Why My Marriage Works

Things that I loathe, like, loathe to the point that I actually get depressed and just want to sit on the couch and eat chips until the cops come find my body...are exactly the things my wife sets to with a frenetic glee. For example: moving. In my youth I typically waited until 11 pm the night before I moved to pack everything, in a chaotic explosion of random, unsorted boxes. I cared not what went where, never labeled the boxes. I just hated packing so much. Then, when I got moved to my new destination, only 50% of the boxes ever got unpacked. Typically the rest just lay open and I'd take things out of them one at a time as I needed them.

Insert my wife. Weeks ahead of time, she was planning, getting boxes, labeling things, packing fragile items in paper, scheduling utilities being turned off, and generally being awesome. I unhelpfully moped. Now we are moved, and she is in an unpacking blitzkrieg. I prefer to go to work and write about how much I hate unpacking.


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DARPA and the Human Machine Interface

In a BAA released yesterday, DARPA announced their Reliable Peripheral Interfaces (RPI) program:

DARPA seeks to develop reliable in-vivo peripheral motor-signal recording and sensory-signal stimulating interfaces. Such efforts will involve design, fabrication, testing, and analysis of new materials and technologies to demonstrate substantial improvements in reliability and quantity of peripheral motor-signal information. Ultimately DARPA desires to develop clinically viable technologies, enabling wounded service members to control state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs.

Here's the good stuff:

Technical Area 1: Demonstrate clinically viable reliable-tissue interfaces to peripheral nerves or muscles. These interfaces must enable stable, robust, and high-performance recording of motor-signal activity.

Technical Area 2: Demonstrate the clinically viable tissue-interface electronics necessary to enable the development and testing of reliable peripheral interfaces designed to control many-DOF prosthetic limbs.

Technical Area 3: Demonstrate clinically viable algorithms and subsystem for reliably decoding motor-control signals from detected peripheral signals.

How ironic this BAA releases in TAE's Year of the Human-Machine Interface! What was it I said? Oh yes. "All you need is drivers." That would be technical area 3. I wrote, in a previous blog post about hijacking the nervous system, that you could essentially read and write all five senses if you found a way to directly interface with the nervous system. That would be Technical area 1. And here, in February, I discuss the idea that electronics that integrate with the human nervous system could revolutionize information retrieval. That would be technical area 2.
So don't worry, DARPA, I've got you covered.

Seriously, though, this is good research. While it is probably impossible for most federal agencies to get ridiculous research funded, not so for DARPA. However, by cloaking what I really think is their ultimate goal: cyborg soldiers, behind a veil of beneficent "help the walking wounded" research, they can really kill two birds with one stone. Sure, they want to have prostheses that are more actively and reliably responsive to the actual neural commands of the amputee. That would be fantastic if concepts like Dean Kamen's "DEKA" arm could have better musculoneural feedback. Or the RIC arm could have a better interface than pectoral stimulation.
However, what would be even better would be if a soldier could plug into a supersuit and control it with his muscles directly, and receive external information, like ally/enemy positions via integrated electronics. He could control targeting systems with his nerves directly, without moving. He could send vocal commands and feedback to his teammates via radio...without speaking into a radio. He could plug himself into a USB port at the end of a mission and download his memories of the mission as a high-tech version of a mission report.

While I really laud DARPA for funding this research to help injured vets, what I really feel could be the bread and butter here would be breaking the code of human nerve to digital electronics communication. That would revolutionize and open up a whole new frontier in bionic interfacing. Sign me up.


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Electric Vehicles

TAE predicts the need to recharge electric vehicles on cross country trips could predicate a resurgence in public rest stop use, if states are smart and get self-service charging stations in place quickly.


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Marketing the iPad rival

The smartest name I can imagine so far is the "Motorola Everything." Or "Samsung Universe." Or "HTC Nuclear."

The name should not invoke any references to feminine hygiene, to be sure.


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Adventures in Rare Metal Supereconomics

What if China decided, one day, to not sell rare earth metals (in which it basically dominates the world market) to any company that did not have its corporate headquarters in China? In a day, Apple, Motorola, RIM, and a cadre of other cell phone manufacturers would fall to their knees. HTC would be fine.

Southwest Airlines cheap flights, for many years, was partially due to the fact they'd locked in a multi-year gas pricing agreement, and as gas prices surged, they could still get their gas cheap. If I were Apple, or Dell, or Garmin, or anyone really that uses OLED or LCD screen technology or gallium-based electronics...I would be working out a long-term rare earth metal supply agreement with the Chinese government.


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Steve Jobs' Logic Adventures

The iPad isn't selling as well as hoped...because it doesn't have enough competition.


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nom nom.


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Adventures in Airport Security

TAE's (bad) Idea: Tape aluminum foil stencils of funny images to your chest before you go through the fully body scanner.


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Brain-Mounted Computers/Active Contact Lens Displays

Adam Ozinek has an interesting article (cited on Sullivan) about what he sees as an inevitable future:

Let me describe it extreme layman’s terms (the only terms I know): you’ll have a powerful computer in your future iPhone-like-device that is connected to a special contact lens that so that screens floats in front on your face, and you steer the whole thing with your brain. The most important facts about this technology is that a) nobody will be able to tell whether you’re looking at your computer or not, and b) it will always be available to you. Why is using this device a dominant strategy? Choosing to use it is simply expanding your memory and factual knowledge to include everything on the internet. As far as anyone who knows you can tell you will never misspell a word,  not know a fact, forget the words to a song, or know any piece of data. Quick: what was the per-capita GDP of Guatamala in 1976? Anyone with a brain mounted computer will be able to tell you.

This sounds vaguely familiar to something TAE published back in February:

After a moment, a red arrow appears in front of me on the ground, and the words "150 yards" appears below the arrow. I follow the direction of the arrow, which disappears when I pass over it. Further ahead, a second arrow appears, signalling a turn right out the concourse into the stadium seating area. I follow it. Of course, I am the only person that can see these red arrows. The information is being fed directly to my eyes via active contact lenses with tiny LEDs and circuitry printed directly on them. The contact lenses give off no magnification; my eyesight is fine. The circuitry is powered by radio waves beamed from a control unit in my hat. I follow the arrows until a "ding" in my ear informs me that I am near my wife. An arrow in the sky, pointing downward, indicates her location. I go meet up with her.

During the game, the down and distance, first down line, and various player stats are all displayed on my "heads up display" contacts. Mrs. TAE and I got $2 discounts on our tickets, but in exchange for this, during half-time Coca-cola beams a commercial directly to our eyes, even with our eyes closed we see the images. Coke, pouring out of a glass bottle (I mention to Mrs. TAE that glass bottle soda is impossible to find outside of Mexico) into a big glass fills our vision, but by now we are so used to ads being beamed in that we ignore it and enjoy conversation and the band out on the field.

I go further:

Back up in the seating section, I am enjoying a new feature: the football has a tracking device in it, and it glows bright red in my contact lens HUD during plays. This allows me to see where the ball is, and laugh when the defense is duped by a fake hand-off.

After the game, my HUD leads me to my car. While we are walking, Mrs. TAE suggests we consider upgrading from our red monochrome contacts to newer contacts with 7 colors. I suggest we wait a little longer, I have read that the new 256 color contacts are expected to reach consumers within the next two months.

 Now, far be it for me to suggest that I am ahead of the curve on predicting the future. Rather, let me just say that I completely agree with Adam, that eye-mounted computer displays are the future. But he misses something that I didn't: the advertising. Why did Google want to develop the Android OS for cellular phones? So they could advertise on your phone! Any new display technology is of course going to be immediately trolled for all its worth by hungry corporations looking to get in your face with their products. To me, it makes perfect sense that you might buy your contacts from a manufacturer, and then subscribe to a wireless network service, like Verizon or Sprint or AT&T, and subsequently you'd get access to the internet on the surface of your eyeballs but in exchange you might be forced, at certain times, to watch commercials, or have part of your eyeball-mounted display have an ad bar.

One further thought: in that article I wrote back in February, I also suggested that along with contact lens displays, sound would also be accessible by implanted ear bud devices:

Arriving at the football game, I call my wife. I pull my Droid out of my pocket and find her number in the speed dial. I dial her, then put the phone away. A ring sounds in my left ear. Last month, I had a wireless device implanted on the surface of my ear drum, that strikes a tiny "mallet" on my drum, creating sounds where there are none. "Hello" I hear her voice.
"Update your location, I can't find you." I reply. "Okay," she says and I hear the hanging up noise.

Because whats the fun of watching Youtube videos while you are supposed to be paying attention to a meeting...if you can't hear the sound in the video too?


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TAE's Official List of Things Smart People Should Not Be Wasting Their Time On

Old topics, dusted off again. Scientists once again discuss what to do if we encounter extra-terrestrial intelligence. Everyone discusses "what does Stephen Hawking think?" Everyone agrees that this is a complicated topic. No one mentions that there are a lot of problems here on Earth we should probably be concentrating on first.
TAE loves the thought that there are aliens "out there" amongst the stars, possibly zooming about, possibly beneficent, possibly awe-inspiring. It would be the single most amazing moment in the history of our Solar System if we discovered life, even microbial life, outside of the Sun's influence.

However, I'm beginning to think these conferences to discuss (implausible) events are irresponsible. Some of the people at these conferences are very smart! Why are they spending their mental resources discussing an almost ridiculous hypothetical event...again and again...when instead they could be concentrating on solving REAL issues that face our species now?

And so, without further ado, I present TAE's Official List of Things Smart People Should Not Be Wasting Their Time On:
1. Analysis of what to do in the event of contact with extraterrestrial beings: FTL travel is almost certainly impossible, or at least is almost certainly impossible within our lifetimes. So the absurdity of listening for radio signals from extraterrestrial beings (that would have been sent, literally, hundreds and hundreds of years ago) is pretty obvious. Meanwhile, kids in Africa can't get clean water.

2. Missions to land a manned spacecraft on a passing asteroid: Not only is this not analogous to landing on another planet due to the disparity in local gravity, but what happens when we land and then can't take back off? The astronauts pilot their new spacecraft - the asteroid - on a thousand year tour around the solar system. Plus, the asteroid would obviously be uninhabitable. Meanwhile, obesity kills 300,000 Americans a year.

3. Patent trolling: "Okay I've got a new business idea. Let's buy patents and use them as leverage to sue people with similar patents. We won't actually take them to court, though. Instead, we'll sue them for slightly less than what the lawsuit would cost if they went through the court process, so it makes more sense for them to just settle with us. Essentially we'll be getting free money. It's genius!"
It's also evil. How many brilliant lawyers out there are wasting both their lives as well as the productivity of other humans by trolling patents for money? How many innocent people are wrongly convicted because they don't have a good attorney? How many guilty criminals get off because the prosecution was incompetent? While IP lawyers take little immoral scoops out of the economy, justice dies a little. Meanwhile, the people of Iran are dominated by a merciless dictatorship.

4. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: in the entire theater of the first Gulf War, a total of 20 manned aircraft were shot down by enemy fire. The majority of those were by SA-9 and SA-13 surface to air missiles. We now fight an enemy with way less SAM availability. I am not saying that we need to go back to piloted aircraft. Rather, I am saying that we are spending a lot of time and energy developing "new, better" UAVs when the ones we have seem to be doing quite well at terrorizing Pakistani farmers already! Some of the top aerospace engineers in this country and others are diligently developing smarter, more deadly UAVs. And yet, people are starting to admit that the drones hovering overhead is a great recruiting tool for al qaeda. Meanwhile, 60% of Pakistan's population gets by on less than $2.00 a day.

5. 4G wireless phone technology: While it would make sense that I would be a big fan of ever-more-advanced cellular technologies, both because I slobber at Android devices and because I enjoy increasingly Star Trek-like hand held gadgets, but really, I can watch the Youtubes just fine on my Droid already. Do I really need even faster internet? Here in Kansas City, Sprint is rolling out 4G coverage along with a growing number of 4G phones. Verizon and AT&T are busy little bees, working on rolling out their own 4G networks either later this year or early next. TAE asks: before we start on the 5G network (all but inevitable, yes?), could we perhaps figure out a way to make the current cellular network not drop calls? Working on a "new, better" network while not fixing the existing problem is like if someone showed up at the dealership with their 1 year old car and said "this car isn't even a year old and I already need a new transmission..." and the dealer says "well we've got new cars with new transmissions! Forget about that old one!" and the person replies "but I like this car, I just want you to fix the transmission problem" and the dealer says "what transmission problem?" Meanwhile, 1.6 billion people don't even have electricity, much less a phone.

I could go on and on. I'd take aim at 3D televisions next. The point is, really smart people are wasting, absolutely wasting their lives on things that do not improve the human condition in the least. And that is a shame.


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Quote of the Day 2

“I love taking Boy Scouts into caves, showing them what’s underground. Most say, ‘I’m going to go play video games.’ But a few say, ‘I want more of this. I want to be a scientist.'"

Read More.

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Quote of the Day

From my Brother-in-law, in response to my fawning praise of Google's driverless cars:

"I've come to realize that 'Google' is just another word for 'Skynet'."

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Pardon my french, Mom...but...

If God has any mercy on me, I will never work for a company that publishes boilerplate bullshit like this on their website:

"We were engaged to manage the enterprise-wide SAP upgrade project for a Fortune 500 client. Our first step was to identify key success metrics, then drive buy-in from both executive business and IT stakeholders. Next we executed against our project methodology for testing and deployment, which resulted in going live on schedule. Our approach and methodology became a best practice for future upgrades and quartely releases due to the time savings and increase in resource productivity."

Consultants really are the lowest form of engineer.


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Cars that Drive Themselves, Ctd - Momentum Builds

It comes as no surprise to me that after Google's quiet announcement of their work on driverless cars that the blogosphere would light up on the topic.
Doron Levin:

Cars that don’t need drivers also may not need private owners – since they could be summoned remotely and returned once their journey is complete. Why take on a lease if you can purchase a subscription to a car instead? Car owners who never want to spend a saturday under the hood or in the waiting room of a mechanic’s shop again might quickly adapt to a car subscription model.

 I have to say I side with Sean's dissent on this argument. Why would I want to climb into a car that someone else used (abused)? Taxis are gross enough, but at least some modicum of cleanliness is preserved by the driver or the dispatch. And the idea of not owning a car but instead relying on one to "arrive" via dispatch breaks down really quickly when you realize just as the car drives itself away at the end of your trip that you forgot eggs at the store and need to run back. It might be hours before you are queued up again in the list, and another car arrives.
That said, people in situations where they currently live a car-less life that involves either mass transit or taxis could be well served by driverless, subscription based cars. Also, there are probably a lot of taxicab drivers sweating about this; it seems like no big deal to set this up as a system where, for example, I could hop in a driverless car at the airport, punch in my hotel and it would take me there. Most taxis take debit and credit now, so no big deal, right?
Felix Salmon thinks electric vehicles will be boosted by this:

one of the big reasons why people are wary of electric cars is that every so often they want to take long car journeys which can’t be managed on a single charge. Up until now, the only solution to that problem is either to have a second, gasoline-based, car, or else to have a nationwide network of recharging stations which in any case are likely to take far too long to recharge the battery. Car subscriptions would be a much better solution. You use an electric car most of the time, and then when you need something with greater range, you just swap it out for one of those instead.

Yet many seem to think that the vehicle needs to retain some level of human control. Levin thinks that the vehicle will still need manual control for various activities. While I disagree with him on specifics (getting gas, getting service - these things could easily be done autonomously), I do agree that a steering wheel and brake pedal will need to remain. The reason for this is of course winter. Cars can have all the sensors in the world telling them where the road is, where other cars are, etc. But when there is 5 inches of snow on the road, it may prove difficult if not impossible to ever write software to tell a car how to navigate such things; humans are simply unsurpassable in their creativity and adaptability. Cue TAE:

It is reported in the BBC News that Spain is starting trials of a concept called Road Trains, where basically cars automatically draft each other until one car needs to pull off, at which point it drops out of the train. Cars can join up with the train at will, and should save up to 20% on gas by riding the slipstream of the car in front of them.

It seems to me that a likely future scenario is one in which inclement weather causes the car to require manual control on side streets and parking lots, but once reaching the cleared roads can take over for you.

Google, on the other hand, seems to be bending towards "safety" which is fine with TAE:

Wouldn't his tasks have been so much easier - and safer - if he hadn't been driving his car, but instead had been sitting in a car that drove itself? Talking on the phone while writing an email is multi-tasking most of us can handle easily. That is...easily if not driving a 2-ton machine at 60 mph.

That whole post is a diatribe about how much safer we'd all be if we didn't drive our cars. Automobile fatalities account for thousands upon thousands of Americans dead every year. And despite the fact that automobile fatalities are declining...going from 40,000 to 38,000 is still way too many dead each year. TAE has posted more than once that driverless cars are a great way to end drunk driving. If you are too drunk to drive...let the car do it instead. You can pass out in the seat and the car can wake you up when you get home. Or that idiot that simply MUST text while driving. How bout you text while not driving?
There is the other theory, though, that Google wants to free you up from driving so they can stick ads in your face or let you use wireless devices and the internet (where they rule the adsphere). TAE suggests this is a great idea, and not new:

I climb into my truck, and open up the console (where a steering wheel used to be). The console shows a map, my location, nearby landmarks, and includes options like satellite view, traffic updates (usually boring and uneventful), weather/road conditions, etc. I hit the "work" shortcut key and close the console. I sip some more coffee. My truck clicks into drive and pulls itself out of my parking space. I sit back and read my Kindle. I glance out the window at the sun coming up. "Radio" I say, then "AM 980", and the news comes on. I scan more headlines, as my truck smoothly navigates down roads towards work.
My reading is interrupted by a "ding ding ding..." "mute" I say to the radio, and I open the console. The truck informs me that a vehicle has broken down on my normal route, and it is automatically diverting me two blocks east. I clear the update and with an "unmute" go back to reading. The guy on the radio mentions the broken down vehicle, and informs commuters that their commute should be increased by an average of 8.3 seconds due to various diversions.

Perhaps the least discussed, but most advantageous reason to make driverless cars would be that congestion would be all but eliminated. While I have literally no idea where any of the other drivers on the road are going, a driverless network of cars could know where all the cars are going, and could streamline automobile flow by diverting traffic around broken down cars automatically, or by utilizing side streets during rush hour, or even converting two-way traffic roads into one way traffic roads. Why have a 6 lane highway be 3 lanes each way during rush hour? Many cities have commuter lanes that go in the rush direction...an automated network of driverless cars could easily just have a giant, superwide swath of concrete, and traffic flow could capture whatever percentage of that swath was necessary to create the most efficient traffic flow possible.

TAE thinks that driverless cars has become my pet issue, that is drowning out all others. I think that is probably because of all the technologies I dream of, driverless cars is the single most feasible. We literally have all the tech needed to implement such a thing, from GPS to in-car maps and navigation features, to proximity sensors, to robotic steering. Cars already can parallel park themselves with ease. in Europe they are experimenting with trains of cars that go driverless and draft a lead vehicle to save gas.

This is why Google is getting on board, now. The heavy lifting has been done. The technology is already out there. Google just needs to flex its muscles and integrate. Is it really so hard to believe that what Google is after is the last place free from visual advertising? Why let your local radio stations do a shoddy job of selling you stuff when Google could do it better? Does anyone really think Google doesn't see the incredible value of not only being able to stick ads in your face during your commute, but also be able to target those ads at you based on your GPS location? Americans spend on average 100 hours a year commuting. That's a lot of time to be looking at, and hopefully clicking on, ads.

Keep your eyes open for Android for cars.


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Cars that Drive Themselves, Ctd - In Awe of Google

With little fanfare on Saturday night, Google revealed that it has been furtively testing and refining driverless cars on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles, clocking up an incredible 225,000 test-driving kilometres as they did so.  Google says it has quietly gotten into the automotive automation research business by hiring some of the robotics engineers who won (or at least, performed well) in the Pentagon's 2004, 2005 and 2007 self-driving car competitions - the so-called DARPA Grand Challenges. DARPA wants Humvees and trucks to drive themselves so supplies can be delivered without risking the lives of troops.

Between this and Android...I think there is a pretty good chance that in the future, I build a time machine, go back in time under the pseudonym "Lawrence 'Larry' Page" and found Google. How else could this company be so incredibly in line with every idea and value I hold dear?


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Water Ice in asteroids

I'm sorry, how is this news? I knew this (literally) twenty years ago (as in it was common knowledge).

Science articles make me chortle more often than I'd like. I keep waiting for headlines like "new satellite reports sun not visible on 'night side' of Earth" or "New NASA mission finds there may or may not be conditions for life on (insert planet or moon name here)." or "New ultra-expensive telescope confirms information we basically knew since Galileo published it in 1610. Further experiments should find tiny, incremental gains in the overall knowledge base, at a huge cost to taxpayers." or "NASA continues to shovel money into Boeing to support Manned Spaceflight technologies that will never exist."


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10 Years of Andrew Sullivan

Two thoughts on the tenth anniversary of Andrew Sullivan's blog:
1. I have a close friend who was physically abused, quite severely, by his father as an adolescent. He grew up and became a strong dissenter of physical abuse, which is understandable. However, if you try to talk bad about his father, he is incredibly defensive of the man, and will not stand to hear ill spoken against him. It seems paradoxical, that he is so ardently critical of physical abusive parents, and yet is so vehemently faithful to his own abusive father, and refuses to acknowledge that his father simply is not a good person.
This, also, happens to be exactly how I see Andrew Sullivan's relationship with the Catholic Church.

2. When a word is misappropriated and overused in that misappropriated way, it loses its meaning. Eventually the word becomes basically meaningless, or at least its original meaning is completely lost. A good example of this is the word "gay" which originally meant "in a happy way", as in "he had a gay face as he opened his Christmas presents" but now you cannot say "I feel really gay today" and have a single person think you mean "happy."
This is what has happened to the word "Conservative," although Sullivan desperately clings to the "I'm still a conservative" mantra. But the meaning of the word conservative is lost. At this point, it has become a new word, a cloak really, that the GOP uses to label themselves. Sullivan somehow thinks he can be a conservative, yet be pro-gay marriage, pro-marijuana legalization, pro-Obama. But the new meaning of conservatism is so far in the opposite direction on these and so many other issues: conservatism now means being for lower taxes, yet larger government. Conservatism means a hardheaded, illogical refusal to accept defense spending as a flexible part of the Federal budget. Conservatism means an unwavering commitment to tax cuts regardless of the Federal fiscal situation. Conservatism means being a Christian, or a Jew...or at least anti-Muslim. Conservatism means that Israel is absolutely, positively, above criticism.
Andrew Sullivan is not any of these things. Neither are most of the people who in the late 80's and 90's called themselves "Conservative." Andrew may hope that somehow people get it together, and the conservatives go back to the values and beliefs that the conservatives of yesterday had. But alas. Andrew Sullivan's Conservatism is gone.


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Genetically Engineered High School Diplomas

This afternoon I spent my lunch break taking a short walk, just to take in the fall weather. I happened past a sycamore tree, which was already losing its leaves. I saw amongst the branches a small, abandoned bird nest. My inner monologue asked itself the age old question: "how do birds know how to build nests?" The most obvious answer is that they are "born knowing" how. But that begs a deeper thought: "how do you 'know' something?"
The answer is that you know something because your brains has developed strong pathways between neurons when you first learned that information and then later when you want to recall it you basically reactivate that neuronal channel. So was the baby bird born with those neuronal channels already in place? Or did it somehow intuit the nest building process while it was a chick, and then took that knowledge with it when it left the nest? Elsewhere in the animal kingdom, pre-birth knowledge is widespread, and suggests that the baby birds are born 'knowing' how to build a nest. For example, a wasp species native to my area seems to find great pleasure in building pipe-organ shaped tubes out of mud in my garage and then filling the tubes with zombie spiders that are food for the larvae. How the wasp obtained this somewhat elaborate method of child-rearing seems almost certainly genetically pre-ordained; the larval wasps never meet their parents, and never witness the collection of mud, the careful weaving of it into the tubes, nor the method of incapacitating and storing small spiders for food.

So if you can have wasp genes that actually cause neuronal pathways to form in a larval wasp, such that the neuronal pathways cause the wasp to 'know' how to build future nests and stock it with food...could you do the same to humans?

Imagine, 100 years from now, we have unlocked the secrets of genetically engineering babies to not have diseases or to be a little taller or have a higher IQ. Why not insert genes that cause neuronal pathways to form that are the pathways for calculus, algebra, writing, reading, biology, or any othe relevant subject? That is, if genes exist that can teach various species of animals to do complicated, specific, and widely varied tasks, is it so hard to believe that such could not be inserted into humans?
What I am suggesting is no simple feat; one would need to know first exactly what a "math neuronal pathway" looks like, then backwards engineer the mechanisms to produce that pathway, then backwards engineer the genes to produce those protein mechanisms. But let's assume for the sake of argument that it is possible.

The easiest way to determine the feasibility of this would be to start knocking out genes in the Mud Dauber wasp. Just sequentially knock out genes, until you knock out a gene and that wasp builds mud tube nests...but doesn't fill it with spiders. Or knock out genes until you get a wasp that collects little mud balls...and then can't figure out what to do with them. And so on and so forth until you find all the genes responsible for mud-tube building and spider collecting. Then, insert these genes into some other species of wasp's larva...and see if that larva builds mud tubes.

Certainly, I sound like a mad scientist to suggest these things. But I caution you, we already have glowing green pigs, we already have mice with human tumors growing in them. Genetic engineering of this type is actually pretty commonplace.
Of course, 100 years ago we didn't have integrated circuits. We didn't even really know what DNA was. So, given another 100 years, its pretty safe to assume that genetic modification of organisms (including humans) would be a commonplace, even economical, option for researchers. And let's assume that we also figure out how folding of proteins affects their function, so designing RNA for a specific purpose is also realistic. I really don't think it would be impossible to develop gene sequences for knowledge. And we basically already have the techniques to implant those genes into an embryo.

Honestly, if you could have a kid born with the knowledge equivalent of a high school education...or not...would you resist? You'd basically be giving your child an 18 year head start on life.
And why stop with education equivalent of high school? Why not genetically engineer all the knowledge of humanity into embryoes, and produce baby geniuses who are born knowing...literally...everything?


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TAE's DIY Iron Man Arc Reactor

So I got the itch to create. With Halloween coming up, and the Iron Man 2 DVD release last week, I felt compelled to finally get off my hindquarters and get busy on an arc reactor. Seems like dressing as "Tony Stark" for Halloween would be a grand idea. A quick search of other people's ideas on the net produced many good examples, but somehow copying someone else's work didn't seem right.

So here are the ingredients of TAE's DIY Arc Reactor:

1. 9000k white 20mA LED quantity 10

2. 100 ohm resistor quantity 10

3. Custom parts made on an Objet Eden 250 3D printer (handy to have one of these!)

4. 2.5"OD 3/8" wall clear polycarbonate tubing, cut to 0.4" thickness

5. Soldering equipment

6. Red and black 20 AWG wire

7. 4 AA batteries wired in series

8. About 250' of 40 AWG magnet wire

The first step was to drill ten LED mounting holes in the back side of the clear poly ring. I then made custom black parts on the Objet that acted as the wrap points for the magnet wire, while also concealing the LEDs from view. I then glued the LEDs in the back side. Each black mounting point then got a treatment of about 25' of magnet wire winding. The reason I used magnet wire and not bare copper was so that I could just run the LED anode and cathode bare right through them without worrying.

Once the magnet wire wrappings were done (6 hours later, blech!), I started soldering the LEDs together. Basically, all the LEDs are in parallel with a 100 ohm resistor behind each. That way, they all can run on 5 volts without negative damage. For a quick tutorial on LEDs in series or parallel go here. Put in source voltage 5 volts, forward voltage 3.2 volts, forward current 20 mA, and quantity 10. You'll see what I mean.

Now that the LEDs were all wired together and blazing hot bright, it was time to make the housing. I happen to be a whiz at Solidworks thanks to my job, and I have an Eden 250 about fifteen feet away from me as I type this, so it was no big deal to draw up the core and the outer housing, complete with mounts on the back side for a chest strap. Once the parts were printed, I soaked them in 2% NaOH for about 30 minutes, let them dry overnight, and then painted about 3 coats of Krylon brass spray paint on them to get the whole thing a kinda "Tony Stark made one in a cave with a box of scraps!" kind of feel. Also, that was the metallic paint I have on hand due to my steampunk obsession.

Once done, a little glue and a little assembly and voila. It was so easy that I really wished I had done it sooner!

Coming soon: TAE's DIY steampunk goggles!

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High School Reunions

I have to say that I am on board with Megan in the idea that the It Gets Better campaign should be expanded to pretty much anyone that is verbally or physically abused in adolescence:

shouldn't people be doing this for more than just gay kids?  A lot of kids are horribly bullied--weird kids, smart kids, new kids, whatever--and some of them, too, kill themselves.  And even the many more who don't might need to hear that it doesn't just get better for gay people, but that Aspergers nerds and fat kids and everyone else who gets singled out by abuse really can go on to have a happy, meaningful life that they're very glad they aren't missing out on.

Really, she's right. But a backlash argument has occurred, which made my ire rise:

I'm mildly put off by the people who want to include 'many other teens' in this message. Yes, it's true that lots of kids get harassed and bullied, not just gay kids. But the problems faced by gay kids is far worse. GLBT teens are 4 times more likely to kill themselves than straight teens. Hard fact. And in a lot of places, it is perfectly acceptable to harass gay kids, even while administrators discourage bullying of other kids. Gay kids often can't seek support at home from their own homophobic family. So I think it is important that this campaign is directed specifically to GLBT kids, and not just generally to kids that get bullied.

This is a bit misleading. The commentor is basically suggesting that nerdy kids, new kids, kids with mild mental disabilities...all should be lumped into "straight kids" to prove that gay kids are more suicidal. But are gay kids more suicidial than goth kids? And what about gay kids vs. the growing population of straight kids being raised by two gay parents? Megan is not saying "all straight kids should also have a It Gets Better campaign" rather she is suggesting that gay kids can benefit from it...and since they aren't the only ones that get bullied or feel alone or have few adult rolemodels...perhaps other groups of teens could benefit too.
TAE makes no attempt to hide that he was a hardcore nerd in high school (and still is, really). I didn't have a lot of friends in high school, and most of them were not in the groups that one would consider popular. I was small, talked fast, and thought faster. That made me a target. But it gets better. I now work as an engineer at one of the top research institutes in the country doing cutting edge research. I'm working on my own research too, and plan to own my own company in the next five years. I have a few good friends. The social hierarchy forced on me in high school has evaporated, as the jocks went off to sales positions, the popular girls are pharmacy reps and nurses, and as college and grad school went on I sort of filtered down into increasingly geeky circles until I find myself now, surrounded by brains like mine.
But, you can imagine, my ten year high school reunion came and went without me getting very excited. In fact I was more interested in not going than anything. To all you high school nerds out there, pining for friends, for relationships with the opposite sex, for acceptance, let me just say this: high school sucks. College is awesome. Hold out a little longer, use your nerdiness to get into a great school like MIT, and embrace what you are. And if ten years later, when your reunion comes around and the popular kids start sending you Facebook invites and messages encouraging you to come...don't feel guilty if you hit 'delete' and move on. The reason you have no interest in high school reunions is because life after high school gets so much better for you. The reason the popular kids are so interested in high school reunions is because after high school, their reign at the top basically ended, and they miss it.


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How can there be experts?

Alan Boyle writes:

Experts have hammered out a simplified game plan to follow in the event that signals from an extraterrestrial civilization are ever detected. The new guidelines for dealing with theoretical radio transmissions from E.T. were adopted unanimously by the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Study group last week during a meeting in Prague, the Czech capital.

TAE asks: how can there be experts in something that has not happened nor is there any evidence that it will ever happen?
Can a man be an expert in what giving birth feels like? Can a person be an expert on translating dog barks into English? How can someone be an expert in "the event in which signals from an extraterrestrial civilization are detected"?

TAE suggests that he is an expert in what to do in the event that Harry Potter has bad breath.
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TAE, Evangelical Scientist

Francis Collins on why scientists have trouble believing in God:

Part of the problem is, I think the extremists have occupied the stage.  Those voices are the ones we hear.  I think most people are actually kind of comfortable with the idea that science is a reliable way to learn about nature, but it’s not the whole story and there’s a place also for religion, for faith, for theology, for philosophy.  But that harmony perspective does not get as much attention, nobody’s as interested in harmony as they are in conflict, I’m afraid ...
My study of genetics certainly tells me, incontrovertibly that Darwin was right about the nature of how living things have arrived on the scene, by descent from a common ancestor under the influence of natural selection over very long periods of time.  Darwin was amazingly insightful given how limited the molecular information he had was; essentially it didn’t exist.  And now with the digital code of the DNA, we have the best possible proof of Darwin’s theory that he could have imagined. So that certainly tells me something about the nature of living things.  But it actually adds to my sense that this is an answer to a "how?" question and it leaves the "why?" question still hanging in the air. Other aspects of our universe I think also for me as for Einstein raised questions about the possibility of intelligence behind all of this.

Why is it that, for instance, that the constants that determines the behavior of matter and energy, like the gravitational constant, for instance, have precisely the value that they have to in order for there to be any complexity at all in the Universe.  That is fairly breathtaking in its lack of probability of ever having happened.  And it does make you think that a mind might have been involved in setting the stage.  At the same time that does not imply necessarily that that mind is controlling the specific manipulations of things that are going on in the natural world.  In fact, I would very much resist that idea.  I think the laws of nature potentially could be the product of a mind.  I think that’s a defensible perspective.  But once those laws are in place, then I think nature goes on and science has the chance to be able to perceive how that works and what its consequences are.

Regular readers of this blog may remember that I found Francis Collins' book, The Language of God, to be a very sincere, but ultimately uncompelling attempt by Collins to explain that though genetics and evolution do clearly explain the tools used to create Man, as implied above, God is the "why"...or rather the "why" is that God was compelled to create a Universe in which intelligent Man could arise.
Clearly, Collins is still pushing this theory. As a Believer and a Scientist, I hate to attack the arguments of others in the fold, but he really is too much. The problem here is that it is too easy to shoot down Collins' arguments, and so he does not strengthen the case for Belief by presenting weak arguments that atheists can easily defeat.
For example, what defense would Collins mount if I argued that humans, like the dinosaurs, like all the 99.5% of life on Earth wiped out in the Permian Exctinction, like the bonobos and gorillas and Neanderthals...what if just like all these pre-Modern creatures, humans were in fact but a stepping stone to an advanced species in the future? It seems awfully precocious to assume that we are the end product of a tool like Evolution, which is clearly continuing.
And how would Collins react if an asteroid crashed into Earth tomorrow and wiped out life as we know it...turning Earth into a molten fireball for thousands of years? In Collins' Universe, the very fundamental physics are set up in a way that God intended...to create intelligent life. But if that is the case, how could God let a massive impact event destroy His goal?
If increasingly complicated, intelligent life were God's purpose for evolution, and for the very nature of the Universe, then why is there antibiotic resistance? What sense does it make for God to create a place who's very purpose is to harbor intelligent life...and then also create bacteria...mindless, purposeless bacteria...who in a matter of weeks can evolve resistance to the very medications we intelligent creatures use to keep ourselves safe and alive? Shouldn't God be with us, and against the germs?!

Look, I believe in God. Very much so. But I cannot tolerate people who look for a "why" in the Universe, because there is not one. Why did God let my cousin be born with severe genetic defects and die a toddler? Why did God make me only 5'7"? Why is my daughter the way she is?
People (including Collins) argue that God does not interfere with humanity because to do so would endanger free will. Why then do they not extend that hands-off attitude to the rest of the Galaxy and Universe? Is it really so easy to believe that you are free to pick your nose, but its not just as likely that bacteria are free to infect your nose and kill you? Is it really so easy to believe you had the freedom of mind to think what you want, but so hard to believe that intergalactic dust is free to gravitate into conglomerations that eventually become planets?

The problem here, that Collins, and even really Dawkins in the larger sense, and many other theological arguers are making is that they are putting way too much emphasis on the relationship God has with Humanity. But truly I tell you, GOD DOESN'T CARE ABOUT HUMANITY. God cares about you. Michaelangelo perhaps gives us the perfect illustration in the Sistine ceiling. God is reaching out to Adam. God is not reaching out to Adam and Co. Not that I ever want people to think I take the Old Testament literally, but just look at the book of Genesis for meaning: God created Man. God did not create Men. Early biblical writers understood that the focus of God was not on the group, but rather on the individual. In my own limited exposure to the Bible, conversations with God seem almost singularly focused on 1. Individual relationships between you and God. 2. How humans should treat one another.
Now, on occasion Biblical God does step in and help (or smite) plural peoples. Like the intervention for the Jews against the Pharoah in Egypt. But in this case, and so many like it, Biblical God only steps in after humans have clearly shown themselves incapable of following God's Law.
For more examples, read the Parables of Jesus. Almost every single one focuses on the actions an individual should and must take either in regards to their treatment of others, to the way an individual should live in order to secure immortality, or to how an individual should treat their fellow humans. The Christian God is not interested in the Human Race! The Christian God is interested in individual humans.

Perhaps this is more significant than one initially surmises. Could the focus on the individual, with a somewhat pointed disregard for humanity as a group, be because our souls are what God loves, not our human bodies? Could it be that the rules laid out by God are simply the rules our souls should follow, regardless of what species evolution happened to end us up in?
And so we come back around to Collins. Perhaps he is right. Perhaps when God kicked off this whole crazy mess "in the beginning", God laid down all the physical laws, like the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the polarity of water molecules. But God also laid down the Rules for Souls, which God knew would one day be hosted in some kind of body. Could have been that the random chance asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs didn't strike Earth, and eventually Intelligent dinosaurs built churches and painted gray-bearded lizards on their Sistine ceiling. But what I think we, as children of God, must do is put our obsession with God+humanity behind us, and become instead more concerned with our individual relationships with God. Why should I worry about what God thinks of Us, when I should instead worry about what God thinks of Me?


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Don't Tread On Me

By Brian Knapp


I collect souvenirs. No, I don’t hop from location to location, sacking each gift shop in each respective airport. Instead, I mimic.

Observation is probably the one skill that I would say I perform better than 99% of the population. I would rather sit back and drink in information in attempt to decipher the world rather than to actually live in it.

In this case, I speak not only of the natural world, but of the social one. Human behavior is a powerful and interesting subject and understanding it is invaluable.

Along the way, there are times in which mimicry of action is necessary in the learning of it. A thing is multidimensional. In order to grok in full, one must know it multi-dimensionally. Lucky for humans, we have several sensory inputs. Coupled with the probability machine of our minds, these inputs add dimension to a thing. The way a thing looks tells one only how a certain spectrum of light is affected by it. How a thing sounds adds another dimension.

To truly Know a thing is to understand it from every possible dimension. This, of course, might be impossible. Yet adding many dimensions will at least allow us to know a thing most probably.

In adding dimension to people around me, I mimic their behaviors. When I learn a behavior thoroughly enough I begin to perform it on a regular basis.

When I was young, my aunt “popped” her back and knuckles often as a chiropractor would. I knew this behavior well, I thought, and pop my back to this day. Later in life, I had a friend who performed similar actions to most other joints and yet another who did so for other joints. I know this behavior well enough to perform it for about any joint I choose. To this day, I cannot perform any like action without thinking of these people. These are souvenirs I picked up from them.

I have another good friend who has carried chewing gum with him since the day we met (and presumably before then). For hours every day, I chew gum. I can’t escape it. There are many other behaviors that I perform and all but for a few essential ones, I attribute to a person that I “visited”.

One souvenir which is most interesting is a tattoo. Yes, a tattoo. Those who know me might be surprised. But then, it is another dimension that they were not aware of before. So, now they have a more probabilistic view of me and hence “know” me better.

When I was a teenager, I was quite interested in politics. I read political philosophy and applied it to current events in attempt to understand our system better. I quickly went from right conservative to conservative libertarian. Then, I moved into anarcho-capitalism, and finally settled right in the center, embracing civil and property libertarianism, or what I like to call, pure libertarianism.

Because of my contempt for anything compulsory, like high school, my rather self-reliant upbringing, my pubescent need for independence, and my aforementioned political ideology, I was rather intense. Thick surges of testosterone and a limited worldview emboldened my ideology.

About a year later, I had entered what many refer to as “the real world”. I forwent college in order to finance my girlfriend’s (now wife’s) education. I worked ridiculous hours and had little time to pursue the life I thought I would lead.

But I didn’t want to forget about what I thought was liberty; the right of a person to own himself and the product of his labor and his natural right to defend both to the death against any action in violation of this law (whether intentional or not).

So, I got a reminder, a tattoo: “Don’t Tread on Me”. The line in the sand that is the Gadsden flag was painted right on my arm where I could never forget it. And I never have.

But time can wear down anything without breaking a sweat. And although the ink remains, the foundation, the faith, that it symbolized is gone. It is now a relic, a souvenir, of who I used to be.

I call it faith, because believing in the sanctum of “Don’t Tread on Me” doesn’t work. This is an observable fact. I contend that it is impossible to move through life without both being tread upon and treading upon others. Yes, even in America.

“Don’t Tread on Me” went from a strong assertion, to a reactionary bark, to a reasonable exasperation, to a desperate plea. And now, it sits on the shelf, collecting dust. Lately, I seem to express the phrase “Tread on Me Lightly Please” instead of its distant cousin. It takes itself, like me, a little less seriously and it has a more authentic, if tragically amusing, sentiment.

The interesting bit in observing the memories of my past self is to understand how differently I see the world now compared with before. Once, I believed, wrongly, that I could carve out a place for myself, free of infringement, and live there in peace. Now I understand that I am too interconnected, too dependent, on even those I do not know, that I couldn’t isolate myself if I wanted to. I need to be tied in.

“Don’t Tread on Me,” taken to its logical conclusion fails. Famously, Ben Franklin exclaimed that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. This may very well be true. Death is the inevitable tread of natural law. Entropy and chaos will break down especially the most complex systems such as the body. And Taxes are the inevitable tread of the social rule insomuchas we are responsible for each other.

Taxes are instituted by the government, sure. But the goods and services that we rely on must be obtained through others, whether in form of government or other social entity such as a corporation. Money exchange however undesirable and even unwillful to a certain extent must occur. When faced with the prospect of freezing in the winter or paying the utility, there effectively isn’t a choice.

To go to an even further extreme, to refuse to participate in certain events socially can be equally devastating, depending upon the standards of the community. Yes, that means to not own and operate a cell phone in the U.S. can be devastating. The expectation of doing so is so great that one’s viability is not insignificantly impacted. Will someone DIE if they don’t have a cell phone? Clearly, no. However that particular and peculiar facet of humanness that requires social interaction for survival (yes, mere survival), can be stressed to the point of failure.

The point is, that place that I wished to carve out for myself, unbothered and governed only by the inviolate letter of liberty does not exist here.

I don’t begrudge “Don’t Tread on Me”. It’s a souvenir I picked up at a place I visited once. I hold it dear to me like the other souvenirs I’ve received from others. Like my dad’s mannerisms. But it certainly is not what I thought it would be and it doesn’t do what it promised it would.

 
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