Living In A Van Off The Grid

Need to travel a lot? Don't want to waste money on hotels? Why not stay in your van? That's what this guy's doing.

A Working Hover Craft

This great new device is made by Aerofex, located in California. Okay, when do the hoverboards come out?

Travel Photo(s) of the Week: Kevin Kelly's 2012 Bike Tour

Kevin Kelley, his son and his nephew took a 1,300 mile bike tour along the Pacific coast this summer. Here are the photos.

Treetop Homes In Costa Rica

Finca Bellavista is a community of treetop homes in Costa Rica and from a look at the photos, I'd say it's quite spectacular.



Looks like they're selling lots. Think I'll move in.

Quantum Levitation and Locking.

This TED talk by Boaz Almog highlights a feature of super-cooled superconductors and their abilities to 'lock' to a magnetic field. Just imagine what we could do with this.

The Greatest Machine Never Built: Charles Babbages' Difference Engine

How would the world have been different had Charles Babbage's Difference Engine been built when it was conceived in the '30s? The 1830s, that is. This TEDx talk from John Graham-Cumming tells us.

Fun Time! What If Everyone JUMPED At Once?

Room Temperature Maser...Finally

This from Nature. Almost by accident it seems, Mark Oxborrow, a physicist at the UK National Physical Laboratory, has created the first room temperature microwave laser. Using an crystal of organic molecules and a medical laser bought off Ebay, he's created a maser one hundred million times as powerful as currently existing units.

The device will eventually find uses in communications.

How To Get A Real Human On The Phone.

This from Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools. Tired of the endless phone tree when talking to a human could solve your problem quickly? Well you're not the only one. Most of us have, at one time or another, gotten stuck going round and round pressing 1 then 2, only to find ourselves back where we bagan.

Now there is GetHuman, whose website states, "Companies have more phone numbers and contact options than ever. GetHuman shows you how to get through fastest."

Indeed it does. What a good idea!

Travel Photo of the Week

Restaurant near Sanyou Cave above the Chang Jiang river, Hubei , China

Global Groundwater Use Outpaces Supply

This should certainly concern everyone that drinks water...and that's everyone. This article from Science News talks about how a few very thirsty nations are draining major aquifers around the world.

Apparently, "India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mexico, and the United States lead the global pack of water-thirsty nations" and as indicated in the accompanying illustration, "the groundwater 'footprints' of these aquifers (in gray) represents the theoretical area that would be needed to sustain current demand."

Here's a link to the original abstract published in Nature.

I guess that idea of conserving water is about to take hold, whether we like it or not.

Parasites May Get Nastier with Climate Swings

Recently we've seen an uptick in malaria infections in Texas and other southern states as mosquito populations infected with the disease move north due to climate change. Now this comes in from Scientific American. It seems that mosquitoes are not the only problem we'll face as climates shift. Fungi, tapeworms, insects and all the rest of the parasitic world might soon be getting more difficult to deal with.

"Increases in climate variability are likely to make it easier for parasites to infect their hosts," Thomas Raffel of Oakland University in the United States told Reuters, based on findings about frogs and a sometimes deadly skin fungus. "We think this could exacerbate the effects of some disease," he said of the report he led with colleagues at the University of South Florida.

The article goes into more depth.

35 Amazing Photographs Of Dragonflies

These 35 stunning photographs of dragonflies are just eye-popping. If you make a trip to your backyard with a camera outfitted with a good macro lens and some patience, you can do this yourself.

Fun Time: LEGO Curiosity Rover

Right now, there is no official Mars Curiosity Rover from LEGO, but here's a hack from Rebrickable to build your own. They are also promoting a petition to LEGO for an official version. And it looks like they have enough signatures to make it happen.

Wrongdoers Feel A ‘Cheater’s High’

This article from The Wall Street Journal explains why people like to cheat in order to get what they want. Apparently, they get a rush from cheating. This from the article...

"In one of the experiments, 179 subjects had to unscramble as many words as they could in a 15 minute period, earning $1 for every completed word. The subjects were provided with an opportunity to cheat—they were given an answer key and allowed to check their answers on their own—and 41% of participants did so. Right after the exercise, participants took a survey that gauged their emotions; cheaters reported higher positive feelings (such as excitement) and no difference in negative feelings (such as guilt) than non-cheaters."

I guess this explains why politicians lie.

Snoozebox Shipping Container Hotel

Snoozebox is a company that provides portable accommodations that are made from shipping containers. The units can be configured to provide 40-400 room living quarters and can be transported by road, rail, sea or air. When the the units arrive at a given destination, a Snoozebox team has the hotel fully operational in within 48 hours. A 320 room Snoozebox hotel was utilized in Essex, UK to house staff for this year's London Olympics.

Imagine what something likethis, on a larger scale, could mean during a disaster such as Katrina.

Travel Photo of the Week

Havana

The Scientific Power of Music

US Could Go Completely Solar

This paper from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory plainly states what I've long suspected: the US could be generating practically all of its energy needs with renewable energy technologies, right now.

The question is, why aren't we doing this? The answer, quoted directly from the report, is:

"These are technology-specific estimates of energy generation potential based on renewable resource availability and quality, technical system performance, topographic limitations, environmental, and land-use constraints only. The estimates do not consider (in most cases) economic or market constraints, and therefore do not represent a level of renewable generation that might actually be deployed."

Economic or market constraints. Translated into plain English that becomes "entrenched industries and public perception."

Why We Can't End Poverty

This fascinating opinion piece in the New York Times, from two weeks back, points to several endemic reasons that poverty persists in America. Here's a pertinent quote....

"Four reasons: An astonishing number of people work at low-wage jobs. Plus, many more households are headed now by a single parent, making it difficult for them to earn a living income from the jobs that are typically available. The near disappearance of cash assistance for low-income mothers and children — i.e., welfare — in much of the country plays a contributing role, too. And persistent issues of race and gender mean higher poverty among minorities and families headed by single mothers."

...and...

"We’ve been drowning in a flood of low-wage jobs for the last 40 years. Most of the income of people in poverty comes from work. According to the most recent data available from the Census Bureau, 104 million people — a third of the population — have annual incomes below twice the poverty line, less than $38,000 for a family of three. They struggle to make ends meet every month.'

Considering that these factors are a confluence of business practices and politics, I'd say perhaps a better title for today's entry might be "Why We Won't End Poverty."

Fun Time! H2O Activated LED Wall

How To Grow 100 Pounds Of Potatoes

Here's something useful from the website Matt Over Matter. Like potatoes? Here's a way to easily grow 100lbs of the popular tuber in four steps.

I like the elegantly designed planter and emergency potato escape hatch, too. Hurry! We're having a culinary emergency!

Good Eggs

Good Eggs is a website that connects consumers to foods produced near them. This insures the freshest product and a direct link between the people who produce your food and you. It's easy to see what goes into the items you eat and to judge the quality, not only of what you eat, but the people behind it.

Right now, this is only Bay Area of San Francisco, but with a little effort I can easily see it coming to the rest of the country.

Travel Photo of the Week

The Grand Prismatic Spring, Yellowstone National Park

Smelling Disease

This from Scientific American. I looks like soon you will be able to go into your doctor's office, breathe into a machine and a diagnosis will pop out. A team at Stony Brook University, The State University of New York, have developed an "e-nose" that uses semiconductors to sniff out ills.

According to lead scientist Perena Gouma, "the sensor is highly sensitive to gaseous disease-signalling markers in the breath—it can detect specific molecules in parts per billion. The sensor chip is covered with spaghettilike metal oxide fibers that have diameters ranging from one to 100 nanometers (a nanometer is one billionth of a meter). The nanofibers' crystalline structure and the atomic configuration on their surfaces determine which compound can be detected."

But as the article notes, it may be a while before this technology shows up at your HMO, so don't hold your breath.

Asimov's Psycohistory Becomes Real

I feel today's entry is especially important since the nation is dealing with the aftermath of a second mass shooting within three weeks.

Over a half century ago, Issac Asimov wrote the Foundation Trilogy in which Hari Seldon, a psycohistorian, is able to accurately predict future events for thousands of years.

Now, this comes from the weekly journal, Nature. It appears that a group of scientists has developed a mathematical model that predicts cycles of violence. The person heading up this research, Peter Turchin, calls it cliodynamics after Clio, the ancient Greek muse of history. From the article...

"To Peter Turchin, who studies population dynamics at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, the appearance of three peaks of political instability at roughly 50-year intervals is not a coincidence. For the past 15 years, Turchin has been taking the mathematical techniques that once allowed him to track predator–prey cycles in forest ecosystems, and applying them to human history. He has analysed historical records on economic activity, demographic trends and outbursts of violence in the United States, and has come to the conclusion that a new wave of internal strife is already on its way1. The peak should occur in about 2020, he says, and will probably be at least as high as the one in around 1970. “I hope it won't be as bad as 1870,” he adds."

When friends ask me what I think the future will bring, I often begin, "In fifteen years, after the next civil war is over..."

I am sad to say that now my prediction has some scientific grounds.

The House That Sweaters Built

Kat O'Sullivan sells sweaters and not just any old sweaters. She sells recycled sweaters. This endeavor has sustained her and in the process has financed a quite amazing house in upstate New York. Trying to describe this home would be futile, so many room, so much color, so much beauty. So here's a link to some amazing photos of it.

Oh and if you want a one of a kind sweater, here's a link to her Etsy store. If you like the house, you'll love the sweaters.

Fun Time! Hand-Cranked Wooden Shell Game Machine

From Laughing Squid.

12 Universities Offer Free Online Education

I meant to run this a couple of weeks ago and there have been so many interesting pieces that have crossed my desk that it got neglected. This is from the Wall Street Journal  (my favorite newspaper).

12 of our top universities are offering free courses online. They include the California Institute of Technology; Duke University; the Georgia Institute of Technology; Johns Hopkins University; Rice University; the University of California, San Francisco; the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the University of Washington; and the University of Virginia.

 There have been many schools that have offered courses online but not free. Perhaps this is the thing needed to democratize education and offereconomically disadvantaged student the opportunity to suceed.

Beautiful Remote Summer Cabin

Here's a photo-essay of the construction of a beautiful summer cabin up in northern New Hampshire built by a couple of guys for a client on her 40 acre plot in the White Mountains. The builders had to haul the cut lumber over two streams, up and down slippery terrain and up a cliff to the site, because the electricity needed to cut the wood for the cabin was a 10 minute walk away. Here's a link to see the finished product.

Travel Photo of the Week

Krabi, Thailand