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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