FalconCam!

Not a camera watching a falcon, but a camera on a flying, hunting falcon.  Via friend, colleague, and reader (triply crazy!) Doug S.:

Organic Airframes...

Airbus is working on incorporating lessons learned from the skeletons of bird into airframe design.  The concept at right is one such effort.  Manufacturing methods currently in use couldn't build such an airframe with any reasonable amount of money – but new techniques, based on 3D printing, could do so. 

This technology (3D printing) is developing very fast, with many different materials and on many different scales.  I've blogged before about large-scale printers using concrete as their media being used to construct buildings and bridges.  The Airbus concept would use composite materials (fiberglass, possibly with carbon fibers).  The most common 3D printers today work in plastic on relatively small scales (a cubic foot or less), but I've read about 3D printers using various metals (both molten and sintered powders), composites, engineered wood products, and glass. 

It can't be too long now before these printers are widely used in manufacturing – and that's going to change a lot of our long-held perceptions about buying things.  Here's one example: tools like screwdrivers, pliers, and hammers could be made to fit your hand, and yet cost no more than they do today.  Another: if you want a lamp for your den, you could order one in the exact size and style you want – and the manufacturer will build it to your specification for the same cost as a mass-manufactured model.  I'm sure there are many more uses I can't even imagine!

Organic Data Storage...

Researchers at Harvard University have stored an entire book (more than 5 megabits of data) in artificial DNA – and read the book back out.  This storage technique has very high density, and (at least theoretically) archival storage time measured in centuries or even millenia.  There is one small drawback at the moment: read/write times are on the order of days.  They'll need to speed that up by a few orders of magnitude before we can write off rotating magnetic storage and flash memory storage...

You Can Win Prisoner's Dilemma?

More from the world of game theory: a newly-discovered strategy for one player in Prisoner's Dilemma to get an advantage over the other.  That's not supposed to be possible.  Bonus: it involves one of my favorite characters in science: Freeman Dyson...

Parrando's Paradox...

Parrando's Paradox comes out of game theory, an area of math that's always fascinated me even though I really know very little about it.  I've run across Parrando's Paradox before, always together with dense math that I didn't understand.  The idea of Parrando's Paradox is simple enough: in certain circumstances two games that are individually losing games can become a winning game if played together.  Not all losing games, mind you, and certainly not all losing games played together – just under certain circumstances.

For example, playing the slots is a losing game: if you play the slots long enough, you'll have less money than you started with.  Similarly, roulette is a losing game.  If it were true that you could make money by playing one round of slots, followed by one round of roulette, and continuing in that pattern, that would be an example of Parrando's Paradox.  In the example I gave, even the two games in combination are a losing game, so it's not an example.

There's a post on Data Genetics that explains Parrando's Paradox, complete with an actual example, in terms I could wrap my addled brain around (even some of the math!).  It leads off with “How two ugly parents can make a beautiful baby”...

Obama: Liar or Bozo?

You've seen this chart before, and perhaps you think this schtick is getting old. I think we all need reminding of this sleight-of-hand the chosen one pulled on us.  So here's your reminder: Obama sold his ginormous “recovery plan” with the promise that it would result in the unemployment rates shown in the dark blue (bottom-most) line below.  If that had actually been acheived, we'd have 5.6% unemployment right now.  Oh, if only that were true!  Note that the Obama team's own prediction was that without the stimulus plan, we'd be at 6.0% unemployment right now.  Wouldn't that be nice?  What actually happened is shown in the red dotted line.  Our unemployment rate (even after the weasely adjustments) is higher than their prediction of unemployment without the stimulus.  Substantially higher: 8.3% right now, or 48% higher than predicted.

What does that tell you?  It tells me that one of two things must be true.  Either the Obama team knew the truth and lied to us, or they're so hopelessly incompetent that they missed by almost 50%.  Either way, I certainly don't want them around for another try!

Remember this when you vote in November, please...

Depressed, Hopeless Caveats of Despair...

My blog girl Rachel echos my fears, and cracks me up:

Like I said, I personally know enough voters who are so thoroughly uninterested in knowing anything more than what Jon Stewart tells them, and only even interested in that because it makes them go hahahaha (otherwise they wouldn’t actually know anything about politics), that it’s hard for me to stay optimistic.

But it’s not impossible because last week, days before the Ryan announcement was made, I was optimistic enough (with depressed, hopeless caveats of despair) to predict in public that he’d be the guy. I even stuck with it the next day. And for once, my unfounded hopes were realized.

So I’m sticking with that coping technique for now; it’s the only way to get through this. Join me. Let’s all spend the next 82 days pretending we believe that an electorally-significant number of voters understand and care about the math-induced armageddon that’s coming, okay? Maybe our wishful thinking will not be finally annihilated in crushing disappointment.

That's exactly right. I'm hoping not to have my wishful thinking annihilated in crushing disappointment.  Go read the whole thing, and while you're at it, add her blog to your reading list.  When she can be bothered to post, it's guaranteed to be worth your time to read...