Doctor Recommended
100% Natural

Popgadget points to a new resort that is supposed to be built under the sea.

Unfortunately, it is named “Poseidon Undersea Resorts.”

While I have not seen the movie yet (seems too formulaic from the previews), “Poseidon” is a film currently playing in the theaters.  In short, it is about a large cruise ship that is knocked upside down by a tidal wave and the movie chronicles the absolute pandemonium that breaks out inside the overturned vessel.

Not sure how many other individuals will make that connection — it would be a shame if the idea was indirectly tarnished that way.

Wouldn’t want to build another “bridge to nowhere.”

It might be two years old but the Popular Science overview on the state of hard science fiction is worth a quick read, if nothing other than to have a better idea what Accelerando is about (see my small review of it).

Interestingly enough, the Panulirus interruptus (California spiny lobster) mentioned on the last page, had an interesting role in the story. Apparently it was the first animal to have part of its brain (all 14 neurons in its gastric tract) simulated electronically. In fact, there has been quite a bit of research on them, as shown by the amount of peer-reviewed papers published (more here).

I wonder when the brain of a Rattus norvegicus (lab rat) will be completely simulated; will we learn a lot more about cheese and their true feelings about mazes?

See also Charles Stross’s unorthodox use of the intarweb for correcting typos in Accelerando.

You may have heard the term Darknet mentioned throughout your days on the internets.

In a nutshell, it is simply a private virtual network in which its members only share with people they trust. If you have used IRC, there are private, password protected channels that only friends can join. That is a very low-tech, yet effective proto-darknet.

In the era of lawsuits from the RIAA et al, a new generation of wares is being developed to increase a users anonymity and security. This includes the use of file encryption, proxies to continuously route and reroute traffic, and masking schemes designed to prevent the public from peering into their metaverse.

Enter AllPeers. Sean Lynch, a friend of mine, pointed me to it today and after testing it out, it seems like a usable proof-of-concept peer-to-peer darknet.

It is currently in beta mode and it shows, you can only share 300 files at a time and there are no subdirectories.

It plugs into your browser through a Firefox extension (other browsers will be supported later on). And because you only share files with people you know, there is really no way the RIAA can trace this kind of thing unless the developers install a backdoor into the software… or if the RIAA tries to trick you into sharing files with them.

It also claims to use SSL encryption and BitTorrent, however seeing as you are only sharing with a few friends, there shouldn’t be much of a need to distribute and balance the load. Also, based upon a Wikipedia entry, it seems that it is built on a bug that might be “fixed” and in doing so, would terminate its ability to act as a P2P application.

Note: this is different than a “BrightNet” like Offsystem.

I’ve discussed extremophiles several times before (1 2 3 4) and noted that some have been found miles beneath the surface of the Earth.

While Futurismic may have jumped the gun on a fake story published by some crafty UFOlogists (someone at Whipnet concocted a purportedly original news story about Thomas Gold, a guy who has been dead for two years), the idea of silicon-based life forms is apparently not a new theoretical field in astrobiology.

Scientific American discussed this issue several years ago as has the NASA Astrobiology Institute.  Here’s a concise overview from Wikipedia.

Last year a new, personal business jet was announced to the public: the Javelin.

It looks like a jet fighter and flies like one too, at .925 Mach. It holds two people and is certified for aerobatic maneuvers. Plus, it will only set you back a measly $2.8 million. Here’s the latest skinny on its deployment.

If that’s not fast enough for you, how does flying at 1.6 Mach? What about Mach 1.8? Wired News has a write-up of two vehicles currently undergoing engineering tests, with deployment expected at the beginning of next decade.

Lockheed Martin’s QSST holds 12 people and is capable of flying over 4,600 miles non-stop, at speeds around Mach 1.8. Development costs alone are projected to reach more than $2.5 billion and it remains unclear what the individual pricing will be (they plan to have a dual-use with the military).

On the other hand, if you’re willing to sacrifice 10% in speed, you can pick up Aerion’s SSBJ for a paltry $80 million. It is also designed to carry 12 people.

If neither one of these are your cup of tea, then perhaps you might be interested in the Sport-Jet. This all-fiber glass design will set you back $1 million dollars; it holds 4 people and cruises at 340 knots.

Popular Science has an overview of three other personal jets currently being developed for the budget-minded.

The first is the Eclipse 500, which seats six, cruises at 432 mph and costs about $1.5 million a pop. This past spring it went into production.

The Citation Mustang is built by industry veteran Cessna. It first flew over a year ago, seats six, has a range of 1,500 miles and costs $2.4 million.

Last but not least is the Diamond D-Jet. This five-seater made its world debut last month, cruises at around 360 mph, and costs $1.4 million

The BBC has an overview of garments that are being designed to take advantage of the increasing computer-laden world of today.

While this “smart fabric” is seen by some designers as a means to changing fashion trends (the form), others see it as a way to increase the utility of the shirt you are wearing (function).

For instance, one designer suggests that your shirt could be interlaced with fiber optics, which sparkle different colors and could be popular for those that bar hop.

While at the same time, another designer postulates that the clothing could power devices which are woven into the frabic itself — and is powered by kinetic body movement and the heat radiated from the body.

This is somewhat similar to a report from Technology Review published this past spring. In it, the author noted that medical scientists are now engineering nano-sized devices which can tap into mechanical and thermal energy your internal organs create each day.

For instance, whenever you walk, you produce 67 watts. Moving your finger is .1 watt and even the simple action of breathing produces 1 watt.

These researchers believe they can effectively “convert 17-30% of that” to power microscopic devices. Hypothetical devices include things such as heart monitors and sugar-level regulators.

Be sure to also read, Harnessing your sleep-walking energy as well as The Future of Medicine is the End of Medicine

There is a distributed computing project called Folding@Home that is spearheaded by a group of researchers at Stanford.

Folding@home simulates the way in which protein chains, which are comprised of amino acids, coil and fold into three-dimensional structures.

This past week, the development team announced additional support for ATI’s line of Radeon GPUs. While this is not the first time academia has put GPUs to scientific use, it underscores the sheer brute force that video cards are now capable of; in this case, it is estimated to perform around 100 gigaflops per GPU.

To put that into perspective, I have discussed GPU and CPU theoretical benchmarks this past week and noted that no desktop CPU is currently capable of achieving anything near that number (the newest ones, such as Intel’s Core Duo achieve about half of that). [Note: the IBM-designed Xenos CPU found in the XBox 360 hits over 100 gigaflops on paper, however it is not a general purpose CPU]

It should also be noted that with chipmaker AMD’s purchase of ATI, several reports have predicted that GPU’s and CPU’s will be manufactured on the same die before the end of the decade.

System-on-chip anyone? See also, Moore’s Law Meets Its Match

You can spend an entire career analyzing the numerous reasons as to how and why factories came into existence.

Economically, one of the primary reasons was that it brought productive labor into a relatively small geographic area; this gave entrepreneurs an advantage over the old sneakernet of yore. It cut out a prohibitive mobility cost; or in other words, the longer the distances between assembly points, the longer it would take to create a finished product (a tautology, right?).

This summer’s issue of DigitAll magazine has an interesting piece on how the modern-day workplace will once again be radically transformed. Here is a choice quote:

Rapid prototyping has already had a significant impact on product design. It gives designers the opportunity to work faster and catch problems in products before they reach production. It also allows users to participate in the design process, something that appeals to industries with demanding customers and a taste for ethnography. Snowboard manufacturer Burton and white-water sports company Watermark give working prototypes to fans, incorporate user feedback into the CAD files, then generate new prototypes in a cycle lasting days rather than months.

Rapid prototyping is now morphing into rapid manufacturing. Hearing aid manufacturers Siemens and Phonak are laser sintering silicone earbuds encasing supersmall hearing aids, and makers of artificial limbs and orthodontics are following suit. Aerospace companies are bringing rapid prototyping to the factory floor to make small runs of highly complex aircraft parts. Boeing even spun out an On Demand Manufacturing subsidiary in 2002. Experts predict that machines that fabricate electronics and displays along mechanical structures will be available by decade’s end.

I have mentioned rapid prototyping before. And it is showcased throughout various shows on the Discovery Channel and History Channel (the reconstruction of an ancient hominid skull was produced in one of these machines).

It’ll be nice if you could put one of these manufacturing plants in your garage: “Computer, synthesize a GI Joe figurine, stat.”

Two weeks ago, I walked across the stage. I first walked across it 3 years ago and not much had changed (although the degree came in an A&M maroon-colored tube instead of white).

I even shook some of the same hands: Dr. Robert Gates, former director of the CIA, became president of the University the semester before I finished my undergrad — he looked just about the same.

The only downside is the colorful hood graduate students wear. We only got to rent it (for $35) and had to return it after the ceremony.

Damn those tariffs on textiles.

Also, you know that announcer guy who states the name of every degree candidate as they walk across the stage? What do you think they do when a group of them has their annual get-together? Challenge one another to a sound-off of verbose, cacophonous syllables?

Our guy put the pro back into professional, but then again, once you hit the 30th non-hyphenated character, everyone sounds like John Moschitta (the Micro Machines guy).

Oh, and it was an MS in Kinesiology (emphasis in Sport Management) which is an odd specialty considering just how much I spend studying other disciplines. See my Mises Institute archive here.

And I’m finishing up another masters, this one in education (Curriculum & Instruction).

Over the past year, The Onion has published a weekly magazine cover that parodies Sunday morning zines like Parade.

See all of their Sunday Magazines.