Water Cloud Jovian

According to astronomers, one of the more commonly discovered planets that we've seen in the universe is the Water cloud Jovian -- imagine Jupiter, but in the earth's orbit. Under higher temperatures, the brown and orange stained ammonia clouds evaporate, and are replaced with fluffy white clouds, the kind seen in the earth's sky. The planet enjoys earth-like temperatures (based on radiation calculations), and if you could somehow visit one, you'd see sky above, and sky below, ending in a blue void. Artists have drawn, from the scientist's description of the conditions, what one would look like from the view of an air vehicle flying through the upper atmosphere, and it is remarkably beautiful.

Jovian planets would also be useful industrially. Although this beautiful air would choke you to death, plants could live in this environment without difficulty, and the strong magnetic field allows light in while shutting out much of the more harmful radiation of a star. A farm in such an environment would be a very useful thing, if you could get it on a floating, balloon hoisted platform. With effectively ten earths of space, you could grow quite a bit of stuff. The planet is also rich in chemicals like methane and ammonia, and hydrocarbon synthesis would also prove valuable as industries. Much of a Jovian planet's hydrogen is actually in the form of pure H₂, which is quite chemically valuable (as well as dangerously explosive, so it would have to be kept separate from the breathable air.)

These industries would be able to bootstrap from small balloon-hoisted platforms into larger platforms, into connecting the platforms. While getting the end-products out of the immense gravity well would prove challenging, a successful farm would also be a good place to start a colony -- independence and cheap food would prove a draw to quite a lot of people. The plants would, over time, terraform the planet and increase the industrial usability of the planet's remaining hydrocarbons. Although metal would be in short supply, there being effectively none other than what the colonists bring with them when they arrive, all the plastic you want could be synthesized out of, effectively the planetary air, farming will be super easy, Earth can't attack you, and you can never, ever leave. Anarco-primitivists would love it, as would the more agricultural sectors of French society.

Over time, I think these floating platforms would expand to cover the planet, with each new immigrant group bringing another platform, and extensions being woven from wood and plastic. In a few strategic spots, a hole is deliberately left for the view, but elsewhere, cities spring up, farms grow enough food to literally cover the entire surface of the earth, and people live their lives.

It'd be awesome. Also, impractically distant, as the closest known water cloud Jovian planet is about 41 light-years away, not to mention the usual preposterous costs of any space travel at all.

Cooling Fountains

Fountains are a common civic decoration, in front of buildings, in parks, and in all sorts of locations because we humans just can't get enough of that flowing water. Both the visual element of water spraying into the air, and the sound it makes as it trickles back to its source evoke some very pleasant instincts for us. Unfortunately, fountains are surprisingly expensive. The water must be pushed against gravity for a surprisingly high energy cost. The water will quickly grow full of slime and clog the machines unless regular cleaning is involved, or poisonous water. However, fountains give me an interesting idea. Cars and computers are often cooled by a flowing liquid. This is an old technology. The liquid flows through the hot areas, taking heat with it. The liquid then flows through a radiator, which has a much larger surface area and can disperse far more heat. The liquid is then cool, and can be sent back to the hot areas. Hence my next idea. In my idea, a large radiator is replaced with a fountain, which spews hot water out of the ground using a pump, producing a fancy geyser. The hot water cools significantly in contact with air, until it hits the small "lake in the fountain, and is sucked back into the system to cool the machinery again. Algae and mildew can't build up in this system, as the water is routinely heated by well over 50C, and potentially up to boiling temperature. Even if it could withstand the hot end of the scale, the repeated heating and cooling would kill any living thing by thermal shock alone. The fountain is pretty, and the machine is using a house-sized piece of atmosphere as a radiator. It's sort of efficient...and artistic!

Steampunk

Image via Wikipedia

Steampunk is an art movement stemming from alternative history -- what if Charles Babbage's differential engine had worked, kicking off the Information age in Victorian times? The result combines Cyberpunk -- a grim cybernetic future where hacking cyborgs struggle against evil governments and corporations with superior skill, with Victorian fashion and steam-era technology, to form some sort of weird retro-future hybrid.
This does lead to some unusual technology choices. Steam was the power source of choice in Victorian times. If something needed energy, a boiler was the usual way to do it back then. Steam was well understood. Electricity was known, but it was known so poorly that it was seen as semi-divine, and only a truly mad scientist would be willing to mess around with it. So to make your car or train go? Steam. You need your computer to send signals? Steam based valve. You need to power your factory? Steam.
So...some very interesting art comes from this. Much of today's technology could have been made in victorian times, although they would have made it in a very different style. Brass instead of plastic. More showing of mechanism out of technological pride, than hiding it out of aesthetic purity. How would the world have been different?

VOC Plant Removal

Volatile Organic Compounds, or VOCs, are an unpleasant part of indoor air these days. They can make you dizzy and nauseous, or tired, or headache-y, and are in things from paint to adhesives. The best way to get rid of them is to vent them out, as they are, well, volatile.
A better way is to absorb them with plants. A group of artists have made an attractive chart showing which plants are best at absorbing which VOCs, which they learned from chemical data.
When art and science combine, wonderful things happen.

Sea Tunnel

Many aquariums now feature a plexiglass walking tube, so you can see the tanks not from the top, or the side, as was traditional in the past, but from the bottom. The fish glide about over your head. It's really quite majestic. And then I heard a restaurant is doing this too, serving the food in a plexiglass tube in the ocean, where the fish glide over your head as you eat....other fish. I won't be dining at this restaurant anytime soon, as it's half a world away from me and charges well over $200 per meal. It's some fancy fish.
But this gave me an idea for something...interesting. We would build a tunnel, with plexiglass, between two islands. Let's start with the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. A small electric tram runs through the tunnel. When customs approves your trip (because this would cross an international border), you get on the tram, and the tram goes into the dark tunnel. Then there is light: you are in a plexiglass tunnel, with the fish idly swimming above your head. The glories of the ocean are all around you, and it is quite arty. After some time of that, then it's dark again, and then you're at the other island, where you disembark. Visitors approved for the trip in the other direction now board the tram.
Further tunnels would go to other islands from here, as there is a chain of islands that eventually reaches Venezuela. Then I would look into other potentially interesting connections. A cross red-sea connection, from Yemen to Ethiopia, perchance? A visible chunnel, from London to Chalais?
The technology would only allow for short tunnels. Tsushima to Busan would be doable. New York to Brest would not. (The deeper part of that tunnel would collapse under the immense weight of the Atlantic, and the entire tunnel would flood.)

Autobagpipe

The bagpipes are a celtic instrument in which the player uses a bag full of air to pump air through numerous pipes, each of which makes a tone. One of the pipes has little finger-holes so that you can play notes. (The other three or four pipes play a sort of background-chord.) You need a strong pair of lungs to play the bagpipes, or you run out of air quickly.
So if you're asthmatic, or perhaps lazy, how would I automate it? Well, I would have an air-pump, the kind made for aerating a fish tank, and have that pump air into the bag at a steady rate. You'd still have to use the finger holes and squeeze the bag, but this way, you don't pass out. As a bonus, this system is much less wet than your own breath unless you live in an extremely humid area. (Though modern bagpipes have ways of dealing with the moisture.)
What's that, you have arthritic fingers too? I could whip up a set of midi-controlled valves, so an embedded computer can ensure that it plays the right tune. You'll still have to squeeze the bag, but that's so easy that a small child could do it.
What's that now? Now you want to automate the bag squeezing for some sort of 24-hour musical festival that you couldn't stay awake the entirety for? Okay, a simpler version of the finger valves squeezes a clamp around the bag.
And now your neighbors are angry? Well, not everyone likes bagpipe music, and that I can't do anything about.

Trolling Big Brother

Though the totalitarian states of George Orwell's writings have diminished to just two, minor acts of big brotherish douchebaggery spread around the world, deeply annoying people. Various acts of activism are proposed to deal with it, none as effective as the planners hoped.
So what to do about it? How about trolling the authorities? Wait, no that won't work. They have absolute power over you. How can you annoy someone who's thousands of times more powerful than you? In Max's Stubfield's hillarious parody, he does it by being insufferably ignorant and trival, being too compliant to actually punish, but still grotesquely irritating and impossible to deal with. He gets privacy by being too boring and annoying to actually watch.
Which is what he wanted in the first place. Muahahahahaha!

The Rambling Blog

*gets out guitar*
*plays folks-ish tune*

CHORUS
Oh hey, the rambling blog
it's ranting on the internet
oh hell, the rambling blog
it's ranting on the internet

Now On this blog, there was a post
a real post, a ranty post
a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to that post, was a reply
a real retort, a ranty retort
a retort to the post
and the post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to that reply, there was a troll
a real troll, a ranty troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to that troll, there was a flame
a real flame, a ranty flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

and to that flame there was a war
a real war, a holy war
holy war at the flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to that war, there were some bans
some real bans, some ranty bans
bans to the war
holy war at the flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to those bans, there was a whine
a real whine, a ranty whine
whines at the bans
bans to the war
holy war at the flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to those whines, there was a taunt
a real taunt, a ranty taunt
taunts at the whines
whines at the bans
bans to the war
holy war at the flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

And to that taunt, there was a pwn
a real pwn, a ranty pwn
a pwn to the taunt
taunts at the whines
whines at the bans
bans to the war
holy war at the flame
a flame at the troll
a troll at the retort
a retort to the post
and a post on the blog
that rambled on the internet

CHORUS

Computer Aided Fashion Design

Fashion is a big industry. Billions of dollars are thrown around to get just the right look. And for now, they all have to be designed by hand. Computers and sewing technology may help assemble the final product, but it starts with a hand drawn sketch.
But, an important invention in Computer Science and Biology will, if applied here, assist the fashion designer greatly. I speak, of course, of genetic algorithms.
Evolution is an important principle in modern biology, and the subject is frankly impossible to understand without it. Evolutionary biology states that genes drift over time, and successful ones predominate over unsuccessful. Therefore, life adjusts to current conditions, whatever they may be.
Genetic algorithms adjust computer code, or abstract computerized representations, according to a fitness function. When the genetic algorithm is trying to design something, the fitness function works according to the qualities of the thing trying to be designed. When the genetic algorithm is designing an algorithm, the fitness function determines how efficiently the target runs.
The algorithm starts with a pool of different designs. Each are tested. A fraction of the ones that perform the least well are removed from the pool, and are now "dead." The same proprtion of those that perform the most well are combined with each other to produce new designs to take their place. A different fraction gets "mutated" with small variations on their design. Then the entire process runs again.
The genetic fashion design algorithm will start with a representation of a person (almost assuredly a woman, due to stereotyping in the industry and culture), and 25 clothing designs, copied from previous years fashions.. The fashion designer will be asked to click the one that appeals to him (or her) the most. One design would randomly be removed. Designs would have to retain a number of clicks every round to "survive." After 7 rounds, all designs that had not received at least one click would "die." After 15 rounds, two clicks. The mutation rate shouldn't exceed two mutations per round.
A good genetic algorithm typically requires thousands of rounds, but I don't anticipate this taking more than two hours. And after it's done, one design will prevail that the fashion designer absolutely adores. He (or she) will probably put a personal touch on top when he (or she) draws it, producing something probably better than would be made either by computer or human alone.
Alternatively, this could be made into a Flash application that random samples of the Internet could mess with, the results being statistically tallied and sent to the design room, as a "random sample" of what people think about fashion. Fashion designers probably shouldn't rely on this, as people have been known to crash online polls "for the lulz" or to push some point that the public at large doesn't agree with.

Cognitive Collison Equals Creative

According to Wired Magazine, the best thing the boss of a creative team (like advertising, programming, engineering, or so on) can do to promote their creative talents is to let them goof off on facebook or twitter for a while. Wait, what?
It seems that creative works are caused by a sort of cognitive collision, when two of your ideas ram headfirst into each other, leaving the debris of a new idea behind. People notice things, incorporate them into their existing ideas, and when two of them collide, bam, awesome new idea.
This explains why it's so much harder for me to come up with new ideas to write about now that I've graduated. College did involve going to a different environment, with shiny new ideas constantly inserted into my conciousness where they collided with existing ones. The constant need for task switching helped too. Now that it's over, thinking "Hmm, need job, find find find okay now tired watch television" all day isn't as helpful a mode.
The article warns that it's not sufficient to just goof off. A game of solitaire might help you feel better after a hard day, but it's not going to give you any new ideas. You need novel stimulation of brand new information for this to work. Even if this information is completely irrelevant to your problem.

Nonhuman Music

I have four tracks of music on my computer that were written by something that wasn't a human being. This is not a surprise to me -- birds and some other animals use music for communication and whatnot, but it has disturbed some people who believe that music is somehow uniquely human.
Two of the tracks are by an elephant orchestra in Thailand. Elephants write rather strange music by human terms, with a jarring and chaotic sound. This doesn't disturb the critics, because they can easily proclaim it not to be real music.
The other two are written by a computer program, in the style of European classical music, as was popular from 1400 - 1800. They are indistinguishable from a composition written by a person back then, and that really bothers people. because they feel that only a human being can produce music that touches their emotions like that, and if a computer can do it, maybe their feelings somehow weren't real in the first place.
The program, EMI, has undergone a lot of evolution. It was first taught to write music according to rules, but that proved too boring. So then its author, Miller McCune, reviewed how classical composers wrote, and they did often break their own rules. So randomness and rule breaking were introduced. Many small improvements later, it was writing music that could fool all the critics.
In a way, it doesn't compete with human composers, because human composers can work with many different styles, and can even chose styles, while the program is limited to one style.
Personally I have dabbled in music, but I ironically seem to be some sort of hypothetical composer, being quite able to produce interesting scores, but unable to actually perform them. Strange. I like this idea, because people love music, and this ensures that there will be a lot of it.

Propaganda

I've been reading an article on military propaganda a few days ago. The term "propaganda" came from an early attempt to do so, the Catholic "propaganda de fe" or "Propagating the faith," hence the name. I note that there's a science part and an art part.
In the science part, you have to deliver the message, intact, to the intended recipient. And in wartime, you do not have access -- your target is usually behind the enemy lines where their government explicitly does not want you handing them fliers! So you have to somehow deliver it, intact, into your target's hands. No one reads destroyed, burned, or damaged leaflets.
On the art part, it has to be in your target's language, preferably with illustrations (because words alone are boring) (Yes, I realize the irony of that statement in a blog that has few pictures) and using your target's symbolisms. This is harder than it sounds. Cartoonists conventions like dialog balloons and thought bubbles are completely unknown in major segments of the world. Puns and wordplay almost never translate and have to be built in the target language from the ground up. Even heroes and villains vary greatly from group to group. PsyWarrior points out an embarrassing failure in an American attempt to influence Iraqis, in which a leaflet attempted to insult Saddam Hussein by comparing him to Hitler. Unfortunately for them, Iraqi knowledge of Hitler is that he was an anti-British and anti-Jewish leader, both of whom are seen as archenemies of Iraq. Whoops, it bolstered him instead.
The site, and others like it, go on to mention some general principles. The target of your propaganda is a hero, of course, or at worst a victim. Avoid playing into your enemy's hands. Try to sell your position. You won't succeed every time, but a good psychological operation wins battles without firing a single shot.
And bad psychological operations can lose a war. Case in point: Vietnam. Even a cursory glance into the propaganda shows that the American effort was scattered and disorganized, while the Vietnamese one managed to sow a continuous stream of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. American efforts were often demonstrably wrong, while the Vietnamese stuck to slightly more plausible claims. America won every battle and it didn't matter in the slightest.
Vietnam's still a touchy subject.
I'm in favor of Psychological warfare, because it leads to better and more productive peace agreements.

Purpose of Paint

I used to think that paint was a purely aesthetic thing whose only purpose is to make things be pretty colors. Haha, wrong.

Even in a world with no art, paint would still exist, albeit with a significantly shallower palette. For paint provides a corrosion proof covering, provides resistance against ultraviolet radiation, is easily maintained even by completely untrained people, and visually demonstrates the condition of the object in question, because the paint is the first thing damaged.

White paint, colored by titanium oxide, would be the most common shade, and other colors would be discovered on a "when we get around to it" basis. A documentary I saw recently reports that the first colors were literally just ground up rocks, making some colors very expensive indeed (blue and purple only came from expensive gemstones). Chemistry cheapened those colors over time.

Of course, since art exists, there's pressure to develop more and cheaper colors. Artists make all kinds of colored objects, but only make money if they get famous for it. Anything that reduces their costs, they're naturally all in favor of.

So, paint, use it to make stuff pretty, and it'll keep it safe, too. This has been my 12^2th post.

Mad Engineering Illustrated, Badly

I think that some of the things I write up on this blog would be easier to understand if I drew them up. I'm not much of an artist, but I do have a CAD program that should display a reasonable approximation of layers, and later programs to add color for contrast. QCAD, ho!

First, the implantable glucose testing device. The device is planted in the arm, with the vein and the arm-bone shown.



Hm, that didn't help much Then, the artificial heart idea.


.....

QCAD, you're fired. Clearly not the tool for the CAD-inexperienced
user. GIMP, can you clean it up?



...Gah. You're fired too, GIMP. Hire artist.