tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33155793330676395532024-02-19T19:17:06.478-06:00Mad EngineeringManiacal solutions to everyday problems.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.comBlogger812125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-4449595441056393502015-11-28T09:00:00.000-06:002015-11-28T09:00:04.861-06:00The new new jobJust as I was about to give up, I've been hired on a project to improve the safety of the local roads. Many aspects of this are super complicated. Hopefully this will save some lives.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-52650653028802869052015-11-24T17:05:00.000-06:002015-11-24T17:05:00.418-06:00Eggbeater boatsWhile helping cook for a bake sale, I noticed something while whipping cream. The eggbeater that I was using had induced a current into the cream. This current continued even if I withdrew the eggbeater.<br />
<br />
Coastal waters suffer an issue in which between the nutrients leeching from farms, and the nutrients in the nearby sediment, develop harmful algae blooms, choking all of the life out of them.<br />
<br />
What if we got a large fleet of boats with underwater paddles. At a coordinated time, all of the boats activate their paddles, causing a massive wave of outgoing water. The coast is drained, then re-flooded with deep water as the wave comes back. This "flushes" the coastal water, removing the harmful algae and sending the nutrition to the deep ocean, where it can do more good.<br />
<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-23962220973340820022015-10-24T07:00:00.000-05:002015-10-24T07:00:10.159-05:00Now I'm 35When did that happen?Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-13615929101530846852015-10-20T07:30:00.000-05:002015-11-22T18:53:00.693-06:00Solar ConcentrationWhen I was a small child, I loved the game Simcity 2000. This game, by Maxis, posits you as the mayor of a city, who is tasked with designing the city and helping it grow. One major factor, which also applies to real life, is energy use, as your city is not satisfied to live in primitive times, and expects electrical service in all structures. The use over time is also simulated, as a city in 1900 only wants to light up the night, then power grows as radio, television, personal computers, and other things get developed. Power use tapers off in later years, as the various gadgets get more efficient.<br />
Simulated mayors had multiple options for electricity, just as actual cities do, and each had their advantages and drawbacks. For example, coal was very cheap, but polluted your city with thick black smoke, and people thought it was sort of ugly, so it was bad for nearby property values. Nuclear power worried people. Solar and wind were environmentally friendly, but had low output that sometimes didn't work at all, plunging the entire city into darkness. Fusion power was the ultimate, but the most interesting option was orbital solar, which the game called "microwave" for some reason.<br />
As described in the flavor text, "microwave" power consisted of having an orbital satellite, which orbited the earth, gathering power in giant solar panels, and firing a power-transmitting laser into a collection dish in your city. The power plant mostly existed as a place to fire the laser, and convert that laser into power that your city could use. It was kind of expensive, and the flavor text warned you that the laser could possibly misfire, resulting in some random building (typically near the plant itself, the laser is trying to hit the right spot after all) being baked until it exploded.<br />
What if we powered cities this way in real life? The satellite would have to be orbiting the equator, in a geostationary orbit, in order to be in range of the city at all times. The alternative is to have a large number of satellites, and a complicated schedule establishing a duty cycle, in which the satellite closet to the city is charging the plant, while the others are storing up additional power. Of course, the satellite would have to store up enough power to fire for 12 hours with no sunlight, because half of the earth is by definition experiencing nighttime.<br />
It would be green, and fascinating, but also difficult, cumbersome, and with some nasty consequence if anything went wrong whatsoever. Still a better idea than half the things we're currently doing for power, though.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-51088686551685273672015-09-28T08:00:00.000-05:002015-09-28T08:00:06.456-05:00Our Hollow EarthIt's been brought to my attention that 11 years ago, an architect made a mad plan to give us more space. To be specific, seven Earths of space, using the materials of the earth itself. Just one problem -- <a href="http://www.damninteresting.com/transforming-the-earth/">the original earth would be completely destroyed.</a>
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Specifically, the plan was to drill into four spots in the equator, and have it pumped up four space elevators, producing an ever-growing ring around the earth, which would be expanded over time into a giant hollow shell. As this worked, the sky would darken, gravity would shrink (due to more of the earth being above you than below you), and everything would slowly get moved up. Halfway through the process, all of our nature and civilization would have to be moved up to the hollow surface up top. Finally, the shriveled up earth collapses, raining down on the inner surface, providing it with the atmosphere and water it needs to survive.<br />
Other engineers have pointed out just a minor rub in the plan. Namely, the nickle-iron substance of the mantle that he was planning to use as the primary framework could not withstand the strain of an object that big, and would collapse. With some slight reenforcement from asteroid-iron, it could survive that, only to get ripped apart by the lunar and solar tides. Ultimately, a stable lattice would require materials that have not yet been invented.<br />
It's clear to me that eventually, we will need more space than the earth has. Every idea, even the completely crazy ones, will help.<br />
<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-69487483895369898612015-09-09T09:00:00.000-05:002015-09-09T09:00:03.771-05:00Antilogic GatesComputers operate through a very large number of very tiny electrical gates. There are six types, though we currently have a proof that shows how if you have a particular one of them, NAND, you can simulate all the others. (This makes manufacturing much easier.) The six types are:<br />
<br />
* AND gate<br />
Take two inputs. If both of them are true, then return true. Otherwise, return false.<br />
<br />
* OR gate<br />
Take two inputs. If at least one of them is true, return true. If both of them are false, return false.<br />
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* NOT gate<br />
Take one input. Return whatever the opposite is. So if the input is true, then the result is false, and if the input is false. then the result is true.<br />
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* XOR gate.<br />
Take two inputs. If one of them is true, and one of them is false, then return true, or else false. This stands for "Exclusive or," so one or the other ,but not both.<br />
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* NAND gate<br />
Like an AND gate immediately followed by a not gate. If both inputs are false, then return true, otherwise return false. NAND stands for "Not And."<br />
<br />
*XNOR gate.<br />
Like an XOR gate immediately followed by a not gate. If the inputs are different then return false, but if the inputs are the same, return true. XNOR stands for "Not Exclusive Or," in a rather roundabout fashion.<br />
<br />
Using these six gates, all computer instructions are encoded, as an example, <a href="http://www.circuitstoday.com/half-adder-and-full-adder">the half adder</a>, which gets chained together to do all basic arithmetic.<br />
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However, I notice that much reasoning in the world isn't based on logic, I've decided to reverse this principle. With much tinkering, I have created sixteen <i>anti</i>logic gates, to better simulate the spontaneous arguments that pass for reasoning in our courts and government buildings. I have the following:<br />
<br />
* Red herring gate<br />
Take two inputs. Return ad-hoc conclusion that has absolutely nothing to do with either input.<br />
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* Excluded middle gate<br />
Take two inputs. Conclude that the output somehow caused the second input. Handwave away all complaints that this makes no sense whatsoever.<br />
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* Ad homenim gate<br />
Take one input. Return massive rant blaming all the problems on the world on some aspect of that input.<br />
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* Petito Principii gate<br />
Take two inputs. Return an argument at length that the first input is the cause of the second, and vice versa. Handwave away all complaints about this.<br />
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* Middle ground gate<br />
Take two extremely different inputs. Argue that the position between the two is the actual correct way that the universe should be.<br />
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* Ad hiterlium gate<br />
Take one input. Return a comparison between the input and a wildly despised public figure.<br />
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* Strawman gate<br />
Take one input. Return a massive rant that first wildly distorts the input, then mocks it as stupid.<br />
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* Tu quoque gate<br />
Take one input. Return rant accusing the input of being somehow hypocritical.<br />
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* Bandwageon gate<br />
Take one input. Return argument claiming that the obviously false parts are popularly believed, and conclude that the popularity somehow makes them true. Other parts of the input are then reported without further adjustment.<br />
<br />
<br />
* Cherry picking gate.<br />
Take two inputs, the first one representing a desired conclusion, and the second one being a body of evidence. Discard all parts of the evidence that don't support the conclusion, and return only the parts that do.<br />
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* Single cause gate<br />
Take multiple inputs. Return rant claiming all inputs to be connected through single massive conspiracy.<br />
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* Incredulity gate<br />
Take one input. Return rant insisting input to be false. Rant tends to be especially absurd when input is obviously true.<br />
<br />
* Assertion gate<br />
No inputs are required, but this can be connected to up to two inputs. Return rant making wild (and possibly absurd) conclusions. If any input challenges any arguments previously made, return that argument again, this time with an added note insisting that it is true.<br />
<br />
* Appeal gate<br />
Accept two inputs, the first must be from a mood ring, and the second from another logical gate. Return passionate argument about the second input, asking for special consideration for, depending on the state of the mood ring, fear, wishful thinking, flattery, ridicule, spite, novelty (or in opposition, tradition and nature), wealth or the lack thereof, or even speculation into the motivation of the second input.<br />
<br />
Starting with two incredulity gates chained together with a switch to form the antilogic equivalent of RAM, I had a genetic evolution system design an full fledged computer, capable of text output to a monitor, and input through a keyboard. While the most interesting results would be from a computer that was primarily composed of traditional logic gates and had a few antilogic based operations, as a proof of concept that this worked at all, I would first have to construct a pure antilogic computer.<br />
<br />
Based on the results of the genetic evolution, I etched a circuit board, and 27 ICs, which I arranged according to the instructions. It accepted an ATX power supply, a USB keyboard, and a VGA monitor. I then switched it on.<br />
<br />
The computer operated slowly, first examining the RAM, and writing a short rant claiming the RAM to be made entirely out of sheep. It then ended with the claim that this was still acceptable, on the grounds that the moon is made of cheese.<br />
<br />
It then displayed the word "Loading," and paused for a minute. Then a large rant appeared, at about one character per second. The computer started off claiming that the color purple represents evil, then concluded that itself (which it called "The Antilogic Computer") was the cause of the world's problems, starting with the creation of the Illuminati. Attempts to type in that the Illuminati were disbanded for over 200 years before the computer was created caused a pause in the argument, only to be summarily dismissed.. It reported that pants were in fact leaves, and these should be returned to our streets posthaste. Then it vitriolically insulted itself for about ten minutes before exploding.<br />
<br />
While I managed to extinguish the fire before it caused too much damage to my lab, my notes have tragically gone up in flames, and the insurance company has asked me to discontinue all future research into this topic.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-68807800595190410842015-09-04T07:00:00.000-05:002015-11-22T18:54:22.986-06:00TeleportationTeleportation, the idea of moving from point A to point C without traveling through the space between, has been around for thousands of years, the first recorded claim of teleportation coming from Buddhist history, in which the Buddha was reported as teleporting between his home in India and Sri Lanka, and later back.<br />
Two kinds of teleportation have been identified in fiction. In one, the item to be teleported is broken down into its component atoms, typically to translate it into energy or a fast moving signal, and reassembled on the other end. People have pointed out that this means that teleportation of a person is killing them to replace them with an identical clone that has the same set of memories. If this kind ever exists, I think that I will not teleport myself, but that it will become routine to teleport objects. If I buy something at the hardware store, rather than put it into my car and drive it home, I will teleport it directly home, and then drive there alone. Vehicles will only be required for the transportation of living things. This would be a big advantage to me, since sometimes I buy things at home improvement stores that are very difficult to fit in my smallish car.<br />
In the other, space is bent, causing an extreme shortcut between point A and point C, the item to be teleported is pushed through this shortcut, thus bypassing all the point B that is in between the two. The space is then un-bent. Since the item remains intact at all times, it would be safe to teleport people using this system. This may have some strange energy requirements, and repeatedly bending and un-bending space can't be good for it.<br />
In any case, either of these teleportation systems would revolutionize the world forever if done reliably. For one, transportation is now obsolete for anything not alive. Sure, your factory could pay a truck to haul it to the store, as is done now, but it will almost assuredly be cheaper to just teleport the widgets over. The transportation industry's loss will be the rest of our gains, as this will mean lower costs, which could lead to lower prices if the extra money is not simply absorbed as extra profits.<br />
But more noticeably, space travel. The international space station was painstakingly built over years, with many rockets each hauling up one additional part until today's current structure, the size of a football field, was in place. With teleportation, the entire structure could be built on earth and then teleported into orbit. Even if the teleporter had to supply the difference in potential energy, which seems like a certainty if there's anything realistic about this at all, this would cost far, far less than all the rockets that were required. If you're using the reassembling type, the astronauts would then have to travel up by rocket, but when they arrive, all of their food, tools, scientific equipment, and computers are all already in place. If you're using the portal method, the astronauts could just directly teleport to the station, and rockets would be obsolete.<br />
And space colonies could be constructed on earth's most brutal deserts, like the Atacama desert on the Peruvian/Chilean border. When we verify that the station is able to sustain human life, it's then teleported to a distant planet, such as Mars. Humans arrive there, either by rocket or portal, and teleporters allow the exchange of goods between earth and the colony. Even if energy can't be directly teleported, fuel or charged batteries could, and if signals can't be teleported, then UUCP commands over a small, say, USB stick, could.<br />
<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-70627850935383173912015-08-07T08:00:00.000-05:002015-08-07T08:00:04.966-05:00Easy come, difficult goLost the factory automation job yesterday when I accidentally mis-measured something , causing a very large, very expensive thing to wreck itself. <br />
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If you need me, I'll be back home. Trying to dismantle space-time itself.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-91709305652119514812015-08-03T08:00:00.000-05:002015-08-03T08:00:02.282-05:00Light and HeavyI've been thinking about two things that commonly have the adjectives "Light" and "heavy" attached to them. Specifically, rail, and industry.</p>
While light and heavy rail have disputes on the border between these two, both are transportation systems involving a track, and a train that rides upon them. The light rail systems typically involve fewer cars, are more passenger oriented, and stop more frequently. The heavy systems are more cargo-oriented, have many more cars, and stop less frequently.
Industry, meanwhile, comes from the Latin word <i>industria</i>, meaning "productivity." Light industry tends to be companies that require less capital to start up, produce more consumer goods than industrial ones, and use the results of heavy industry as its primary feedstock. Heavy industry tends to be more expensive to set up, starts with raw ores, and produces primarily industrial goods. As examples, steel is heavy industry, whereas soap dispensers made of steel are light industry.
</p>
A national economy requires all four of these things. A lack of heavy rail means that all goods transportation are made with relatively inefficient means, be it muscle-based transportation (by humans in the poorest of economies, by animals in slightly richer ones), or by massive trucks that cause massive smog. A lack of light rail hinders the movement of human beings. Even the car-based transportation in my part of the world is inefficient, as the downtown region inevitably clogs on a daily basis, resulting in transport taking an extra hour, or in particular aggravating times, two. A lack of heavy industry means that all goods are based on things you can farm or import. A lack of light industry took down the communist economies, as at first, the nearly starving peasants were happy to be working at all, but eventually, the inability to buy things other than food and shelter started to grate on people. The economy resorted to military keynesian policies, meaning that lots of people were making tanks, who then had basically nothing they could buy with those wages.</p>
<p>Clearly, a good economy is, among other things, diverse.</p>Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-58114697865985913842015-07-20T07:30:00.000-05:002015-07-20T17:10:04.024-05:00Will Wheaton's Laser Jackhammer<p>A <a href="https://twitter.com/wilw/status/620643231236165632">while</a> ago on July 13th, Will Wheaton proposed that the jackhammer that was annoying him at the time be replaced with a new system, that would, instead of using a vibrating hammer to break apart the rocks and concrete of the urban jungle, vaporize it with lasers. Mr. Wheaton feels that this would be quieter, which would disturb his work significantly less.</p>
<p>An interesting idea for sure, and it would certainly change urban renewal forever. Unfortunately, it would come with some strange side effects. For one, lasers do not remove the rock so much as heat it to about 1200 degrees, at which time it chemically changes to carbon dioxide and a fine mist of glowing orange chunks of calcium oxide that will instantly ignite everything they touch. Elaborate safety systems will be required to ensure that your construction workers do not routinely set either themselves, or passing pedestrians, on fire. In order to prevent this, a vacuum system will suck the molten rock into sealed containers for later re-use.</p>
<p>The energy use of this system will be somewhat extreme. Just like water, most rocks resist being heated up and cooled down, especially the limestone that a typical city like the kind Mr. Wheaton lives in is made of. A power plant capable of putting out some 50 megawatts, the energy used by an entire block of Mr. Wheaton's city, would be required to keep the lasers firing, the vacuum pulling, and the other safety systems containing the mess. If we just plugged this in, brownouts would be likely, and portable power systems are unlikely to keep up with the load. At least, not without being louder than the original jackhammers were.</p>
<p>Lastly, this system might not be quieter. While the sound would likely be less irritating than the repetitive, machine-gun-esque thumping of a jackhammer, it would almost certainly make a loud whirring noise while in operation. The vacuum pump that pulls the heated rock away makes noise. The power use makes a loud hum. The rock makes sounds as it heats up, and chemically disintegrates, plus if any water hits the rock, it vaporizes with a loud hiss. The noise would be continuous, and almost certainly distracting.</p>
<p>As irritating as the construction is, the jackhammer is unfortunately a better solution for the moment. As one possible improvement though, many jackhammers are gasoline fired, making them unnecessarily loud. Instead, we will replace the gas motor with an electric one, which makes no sound by itself. The jackhammer's only sound is now the metal hammer striking the rock, making a tapping sound as it does so. If we then insulate the office buildings a little better, the sound will become unnoticeable to the people working above.</p>Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-90376524017772128632015-07-14T07:16:00.000-05:002015-07-14T07:16:00.077-05:00On GeoengineeringCartoonist Stephanie McMillian of the strip <a href="http://stephaniemcmillian.com/">Code Green</a> has a criticism of the effort that I and others have put into geoengineering the earth:
<img alt="Geoengineering? Why not cut emissions instead?" src="http://i59.tinypic.com/34yzjvp.jpg" height="600" width="570" />
<br />
Well, I highly doubt that I'd see millions for geoengineering, or for that matter, turn a profit at all. As for mastery over the earth, I'd argue that we've had that since we managed to figure out fire. I do agree that reducing emissions in the first place is the most ideal solution, but there's a catch.<br />
Specifically, reducing emissions would require an unprecedented amount of cooperation, which is unlikely to be forthcoming, given what people believe. I live in a region not only riddled with global warming denial, but the belief in abiotic oil -- the belief that oil doesn't come from the fossilized remains of things dead for eons, but instead is generated in the mantle and bubbles up, due to <i>handwave handwave god handwave handwave</i>.<br />
Since these people do not believe that global warming is even happening, they are unwilling to make any changes to their lifestyle, energy use, or anything else, in order to resolve what they regard as a non-issue. I have tried to convince them, but they have largely been unwilling to listen. Psychology studies suggest that they are basically un-convincable as they have made this a tribalist issue, in which they have largely defined themselves as not the kind of person who believes. And as for the facts, the facts be damned. If chemistry and physics shows that this is happening, then by jingo, chemistry and physics must clearly be socialist plots.<br />
Since they can't be convinced, the next step would be to try and organize to defeat them politically, which would also be insanely difficult, as they are a very entrenched interest group with the backing of at least 40% of the electorate. We couldn't force it without effectively having a brutal second American civil war, likely to pull in and destabilize other countries as well.<br />
Video blogger Hank Green once lamented that the copyright solution that Youtube, the company that he must work with on a daily basis, does not use the best possible solution for the conflict between people wanting to upload videos that may contain additional copyrighted work (such as someone else's music in the soundtrack), but instead <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG_FCQiKUws">the most possible solution</a>. Similarly, I think that geoengineering is, at this point, the most possible solution, as I do not require universal cooperation to make it happen. It does not challenge the deniers, who are unlikely to even notice.<br />
However, one thing that emission efficiency that she advocates would give us is that it would enable us to geoengineer <b>less</b>. The more carbon we have to yank out of the atmosphere, the more extreme the measures that we will have to resort to in order to actually make it happen. The more trees you can plant, the less I have to feed the ocean. The more you can reduce your use of gas-burning cars, coal-derived electricity, and cement, the less I have to dim the atmosphere to protect against the most catastrophic effects. The more you can use organically farmed produce instead of factory farmed meat, the fewer artificial trees I will have to plant in the desert.<br />
Ultimately, I'm interested in geoengineering to give us a better world than the one nature gave us. A world that has space for both the cities that help us get what we want and need, and the nature that we admire so much. And with practice, I'd like to use what we learn from doing this to turn Mars from a frozen dried rock into a lush world with many human cities, and Venus from a scorching hellish world into a new paradise. And someday when the sun dies, I'd like us to be able to move out into the universe, carrying with us the gifts of the earth, who will continue to live on in a new world, perhaps one not yet born.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-88540255567935411202015-07-01T07:26:00.000-05:002015-07-01T07:26:00.643-05:00Reactionless EM driveRecently, a Chinese physicist claimed to have invented something that was previously only science fiction. I'm going to have to explain.
Most of our motion is thanks to Newton's 3rd law, which states that for every action, there is an equal but opposite reaction. In other words, to move forward, something else must be pushed backwards. When I walk, or drive, or take a train, my shoes or the vehicle are pushing the earth backward, to push me forward. The earth is pushed back a negligible amount.
This is bad news for rocketry, as there is now a tyranny of fuel requirements. In order for the rocket to move, it must eject fuel. The fuel has weight. More weight means less thrust for any particular expenditure of fuel. The rocket must be super powerful to move both itself, and the fuel required to move it, which requires still more fuel (because the additional fuel has mass, causing additional inertia).
So science fiction writers proposed the reactionless drive, in which no fuel is ejected. Instead, energy is inputted into the system, and somehow directly transferred into motion. This way any energy, such as solar power, nuclear power, or other systems that don't involve a constant stream of exhaust, could keep the rocket moving. The rocket would be much lighter, and thus easier to launch, maneuver, and power.
The EM drive is, if the reporting about it is correct, exactly that reactionless drive. Microwaves are bounced around in a container, imparting their energy in the desired direction of motion. Microwaves have essentially zero mass, and can be produced by electrical activity. Since electricity can be generated by all kinds of systems, any of these systems can power the rocket.
The drive as described now is not very efficient. Only 2% of the inputted energy becomes motion, the rest becomes heat, noise, and other wasted energy. This drive could not launch a rocket from the earth's surface, and would only really be useful for a rocket that is already in space. However, we can expect refinement of the device as time goes on.
And someday, in the distant future, a spacecraft will launch, unfurl its solar panels, and use a reactionless drive like the EM drive to speed it on its way to a distant star. A laser system in solar orbit is tracking the system and providing a steady steam of power. The craft accelerates, going faster and faster until it is traveling at a large percentage of the speed of light. After years of accelerating, it then reverses the process, slowing down until it arrives at a planet, orbiting the distant star. It then deploys its payload. Perhaps this is a scientific probe, to bring data of this distant world to scientists on earth. Perhaps this is a colony constructor, bringing a human colony to a distant world. Perhaps it is something that I can't even conceive of yet. But whatever it is, it will be glorious.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-24011000020616317722015-06-29T07:10:00.000-05:002015-06-29T07:10:00.039-05:00The new jobAfter a long and grueling search, I have a new job, automating industrial production. It's still new to me, but it's saved me in just the brink of time. I was almost bankrupt.</p>It's also extremely tangential to all my previous experience.</P>
<p>While I hope that this will free up enough time to resume blogging properly, at this time, only time will tell.</p>
Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-67024227277329380782015-02-01T08:42:00.000-06:002015-06-27T07:25:59.449-05:00WhoopsI got busy, then I got busier. Then I no longer work for the ISP. And then my workload increased even more.<br />
<br />
Sorry about the schedule slip. :(<br />
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<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-88190509873360195402014-05-29T16:00:00.000-05:002014-05-29T16:00:02.944-05:00ScaleI was recently fooling around with <a href="http://wolframalpha.com/">Wolfram Alpha</a>, especially in regards to the whole feed the oceans thing I wanted to do. The following preposterous things were discovered:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The cost would be about $100 million for the first run, then $50 million after that</li>
<li>Getting the carbon levels down to the way they were when I was a child would triple the biosphere</li>
<li>Reversing the carbon to pre-industrial levels would increase it to ten times</li>
</ul>
These numbers give me a headache. By tripling the biosphere, I mean that imagine every fish there is in the world. Now imagine three times as many. Three times as many seagulls. Three times as many whales. Three times as many squids. Three times as many sea cucumbers. And sooner or later, it works back to the land, and you have three times as many crows, and three times as many snakes, and three times as many owls, and mice, and cows.</p>
<p>Meanwhile for me, an unexpected expense that came up that amounted to my entire paycheck for a two-week period threw everything through a loop for a month.</p>
<p>The big numbers are discouraging, but the journey of a million miles begins with a single step. Even stopping things from getting worse makes it that much easier to get around to making things better.</p>Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-75398353947527379302014-04-30T09:00:00.000-05:002014-05-29T11:52:28.551-05:00A critical shortageRecently we have run out of a critical supply. No, there's still enough oil for the moment, the electric grid is working fine, at least in my area of the world, and there's no shortage of food where distribution is not being deliberately sabotaged. We're short of IP addresses.<br />When the current familiar IP scheme that you're used to was invented in 1981, networked computers were kind of rare. It was though that the 4 billion addresses possible under the system could never possibly be used up, since networked computers were primarily owned by governments and major educational institutions. In the early days, addresses were handed out like candy, with groups getting a class A (everything starting with one particular number, like all addresses starting with 12".) all to themselves just because. In addition, the entire 127 block (from 127.0.0.1 to 127.255.255.255) were all allocated to "loopback" meaning "Don't actually use the network because it's right in this computer right here." You should only need one address for that.<br />Later, when more and more countries were going online, it became apparent that since there were 5 billion people in the world, who all wanted to go online, and only 4 billion possible addresses, that something would have to give. More justification had to be given to be assigned large blocks of addresses instead of small ones.<br />This was then made worse by devices, as well as individual people and servers, also wanting IP addresses for projects like an Internet-connected refrigerator. (The refrigerator can report its state to, say, the grocery store, so instead of you ordering milk, the refrigerator does it for you.) <br />By last year, justification had to be given to get any sort of IP address at all. Groups with large allocations were asked to give them back. This faired poorly -- generally the response was to come up with dumber and dumber schemes to "prove" why ownership of their entire allocation was "necessary." Some organizations did in fact give their blocks back, most notably Stanford University.<br />So next month, we run out completely. If you want to go online -- well, too bad, all slots are full. Now what?<br />Thankfully, this whole thing was seen well in advance, and a new specification, IPv6 was written in 1998. (version 5 was a beta that turned out to not be very useful.) IPv6 increased the address size by four times, which due to the way that computers stores numbers, exponentially increases the possible addresses. IPv6 has enough addresses to give every atom in the solar system, if not the visible universe, its own unique address. I won't say that running out is impossible -- I suppose that in the deep future we could develop some sort of teleportation and quantum entanglement technology that makes us have a galaxy-spanning empire of hexadecitellions of people, but it won't happen anytime soon unless we're REALLY stupid about how we allocate addresses. <br />To use IPv6, your operating system has to support it, your software has to support it, and your ISP has to support it. Generally the las step is the sticking point. My company offers browsing customers a hybrid stack, where you have an IPv6 address, but IPv4-only websites will see you as this one address that the ISP has reserved. That address is a node that understands both protocols, and can route between the two.<br />China is the most excited by this news, as when IPv4 was first written, most of China didn't have electricity, much less computers, and so they were allocated extremely few IP addresses. Since pretty much everyone in China wants to go online, they need to go IPv6, or it's just not going to happen.<br />Everyone should try to go to IPv6, but there are some transition costs, and I think we're going to have to struggle with it for quite a while, and the pain is higher because we waited so long.<br /><br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-36919199259253633742014-04-01T03:37:00.000-05:002014-05-29T11:53:52.427-05:00Solvay Environmental Fix<p>I just found out that with unlimited energy, it would take me only two chemical processes to end global warming forever.</p>
<ol>
<li> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber-Bosch_Process">Haber-Bosch Process</A></li>
<p>Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch's chemical process revolutionized modern agriculture by making endless amounts of Ammonia, thus taking away the limitation that agriculture used to have of the supply of Nitrogen in the soil, formerly limited to various animal poops, and maybe possibly composts. This has vastly increased the carrying capacity of the earth, and one fifth of the food on your pantry's shelves is directly due to this.</p>
<p>Most industrial versions use natural gas for the hydrogen, but I'll be taken Haber's original, less polluting version (since I'm using unlimited energy as a conceit), electrically split water.</p>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Process">Solvay Process</A></li>
<p>The Solvay process makes baking soda. If you're not from the US, the baking soda in your local grocery store was made this way. It uses Ammonia to split up salt water, then absorbs CO2, resulting in Ammonium chloride and baking soda. Most commercial uses of this process then reclaim the Ammonia, because it is more expensive, and because Calcium chloride draws less attention when you throw it out, because it doesn't smell like solidified pee. I'll be using Hou Debang's variation on the process, which doesn't bother with the Calcium step.</p>
</ol>
<p>With these two processes combined, I can solidify air, and both of these processes are automated, so once set up, they would continue to run no matter what I was doing. To truly end global warming, I'd have to send the baking soda off world, and I can use part of the components to do this.</p>
<p>An old recipe for "Heavy duty" batteries was to put a carbon rod between two plates of Zinc, and fill the difference between them with Ammonium Chloride. Each individual cell is fairly weak, but you can chain them together until you can produce huge amounts of power. Getting several pounds of Zinc, I produce enough batteries to power a railgun, and rocket the baking soda off to Mars, or some other place in need of Carbon.</p>
<p>And should I need to recover the carbon, I will get the cheapest plonk that I can get a hold of, bubble it for 3 months, and then pour that vinegar onto the baking soda. Presto.</p>
Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-69436945290700248382014-03-31T08:30:00.000-05:002014-04-05T02:45:02.525-05:00CEOs and Free Speech<p>And lo, suddenly politics hijacks everything.</p>
<p>A major story brewing in the US news is about the Mozilla foundation, who just hired a new CEO. They then had a massive shitstorm over that CEO's political activities, which included large donations to California's Proposition 8, a political measure to ban gay marriage that ultimately was found to be against the state constitution and thus discarded.</p>
<p>Most of the stink came from the Mozilla employees, who are quite diverse, and some of them are, yes, gay. The project exists in Silicon Valley, a very competitive environment where recruiting talent is bitterly contested, and companies need every advantage they get to keep employees, as well as not piss them off too badly. Once this became public, though, various business libertarians, gay rights activists, gay rights opponents, and a million other interest groups weighed in.</p>
<p>I'm of two minds. On one hand, I thought that Proposition 8 was an abomination, brought forth and paid for by hostile interests outside the state, (especially from Utah) that it was a step backwards for society, back to when people wanted to pretend that gay people didn't exist, and that any sexuality other than married sex for the explicit purpose of creating children was unacceptable. It also drew questions about the fairness of a person who supported that, though to his credit the CEO has stated that he does intend to treat his gay employees just like his straight employees.</p>
<p>On the other, it irks me the way that businesses are treated as personal fiefdoms with wanky personal interests enforcing orthodoxies. I know I would be personally outraged to be discriminated against, passed up for promotion, or fired, merely because of a private opinion. Is someone's politics truly relevant to the running of a company, and is even asking a step back to the bad old days of nepotism?</p>
<p>Another issue is that the position of CEO is largely seen as the public face of the company. Unlike most positions, the work doesn't stop when you go home for the day. Even after your time in the offices, you're writing press releases, you're doing charitable works, you're doing everything in your power to make everyone like you, and to be seen as someone who can be trusted. It's a deficiency of freedom that most of us would find completely unacceptable, but that's why you make the big bucks. I will never be a CEO, because aside from my general odd-ness, my lack of Christianity makes me unacceptable to the American public.</p>
<p>Your thoughts would be appreciated, though this is a sensitive topic, and a large amount of tact will be required.</p>
<P>EDIT: Somewhat after this occurred, the CEO resigned from his position.</p>
Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-36345757292810269232014-03-03T07:00:00.000-06:002014-03-03T07:00:01.955-06:00Weather controlI recently read that trees planted in an alpine environment benefit twice. Once from the tree's normal metabolic habits, and twice because the roots reach into previously sealed rock, exposing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivine">oliveine</a> and similar minerals to weathering. This gives me an idea.<br />
We dig massive holes into the mountains. After a year's time, we fill the hole back up, ending with a sapling. This maximizes weathering, resulting in the best possible carbon sink for the area.<br />
<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-17449994397270215982013-10-28T19:18:00.001-05:002013-10-28T19:18:30.653-05:00Tommy Edison's questions for sighted peopleFilm critic Tommy Edison hasn't actually seen a single movie in his entire life, although he's heard lots of them, due to the fact that he is blind, and has been since he was born. He also enjoys photography, thanks to assisting technology.<br />
<br />
On his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TommyEdisonXP?feature=watch">youtube channel</a>, he recently asked a number of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=919GzqpFDBk">questions</a> for sighted people. Though people have already provided him with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VngUCYJpwRQ">answers</a>, I also thought it would be a good idea to answer him as well.</p>
<p>Hello, I am Professor Preposterous. I am 33 years old, and have vision, albeit with somewhat severe nearsightedness. This means my vision is distorted past the range of my hands or so if I don't wear glasses.</p>
<blockquote>
How do you remember all those colors?
</blockquote>
<p>In general, I would say that there are millions of small variations on a small set of colors. A fashion designer might be able to tell the difference between "aquamarine" and "periwinkle," but to me both are just "blue." I can tell that they're a different shade of blue, but I don't see the point in differentiating further. To make a metaphor, I would compare colors to textures. A wooden object feels different to the touch than say, a plastic one, or a felt one, and if you pay a lot of attention, you might be able to tell if the wood is, say, pine, instead of spruce.</p>
<p>Color is actually due to the frequency of light that bounces off an object, light being an electromagnetic radiation that vision detects, the way that hearing detects compression waves in the air. There are seven basic ones:</p>
<ol>
<li>Red: 700 - 635 nm</li>
<li>Orange: 635 - 590 nm</li>
<li>Yellow: 590 - 560nm</li>
<li>Green: 560 - 490nm</li>
<li>Blue: 490 - 450nm</li>
<li>Purple: 450 - 400nm</li>
</ol>
<p>There's also black and white, which depend on if it is described with an additive color system (like a spotlight or a computer monitor) or a subtractive one (like paints). With additive systems, all the colors make white, and no colors make black. With a subtractive system, all the colors together makes black, and white has to be prepared separately. My computer monitor uses an additive system that can make basically every color there is from three: red, blue, and green.</p>
<p>Also, I would be very surprised if you were unable to provide me a similar level of detail about texture, or sound.</p>
<blockquote>What's it like to be able to look at a room and know exactly where everything is? My god, that's genius.</blockquote>
<p>Extremely orienting. Except that vision only shows you where everything is in a room if the room is sorted first -- vision is blocked by the first object with color that it encounters, so if something is behind something else, a sighted person can only see the thing in front. Sight also only works forward -- we see what's behind us about as well as you do, which is to say not at all. For what's behind us, we have to rely on hearing, or perhaps mirrors.</p>
<p>While in theory, vision's distance is unlimited, closer things provide more detail than further away things, any obstacle blocks further sight, and some of the things vision tells us are just plain outright lies. For example, the sky is not actually a thing -- there's air over our heads, but vision tells us that it's a large dome-shaped object at a large distance away, maybe 20 miles. Or the horizon, where the sky and the ground seems to touch if there are no large objects blocking it, which appears to be about 8 miles away, but moves with us if we move.</p>
<blockquote>
So, how come you stop and look at a hot chick? Guys at a red light, they'll stop traffic!</blockquote>
<p>Vision provides a lot of information at once. Sometimes this is kind of distracting, especially with our lower brain, the one we got from lizards, hijacking everything else to think up pickup lines until we realize that we've been staring and have lost all chance of relating to her normally.</p>
<blockquote>
How do you remember what things look like? I mean, there are so many things. Like cars. How do you know the particular make of a car? Or vegetables? Fruit? Food?</blockquote>
<p>Things don't really change all that often. If I were to hand a random object off my desk to you, you would probably recognize it instantly, because it feels the same as the other ones that you've encountered before. Let's say that I hand you an apple. The moment it touches your hand, you'd probably recognize it. Vision is the same -- seeing an object gives us the general shape, the color information, and hints at the texture of the object. Having seen similar objects before, we recognize them.</p>
<p>If you were somehow able to touch and feel every car extensively, every time you passed them, I think you would start to recognize particular models after about a month. Every car of a particular year, make, and model is shaped exactly the same. The color is different due to auto paint, but the texture is the same and the shape is the same. We recognize them because we've seen them before.</p>
<p>The same with food. Apples have the same general shape as other apples. Bananas have the same shape as other bananas.</p>
<blockquote>Fashion blows my mind. I mean, you choose to wear something that looks good rather than feels good?</blockquote>
<p>As someone in the applied sciences, fashion doesn't work well with me either. But people who wear things that look good usually like the attention that they get for doing so enough that they're willing to put up with a surprising amount of discomfort.</p>
<blockquote>What's it like to go somewhere all by yourself?</blockquote>
<p>On one hand, liberating. On the other, lonely. I was kind of surprised with the idea that you couldn't travel alone.</p>
<blockquote>
What about driving?</blockquote>
<p>I learned to drive 17 years ago. When I first started, it was unbearable -- having to keep track of everything and do so many things at once took more brainpower than I had available. Over time, I got used to it as more and more things became habit and could be relegated to the unconscious, until I could drive and listen to the radio and muse about philosophy all at the same time. Cell phones are a bad idea though. And texting -- texting is just asking for trouble.</p>
<blockquote>
What's it like to walk around in the snow?</blockquote>
<p>Snow doesn't support your weight and sinks when you step on it, with an annoying crunching sound. It's also super easy to get lost, the massive amount of reflected light gives sighted people a headache, it's wet, and it's cold. In my opinion snow can go die in a fire.</p>
<blockquote>
How do you not see something that happens right in front of your face?</blockquote>
<p>Vision uses a huge amount of brainpower all by itself, so if you do it, your brain takes a lot of shortcuts. A sighted person can see something and not recognize it, or could be facing the wrong direction, because vision only works in front of you. Anything above or below, or behind, will just not be seen at all. If your sighted friend is facing the wrong way, his vision is just not going to help.</p>
<blockquote>
How do you lose sight of something? I mean, like you drop money on the floor and lose it?</blockquote>
<p>Sight only works one layer deep, as it were. If the money goes under or behind something, sight will tell us that nothing's there. If money falls into the sofa, and we look at the sofa, we'll only see the sofa, not the money. Sometimes moving around can give us new information, like putting our head to the floor before looking at the sofa (oh hey, there's that quarter!)</p>
<blockquote>
How do you lose your car in a parking lot?
</blockquote>
<p>Unfortunately, cars are not all that unique. One particular make, year, and model of car, in a particular color, is as specific as it gets. There's at least three cars in any particular lot that exactly match the description of my car, so I'll walk to one and....this is somebody else's car. Damn it!</p>
<blockquote>How do you miss the exit while driving? Wouldn't that be blatantly obvious?</blockquote>
<p>With distractions, usually. You have to look at quite a lot of things very quickly, and the recognition step of vision sometimes comes too late due to the speed. Okay, avoid that car, check the rear view mirror, check the side, see the sign, avoid that other car, wait, that sign was indicating my exit. Damn!</p>
<p></p><p>Thanks for the questions, Tommy. Tommy maintains both a channel about <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/TommyEdisonXP">his experiences with blindness</a> and how he deals with it, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/BlindFilmCritic">his reviews of movies</a>. Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-61473358988645208942013-09-10T07:30:00.000-05:002013-09-10T07:30:01.413-05:00Solid TiresWhen I think about tires, the more I realize how completely weird they are. Our roads are full of vehicles that ride on inflated air. Why? A completely solid tire would cause too much wear on the road, but they're also vulnerable to puncture, deflation, and so on.<br />
<br />
There's a number of reasons that we do this. Tires need to be soft enough to not damage the road that you're driving the car on, provide enough friction to prevent the car from sliding, and hard enough that the engine doesn't get overtaxed by pushing them. (Deflated tires have a greater resistance to actually turning). <br />
<br />
So the usual solution is to have inflated tires, filled to a set pressure. (Mine is 35 PSI, about twice atmospheric pressure.) If driving conditions change, you can inflate it more, for greater gas milage, or less, for more traction. For instance, in a very sandy road, I might want to deflate my tires to 20PSI to make sure that I don't skid.<br />
<br />
However, since basically 100% of my driving is on cement or asphalt roads, which change very little, and puncturing a tire is a severe problem, I was thinking, as a longer lasting solution of a tire that instead of being inflated, was filled with a memory-foam like substance. This tire could not be punctured, would perpetually remain balanced, and could be used until the treads physically wore off.<br />
<br />
On the downside, if you did ever need the characteristics of the tire to change, you'd have to pretty much have to remove all four tires and put on four new ones.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-66358937097317958692013-09-08T07:00:00.000-05:002013-09-08T07:00:05.122-05:00Sea BucketDuring a lunch break, I saw a "ha-ha, only serious" article suggesting that we deal with sea level rise by flooding arctic Canada. Why? Several reasons:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>No one lives there. 90% of Canada lives within 100 miles of the US border.</li>
<li>North of the tree line, the plant life stops being all that interesting</li>
<li>No real commercial interest in the area either</li>
</ol>
Of course, Canada will raise objections to this plan, if no other reason than because it makes them lose territory for no good reason. However, thinking about it gave me an idea.<br />
<br />
I can model the ocean as a bucket, 5 miles deep, with a trickle of water being added to it. (The rise is more related to its change in temperature, but that'd be harder to model in the small scale.) We as humans can dig far deeper than that. I'm thinking of the borehole studies like the Kola borehole, where we dug down as deep as we could just to see what was there. Previous knowledge of the depths of the earth was based on seismic studies, in which we bounced sound off of it. Things got weird.<br />
<br />
The kola borehole went down 40,000 feet. The further the geologists drilled, the stranger it became, and the more often the drill would break and have to be replaced. The environment at depth was over 360 degrees (180C), and they reported clouds of hydrogen gas. <br />
<br />
Accordingly, in a location of low commercial value, but still near the ocean, we dig as deep a hole as we can manage, build a geothermal plant over it, then dig a shaft from our hole to the ocean. Water from the ocean drains into our hole, gets superheated into steam, and turns the turbines in the geothermal plant. The water then condenses into fresh drinkable water. The first place that would be good to do this would be the Kola borehole itself, if the Russian government is amenable to this.<br />
<br />
Ideally we would pipe this water into the various fossil water reservoirs that we've been using all these years, but in practice I have a nagging feeling that the water will be sold to the highest bidder. Probably a bottled water company.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-27642290846340731612013-06-26T09:30:00.000-05:002013-06-26T09:30:02.053-05:00Garbage eating PigeonsThe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_pigeon">pigeon</a> is ubiquitous in the world's cities due to a similarity to the native habitat of these birds -- seaside cliffs in the middle east. We humans went and built these cliffs everywhere, and even leave around half-eaten sandwiches for sustenance. If there weren't cars and cats and predatory hawks, pigeons would think cities were perfect.<br />
<br />
One thing that annoys me about the city is litter. I often see little bits of garbage thrown into some corner where it will just kind of sit around for all eternity. Occasionally I've gathered it up and thrown it away myself, but within a week's time, it's back. This gave me an idea.<br />
<br />
Using the de-extinction technology I mentioned earlier, I make an artificial variant of the pigeon. This species will have digestive enzymes that can consume paper, plastic, and styrofoam. I'd like to include glass, but glass is made of pretty much pure silicon dioxide, and there are limits to what protein can accomplish. I engineer 20 of these, and release them in a major city, ideally one with an extreme litter problem.<br />
<br />
The garbage eating pigeons will clear the streets quite handily. While existing pigeons will go to extreme lengths to grab old bits of bread and discarded lunch things, such as jumping into dumpsters, charging across five lanes of traffic, and I even saw a pigeon try to divebomb a sandwich out of someone's hands once. (This failed.)<br />
<br />
So when pigeons can eat stuff that's just lying around, I imagine it'll be snapped up in a matter of weeks. At which time they will move on to dumpsters and landfills, lowering disposal costs.<br />
<br />
Of course, there's a catch. No organism is 100% efficient, and birds poop. Birds in fact have an annoying instinct to poop into puddles to disguise their trail from predators, and when airborne often confuse shiny cars with puddles. This is going to mean a greatly increased bird population in the city, and with it, greatly increased car washing will be required. I may be able to breed a new instinct into them to poop into grass instead, which would fertilize the grass.<br />
<br />
And if they get too numerous, there's another creature from their native habitat that also does well in cities, the Peregine falcon. This is the fastest moving bird on earth, and exclusively eats other birds. It enjoys pigeons for dinner the way that I enjoy a medium-well steak. Each released falcon will eat a minimum of five pigeons a day.<br />
<br />
Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-44566782549442367422013-06-24T07:00:00.000-05:002013-06-24T07:00:15.011-05:00De-Extinction<p>One of the great tragedies of animal conservation is that a lot of animals are threatened with extinction -- the death of the last of them, causing their species to forever become absent from the face of the earth. Remarkable animals like the Carolina parakeet, the Aurochs, the Dodo, and the Moa, are extinct, and will never be seen again. Anything relying on them is also gone. And anything that relies on that goes away quite quickly too. Some of them have surviving relatives, like the modern Cow's relationship to the Aurochs, the Ostritch to the moa, and the nicobar pigeon to the Dodo. One scientist is aiming to change that:</P>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XKc9MJDeqj0" width="560"></iframe>
<p>Essentially, the extinct species will, from what few remaining scraps we have of their DNA, be cloned into a genetically modified parent. A modified chicken will birth small extinct birds, a modified cow will produce extinct bovines, and what was once gone forever, will cease to be gone. The first generation of these will be sickly, as the modification process has certain complications, but their children will turn out normally. And then the cold hand of death will have to release it's hand on certain animals.</P>
<P>Or to put it more mad-scientistly, <em>IT'S ALIVE, IT'S ALIVE, MAKE MY CREATION LIVE!!!!</em>
<h2>BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA!</h2>Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3315579333067639553.post-69751635965152080152013-06-23T09:00:00.000-05:002013-06-23T09:00:03.393-05:00BlergWhere did the past four months, almost five, go?
Oh right, I was working a crapton of overtime due to a major expansion event. We're now taking clients as far away as San Antonio and Dallas. All this work has been great for my budget, but for ideas, I haven't had any for months.
Then I had one, but it will take some time to properly write up.
This can only mean one thing. <em>I'm back</em>.
Let's see if I can keep it that way.Professor Preposteroushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07833576109973350556noreply@blogger.com0