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Two interesting stories involving automated search: the first involves a satellite called EO-1, that can collaborate with other satellites to focus in on changes in weather or another phenomenon such as forest fires. Upon detection, it can then track and assist scientists without the need for manual reprogrammation (sic).

The other is a new mesh-network of sorts being rolled out throughout the commercial airline industry. When an airplane is equipped with this system called TAMDAR, it can continually beam updated meteorological and climate changes to a central weather station via satellite. From there, air traffic can be diverted based upon storms and what not — thus, you can only imagine the volume and accuracy of data when thousands of aircraft worldwide adopt the system.

TechFreep recently pointed to a company called Infinia which is combining parabolic solar dishes with Sterling motors to convert light into energy more efficiently than conventional photovoltaic cells.

Now, if you use these Solar Sterling engines as solar power satellites and combine this with a superstructure that uses space elevators to raise water from the ocean (which thereby can be broken down into hydrogen/oxygen), you could potentially design a reversed Niven ring that floats in geosynchronous orbit around the earth.

One of these days I’ll put together an illustration of what I have conjured up, I’m sure someone has thought it up before.

I’m sure Sir Mix-A-Lot took this alot better than when Weird Al spoofed Coolio with Amish Paradise.

See also Weird Al versus Chamillionaire

The Stalwart has a smallish write-up of the SOA industry through the eyes of IBM.

Specifically, these new videos: 1 2 3

Turns out IBM is seeking to educate their potential customer base through viral ads [insert quote from Seth Godin here].

If nothing else, they are concise and gratis. You might just learn something (or maybe you can use them in a presentation).

Oliver Curry is an evolutionary theorist at the London School of Economics who has gone on record saying that in “the future” humanity will fork into two species: one that is hot, and one that is not.

He basically envisions a genetically altered world comprised along the lines of the critically acclaimed film: Twins, starring that Arnold guy. The plot of the film is pretty simple: ol’ Arnold is engineered in a laboratory to be the Ãœbermensch. Statuesque. Chiseled. Perfecto. And his twin brother, played by Danny De Vito, is all the crap left over.

And that’s the bleak, distopic vision Curry sees an unrestrained humanity running towards [Oh, and his new race of super humans would of course, have genius-level intelligence too].

Well, fortunately for mankind, Mike Judge has come to the rescue, kiinda (he ends up bashing affluent yuppies for the sake of their affluency). He was the director behind the classic movie: Office Space. He released a new film this year called Idiocracy, starring Luke Wilson.

The gist of the film is this: Luke Wilson plays a supremely average guy from the year 2005, who is used as a guinea pig for a government project which places him in hibernation for 500 years. Upon waking up in the year 2505, he discovers that society has become so incredibly dumbed down, he is now by far the most intelligent person in the world.

While one could argue that millions of people are actually participating in this government project today (e.g. public education), that is a topic for another time and place.

One of the premises in the plot is that smart people stop breeding altogether. And just as bad money runs good money out of town (Gresham’s Law), invariably, the “dumb-ass” gene ends up dominating the gene pool.

While I have not had a chance to see the new film or even peer into the future, the fact of the matter is “artificial” breeding has taken place for thousands of years. In the past, various peoples in ancient civilizations would only “mix blood” with certain persons (Jewish tribes come to mind, as do the nobility starting with the Pharaoh and on through Ceasar, etc.).

Today, many families plan, save, and design a system in which their offspring are able to live healthier lives. Lives filled with more chances to innovate. Chances that are comprised of better educational and training tools.

Thus, there is nothing heinous or unethical about providing a better world for ones posterity, and this includes screening and selecting genes that could enable your posterity to live a fuller, more productive life.

See also: Genes and jeans, do you own both?, as well as the artificial selection of the Heikegani crab.  And here is a review of Idiocracy from The Onion.

Back in junior high, I was in a leadership program whose director felt compelled to distribute Apple Newton’s to all its participants.

So, early on I had a chance to toy around with relatively premature handwriting recognition software.

Earlier today, my younger brother sent me a link to this video presentation of a new sensitive, yet smart sketching system developed at MIT — for a whiteboard no less. It is called ASSIST.

I wonder if his graduate assistants spend all their free time playing “The Incredible Machine” on it.

By accident and by chance you have probably seen one of those nature shows that are narrated by an intellectual sounding Briton.

And with this erudite accent they can make just about any type of loathsome activity sound interesting — or at the very least, leave you with the impression that you have learned something.

Among other edutainment lessons, you have no doubt seen a pregnant female eat her male counterpart. Crunch, slurp, and burp. This cannibalistic act of course, is poo-pooed by you and I, however no lawsuit is filed or law is passed to upend this violent “cycle”… because it is “natural.”

On a personal note, I always think of black widow spiders, and how the male gets the shaft — head first — however, this is neither here nor there.

And while breeding patterns like those above occur across the animal kingdom, a paper published last year in Nature reconfirmed a decades-earlier hypothesis: that man and chimpanzee are separated by a mere 1.23%, “and that the most striking divergence between them occurs, intriguingly, in the Y chromosome, present only in males.” (original emphasis included).

In a recent article in The American Spectator, this finding is discussed at length. However, what starts as a stoic science lesson, ends with some very dubious conclusions (e.g. humans didn’t evolve from chimps, we share a common ancestor, and are both branches along the same grouping, however generalizing and projecting habits and manners of one species onto another is a non sequitur).

And no accent can change that.

See also: David Attenborough’s, The Trials of Life.   Via ehmunro.

I can’t say that I’m much of a fan of guitar soloists, except of course, for Jimmy Hendrix.

Earlier today a friend sent me a comical parody of guitar legend: John Petrucci.

Note: my air guitar is about as intimidating as his world domination mode.

See also: Metallica sues Canadian Band for use of E,F chords.

High school back scores 10 TDs, team still loses

Check out the final score.  Talk about a heart breaker.

In comparing the auto mechanic industry with organ treatment centers which perform very few transplants each year (less than a dozen), one specialist noted:

“I wouldn’t take my car to be serviced by someone who repaired nine cars over the past three years.  Would anyone do that?”

Yet, the organ industry is not the only market that is socialized and therefore suffers from economic shortages.  As Russell Roberts points out, so too is the market for vaccines.

Per usual, South Park did their best at bashing everyone, including the Hardy Boys, in tonight’s new episode: Mystery of the Urinal Deuce.

They took on the 9/11 conspiracy that suggests that the government planned and executed, in perfect detail, the most elaborate terrorist attack ever. Ever. [As quoted in the show]

And as Vanity Fair recently publicized: NORAD was not only ineffective at responding to the crisis while it was developing, but that the fighter jets who were scrambled, did not know where the White House was in order to protect it (let alone shoot down passenger planes as suggested by conspiracies).

Here are some choice quotes from recently released transcripts of that debacle (note, Major Nasypany was the mission-crew commander at the regional NORAD headquarters):

Nasypany: “Goddammit! I can’t even protect my N.C.A. [National Capital Area].�

[A] dramatic chase towards the White House continues. Two more problems emerge: the controllers can’t find the White House on their dated equipment, and they have trouble communicating with the Langley fighters.

CITINO: 15 miles. One-five … noise level please … It’s got to be low. Quit 2-6, when able say altitude of the aircraft.… Did we get a Z-track [coordinates] up for the White House?
HUCKABONE: They’re workin’ on it.
CITINO: Okay. Hey, what’s this Bravo 0-0-5 [unidentified target]?
FOX: We’re trying to get the Z-point. We’re trying to find it.
HUCKABONE: I don’t even know where the White House is.

Perhaps to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists everywhere, the military is inept at executing a known plan, let alone devising a new plan altogether.

After all, a military is “pure” socialism in action, and the organization therefore suffers all the same ailments that every centrally planned and managed organizations suffer from: poor communication and planning (among many others).

Hot on the heels of the neat animation of the historical Middle East throughout the ages, comes an overview from BBC of mankind using the coasts to spread and multiply.

While that is certainly not earth shattering, I thought it would be a germane time to mention how the Nile river used to be fed. In part, by glaciers in Africa.

For instance, two of the main tributaries that feed into the Nile today are the Blue and White Nile, which are fed by Lake Tana and Lake Victoria respectively.

Near good ol’ Mount Kilimanjaro lie two big ice caps: Furtwängler and Rebmann. In the past, their annual thawing contributed to the waters found in the various lakes and rivers that eventually fed into Lake Victoria.  However, due to thousands of years of climatic change (starting from the last Ice Age), they no longer carry that large volume of water.

In fact, even if all the ice fields melted, the water level of the Nile would remain about the same due to the fact that the majority of the water now comes from elsewhere (namely the rainforest and other areas of relatively low elevation).

See also: Might want to measure your super-yacht again

I have mentioned Demotivational Posters in passing before.

Now the task at hand is finding one that describes how the day went.  Our Zen moment, if you will.

- Meetings
- Mistakes
- Persistence
- Potential

Over the past two weeks there have been several innovative attempts at taping into both solar and wind energies.

For instance, Wired magazine recently covered a company from Italy called KiteGen that uses large sails that are strung hundreds of meters in the air. These airborne kites are automated via computer control and have the potential to generate zounds of watts for few ducats.

Another interesting wind-powered development is the KiteShip, which ties a stadium-sized kite to large ocean liners. While still in the test phases, its designers claim that it could “help cut 20 percent of fuel and emissions from commercial ships.” Be sure to watch the video and coverage from Popular Science.

And while nature has had eons to perfect its ability to collect solar radiation through photosynthesis, there are a couple creative uses humanity has put together this past year. The first is what claims to be the largest solar roof in the world, capable of generating 700,000 kWh. And while that sounds like a big number, one commenter on Digg (!!) helps put that into perspective.

Perhaps the best way to wrap-up this solar frenzy is to simply link to the link-intensive symposium put together by News.com. Note: one interesting story that was published after the symposium involves a remote scientific community in the Amazon rainforest.

See also: Robinson Crusoe never had it so good and Mass drivers and Solar Power Satellites

What do you get when you mix the lyrics of Will Smith, with the dance moves of Herbie Hancock, and the voice of the Chipmunks?

Newcleus, aka the “PIMPEST 80′S RAP MUSIC VIDEO EVER.”

I’ve mentioned several future uses for rapid prototypers, including figurines.

Now a company by the name of Fabjectory is using technology from Z Corp to create customized figurines based upon characters from the game Second Life.

One of the cooler attributes is that the color dye is built into the fabrication process as opposed to being painted on afterwards.

Or maybe that should be, borderful.

Here is a quick and colorful illustration of 5,000 years of historical conquest centered around the Middle East.

A quick recap: the Long Tail was first conceptualized by Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine.

He observed that niche titles, when aggregated, can actually generate more revenue than the Big Hits (see Power Laws).  And as a result, several tech firms such as Amazon, Apple and Google have successfully profited off of this ironically “Big Boutique” business model.

A recent article in Slate discusses how Bloomberg News has succeeded during a time when traditional newspapers have faltered.  And one passage in particular stands out:

To use an old 1990s software cliché, Bloomberg excels in producing granular news. It doesn’t matter much to your pocketbook if the price of a barrel of oil moves 10 cents, nor is a record of that movement likely to find a place in your daily newspaper. But fortunes are made on smaller price swings than that, which means very small audiences will pay handsomely for the micro-news Bloomberg delivers inside of micro-news cycles. This turns the daily newspaper concept inside out: Dailies strive to discover and report news that appeals to the many. For that reason, nobody should live on a steady diet of Bloomberg. You’d get scurvy. Still, the Bloomberg operation has earned Gerald Loeb Awards, bestowed mostly by a panel of other business journalists, for its work.

Via Paul Kedrosky.

The Stalwart raises an interesting point about defeating paparazzi practices. Beat them at their own game. Hire some photographers to take pictures of you and then sell these to publishers — and in the process, undercut the ever resourceful photophiliacs.

The timing is interesting as 30 baseball’s signed by Pete Rose were recently auctioned off. The back story has an interesting twist. Rose originally signed these balls, inscribing them with “I’m sorry I bet on baseball” for free. When the owner died, they were put up for auction and sold for $1,000 a piece. And the kicker is, Rose now sells similarly inscribed baseballs on his website for $299.

Which reminds me of a hypothetical scenario I’d be interested in studying: the inflation and subjective value of autographs. Le us say that Michael Jordan got bored one day and decided to go to a sporting good store. He bought 20 basketballs and took them home. He then sat down and autographed each one of them. And in turn sold them on eBay. I think that this would be an easy to understand illustration of how inflation works. Because each and every time he sells basketballs, the relative value decreases (at least it would if based directly on scarcity/supply).

See also: the supply of cigarettes in POW camps (1 2)

I wonder how they would handle forwarding mail: Communication Evolved from MSFT.