Weekend Reading

Data shows that Venezuela benefited greatly under Hugo Chavez. How does such a significant positive change of this magnitude get completely buried by the US media's dislike for a person?

How they made and moved the SR-71 Blackbird. Lots of pictures.

Wikipedia article on the General American accent.

More money, certis paribus, makes you happier. The evidence for this has been accumulating for the last five to ten years.

GMO opponents are the climate skeptics of the left.

The first images of individual atoms forming molecules has been produced, and they look just like the chemistry text book said they would.

Recommended Reading

The universe is immensely large.

To try imagining how big, place a penny down in front of you. If our sun were the size of that penny, the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, would be 350 miles away. Depending on where you live, that’s very likely in the next state (or possibly country) over.

In our ever expanding knowledge of: animals are basically just like us. Rats appear to have empathy. Also in the article, rats will share food and give up chocolate in order to help another rat.

Who are the 1%? They tend to vote Republican even if they aren't more conservative. They tend to have far more education with a simple caveat - being highly educated doesn't guarantee vast membership in the top 1%:

This is not to say that college degrees guarantee vast wealth. To the contrary, only a small fraction of all Americans who report having a postgraduate education (1.5%) or an undergraduate degree but no postgraduate education (0.8%) fall into the top 1% category.

And Some videos in order of educational - funny.

Via Freakonomics:


Via GOOD:

Slowing Down Time

A group of scientists made a camera which shoots 0.6 trillion frames per second. As per explaining my million, billion trillion obsession - 0.6 trillion is 600 billions or 600,000 millions - frames per second. High speed camera = the ability to see things happen very slowly by playing the footage back at a normal rate. We can now see light as it travels (!).



Why isn't this on the NYT front page? Why are all the magazines in the grocery checkout isle feckless and base? The availability of media and physical goods reflects the desires of those able to purchase them. Thus, the world is built for people who love 12 oz. light beers, football, and Maxim magazine.

A Real Water World

About a month ago I wrote about the possible cancelling of the James Webb Space Telescope program. I see such an action as a symbolic gesture of our countries larger unwillingness to invest in science and infrastructure. On a more literal level this is why you need the JWST.

This Weeks Videos

This Carl Sagan video is a must see. I've blogged about him before as he is easily one of the most insightful humans to have every existed.



An interview with Al Jean, the executive producer of the Simpsons, explains to the NYT the now infamous Banksy opening.



One of the better TED talks I've seen in a while. It's about mycelium - mushrooms.

Who Are We?

Just a quick note.

The US is the best country in the world because we do things that other people think won't work or can't be done. Not because we are the most fair or have the best healthcare or because our foreign policy is even tolerable. No, people look up to us because we get shit done.

Well, congress is thinking of shutting down the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project that NASA has been working on since 1996. The JWST is a technological marvel that will enable astronomers and physicists to peer far deeper into space than Hubble currently does. It is a mammoth undertaking.

The technology created for projects like this eventually find their way into consumer products, and in the mean time they help advance science and push the limits of engineering and the like.

What American doesn't look back on all of our great achievements without some tinge of pride? Why do we so deeply want to be just another country that aspires to nothing other than our own comfort and entertainment?

Interesting retro photo website called Myparentswereawesome about peoples parents before they got married.

Apple is getting sued over a typical design flaw-cover up that they're denying. Basically when held a certain way the new iPhone 4 drops calls and Apple is refusing and sort of refund at the moment.

France is trying its hand at a sort of affirmative action that would bump the number of underprivileged/minority students from 10 to 30% at its top Ecoles. Which, by the way, if you get into you're basically guaranteed a good job for life. What I find interesting is that throughout the article the French repeatedly refer to their country as the most fair free place on earth... really? I got a real sense of racism and caste there - even from the young - that doesn't exist in the US.

Scientists have made the worlds most powerful xray that they are using to probe single atoms. They're trying to essentially take time lapse videos of how atoms behave in a number of ways but currently are running into problems of you know... the laser vaporizing the atom. This has huge implications for science though.

Wired runs an interesting series of cockpit photos.

Google purchases a travel search data aggregation company started by MIT scientists that is used by Bing, Kayak, and the like... oh, for $700 million. The FTC still has to okay the deal.

Readings

Hilarious Craigslist post.

Wind powered car goes faster than the wind...

The National Academy of Sciences asked a few engineers how to reduce gas consumption in cars with available technology. Basically it costs money and hybrids still aren't viable.

This is a really good article about (theoretical) congestion pricing in NYC and how it would work. A Harvard math grad put together a spreadsheet detailing the negative externalities imposed by car drivers on the city; which is exactly what congestion pricing aims to do - give incentives to people to make choices that impose less costs on others.

Readings #2

Want to try out a Leica M9 for a few hours? Go to NYC... damnit.

Hawaii puts the kabash on "birthers" (people who think President Obama is not a natural-born US citizen) because they're burdening the health department with all their requests. Even the right is embarrassed, and this is coming from people who expect you to be bad at math to buy the party line.

Interesting design company in Brooklyn called RockPaperRobot.

Life on earth has one common ancestor. Not to say that life on earth only arose once but rather that life does in fact (by odds of about 100,000 to 1) share a family tree and not a web.

Apparently 3-D TV's are coming out soon. The real lesson here is more that technology is changing at an increasing rate, so much so that at some point consumers are going to face interesting dillemas towards adopting new technology. A common theme in history is the adoption of new technology and how this effects societies, economies, etc., but a common occurance I'm noticing is that change is so quick now that we have a hard time adjusting. Architects barely learn a program before it is obsolete. We purchase technology that is obsolete within months and years (my laptop is 3 years old and it can barely run the newest software I put on it), and we train for jobs that are no longer needed well before we are middle aged. I'm not sure where this all points but it's interesting none the less.

A company called Square has just released an application and (free) hardware (plugs into your headphone jack and is tiny) that will allow you to process credit cards on either an iphone or android based system. The fees are 2.75% + 15 cents or 3.5% + 15 cents if the card isn't present. This should make splitting lunch bills easier. I've always wondered when we will get rid of tangible money and use something similar to this, but probably less cumbersome regardless of the fact that this system is fairly light. Imagine just a fob that you can run across someone elses phone then you type an amount into your phone and they accept. Anyways, I doubt tangible money will die off for a long time, people are clingy and hate change (seriously, read that article - no pun intended). There are multiple lobbies and advocacy groups in Washington that make sure pennies and nickels get minted even though they cost 2 and 9 cents respectively to make. The advocacy groups think that changing the material of pennies will somehow decrease their value. Hey interest group - fiat money system. It's all based on confidence. This isn't even worth writing about, it's just sad that we are so encumbered by bureaucracy and interest groups/lobbyists and inability to make logical non-political decisions that we continue wasting out time with pennies, nickels, dollar bills and tangible money in general (although I don't advocate abandoning it just yet... but steps should be taken to start). Getting rid of the first two and making the other a coin would save us hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Plus, no more stupid pennies.

What I've Been Reading This Semester (outside of school)

There are a few questions in science that I really hope I get to know during my lifetime, and one of them is the debate as to what exactly happened to neanderthals and if they ever bred with humans. Some think that they never did and just went extinct, others postulate that they bred into the human line and essentially bred themselves out of existence, and others say they may have bred intermittently with humans but also went extinct. Well, new DNA testing suggests that at some point 60,000-100,000 years ago neanderthals bred with humans - much earlier than anticipated; as they entered the Middle-East (read: Fertile Crescent). Most of the article is a debate about the validity of the research, but if it's true the researchers think that about 4% of non-Africans DNA comes from neanderthals.

UPDATE: New article from MIT Tech Review is worth reading and places the dates at 50,000-80,000 years ago, 1-4% of our genetics are from neanderthals, and is much more conclusive that the results are valid.

Via: Chris Blattman

You must watch these videos (plus they're less than a minute apiece), especially if you're in my architecture class. Think you have it rough...







Apparently my next door neighbor, before I moved when I was about 8, won Miss Illinois. Talk about a girl next door story. All I really remember is having super soaker fights where we weren't supposed to shoot back because she was a girl. That and playing ninja turtles with her brothers.

Reading

The irony of "green" technology (I just dislike the term, not the idea) is that you still have to plunder the earth to make the stuff. Here's how we'll be getting all that lithium from the Bolivian Andes.

This is an article about some newly researched bio-materials. The last three slides are of a sponge animal...? Their internal skeletal structure is glass. Really obscenely strong, better-than-anything-we-can-build glass. So many implications for anything from nanotechnology to aeronautics and architecture.

The courts say that cops using tasers to force victims/citizens/suspects to comply with the officer's will will from now on be frowned upon... in certain places.

Humorous article about how cheap economists can be. Good ending too. I loved that Milton Friedman would call reporters back collect, so classic.

GDP is still one of the best predictors of overall happiness for a nation.

I love when researchers have to prove something that all of us deviants already know. Apparently the clearer a liquor is the less of a hangover you get - shocking.

Backlog of Links Part 1

Must read: the national debt clock runs out of zeros.

Must read: Nathan Mhyrivold (former chief tech officer at Microsoft) started an R&D group composed of chemists, chefs, and artists to produce... a cookbook - of scientific proportions.

Missle silo bachelor pad, must see.

3D fractal renderings (from Wired). I have some odd feeling that this is the distant future of architecture. Think about it... you could build an entire structure using the same mass produced piece, and accuracy would be nearly perfect.

Paul Krugman on why the Fed is powerless to do anything and shouldn't raise rates for a long time.

The Scots really do invent everything. There are actually a few I think they left off the list (for example the ghillie suite of WWI that snipers still use for camouflage to this day, the Scots used it to catch livestock poachers). I had been planning to write a whole long post about this, but apparently someone else has watched too much History Channel too and noticed that everything during the industrial revolution was invented by people from the poorest country in Europe.

A tour of the Leica factory... ugh. Anyone got $11,000 for one of those f .95 Noctilux lenses? They make one of the nicest 35 mm cameras and possibly the best glass (lenses) in the world.

New earthquake proofing technology in Istanbul looks impressive as hell.

Videos of rockets exploding during launch including a 1 billion dollar spy satellite.

Military Youtube... sort of. The military can record footage of an entire area, say a city, and if there's a bombing they can basically rewind the tape and see who planted the bomb...? Just read it.

Most sushi you eat isn't what it says it is. Many of the fish are from protected or over fished areas.

Interesting geodesic domes in California.

This has been a long time coming. Road trains. Safer, faster, more efficient.

Foreign Policy Magazine posted a collection of beautiful photos of slums.

Hahahaha, fuck Vista.

A movie gets pirated all over the internet, it's producers are ecstatic; finally.

This is mostly for my reference. Microscale chart... fun.

Wonkish developmental economics talk about the inability to explain growth in the third world - the drunkard's walk.

Scientists say waterboarding is bad... apparently people will tell you anything when they're being tortured.

Philosophical musings as to whether or not we exist.

Recession over - like 3 months ago.

Hilarious - dead salmon fools fMRI.

Plug and charge, cool but... dumb. If it isn't cheaper than conventional energy, or somehow provides something that is more convenient then it won't work economically. Still interesting though.

Plants recognize and react differently to their siblings.

Nudge - how to make more people use the stairs. Psh, turn them into a piano obviously.

Someone finally won the Netflix Prize which was basically a million dollars given out to the team that could improve Netflix's own movie recommendation algorithm by more than 10%.

America's infrastructure is failing massively, not very surprising. Wired talks about the lack of any current "super projects" in the US and the America Society of Civil engineers say we need to spend 2.2 trillion dollars on infrastructure just to bring it up to par. Yikes... this is interesting to me because people don't realize how much these things affect everything. Roads, water, electricity - these are the basic things that allow America to have a strong economy. It's so basic it's painful.

Backlog of Readings

Now every time I post one of these obnoxious lists I'll point out the best article, or at least the one's that you can't skip.

Required Reading - This is a great (and lengthy) article by Malcolm Gladwell on brain damage and football. Kind of glad I never played.

Google says they overpaid when they purchased YouTube to the tune of 1 billion (they paid 1.65 billion for the site). Best part, they knew they were doing it.

According to Krugman the Fed, even under really rosy circumstances, won't raise rates for at least 2 years.

Ever hear of Conservapedia? They're hilarious, but now they've outdone themselves. They're going to rewrite the Bible to "remove the liberal bias."

New York City made a law requiring restaurants to show calorie counts on menu items. Oddly, the new law doesn't seem to be changing the amount of calories that people purchase in any given transaction.

New theories on altruism vis a vie termites.

A Nobel in medicine this year went to three scientists who discovered telomerase, an enzyme that allows a cell to divide perpetually without dying. It has implications for future cancer research.

Krugman says healthcare reform will happen.

Google's Android OS is about to tip. By the end of the year it'll be available on 12 phones.

Ugh, this wasn't even half of my list... more later.

Required Reading

Color-blind monkeys get gene therapy and are cured. That's insane. They did it by injecting a type of virus carrying a gene that essentially activates a protein that the monkeys are lacking in their cone cells. Wired and MIT.

Interesting video on tangible statistics. So fascinating...

More interesting food research by Brian Wansink. Short

More on high speed rail. It's so cool but just not cost effective for the most part. More on this later when I eventually talk about sunk cost fallacy.

Great article on entrepreneurs in Africa. Must read.

Cameras in London and cops driving around in cars in America are really expensive and both don't do ANYTHING to deter crime... (sarcasm) shocking (/sarcasm)!

Buzz Aldrin gives a Q&A on Freakonomics.

Well written piece about the future of cars, or rather; electric cars are taking over.

New Scientist puts out a list of 13 things in science that can't be explained. Here's round two.

Contact lenses that can monitor your bodily functions. They actually have a working model too.

Penn and Teller's show, Bullshit, covers The Bible. It's good but I wish they'd scream less and be a bit more objective. Then again, it's a show called bullshit.

Some college professors are giving money back to their students that they receive in royalties for required texts that they authored.

Some 9/11 Bush hate pieces. One by Barry Ritholtz of The Big Picture and excerpt of an article in The Atlantic (long) commented on by Chris Blattman (short), a professor of economics and political science at Yale who runs this insightful blog.

Finally, an explanation of why people who don't necessarily agree with Republican candidates vote Republican; they prefer their moral values and views on personal wealth. The strongest indicator? "Whether candidates view themselves as 'better than normal' human beings because of their wealth."

Think the Tevatron (ever notice that just about everything cool was either invented in Chicago [skyscraper] or resides near Chicago?) or Large Hadron Collider is huge? The US was planning one back in the 90's that was over twice as big as the LHC and actually started construction. Here's a photo gallery and story about what remains - yeah I'd totally live there. Here's a piece from Wired about how Fermi Lab's Tevatron is working around the clock to churn out ground breaking research before the LHC comes online.

A company has found a way to detect autism in children much earlier - 2 years old instead of the usual 5 to 6.

A university professor lands in jail for sharing research with Chinese graduate students... really? And apparently The State Department classifies satellites as munitions so that some cutting edge research done on them is considered classified. Short.

A 48 pound genetically engineered rainbow trout was caught in Canada. Just go look at the photo.

The highest resolution photo of Andromeda ever taken can be seen here. Andromeda is 2.5 million light years away and is the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way Galaxy.

Humans Aren't Alone or Special - The Drake Equation

The inspiration for this post came when I made my brother watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos with me. He was floored by the fact that scientists weren't in debate about the fact that intelligent civilizations are thought to exist beyond our own. I thought that was somewhat common knowledge?

There is actually an equation for figuring out the odds of other intelligent civilizations existing - it's called the Drake Equation. I first ran across the Drake Equation in The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity (the Harold Washington Library [in Chicago] has at least two copies). Quite possibly the most formative book I've read. Perhaps this is an overstatement but it was in some way the culmination of my spiritual ideas? It's hard to explain and I don't feel like it. Nothing goes beyond astrophysics. It is nature in its entirety and the culmination of literally everything. To understand it you have to understand how everything fits together at a fundamental level. Yup, sounds like boule-shit... yet totally true. Of course, although we understand quite a bit we really don't truly understand some very fundamental natural phenomenon.

Anyways, this is the Drake Equation:

N = R* x fp x ne x fl x fi x fc x L

Where:

N = The total number of civilizations in our galaxy (gasp).
R* = Total number of stars suitable for life (or rather their formation rate). About 1% or 2 billion (assuming 200 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy).
fp = The number of stars that have planets in orbit around them. 50%, so now 1 billion candidates.
ne = Of these planets which can support life. 50%, so now 500 million.
fl = Which planets actually do support life. 20% or 100 million.
fi = Of this life what percentage is intelligent. 1% or 1 million.
fc = Of these, how many actually broadcast (have the technology to do so) the fact that they exist. 50% 0r 500,000 left.
L = The time period that this intelligent species actually broadcasts proof of its existence. That is, how long they last before they disappear/hit the little red button/melt their polar ice caps/etc. One out of 50 maybe? So 2%, that leaves us with 10,000.

Most estimates say that of the 200 million (100-400 million are the current estimates) stars in our galaxy about 10,000 of these may have civilizations orbiting around them. So that's .005% of stars. Here's the problem that most people are unaware of. The universe is an immensely empty place. The nearest star, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years away. Compare that to the fact that we are a mere 8 light minutes away from the sun... 8 minutes - 4.2 years, and it has a .005% chance of having intelligent sustaining etcetera life. Not so good. So the actual odds of us coming into contact with another civilization (that still exists - as in, we're not just picking up their radio waves that are 10,000 years old) are very bleak.

Here's what the equation does tell us. Life most likely exists elsewhere and even in our galaxy in relatively great quantity. Before you go criticizing my methods consider this. This is something I learned from some great statistician who's name I don't remember (but who's work included the first investigations on the impact of climate change). It doesn't matter that these numbers aren't accurate. Ever if they're off by one hundred magnitudes that still means life exists at a rate of 100 or 1,000,000 civilizations in our galaxy. The point is that they still exist.

Our universe is comprised of matter who's interactions are governed by the four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force) as we currently understand them. What I find fascinating is that due to this unique combination of rules we get everything that we see before us. Gravity determines the shape of the universe. The strong and weak nuclear forces determine the number and size of atoms that exist, and by extension all of chemistry. Therefore, it is a property of matter in the universe that we inhabit to form galaxies and solar systems with suns and planets. If the conditions are right they can sustain another possibility of matter which is life. Beyond that, this "life" (it's tricky to define if you really think about it) can become intelligent to the point that it can understand what it is made of and how it came to be so; essentially it becomes self aware in the most significant way. And if you're me then you also believe that one day humans will make machines that are capable of the same thing. So really it is a property of matter that it can quite literally understand itself.

I admit, it gets a little weird but it's fun to think about. There's plenty more to add to that.

Where Energy Comes From and How We're Going to Collect It

Warning: wonkish and a tad trippy if you've never thought about this stuff.

All the available energy on earth; whether it be oil, bio-fuel, or wind power; comes from the sun.

Well mostly... geothermal energy comes from fissures in the crust of the earth which release energy derived from the intense gravity experienced in the core of the earth which causes rocks to melt into magma deep within the earth allowing us to capture steam. Which is similar, in the sense that gravity causes all the hydrogen to compress, to the sustained fusion reaction that is our sun.

Anyways, outside of geothermal, all energy on earth comes from the sun. Oil and coal are just ancient organic material (things that used to be alive like plants and animals) that has been allowed to sort of ferment into a primordial soup that we can extract and crack in a refinery and use for fuel. It is literally stored sunlight. Wind power is made possible by the sun heating up the earth as it rotates causing warm and cool spots which changes the density of air and causes it to seek an equilibrium density - that is, move. Hydroelectric is just solar energy causing water to evaporate, rain, and then give up its potential energy as it runs downhill. Solar is pretty self explanatory. Nuclear is the exception. Then again it's also imitating how the sun produces energy... or the exact opposite. Whatever.

The total amount of energy hitting the earth is 174 Peta watts (10^15 watts) per day. Of that about 89 PW actually make it through the atmosphere and hit the earth (that much energy could run a 14 watt compact fluorescent light bulb for 730 billion years... or about 50 times longer than the age of the universe). Without going into space, without using stored energy, assuming 100% efficiency, by stealing light from every other organism - that is the amount of energy available to us. Our Current usage rates seem to be on the order of 15-16 Terra watts (10^12)(as of 2005).

So... (8.9 x 10^16 watts)/(1.6 x 10^13 watts) ~ 5600

Meaning that if we could capture 1/5600 or .018% of the energy hitting the earths surface we could meet all our current power demands.

Currently about 80%-90% of our energy comes from non-renewable resources like coal and gas. That is, stored sunlight. So that means that 10-20% comes directly from the sun. Let's take the more optimistic of both figures; 20% renewable and 16 TW total usage and you get 3.2 x 10^12 watts.

so...

Total watts from sunlight available for collection (89 PW) divided by current watts actually collected (3.2 TW) equals roughly 28,000. So currently we're collecting 1/28,0000 or .0036% (at best) of the energy available to us. Way to go team.

The reason why understanding this is fundamental is because it proves that given the appropriate amount of time solar and its related technologies will become viable. We haven't even come close to tapping direct solar energy as a resource. Conversely, things like clean coal may be necessary in the short run, but they are clearly not ultra-long term solutions. The solar industry says that they are already competitive without any of the huge leaps that the media and government have said were needed to make it competitive with fossil fuels.

Side note: If fossil fuels are properly taxed to include their negative externalities this will instantly make renewables more competitive by revealing the true cost of burning fossil fuels. I know it seems crazy, but paying more for your gas (in this case due to a rise in taxes) will help everyone in the long run.

So what's the latest and greatest on these technologies? Wind turbines are being rethought to make them cheaper. This includes turning them around, allowing the blades to flex so as to capture additional gusts of wind, and using just 2 props. Solar-thermal, one of my favorites due to its sheer simplicity, just got modular. GMO's in the form of bacteria that eat CO2 and sunlight (sounds like my mum) have been engineered to create an ethanol like fuel. And then there's the grand daddy, literally, of them all; fusion. Long shot? This approach might be, but one day in the not so distant future (less than 80 years is my prediction) this will be the single greatest source of energy for humans. Not including the sun...

It's worth noting that the majority of your electricity bill is determined by costs associated with transmission and generation; not the cost of whatever is being burned to produce the energy, so realistically nanopower - that is, self powered buildings should become the norm.

Just Some Links

Desert rhubarb (plant) irrigates itself.

The evolutionary aspect of economics. I've always thought this way... didn't know it was "different."

Scientists to public: "We think you're dumb."

It was Tesla's birthday a few days ago, and I'm mildly infatuated with him so here's a 90 minute video on the man who more or less single-handedly invented AC electricity, the radio, the electric motor, hydro-electric power... get the point?

Economists oppose more stimulus. Krugman wants more.

Japan; totally screwed.

More On the Beginnings of Life

I first reported a few weeks ago that scientists had recreated the basic ingredients of RNA in a laboratory setting similar to that of primordial earth.

Well now some scientists have recreated tPNA, "a transitional stage between the lifeless chemicals and the complex genetic architectures of life."

"'Ghadiri’s important and highly innovative new work potentially relates to the origin of life as we don’t yet know it,' said Sutherland. Life’s emergence took billions of years, a process now being compressed into the passage of a few human generations. 'The possibility that humans could come up with an alternative biology that outdoes that which produced us is a mind-freeing and mind-bending concept,' he said."

What I assume he's talking about here is the rise of computers and AI. One day, 2045 according to Raymond Kurzweil, computers will be autonomous and smarter than human beings. This event is inevitable and it's easy to be somewhat scared by the idea. I once read that Kurzweil said that these machines will look at humans as their ancestors. Much like how we think of chimps Which is good or bad depending on how you look at it.

"Asked how long it would take before fully synthetic life could be coaxed from an inert chemical mixture, Ghadiri said, 'Soon. If not in our lifetime, then the next. In my opinion, it shouldn’t be longer than that.'"

Yeah, that's pretty mind-bending.

Scientists Recreate RNA (beginnings of life)

Just read this.

I don't see how it would be possible for these scientists not to win a Nobel Prize, but crazier things have happened.