Category Archives: Tech

Can You Say 'Antikythera' Three Times, Fast?

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Archimedes and the 2000-year-old computer

[I]n 212 BC, the Syracusans neglected their defences during a festival to the goddess Artemis, and the Romans finally breached the city walls. Marcellus wanted Archimedes alive, but it wasn’t to be. According to ancient historians, Archimedes was killed in the chaos; by one account a soldier ran him through with a sword as he was in the middle of a mathematical proof.

One of Archimedes’s creations was saved, though. The general took back to Rome a mechanical bronze sphere that showed the motions of the sun, moon and planets as seen from Earth.

This May Not Bother Anybody Else

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… but it bothers a geek like me. Yeah, another leap second story. I suspect these will propagate, but like a game of “whisper” the errors will compound. Three…Two…One…One…Happy New Year!

They mention THE atomic clock (ha! there are many atomic clocks) and cesium clock/standard, but the picture is of a mercury ion clock. Not that anyone else would notice. Then there’s the mortal sin of the US Naval Observatory hyperlink going to the NIST cesium fountain wikipedia entry. (Don’t get me wrong — the folks at NIST do fantastic things and I have a lot of respect for them. And they’re fun at conferences. But get your links straight)

The blurb about miniature clocks goes to a link talking about optical clocks, which are nowhere near deployment as miniature devices. That’s purely conceptual at this point — full-sized optical lattice devices are cutting-edge at the moment, and require a fair amount of care and feeding. Miniaturization and making them robust enough to be portable, and work as true clocks as opposed to a frequency standard (a true clock runs continuously), is a long way off.

Energy, With a Twist

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Turning a problem into a solution: aquatic clean energy from vortex-induced vibration?

Review of a paper on extracting energy from ocean currents, over at Skulls in the Stars

What is vortex induced vibration? In short, it is an effect by which little ‘whirlpools’ of fluid form in the wake of an obstructing object and regularly detach from it and are pulled downstream. These vortices carry energy and momentum (or, more accurately, the fluid which they consist of carries it) and when a vortex leaves, the obstruction itself gets a little ‘kick’ of motion from its departure. Vortices tend to leave the obstruction from opposing sides of it, and the net result is that the obstruction experiences an oscillatory force transverse to the direction of fluid flow.

Moving Forward

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Auto Bailouts and the Innovators Dilemna (sic)

By investing in an old idea, and the old guard of the U.S. auto industry, we slow the next wave of change from happening. We enable thousands of people to believe their old ways and skills are still viable, instead of motivating them to seek out new skills, products, or roles that have a chance at thriving in the decade and the next.

When you’ve been successful with an idea for years, an idea you’ve put your life into, its hard to recognize it’s time to pull the plug. Odds are high you’ll need someone else to pull the plug for you.

Related: giving retention bonuses to executives at the banks and other institutions the taxpayers are bailing out. Why? Because you’re worried you might have to hire a replacement who’s incompetent?

Things NOT Found on the Internet

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Some Lists

[H]ere instead is a list of phrases that (at the time of this posting) turn up no hits on Google:

“ate a violin”
“driver-side bidet”
“unlike normal furries,”
“Sarah, plain and tall and a cyborg”
“people are too civil on the internet”

And some more in the comments

“differential equations saved my life” – 0 results

“chess for Wookies” – 0 results

“erotic vector calculus” – 0 hits

“Luke, I am your third grade teacher” – 0

“Search your kitchen counter, you know it to be true” > 0 results

“Buttered graphite” – 0

via Science After Sunclipse

Say Goodbye to the Cheerio Tire

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New honeycomb tire is ‘bulletproof’

The University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Wausau, Wis., company have come up with a 37-inch, bullet and bomb-proof Humvee tire based on a polymeric web so cool looking there’s no need for hub caps.

Resilient Technologies and Wisconsin-Madison’s Polymer Engineering Center are creating a “non-pneumatic tire” (no air required) that will support the weight of add-on armor, survive an IED attack, and still make a 50 mph getaway. It’s basically a round honeycomb wrapped with a thick, black tread.