Monthly Archives: April 2010

What's Wrong With This Picture?

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US Military Developing Poop-Powered Nuclear Reactors

Um, unless you’re crapping U-235, no.

What DARPA wants is a deployable reactor that can provide electricity, plus use locally available material — like poop — to make “mobility fuel” (e.g. biodiesel)

For the purposes of this RFI, DARPA/STO is interested in nuclear powered generator design concepts that produce both electricity and mobility fuel. The total energy output of the generator design should support an electrical load of 5 to 10 MW in addition to producing 15,000 gallons/day of fuel from indigenous hydrogen and carbon feedstocks.

Not a Peep Out of You!

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Peep Research

There are several important implications indicated by these [low pressure] results:

1. Peeps are poorly equipped as fighter pilots, supporting the Supreme Court ruling that banning peeps from the cockpits of F-16 planes in combat does not violate the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1992. (Orville & Wilbur Peep vs. US Government, 1994)
2. Peeps should exercise caution when ascending after deep-sea diving excursions, as sudden decreases in pressure may exceed the structural integrity of visceral parenchyma.
3. This may explain the tragic demise of the Col. Lewis Peep expedition which attempted to reach the peak of Mt. Everest in the spring of 1856. It is important to note that these data do not exclude alternative theories suggesting that the group was devoured by a pack of diabetic mountain lions. (Schroedinger, Heisenberg, & Bohr, 1922).

And it Weighs the Same as a Duck

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Newspaper Wood

Mieke Meijer came up with the idea to use piles of discarded daily newspaper making it into a renewed material. The layer of paper appear like lines of a wood grain and the rings of a tree just like a real wood when the Newspaper Wood is cut. It can be cut, milled and sanded and generally treated like other type of wood.

Come on Down!

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Pigeons outperform humans at the Monty Hall Dilemma

Pigeons, on the other hand, rely on experience to work out probabilities. They have a go, and they choose the strategy that seems to be paying off best. They also seem immune to a quirk of ours called “probability matching”. If the odds of winning by switching are two in three, we’ll switch on two out of three occasions, even though that’s a worse strategy than always switching. This is, of course, exactly what the students in Hebranson and Schroder’s experiments did. The pigeons, on the other hand, always switched – no probability matching for them.

In short, pigeons succeed because they don’t over-think the problem. It’s telling that among humans, it’s the youngest students who do best at this puzzle. Eighth graders are actually more likely to work out the benefits of switching than older and supposedly wiser university students. Education, it seems, actually worsens our performance at the Monty Hall Dilemma.

Pigeons are also unwelcome at casinos, but this may not solely be due to their immunity to the gambler’s fallacy.

No More Funny Voices

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Going, Going, Gone

Though the [Federal Helium Reserve (FHR)] still holds more helium than any other stockpile by far, its stores are rapidly diminishing. Since 2003, the US Bureau of Land Management has been methodically selling off the FHR’s hoard (and repaying the $1.4 billion debt) in compliance with a 1996 Congressional act that called for phasing out the reserve by 2015.

Echoing years of complaints from the scientific community, in January the US National Research Council (NRC) released a report condemning the liquidation of the FHR as a shortsighted blunder that has thrown the global market into turmoil and hindered scientific research.

Better This than a Zombie Army

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The Ghost Army

The “Ghost Army” was a unit that used deception to imitate or cover the actions of real units during WWII. There is a documentary being made.

Mason’s platoon was attached to General Joe Collins’ VII Corps as an experiment in deception. Their assignment was to set up dummy artillery emplacements, about a mile forward of the 980th artillery, to draw enemy fire. I was kind of scary says Mason. Task Force Mason stayed with the 980th Artillery for 28 days. Their efforts to draw fire succeeded as they were attacked by both German artillery and aircraft. Luckily, there were no casualties. The experiment was judged a success. There would be bigger operations–and more danger–in the Ghost Army’s future.

Wikipedia article

A Day Early, a Dollar Short

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NBC’s Today show breaks the story on internet trolling. I’m not kidding; I heard the teaser on Wednesday morning at the gym, so this wasn’t an April Fool’s day prank. Trolling: The Today Show Explores the Dark Side of the Internet

Um, Today? It’s your landline, corded phone ringing. I think it’s USENET from 1993 calling to say, “Nothing new here.” Now go work on that new story and tell us all about chatrooms, and work your way up to facebook. In a few years, you can “discover” Twitter.

Programming Your S.O.

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A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy

I explained as politely as I could that separation of concerns is one of the most fundamental of all the principles of system design, and that for me to reschedule my own tasks and take on other agents’ responsibilities would be a gross violation of encapsulation. I explained that, instead, when she accepted the get-the-boys’-drinks interrupt, she should have relinquished her lock and passed the cheese back down to my end of the table before going swanning off off on the drinks mission.

Sadly, she was COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL and started talking as though I was some kind of selfish jerk who just wanted the cheese.

Live by the programmer’s POV, die by the programmer’s POV.