Think Twice About The Singularity And Immortality

Ah yes, "The Singularity." Ray Kurzweil's dream of ending mortality, when humanity is fully integrated with computers. I've always considered the notion a fool's errand.

Now I have support from none other the Joichi Ito, the director of MIT's Media Lab.

"I'm on the other side of the singularity guys. I don't think immortality is a good thing," Ito said. People who think about maximizing efficiency "don't think about the ecological, social-network effects. In the future, every science invention we do should be at least neutral," and preferably positive. "When you introduce immortality, you have to think about what does it do to the system."

I couldn't have said it better. If you'd like to read the entire article as it was posted on CNET, click HERE.

Travel Photo of the Week

Aescher Hotel, Appenzellerland, Switzerland

Model Agency Focuses On Unusual Looking Models

Ugly Models Agency provides just that: models that are not exactly (outwardly) beautiful. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I'm going to let this video speak for itself.

SpaceLiner To Fly Passengers By 2050

From Scientific American comes news of "space plane" that could make the trip from Europe to Australia in an hour and a half. That's what Martin Sippel, project coordinator for SpaceLiner at the German Aerospace Center is working on.

The rocket booster powered, hypersonic vehicle would reach an altitude of about 47 to 50 miles before gliding back to Earth at hypersonic speeds of more than 15,000 mph.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for this one. The project is not expected to fly before 2050. By that time we may have transporters.

A Composer’s Dream: Housing For ‘Nice’ People

From the New York Times. Mitch Leigh is advertising for nice people to populate, in the words of the article, "an entirely new village of sorts in central New Jersey, with apartments and stores, a hotel and an Imax movie theater, surrounded by hundreds of acres of green space. It will have an eye toward creating a community for artists, and also, the developer insists, toward “nice” people."

This sounds like something people have been trying since the Utopian Movement of the 1800s, but Leigh, who was the composer of "Man of La Mancha," has been working on this impossible dream for over twenty years. Over 1000 acres of New Jersey has been purchased with "La Mancha" money for the purpose. And now he's advertising for inhabitants. And he's serious about the nice people part. At the end of the TV ad he says.......

“If you’re not a nice person, please don’t call.”

If you're a nice person, you may contact him at jacksontwentyone.com. I think I'll do that right now. Below is Mitch's pitch.

Fun Time! Food In Space!

Ever wonder how food in space has evolved? From Laughing Squid come this photo essay.

My favorite photo. Almost looks like something from Star Trek, doesn't it?

Fast Food Linked to Asthma and Allergies in Kids

This crossed my desk a little over a week ago. From Time Magazine's Health and Family website comes word of a study that links fast-food consumption to allergies and asthma.

European researchers analyzing data from participants in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood have found that eating fast food meals at least three times a week is linked to a 39% increased risk of severe asthma in teenagers and a 27% increased risk among children between ages six and seven.

From the article: “This is the largest study to date on allergies in people around the world, and the findings are remarkably consistent when it comes to looking at specific regions of the world and within affluence and sex,” says study author Hywel Williams, a professor at the Centre for Evidence Based Dermatology at the University of Nottingham. “If true, our findings have big public health implications given that these types of allergies are on the rise and fast food is so popular.”

Oddly enough, they also found that eating fruit had the opposite effect.

The Automata Blog

I have always loved automata - animated machinery (usually) representing living things. Most often they are toys from the past. Many are elaborate mechanisms designed to impress young and old alike.

The Automata Blog features the finest of these devices with information on their history and makers. Below is  a video of the automata collection of Richard Garriot de Cayeux from the website.

Travel Photo of the Week

Siwa, Egypt

Scientists Create New Gasoline Substitute Out Of Plants

With yesterday's post about a new designed, highly efficient engine, I thought I'd add a note about a new biofuel.

The folks at UC Berkley have created a fuel from a process that "uses a century-old fermentation process to transform plant material into a propellant, could eventually replace gasoline and drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions."

"It's a much more efficient way of (creating renewable fuel) than many of the other products being considered," said Harvey Blanch, a professor of chemical engineering at Berkeley. "This product is one that may be closest to commercialization."

This means that almost any fast growing plant like corn, sugar cane, grasses or even trees such as eucalyptus can be used. It could be the end of petroleum as a fuel source.

Here's more information from the San Francisco Chronicle article.