An interesting idea that I've seen several people write up about is the idea of a non-stop train that one would leave by getting onto another train that would stop. The stopping train would then either pull into a station immediately, or cruise about town to lower-traffic destinations.
The primary advantage of this is that the main-line train does not have to stop, ever. This saves energy and runs faster. People going to destinations further down the line are not slowed by people getting off on the station where the train is now, and the train can be refuled and repaired at the end of the line.
The primary disadvantages are space and safety. If someone should be a little too slow in disembarking, suddenly the stopping train pulls away, dropping the slow passenger onto the tracks at speed. Ouch. Space-wise, this means all train stations need to have an extra set of tracks that moves next and paralell to the main trains, for a fairly long distance. (However long it takes to disembark the train, reembark the new passengers, plus two extra minutes for safety's sake all times speed to produce a distance.) This distance can be reduced if the main train slows down, but that lessens the advantages given above. (Only a little bit.)
This probably won't happen for safety's sake. That one slow person getting dropped on the tracks would probably die, and most societies aren't willing to kill for efficiency's sake. (Also, I'm pretty sure at least one person would fall out per trip. Some people are very clumsy.)
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
America's Birthday Special
America is now 233 years old, and still doesn't have a driver's license. (Ha ha, thanks for that joke, Mr. Brenaman.) The usual celebration is to eat a big picnic lunch outdoors, and at nightfall, shoot off a metric crap load of fireworks.
I say today we pool our fireworks and launch them all at once from a thousand-tube launcher in each city. The resulting display will explode with enough intensity to bring the illusion of daylight, and we can, if we operate in shifts, operate until dawn. Also, Canada and Mexico will tell us to get off their collective lawns, damn kids, which will be hilarious.
I say today we pool our fireworks and launch them all at once from a thousand-tube launcher in each city. The resulting display will explode with enough intensity to bring the illusion of daylight, and we can, if we operate in shifts, operate until dawn. Also, Canada and Mexico will tell us to get off their collective lawns, damn kids, which will be hilarious.
Friday, July 3, 2009
NutritionBuddy
The newest product from Mad Engineering Industries, NutritionBuddy is a small screen that, 3 times a day, beeps and displays what you should be eating. We calibrate it to your size, weight, gender, activity level, and so on upon ordering, so if you follow NutritionBuddy's advice, you will obtain a healthy weight within a year's time.
Look forward to exciting recipes, and if you sync it to your PC and use our handy CD, it will also print up handy recipes to help you fulfill your daily requirements. NutritionBuddy obtains most of its power through the innovative active-quartz movement electrical generation system, but can be plugged in at night, and retains 12 hours of charge.
Warning: NutritionBuddy will not help you lose weight should you ignore its advice or binge. Do not get NutritionBuddy wet. Do not throw NutritionBuddy on the floor, as while NutritionBuddy is durable, it is not infinitely so. NutritionBuddy cannot hear you cursing, so feel free to taunt NutritionBuddy. Do not feed NutritionBuddy, as it is not alive. If NutritionBuddy recommends a patently unreasonable meal, please consult the help line.
Look forward to exciting recipes, and if you sync it to your PC and use our handy CD, it will also print up handy recipes to help you fulfill your daily requirements. NutritionBuddy obtains most of its power through the innovative active-quartz movement electrical generation system, but can be plugged in at night, and retains 12 hours of charge.
Warning: NutritionBuddy will not help you lose weight should you ignore its advice or binge. Do not get NutritionBuddy wet. Do not throw NutritionBuddy on the floor, as while NutritionBuddy is durable, it is not infinitely so. NutritionBuddy cannot hear you cursing, so feel free to taunt NutritionBuddy. Do not feed NutritionBuddy, as it is not alive. If NutritionBuddy recommends a patently unreasonable meal, please consult the help line.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
In which I persue a Baccalauréat
According to blogger SandWalk, all French university students must pass a philosophical test that they call Baccalauréat , which probably shares the same linguistic roots as the "Bachelor's" degree I'm pursuing.
Sandwalk says that the student has four hours to put together a comprehensive paper on one question. I'm going to try to answer both:
Is it absurd to desire the impossible? This depends on the scope of impossible. The grossly unfeasible, the limited by reality, and the manifestly logically impossible all are dismissed under this one umbrella term. If we limited ourselves by feasibility, science would stagnate. After all, this computer I'm using now was grotesquely unfeasible a mere hundred years ago, yet here it is. And what is impossible now due to technological limits may be overcome in the future. If I did not butt my head against these things, I would be unworthy of the title of my blog.
However, some things are genuinely impossible, and cannot be overcome no matter how many resources are brought to bare. There are the logically impossible things, in which all results are disqualified. A four-sided triangle, for instance. Any figure you draw with four sides cannot be a triangle, so the task is a waste of time. Tasks which violate the universe's laws of physics, also, are futile. Since one never gets fruit from one's labors this way, wanting a logically impossible thing is absurd. The physically impossible is also absurd to desire, because your every attempt will be a failure. It is like trying to stand in mid-air, you get no result at best and at worst hurt yourself in the process. (By the way, just because we think it's physically impossible, that doesn't make it so, but thousands of failures with nothing approximating success tends to be a big hint.)
Since I see science as understanding the world in order to better enjoy it, pursuing unfeasible, unusual things is actually sane and rational, but pursuing the logically and physically impossible is an insane waste of time.
Are there questions no science can answer? Yes. Absolutely. Scientific ideas must be testable and falsifiable. "Falsifiable" means that there are in fact ways of proving that the idea is actually wrong. "What is the meaning of life?" is a non-falsifiable question, if I answer it in a ridiculous way, it can't be proven that my idea is wrong. If someone was to claim that the meaning of life was to collect 34 of all possible objects, I could not disprove that.
Other questions science cannot answer include "How should I live my life?" "Do deities exist?" "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and "What if none of this is real, it's all a simulation or just in my head?"
Okay, I think I just flunked out of French college, but in American college, I'm doing fine.
Sandwalk says that the student has four hours to put together a comprehensive paper on one question. I'm going to try to answer both:
If you were one of the science students the questions were ....
1. Is it absurd to desire the impossible?
2. Are there questions which no science can answer?
Is it absurd to desire the impossible? This depends on the scope of impossible. The grossly unfeasible, the limited by reality, and the manifestly logically impossible all are dismissed under this one umbrella term. If we limited ourselves by feasibility, science would stagnate. After all, this computer I'm using now was grotesquely unfeasible a mere hundred years ago, yet here it is. And what is impossible now due to technological limits may be overcome in the future. If I did not butt my head against these things, I would be unworthy of the title of my blog.
However, some things are genuinely impossible, and cannot be overcome no matter how many resources are brought to bare. There are the logically impossible things, in which all results are disqualified. A four-sided triangle, for instance. Any figure you draw with four sides cannot be a triangle, so the task is a waste of time. Tasks which violate the universe's laws of physics, also, are futile. Since one never gets fruit from one's labors this way, wanting a logically impossible thing is absurd. The physically impossible is also absurd to desire, because your every attempt will be a failure. It is like trying to stand in mid-air, you get no result at best and at worst hurt yourself in the process. (By the way, just because we think it's physically impossible, that doesn't make it so, but thousands of failures with nothing approximating success tends to be a big hint.)
Since I see science as understanding the world in order to better enjoy it, pursuing unfeasible, unusual things is actually sane and rational, but pursuing the logically and physically impossible is an insane waste of time.
Are there questions no science can answer? Yes. Absolutely. Scientific ideas must be testable and falsifiable. "Falsifiable" means that there are in fact ways of proving that the idea is actually wrong. "What is the meaning of life?" is a non-falsifiable question, if I answer it in a ridiculous way, it can't be proven that my idea is wrong. If someone was to claim that the meaning of life was to collect 34 of all possible objects, I could not disprove that.
Other questions science cannot answer include "How should I live my life?" "Do deities exist?" "Why is there something instead of nothing?" and "What if none of this is real, it's all a simulation or just in my head?"
Okay, I think I just flunked out of French college, but in American college, I'm doing fine.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Carnivorous Clock
Engadget has a device that looks like the kind of thing I invent. A clock...that eats things.
The clock catches flies and other insects, and digests them for energy. Presumably it has an initial charge so that you don't have to feed it the first fly yourself. It continuously recharges its battery by throwing all the flies it catches into a pit of bacteria, which produce electricity from the dead flies.
This is convenient because all houses have a few flies and they are incredibly annoying. In the absence of flies, moths, wasps, and other pests also work, but may not be attracted to the built-in flypaper.
Other carnivorous devices are also possible in theory, but most homes don't have the volume of flies required to support, say, a refrigerator or a computer, unless they are some kind of garbage dump. (Perhaps not intentionally, some people are really really slovenly.)
The clock catches flies and other insects, and digests them for energy. Presumably it has an initial charge so that you don't have to feed it the first fly yourself. It continuously recharges its battery by throwing all the flies it catches into a pit of bacteria, which produce electricity from the dead flies.
This is convenient because all houses have a few flies and they are incredibly annoying. In the absence of flies, moths, wasps, and other pests also work, but may not be attracted to the built-in flypaper.
Other carnivorous devices are also possible in theory, but most homes don't have the volume of flies required to support, say, a refrigerator or a computer, unless they are some kind of garbage dump. (Perhaps not intentionally, some people are really really slovenly.)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Auto Diaper Change
Some of my classmates have had offspring. (Yes, I know this is an awkward tense. I don't have the same classmates every semester.) I don't. Quite a lot of people really want to have babies, but it seems like so much work. Which is another opportunity for making something insane, again, to save new parents from the massive workload.
Diaper changing is a simple task that a new parent must do several times per day. I did it exactly once while helping one of my parent's friends. It smelled, but wasn't terribly difficult. Mostly I was afraid of screwing it up, because we were using the old fashioned pin-diapers. (Velcro diapers seem to be the rage now.) Baby would not like to be poked with a pin, I'm sure of it.
Okay, so place baby on a table. Table has scale, to detect presence of baby. Articulated arms lift baby's legs, remove old diaper, and provide powder, in case of excessive moisture. (Probably better to overpowder than underpowder. Diaper rash is sure to make the baby miserable, which makes the parent miserable.) New diaper is taken from compartment, and baby is slightly lifted. Place diaper under baby, and close flaps to attach new diaper to baby. Place old diaper in old diaper compartment. Parent should now remove the cleaner and slightly better smelling baby.
Machine should track diaper usage to keep supplied, and should at no time ever mix new and old diapers, because, yuck. Old diapers should be dealt with by material. There are cloth diapers that can be washed and reused (but are often too thin to be effective, so you want to double up), there are disposable diapers that should be sealed and thrown away, and I think there's a third kind at this point, but not being a parent I am not familiar with it. Rather than identify diapers mechanically, I think diaper disposal should be the machine owner's (ie: the parent's) job. Disposal should be made in such a way that the parent need not actually touch the diapers to dispose of them if possible.
Since the machine can diaper faster than a human, this will lead to a slight increase in baby-hugging time, which is good for the baby's development. I also imagine hospitals enjoying this invention. You know, the maternity ward that current changes hundreds and hundreds of diapers by hand?
Diaper changing is a simple task that a new parent must do several times per day. I did it exactly once while helping one of my parent's friends. It smelled, but wasn't terribly difficult. Mostly I was afraid of screwing it up, because we were using the old fashioned pin-diapers. (Velcro diapers seem to be the rage now.) Baby would not like to be poked with a pin, I'm sure of it.
Okay, so place baby on a table. Table has scale, to detect presence of baby. Articulated arms lift baby's legs, remove old diaper, and provide powder, in case of excessive moisture. (Probably better to overpowder than underpowder. Diaper rash is sure to make the baby miserable, which makes the parent miserable.) New diaper is taken from compartment, and baby is slightly lifted. Place diaper under baby, and close flaps to attach new diaper to baby. Place old diaper in old diaper compartment. Parent should now remove the cleaner and slightly better smelling baby.
Machine should track diaper usage to keep supplied, and should at no time ever mix new and old diapers, because, yuck. Old diapers should be dealt with by material. There are cloth diapers that can be washed and reused (but are often too thin to be effective, so you want to double up), there are disposable diapers that should be sealed and thrown away, and I think there's a third kind at this point, but not being a parent I am not familiar with it. Rather than identify diapers mechanically, I think diaper disposal should be the machine owner's (ie: the parent's) job. Disposal should be made in such a way that the parent need not actually touch the diapers to dispose of them if possible.
Since the machine can diaper faster than a human, this will lead to a slight increase in baby-hugging time, which is good for the baby's development. I also imagine hospitals enjoying this invention. You know, the maternity ward that current changes hundreds and hundreds of diapers by hand?
Monday, June 29, 2009
Webtop software and connectivity
My university has been heavily, heavily pushing the idea of "Webtop" software, in which the computer that the end user uses consists only of a basic operating system and a web browser. All other functions are performed by surfing to a website that has a web-application appropriate for the task at hand. If you wanted to, say, produce a spreadsheet of today's sales, you would go to www.examplespreadsheetprogram.com (or whatever the URL is), and use it from there.
There are a number of advantages to this, most notably the removal of the need to maintain and upgrade anything but the web browser (which is simple enough), and the automatic upgrade to the best version, which "examplespreadsheetprogram.com" will do for you. However, I immediately saw one large, glaring disadvantage to this. And a few others later, but my university has continued to reject all criticism of their beloved plan. "It's the wave of the future!"
While the Internet itself is built with impressively redundant connections and would survive the destruction of 70% of its nodes, connections to 1 particular site, like your company, tend to be more fragile. My own connection to the internet revolves around a shoddily buried cable that goes to my ISP. If an animal were to chew through this cable, I would lose internet access until it was repaired. If I accidentally cut this cable while trying to, say, mow the lawn, no more internet for me. If my ISP were to lose power, or get bandwidth jammed in a DDOS attack, I would also lose access. And with the webtop scheme, the loss of internet access means my terminal is totally useless. Not only can I not send email, read webpages about my job, and so on, but I can't put together spreadsheets, type text, or compose my email either. (Many email clients allow you to queue a message to be send later, a helpful thing to do if internet access goes down. You can write and queue it now and send it when access is restored.)
Now perhaps a company relying on webtop software would do the smart thing and have several ISPs, routed through a local machine that can easily switch between them if one should fail. Even so, there are other disadvantages to webtop setups.
Another one is inability to control upgrades. Many computer users deliberately like to use older versions of software, because newer versions changed the features in a way they dislike. Maybe the new version is more confusing, or it interprets input in a way they find more confusing, or it handles formulas in ways the users no longer understand. If you use webtop software, you use the newest version all the time. If they changed formulas on you and you don't like it, too bad. The old version is just gone forever.
The last issue is storage and control. When I make a spreadsheet at "examplespreadsheet.com," where is it stored? Do I save it to my terminal's hard drive, or does "examplespreadsheet.com" store it? If they store it, and my boss gets tired of paying "examplespreadsheet.com"'s fees, does that mean it's lost to us forever? Worse, what if they then offer it to a competitor to spite us? (Although this may be against the law, I can imagine a more corrupt company doing this.)
I can see why companies would chose to use webtop software, but if they ask me for my opinion, I would argue it is a bad idea. Webtop is probably best for very small companies that cannot afford even a part-time IT department, and don't have any established habits yet. When you get larger, it's probably best to have your own expertise and maintenance on staff. When accounting's complex formula abruptly fails, it pays to have someone who can immediately identify why and start on a fix.
There are a number of advantages to this, most notably the removal of the need to maintain and upgrade anything but the web browser (which is simple enough), and the automatic upgrade to the best version, which "examplespreadsheetprogram.com" will do for you. However, I immediately saw one large, glaring disadvantage to this. And a few others later, but my university has continued to reject all criticism of their beloved plan. "It's the wave of the future!"
While the Internet itself is built with impressively redundant connections and would survive the destruction of 70% of its nodes, connections to 1 particular site, like your company, tend to be more fragile. My own connection to the internet revolves around a shoddily buried cable that goes to my ISP. If an animal were to chew through this cable, I would lose internet access until it was repaired. If I accidentally cut this cable while trying to, say, mow the lawn, no more internet for me. If my ISP were to lose power, or get bandwidth jammed in a DDOS attack, I would also lose access. And with the webtop scheme, the loss of internet access means my terminal is totally useless. Not only can I not send email, read webpages about my job, and so on, but I can't put together spreadsheets, type text, or compose my email either. (Many email clients allow you to queue a message to be send later, a helpful thing to do if internet access goes down. You can write and queue it now and send it when access is restored.)
Now perhaps a company relying on webtop software would do the smart thing and have several ISPs, routed through a local machine that can easily switch between them if one should fail. Even so, there are other disadvantages to webtop setups.
Another one is inability to control upgrades. Many computer users deliberately like to use older versions of software, because newer versions changed the features in a way they dislike. Maybe the new version is more confusing, or it interprets input in a way they find more confusing, or it handles formulas in ways the users no longer understand. If you use webtop software, you use the newest version all the time. If they changed formulas on you and you don't like it, too bad. The old version is just gone forever.
The last issue is storage and control. When I make a spreadsheet at "examplespreadsheet.com," where is it stored? Do I save it to my terminal's hard drive, or does "examplespreadsheet.com" store it? If they store it, and my boss gets tired of paying "examplespreadsheet.com"'s fees, does that mean it's lost to us forever? Worse, what if they then offer it to a competitor to spite us? (Although this may be against the law, I can imagine a more corrupt company doing this.)
I can see why companies would chose to use webtop software, but if they ask me for my opinion, I would argue it is a bad idea. Webtop is probably best for very small companies that cannot afford even a part-time IT department, and don't have any established habits yet. When you get larger, it's probably best to have your own expertise and maintenance on staff. When accounting's complex formula abruptly fails, it pays to have someone who can immediately identify why and start on a fix.
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