Wow! With all our incredible communications technologies, we are creating a global brain! But 99.99% of this global brain’s thoughts are going to be completely trite and idiotic. Are we, perhaps, creating a global moron?
Month: December 2007
3D Printing Microfluidics
The rapid and non-photolithographic approach to microfluidic pattern generation by leveraging the inherent shrinkage properties of biaxially oriented polystyrene thermoplastic sheets. This novel approach yields channels deep enough for mammalian cell assays, with demonstrated heights up to 80 µm. Moreover, we can consistently and easily achieve rounded channels, multi-height channels, and channels as thin as 65 µm in width. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of this simple microfabrication approach by fabricating a functional gradient generator. The whole process—from device design conception to working device—can be completed within minutes. DIY biology world isn’t close– if you’re ingenious and have the toys at hand, it’s here.
Octodog
What the heck is an Octodog?? Well it’s a new, unique way to make you hot dog. Just insert an hot dog into the Octodog push down and get the craziest looking hotdog you’ve ever seen.
this almost makes me want to start eating the meats
A foolhardy lot
it is common for young men and women, who have had years of education, to know nothing of the world, to have read nothing.
i am always shocked by the illiteracy and the lack of common knowledge with “college graduates” in the us.
Nutrition is Aging
I wanted to compare my body mass, strength, lipid and hormone profile to the 28 year old experienced weight trainers studied in the NJM article I discussed earlier this week. I want to show that the conventional wisdom that aging causes a decline in muscle mass, increased obesity, a fall in testosterone, and an unfavorable alteration of blood lipids is not true. Aging research is flawed; it is not the aging process but the poor eating and lack of exercise that is responsible for the general decline we often see with aging.
this is the most convincing yet for evolutionary fitness / diet: at 70, he kicks the ass of 28 year olds.
Datacenter Energy
Bapat is also right to point to electricity as a weak link in the system. The centralization of computing can bring dramatic increases in overall energy efficiency, compared to the fragmented, subscale private data centers we have today. The megacenters tend to operate at much higher levels of capacity utilization than the private centers can achieve, and their operators have the skill and wherewithal to install cutting-edge power-management and cooling technologies. At the same time, however, the centralization of computing assets concentrates energy demand, putting new strains on the aging electric grid. Efficiency increases, but vulnerability does, too.
politicians will soon be forced to wake up to the importance of data centers as national assets. maybe data centers can lead the necessary changes to the energy grid?
Broken Business Models
I won’t go into it again in detail (see here and here) but it strikes me that instead of vainly trying to preserve an outdated business model by desperately looking to slap taxes and rents on anything that moves, artists and their agents should be looking to embrace the long proven and manifest advantages of robust, liquid and transparent markets to reduce their risks and refine their pricing.
too funny. sean makes up a nice example to expose the usual lunacy of the dying music industry.
Nano risk
why were these risks not widely discussed 10 years ago? we have known about this stuff since the 80s, but of course hidebound people were entirely ignorant, maybe willfully.
JetBlue Wifi
JetBlue, Yahoo! and RIM have announced free in-flight WiFi services. But there’s a catch as there always is. The service is limited to Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and WiFi enabled BlackBerries will have access to their BB mail and messenger.
eww. why bother?
Finding Talent on Youtube
so I went on YouTube for a couple of days and just sat on it for hours. I was starting to think I was never going to find anybody. I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true. I thought, ‘he can’t be that good.’
Gregor J. Rothfuss 