/glory incentive and begging the Saints and Colts to not rest. I would have promised them all the Monday night games they wanted next season. I would have promised them that they get 9 home games, or even ten. I would have offered to send their whole team and families to the Pro-Bowl. I would have done whatever it took to get two undefeated teams into the Super Bowl.


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Old Brows Furrowed

Christopher Ryan, PhD, argues that early proto-humans lived far beyond 30 years:

But it's bullshit! Nobody was considered "old" at 30 in prehistory, just as 30 year-olds aren't considered "old" among modern day hunter-gatherers, or in the Old Testament, where humans were allotted 70 years (three score and ten). People who lived beyond childhood often–even typically–lived into their 60s and 70s in prehistory. The evidence for this is overwhelming, and well known to specialists in anthropology, primatology, and archaeology.

I've argued this before, to a certain end. Many biologists contend that most species on this planet who are trained in foraging and hunting are trained by their direct parents (see tigers) or are born with the instinctual knowledge (see sharks). A smaller number are trained by the pack/herd/flock (see lions). Of these, humans are one of the only species that has large quantities of grandparents, and long exposure to them. Imagine a 40 year old human, successful at hunting and still near the peak of their life, able to spend the next 20 years of their life passing down hunting knowledge? Imagine the gains, as a species, that could be generated from that amount of exposure to the older generation? It would allow the grandparents to teach not only their children, but their children's children, virtually everything they knew, day by day, year by year. The elders could gradually and carefully pass along hunting techniques, good areas for finding food, how to read the weather, inter-tribal politics, wisdom, fiction, and perhaps most importantly of all: love.
It is no secret that the tight-knit bonds of humans in their tribes was a key ingredient to the rise of our species as the dominant one on this planet. Having grandparents around for a good part of a human's childhood certainly helped that. And it has implications for today's society, where all too often the elders of a family are punted to Florida where they can "retire" (read: die) in peace, and leave the young alone to repeat all their mistakes...


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Chessmaster 4,000

When I was a kid, my parents bought this bad mo-fo of a computer. It was a "Gateway" and the tower was about the size of a minifridge, capable of reading (not writing, mind you) cd-roms at a supersonic 12x, and could download illegal files called "mp3s" off the internet at 3 a night! I bought a game for it, called "Chessmaster 4,000". With this game in hand, I would finally realize my childhood dream of being a huge, epic dork.

After about 30 games, it became patently clear that 'the Chessmaster' was way better than me and I was not improving nearly as rapidly as I had hoped. Like piano, it was clear chess was not my niche.

Jonah Lehrer points to a Time Magazine profile of Magnus Carlsen, an unexpected chess prodigy. Jonah notes:

One of the fascinating elements of Carlsen's talent is that he's learned the game by playing computer chess, matching his wits against advanced algorithms. The end result is a prodigy who's amassed an unprecedented amount of deliberate practice at an early age, as he's able to play multiple games on the same machine at the same time. Computers, in other words, have accelerated the pace of his chess education.

I find this interesting, because computer chess did not accelerate the pace of my learning, rather it only accelerated the rate at which I gave up chess completely. In fact I now find chess one of the most boring games in human existence. Part of this comes from the gradual transition from geek to frat boy I have made over my lifetime, and as such sitting in a park playing chess with a friend just doesn't seem as fun as tossing a pigskin with same said friend would be. But part of it comes from the fact that the very nature of chess, the complex foreplanning of moves, the stupid history lessons about chess being a trainer for military strategists, the Russian bloc domination of chess for nearly 40 years, the fact that you have to just sit there, the idea that the board is ruled by the Queen, whatever it is, I simply despise chess down to the core of me.

Spare me your judgements too, okay. Someone might argue that I was simply too "A.D.D." for chess, and that's a fair argument. But consider me playing, fully focused, and entire game of scrabble during which I toy with my opponent and see just how mad I can make them before they quit. It is not, to me, that chess is a game that requires more concentration than many of us prefer to apply. To me, chess' big problem is that the game is old-fashioned and boring.


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The End of the Democratic (Party) Era

TPI laments Obama's lack of intestinal fortitude when the going gets rough:

And what, I wonder, have "th'opposed" learned from it so far? That the president has a glass jaw. That he has no stomach for a real fight, no willingness to get dirty and bloody, no appetite to push the procedural envelope or punish the wayward or take ownership. What we are witnessing, here and now, is the end of the Obama administration's domestic agenda--nothing less.

A couple nights ago I sat down with my father, and we were discussing the "crushing loss" of the 60'th seat by the Dems. We both agreed that the backlash was not exactly surprising, we both agreed that Ted Kennedy was scum and a GOP in his seat was delicious irony, and we both agreed, most importantly, that the Dems had been their own worst enemy during 2009.

Two things happened in 2009, and they both seem to be unsurprisingly painful for the Democratic Party now. The first is that they told the GOP to "drop dead" and decided to go on this extraordinarily partisan blowout of legislation. All I heard about last year was "supermajority this" and "can Pelosi get enough votes to overwhelm the House GOP?" And where was Obama, reining in his babbling little Dem children, telling them to behave and share the toys with the minority kids? Obama kept his mouth shut mostly, about the Dem free-for-all, and basically just said "let me know where to sign."
Second, the Dems decided they needed to squabble amongst themselves like voltures over a carcass. Having driven the hyenas away with their sheer numbers, they decided to get territorial and ambitious, and while they got no food eaten, they certainly made plenty of noise. Senators like Harry Reid and Ben Nelson decided that rather than get the single greatest piece of legislation evarrr through Congress as quickly as possible, it would be better to negotiate for their state, demanding absurd and unfair amounts of Medicaid dollars, because getting reelected is the sole reason they vote for or against legislation.
And look what happened. The quibbling went on, and on, and on. And now the Senate supermajority is gone and so is health care, so is Obama's ability to pass anything, and instead of a Democratic supermajority pushing around an angry GOP, you now have an angry GOP with filibuster numbers that feels righteous vindication; they are the saviors of America, the people have spoken!

I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the Dems, to be sure. I am sad that health care reform will likely founder and die, that was a pretty good idea. But when people are given a silver spoon and they use it to wipe their ass for 9 months, I have to feel a bit jaded. And so, apparently, did Massachusetts voters on Tuesday.

This all is especially sad, because the 59-41 Senate would already have made November campaigns aggressive enough, but now that the Supreme Court has opened the way for billions in campaign spending by corporations and unions, candidates are just going to get more and more vile, and their campaigns are going to become more and more saturating. I suspect in October to not see a single commercial break without at least 2 political candidate ads.


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Photoshopped Image Of The Day

Now, I readily admit Cindy McCain has "cougar" written all over her, but this level of photoshopping must be openly acknowledged.

In other news, in 34 years I will vote for Meghan McCain for President. Mark my words, she's the Margaret Thatcher of my generation.

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Quote of the Day II

"Thanks to Facebook my husband is having an affair and wants a divorce so he can go live in Florida to live a fairy tale life with his mistress. This is a man who is willing to give up his family,home and a very good job with insurance benefits that most people only dream of. Did I also mention he has incurable cancer."
-Debbie, Shacklefords, VA.

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Deep Thought

Can I bring my radio-harmonically-amplified pulse laser rifle into existence? And given the directed projectile is a short burst of (massless) photons, will the projectile be considered too light for local hunting regulations?


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Politics and Science

Of course, when I heard the Dems lost their Senate majority lost one Senate seat and aren't filibuster proof anymore, my immediate thought was "okay..."

But in the larger scheme, what does this mean for science? Obviously as a pro-choice, pro-science, pro-Darwinian Evolution, pro-sanity scientist/engineer, I want as few right-wing wackos in play as possible; the worst thing for science is people who refuse to even consider it. So Brown's election is a little disappointing.

But then again, it is not like a whole lot of pro-science legislation was getting rammed through Congress in 2009, in fact a search of the Speakers' website reveals that of the dozen or so bills passed by the House and Senate, virtually zero of them contained any funding for science research outside of some Stimulus funds for science teachers in high schools.
At one point this last year, Obama funded the ARPA-E, a "DARPA for energy", but that was technically created in 2007 under Bush, though not funded until February 2009 via the Stimulus package. Obama also dropped the Bush era stem cell research restrictions, but that was done via executive order, not via Congress.

So really, Congress hasn't done much of anything with its 60 Dem majority to push science and technology in this country. My instinct tells me exactly the same amount will be done with 59 Dems.


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Quote of the Day, Massachusetts Edition

"I’ve been avoiding hopping on the “Martha Coakley is a terrible candidate” bandwagon since I’m reasonably confident she’s going to win..."

-Matt Yglesias, Monday morning. Coakley lost the next day.


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More God Mania

This wikipedia article on omniscience makes me laugh:

Some theists argue that God created all knowledge and has ready access thereto. This statement invokes a circular time contradiction: presupposing the existence of God, before knowledge existed, there was no knowledge at all, which means that God was unable to possess knowledge prior to its creation. Alternately if knowledge was not a "creation" but merely existed in God's mind for all time there would be no contradiction.

God, despite our best efforts, is not Gandalf, poised over a cauldron, speaking Elvish.


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God Mania!

This afternoon on the radio I heard a man discussing a food aid center in Haiti that had been "ready" for the earthquake. Apparently they were located just outside PaP, far enough from the epicenter that their building was not damaged by the quake. Further, just last week they had completely restocked their food and medical supplies. The man said he didn't think the resupply was a coincident; "it was divine providence."

TAE immediately laughed. Yes, God directly stepped in and caused this aid center to resupply itself, but did nothing to prevent a massive earthquake that killed an estimated 50,000 people and climbing.

TAE believes that God plays a very indirect part in the lives of everyday humans. Although God's presence can be readily felt, especially when one takes stock at the amazing complexity of life on this planet in this universe and the absurdity and contradictory nature of the human species (especially compared to all other species on this planet). However, lately God doesn't seem the type to step in and flood the world. And God almost certainly does not, despite reports, talk directly to George W Bush.
TAE thinks God's influence, rather, is in the establishment of the soul and the Natural Laws of humanity that are inherent in all of us. TAE submits that God works every day on this planet in littler ways, not as a chess master moving pieces, but rather as the inexhaustible morality within each person that causes them to stop and hold the door open for the person behind them.

In terms of the Haitian quake, I highly doubt God directly acted to replenish the stocks of an aid organization a few days prior to a quake; as I said, why not just prevent the quake? Instead, God acts through all of us, and the $19 million in online relief funds raised so far come because despite our best efforts, we feel a connection and empathy towards the suffering of all other human beings, and most of us find that suffering hard to ignore. Further, a part of us is physically rewarded when we sacrifice a small part of our fiscal stability in order to ease a small part of the physical suffering of others. This tendency, the urge to throw a tiny, inconsequential iota of cash at others, isn't because God whisperes "text 'Haiti' to 90999" into our ears, it is because upon seeing the devastation, and hearing how helpless and weak the people of Haiti are, the part of us that is separate from animal, the part of us that is absurd and complex and is interconnected with the similar parts of all other humans, the part of us that is bestowed by the Almighty, that part feels genuine pain at the suffering of others, and wants to alleviate their suffering, in an attempt to alleviate its own suffering.

TAE loves the phrase "God was with us today" because of the hilarious notion that on other days God is not with us. One of the great failings of our mortality is the lack of understanding we (especially us Westerners) have of omnipresence.


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Space Shuttle Red Tag Sale

You know, what's sad is when I half write a really decent post, then become unable to wrap it up at the end and so leave it as a draft in my account and dont publish it. Then NASA goes and does something hilarious that directly references the unfinished post! Here, NASA reports that not only have they lowered the price tag on the soon-to-be-retired shuttles to a mere 29 million bucks, but the shuttle main engines are FREE!!!
Here's what I wrote back in September of 2008:

Of course, owning a shuttle would be splendid, you could have it permanently strapped to the top of your personal 747 and whenever you landed at some airport people would go nuts.
But what would be even more splendid would be to own a shuttle main engine. At a lovely 400,000 lbs of thrust, one of these bad boys would put a small vehicle (about the size of a Honda del Sol) into space quite easily. Honestly, the uses for such an engine are numerous and fantastic, the least of which would be to strap it to an asteroid and use the asteroid as a nuclear deterrent to foreign nations; don't nuke us or we will annihilate your continent. However, I doubt the the shuttle main engines will ever be for sale, they are undoubtedly going to museums across the globe.

How wrong I was! Not only are they for sale, but they are so unwanted by anyone that you can literally have one for free, all you have to do is drive to Florida and pick it up! TAE's mouth waters at the idea...

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A New Era.

Would this have been funny during the Bush years? Probably, but I wouldn't have had the nerve to link to it.


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Human-Machine Interfacing - Power Generation

Apologies for the light blogging, I have some sort of upper-respiratory infection that makes my existence a lot less enjoyable.

Last week I broached upon the idea that in the next decade, the greatest innovations will occur in the area of human-machine integration, and I went to far as to suggest that the invention of an implantable USB port driven by ink-jet printed nerves would be the single greatest leap forward in technology in the last 20 years. I also mentioned that "vaporware", i.e. technology that sounds promising but is really only a dream inside someone's head (and likely will remain so) is prevalent in this area of research perhaps more than any other.

But back to reality. One problem with integrating machine and human is that the human side of that equation comes with a built-in power supply but the machine side doesn't. If you have a GPS-enabled, infrared-imaging computer mounted on your head that beams a map in real-time to a contact lens on your eye, how do you provide power to that system? The quick answer is "batteries", but that's not the most elegant. What would be better is if the machine components could generate their own renewable power.

And here's (possibly) how to do it: TAE points the reader to this wikipedia article about radioisotope thermal generators, which are big, keg sized assemblies that NASA straps to deep-space satellites. These essentially work by deriving a current from the heat traveling between the hot, radioactive core of the device and the cold, space-side of the device via thermocouples.
But wait, all these thermocouples need is a heat gradient to work? Why not sew them into a person's clothing? What if the user's clothing was lined with a layer of electroactive thermocouples, utilizing the Seebeck Effect, such that the heat produced by the body during metabolic processes was in turn utilized by the thermocouples to produce a usable (though tiny) current? It's not a stretch to imagine this working.
However, the energy yield would probably be very small, and in warmer temperatures, the returns would diminish, as the temperature difference is what drives the current. So an alternative to this might be needed. Here at TAE, we've covered the herbivorous robot before (heretofore the "herbibot"). But what if it could be utilized into a backpack generator for use with the MEMS systems located within the HMI? Every time you get low on power, just feed your backpack herbibot another carrot...
I am not sure how efficient the power output is from these herbivorous generators, and frankly I am doubtful they are fantastic. But if the promises of the company developing the herbibots are even close to true, this could be a viable way to carry portable power.

And potentially you could pull paper goods out of the nearest garbage can to use as fuel.


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TAE's Official Review of Avatar

It is ironic that I procrastinated on seeing Avatar because I had heard the story was swiss cheese and corny, but still wanted to go and see the 3D for the sake of imbibing in great technology, and came away disappointed at the 3D experience while thoroughly entertained by a very decent movie.

Leading up to my seeing Avatar, I had read several reviews, including those by Ross Douthat, that suggested that the "Ferngully" meets "Dances With Wolves" storyline was so campy that it overwhelmed the enjoyment a viewer might get from the stunning visual effects. However, having seen Pixar's "Up" in 3D and liked the special effect enough that I figured it was worth the 2 dollar upcharge on Avatar.

So I went in to Avatar expecting to be disappointed. Tuesday I read Gregg Easterbrook's boldfaced evisceration:

The script was as dull and predictable as the special effects were flashy. Maybe the dialogue sounded better in Na'vi.

Given that I usually agree with Easterbrook, I was doubtful. What I saw was nothing short of a great story. Sure it wasn't revolutionary in its plot; natives fighting off attacking greedy white people, the natives start to lose, Deus Ex Machina occurs, natives start to win, blah blah. I knew what was going to happen at the end far earlier than I did at the end of the Maltese Falcon. But it was fun.

What wasn't fun was watching the 3D. James Cameron has built for this film one of the most gorgeous worlds ever imagined. During the day the forest looked like a tropical paradise to the nth degree, but at night, it turned into Cirque de Soleil on mushrooms. Everything glowed in beautiful colors, and my eyes (instead of feeling raped like they did during Transformers 2), tried valiantly to drink in the rich flora and fauna of this insane, artistic masterpiece.

Unfortunately, most of it was out of focus. The caviat of 3D movies is that the only thing really in focus is what the director wants to be in focus. Because 3D works by displaying two images that your mind naturally combines, creating 3D, only some of the images are in 3D; basically it works like this. Focus on the words I have written here, and hold a finger up in front of your face. Your finger should look like (assuming you are still focusing on these words) two semi-transparent copies of each other. Focus on your finger, and the words I have typed go blurry and duplicate. So in order to create 3D in a movie, the depth of field becomes extrememly limited.

I found myself getting aggravated when the characters would move through the landscape, as I was distracted by the gorgeous scenery, only to find it impossible to focus on! Then I'd have to spend a half a second trying to scan the whole image in front of me for what was actually in focus. The 3D was neat, don't get me wrong. Certain scenes, such as when the jellyfish-like seeds float down and land on the protagonist, were richly rewarding because of it. But all too often I found my eyes tiredly frustrated that they weren't allowed to look at whatever part of the screen they found interesting.

I find it strange that now I feel like I should defend this movie from one of my favorite writers, but here goes. Easterbrook writes:

The mineral is an anti-gravity substance that floats. Midway through the movie, we learn there are entire mountains of it floating above Pandora. So why not mine the floating mountains, where no Pandorans live, rather than go to war with the natives? The clichéd super-heartless corporation that wants the mineral is depicted as obsessed by profit. War is a lot more expensive than mining! If profit is what motivates the corporation, war is the last thing it would want.

When is it ever implied in the movie that unobtainium is an anti-gravity substance? At one point in the movie, Giovanni Ribisi's character is shown pulling a piece of Unobtainium out of a display, where it appears to be levitating. But it is never implied that it is the mineral, and not the display case, that causes the levitation! All over the internet I can buy a desktop toy that uses "magnets" to cause levitation. Later in the movie Ribisi's character is showing holding the mineral in his hand, it is not levitating out of his hand! If you consider that Unobtainium does not have anti-gravity properties, then it makes no sense that the "Hallelujah Mountains" are made of it. Nor is it claimed in the movie that the floating mountains contain any Unobtainium. In fact, the soldiers move through those very mountains later in the movie without a single mention that Unobtainium might exist there.

Easterbrook also goes after the paramilitary security forces:

And who are the gun-toting fatigue-clad personnel commanded by the ultra-evil Colonel Quaritch -- are they regular military, mercenaries, private security contractors?Audiences never find out.

Actually audiences do find out. The protagonist clearly narrates, upon arrival on Pandora, that active military personnel do not go to Pandora, and that the soldiers stationed there are ex-military personnel who are looking to get rich fast.

Lastly, and perhaps most important to me, is what Easterbrook writes at the end of his criticism:

Plus the military personnel are depicted as such utter morons -- not a brain in any of their heads -- that none notice the TOTALLY OBVIOUS detail that Pandora's unusual biology will be worth more than its minerals.

I have mixed emotions about this one. I disagree with Easterbrook: while the mining facility is making $20 million per kilogram for the Unobtainium, the botanical research performed at the planet by Sigourney Weaver and Co. has produced nothing the movie implies as profitable.

However, the Na'vi appear to have an appendage that contains adaptable, active nerves.

Ever notice how when you plug a new thumb drive into your computer, it automatically says "installing drivers," then moments later "your USB device is ready to use"? This is because the computer and peripheral device have a driver language system that allows them to communicate with one another despite their hardware differences. The Na'vi appear to have the biological equivalent of this. When one Na'vi mounts on his horse-thing, he connects his interface to the horses' interface, they immediately share a bond, and he can communicate mentally with the horse, giving it directions without physical command or motion. Similarly, when they hop on their flying creatures, they connect via their interface. At one point, some characters connect via their interface to trees!

TAE asks: how hard would it be to connect their hair-interface-thing to a computer? And if the medical geniuses back on Earth can fix Sully's parapalegia, as is implied in the movie, and if the genetic engineers are smart enough to create the Avatars (a Na'vi/human hybird), couldn't they also potentially tissue engineer the human equivalent of the Na'vi's interface, and consequently create the greatest single advance in human evolution since we stood upright and scanned the horizon?

TAE agrees with Easterbrook: the biology of Pandora could eventually yield higher profits than stripmining could. But in the short hand (the quarterly statement as Ribisi's character muses), mining was more profitable. Especially to a mining company.

All in all, I found the movie entertaining. And I feel sorry for people who expect the greatest movie of all time with the most clever, original plot ever, every time they go see a movie. They will almost certainly be disappointed time after time. I realized, as I sat back and enjoyed this movie, that sometimes you don't need to sit there and take notes on the holes in the plot, or pointlessly get apoplexy that the mindless mercenaries being killed clearly are portrayed as Americans. You just need to sit back and be entertained. And this was an entertaining film! I might actually go see it again, but in 2D this time.

However...

...one thing did bother me. At the end, the humans decide to detonate an important Na'vi shrine in an attempt to psychologically break the uprising. They do so by filling a "bomber" with pallets of C4-like material and then fly at an absurdly low altitude and absurdly low speed over the target, dumping the pallets out the back.

Anyone with half a brain (and an retired Air Force Colonel fighter pilot for a father) would recognize the foolishness of "slow and low" attacks against an opposing Air Force that outnumbers you (and has more maneuverable fighters). It would make a lot more sense if the bomber had been at 40,000 feet, and dropped a single MOAB.

Mrs. TAE adds: how do you think the Na'vi mate? They clearly have no genitals.

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Printed Human Parts

All over the blogo-techno-inter-tubes there has been a buzz about ink-jet printed body parts. Here it is reported by John Hunter, and here it is at treehugger (with ridiculous 3D model). The funny thing about these two articles is that they are not the same thing; the first refers to a Pittsburgh team trying to use muscle stem cells to potentially produce bone and muscle, and the second article discusses Organovo, a startup attempting to do the same thing with internal organs.

But both articles loudly tout the possibilities of inkjet printing human organs while very subtly mentioning that no one has done it yet. Frankly, its still 99% idea and 1% science. And XKCD's Law of Research Translation comes into play here, as I highly doubt we see ink-jet printers making body parts in the next 50 years.

But I have two thoughts here. First, what if they could do it? Wouldn't it make sense to start with something easy, like cancellous bone, before graduating to harder architecture, like striated cardiac muscle? And although I understand that laying cells down might be relatively easy (compared to inventing a time machine) I do not understand how they expect to make nerve connections and the endocrinic connections that cells use to communicate amongst themselves locally.

Second: why not use this to build human-machine interfaces? What if you could print, layer by layer, nerves that would connect to a micro-USB hub? You could then implant that printed bioport into a living being, and potentially connect them to USB! Or print a nerve system that matched the arm, and then attach that to the shoulder of wounded soldiers for connection to a bionic arm they have manufactured? Printed biological materials, it seems to me, is a lot less feasible for whole-organ printing than for human-machine interface device printing.


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TAE, prophet

Here, I suggested that by Spring Charlie Weis would be in Kansas City as the Chiefs' new offensive coordinator. You can see the date, November 23, 2009.

Unsurprisingly, I was right. ESPN reports Weis has been signed to do just that, starting this spring.


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Cause and Effect

Here in the Midwest, it is ridiculously cold. Last night the temperature (not windchill) was -1 Fahrenheit, which is roughly -18 Celsius (or if you are really old, -18 Centigrade). And this has been the temperature, give or take, for a week. Temperatures are expected to dip even lower the rest of this week and bottom out this weekend, with overnight lows of -20F, or -28C. That's cold. To make things worse, we've had 10ish inches of snow on the ground for a week, with a couple more inches on top of it. Tomorrow they predict another 3 inches of snow on top of that. It is cold, cold, cold.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, several years of temperate winters has allowed the Mountain Pine Beetle to flourish. This beetle is normally very handy; it weeds out sick, old, and weak trees by infesting it and killing it. However, the Mountain Pine Beetle population control is largely based on temperatures; some estimate that an area needs five straight days without the temperature rising above -30 degrees F in order for the Pine Beetle population to be killed there.

So while we cry here about the cold weather, consider this: the cold snap gripping us may actually be a good thing for our forests.


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Adventures in sex Math

When I heard the news that Warren Beatty has supposedly slept with 12,775 women, my first instinct was to do the following math: 12,775/365.25 = a different woman every day for 35 years straight.
Are we really to believe that he had a unique woman every single night for that entire period? Or will skeptics like me think that number is a little hyperbolic (though the message is the same).
And just for a little gross fun, let's assume Beatty achieved ejaculation 12,775 times. At 250 million sperm per, that's approximately 320 billion sperm.

TAE finds it absurd that a single person's testicles could produce that many sperm. But alas, TAE is wrong. The average human male produces 12 trillion sperm in his lifetime. Warren Beatty, you are wasting sperm!


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The Art of Raising A Puppy

Several of my friends (and millions of other people to be sure) have suggested that getting a dog is good 'practice' for having a future child, and therefore they plan to get a dog. Almost invariably, the following steps occur:
1. Couple decides they want kids, but are nervous about their parenting skills. Decide a puppy would be good method to hone parenting skills. Plus, with all that free time they have, training a doggie should be fun and easy!
2. Couple both loves large dogs, but owns new, expensive home with nice carpet and small (or fenceless) yard, gradually accepts that a smaller dog would be better.
3. Couple ends with tiny, high-energy, territorial, constantly-barking misfit dog they "rescue" from a shelter.
4. Couple tires of getting up at 5 am to take dog out, tires of dog puking in their bed, tires of dog barking out the window at passersby, tires of dog peeing on the floor when visitors come over.
5. Couple postpones having kids.

While individually, I do not find it distasteful in the least for people to "rescue" dogs from shelters, nor do I find owning small dogs too incredibly irritating, nor do I find it altogether bad that people want to own dogs before they want to procreate, let me suggest this: when company comes over, you can't shut your kids in the upstairs bedroom so they won't bother your guests.

Having a dog is an fun, awesome responsibility! Share it with your kids! If you are going to get a dog and then a few years later have kids, why not flip that around, and have kids then a few years later get a dog? That way, your preschool age kid, looking for ways to contribute and gain responsibility themselves, like taking the dog out to pee, or giving the dog food, or taking the dog for walks.
If a kid is born into a family where the parents already have a dog, the child will assume the dog belongs to the parents, and taking care of it becomes a chore assigned down from mom and dad. Love and Logic parenting produces children who are their own adversaries, and shifts blame for things off the parents: if the dog "belongs" to the kids, then they can only blame themselves when they have to take the dog out on freezing mornings, but if the dog is mom and dads, they blame their parents when they have to do that task.

I am not saying a dog doesn't enable two caring individuals to prepare for children; but then again, do you plan to swat your kids with a newspaper to train them to sit? Do you plan to teach your kids to lay down and roll over? Do you plan to make your kids stay in a crate over night? Dogs and kids are not the same, and chances are if you whack your dog with a newspaper once in a while, it will still love you and probably will still curl up in your lap as soon as it can. Abusing your children doesn't quite work that way.
Also, as a parent I must warn future parents: children are not as easily self-entertained as dogs. Give a dog a bone or a good toy, it might disappear for hours. Give a child a toy, it is bored in minutes. You don't have to teach a dog to talk, teach it ethics, teach it to read or write, give it baths every night, teach it to get along with others, teach it about God, help it when it falls down, and you can leave it at the kennel when you go on vacation. In short, a dog is a poor substitute for a child. Really, all getting a puppy teaches you is that parenting is going to be a lot of work. Wouldn't it be easier to raise a puppy with more helping hands than you and your spouse alone?

Now, the above scenario may not be true for every young couple on Earth, in fact, it surely isn't. But TAE has noticed a trend amongst his peers enough to say something: buy the house, want the big dog, adopt the small dog, postpone children. If you are wanting children, then hurry up and have them, and let your kids become dog owners with you.

And no matter what you decide, read The Art of Raising A Puppy before you act. It is probably the definitive book on puppies.


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One more thought

I bet this year we see actual applications for carbon nanotubes...


...bwahahahaaaaa


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New Year, New Decade, Same Ol' Problems

NASA plans an escape system for its future astronauts. Of course, the entire cost of this escape system could be eliminated if NASA got rid of human astronauts. TAE looks forward to another year of addressing the fact that NASA is the Federal Government's "Bridge to Nowhere" but no one has the moxie to say so, and is excited that the decade in which the shuttle fleet will cease operations is at hand!

On several occasions, TAE has written that artificial dams, though noble in design and effective in use, are antiquated methods of creating artificial water reserves where they should not be - while taking that water from where it actually belongs. TAE also holds that artificial dams wreak havoc on local and global ecosystems by disrupting the flow of fauna and enabling invading species to flourish. Now scientists suspect that artificial dams create negative effects on the local and global weather pattern as well. TAE looks forward to another year of eviscerating the Federal Government's insane policy on natural resources, and is excited to see the Solar cycle causing what may be one of the coldest decades on record.

TAE has promised that the increasing integration of human and machine (the Human-Machine Interface) will be the breakthrough technology frontier of the next decade. Here, an over-reported, over-hyped article talks about Dr. Babak Parviz' bionic contact lenses. TAE has some experience in this area; although the idea of circuits on a contact lens is a massive breakthrough, the intense over-prediction of everything from HUDs to x-ray vision leaves TAE's head spinning and reminds him of this great XKCD comic. TAE looks forward to a year of dashing hopes and cutting bold predictions off at the knees, and is excited that although skeptical, he really believes that by the time his daughter becomes a teenager she'll want implanted devices for Christmas.

TAE always looks forward to articles that claim futuristic technology is impossible, because usually that technology is completely possible just restrictively expensive. This article is a good round-up of several methods of interstellar travel, with actually decent plausabilities attached to each travel method. Give it a look. TAE looks foward to another year of proposing technologically possible, though politically and fiscally insane, ideas that would make this planet dramatically better for humanity, and looks forward to a decade of those ideas getting tossed around and summarily dismissed!

Best to all in 2010!

-TAE


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