Monthly Archives: October 2010

Recursion, Lego Style

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MakerLegoBot is made of Lego, makes things out of Lego, is so meta it hurts

Building things out of Lego? Lots of fun. Building a thing out of Lego that itself builds other things out of Lego? That’s totally mindblowing, and that’s what Mindstorm master Will Gorman managed here with his MakerLegoBot masterpiece. The machine takes input from a PC running MLCAD, a sort of industrial design tool for blocknauts, and then churns out anything you like — so long as it is comprised of 1×2, 2×2, 3×2, 4×2, and 8×2 bricks.

All we need is a LEGO robot to play with the finished product, and we’re all set.

What's a Miracle, Anyway?

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Roger Ebert: What do you mean by a miracle?

Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” It is also true that an apparent miracle can be explained because our knowledge of its natural cause is inadequate. For the Church to declare anyone a saint, I presume, is possible because the Devil’s Advocate (that is, mankind) does not yet possess sufficient knowledge

Too Long, Didn't Read

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The caveat in paragraph number 19

This is what they found: by the time you get to a story length of 8 to 11 paragraphs, on average, your readers read only half the story. A minority will make it to paragraph number 19, where, on this occasion, a fraction of the readers of the Daily Mail would have discovered that the central premise of the news story – that a new trial had found a 40% reduction in cancer through intermittent dieting – was false.

Outwitting or Nitwitting?

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German “heatball” wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban

Rotthaeuser studied EU legislation and realized that because the inefficient old bulbs produce more warmth than light — he calculated heat makes up 95 percent of their output, and light just 5 percent — they could be sold legally as heaters.

Technically 100% of the output is heat, because the visible light is heat, as it is part of the blackbody spectrum. So they’re right — it is a “heatball,” as are all light bulbs. However, the whole point is that 95% of the energy is wasted if your goal is to generate visible light. What’s interesting is that electricity is considerably more expensive in Germany than in the US, so compact fluorescents pay for themselves faster and make even more economic sense (and soon will LED systems, as well). So these people are throwing money away, in their passive-aggressive protesting way.

See Me, Feel Me

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Wind turbines wrong colour for wildlife

[C]hanging a turbine’s colour could have a profound impact on the number of insects it lures in and therefore the number of birds and bats that follow.
The researchers also found that the ultraviolet and infrared components of paint colour, which humans cannot see but insects can, also had a significant impact, with higher levels of both attracting more insects.

Dem Bones

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… and Titanium foamy goodness. Titanium foam is just as flexible and rigid as real human bone

The secret behind the new titanium foam implants is a foam-like structure that resembles spongiosa inside human bones, and a powder metallurgy-based molding process that consists of open-cell polyurethane (PU) foams being saturated with a solution that contains a binding medium and a fine titanium powder. The powder adheres to the foams cellular structures, and the binding agents and the PU are vaporized. The end result is a “semblance of the foam structures, which is ultimately sintered.”

Going Green(wich)

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Oct. 13, 1884: Greenwich Resolves Subprime Meridian Crisis

Britain had first solved the problem of longitude, Britain had the world’s largest navy, and the sun indeed did not set on the far-flung British Empire. Britannia ruled the waves, so there was no need for Britain to waive its rules.

Thus, the conference established that the meridian passing through the Royal Observatory at Greenwich would be the world’s Prime Meridian, and all longitude would be calculated both east and west from it up to 180 degrees. The conference also established Greenwich Mean Time as a standard for astronomy and setting time zones.