Showing posts with label Wrong. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wrong. Show all posts
Thursday, November 10, 2011
UFOs
You know where I think the ideas of UFOs came from? I think there was an experimental aircraft crash in 1947, the government got all weird and evasive about it, like they do for anything classified, rightly or wrongly, some guy happened to write a book about people being abducted by aliens that year, and the two ideas got combined in a massive hurricane of terrified and crazy.
Tune in tomorrow when I continue with the downright strange things of this world.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
The Fruit Machine
Mentally-ill engineering can also be used for evil. In Canada shortly after World War II, there was a paranoid fear that homosexual people would infiltrate the government and do whatever things that right-wing homophobes think that gay people are plotting to do. As an attempt to counter this, a machine was invented for the supposed purpose of identifying gays, which was about as effective as modern polygraph or the Vietnamese war's famous "Magic Eye." That is, it worked because people thought it did and then their own paranoia gave them away. They called it the "Fruit Machine," "Fruit" being one of many slang terms for a gay person.
The device resembled a dentist's chair, and had a screen and a camera. The screen showed pictures. Some were neutral pictures of scenery, math, or some other thing that held no interest. Some were pictures of naked women. Some were pictures of naked men. A crank theory popular at the time claimed that a person's eye dilated when exposed to things of interest to the person, so if a man's eyes dilated for the naked men pictures and not the naked women pictures.....WHOOP WHOOP GAY DETECTED!!!! Same if a woman responded more to the naked women pictures.
Except that this whole thing was fatally flawed. Pupils dilate more in response to changes in light than to perception of objects of interest. So if the lightbulb on the ceiling happened to flicker while the thing showed you pictures of your gender, it falsely flagged you as gay. And many gays went undetected. The camera had to be off to the side to prevent it from interfering with the screen, which made it often report dilation when actually there was merely a reflection in the pupil. It also produced unpredictable results if the subject had larger-than-average pupils, because it measured dilation by the diameter of the pupil and didn't calibrate first.
The devices were all dismantled in the 1970s after withering criticism from all angles. The device was demonstrably faulty, not only from the engineering standpoint, but also technically and even ontologically as homosexuality was ruled by a number of psychological institutes as not being a mental illness, but a normal human variation. Small comfort to those who lost their jobs and were forever scorned because of the errors of a machine, but at least the abuse stopped there.
The device resembled a dentist's chair, and had a screen and a camera. The screen showed pictures. Some were neutral pictures of scenery, math, or some other thing that held no interest. Some were pictures of naked women. Some were pictures of naked men. A crank theory popular at the time claimed that a person's eye dilated when exposed to things of interest to the person, so if a man's eyes dilated for the naked men pictures and not the naked women pictures.....WHOOP WHOOP GAY DETECTED!!!! Same if a woman responded more to the naked women pictures.
Except that this whole thing was fatally flawed. Pupils dilate more in response to changes in light than to perception of objects of interest. So if the lightbulb on the ceiling happened to flicker while the thing showed you pictures of your gender, it falsely flagged you as gay. And many gays went undetected. The camera had to be off to the side to prevent it from interfering with the screen, which made it often report dilation when actually there was merely a reflection in the pupil. It also produced unpredictable results if the subject had larger-than-average pupils, because it measured dilation by the diameter of the pupil and didn't calibrate first.
The devices were all dismantled in the 1970s after withering criticism from all angles. The device was demonstrably faulty, not only from the engineering standpoint, but also technically and even ontologically as homosexuality was ruled by a number of psychological institutes as not being a mental illness, but a normal human variation. Small comfort to those who lost their jobs and were forever scorned because of the errors of a machine, but at least the abuse stopped there.
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Schrodinger's Car
All that non-physicists tend to remember about Erwin Schrödinger was his cat thought experiment. The one with the cat in the box with one atom of radioactive material and the diabolical setup that will kill the cat if the atom decays, and the nonsensical result of the cat being both alive and dead at the same time. And suddenly, my unsleeping mind goes to some very strange places.
I'm imagining a car that works by controlling, sort of, quantum teleportation. It restricts the teleports to one particular direction, so you move forward at a random, not readily predictable speed. Teleporting against that direction is prevented by a brownian-ratchet type of mechanism. Given this much, it wouldn't even really need fuel. You will get there, eventually.
It's probably not even technically possible, but it would be so much fun to try.
I'm imagining a car that works by controlling, sort of, quantum teleportation. It restricts the teleports to one particular direction, so you move forward at a random, not readily predictable speed. Teleporting against that direction is prevented by a brownian-ratchet type of mechanism. Given this much, it wouldn't even really need fuel. You will get there, eventually.
It's probably not even technically possible, but it would be so much fun to try.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Inductive Highway
Electrical cars would be great. Low maintenance. Cheap to power. Super efficient. Extremely quiet. (Unless you want it to be loud, in which case we can make it sound like a well-tuned sports car.) Just one problem: With existing technology, you have a range of at most 50 miles before you need to recharge it. That's not enough in America, where our petroleum-powered cars go 200-300 miles on one tank of gas. (Depending on the efficiency of the car, and the size of the tank. A police cruiser getting 8 miles to the gallon just isn't going to go as far as a small hybrid that gets 60 miles to the gallon.) And where to charge it on the road? The American owner of an electric car probably can't find anywhere to charge it other than his or her own house.
But: All car journeys in America are either short trips around the city for errands, in which case 50 miles isn't that restrictive a limit, or trips to another city, which involve long freeways that are restricted only to cars. Pedestrians may not set foot on a freeway, as it is simply too dangerous. (Freeway speeds vary from 45 - 85 MPH, with the higher speeds being the more remote highways.) And with these two factors, I came up with a way that the freeway itself could power the car.
Electrical engineers have long had a technique to transfer electricity to things that are nearby, but not quite touching: Inductive current. So we would make the entire highway have inductive-current lines down the middle of each lane. Driving the electrical car down the freeway would charge it up, and use this electricity to go faster still. And at the driver's destination, they still have full batteries.
The devil of how to pay for this rears its ugly head, though. People are going to want a free ride, but the operators of electrical plants understandably want to be paid. I suppose while we're using non-contact technologies, Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, can come to the rescue. The driver would have an RFID tag on the bottom of their electrical car, which would indicate an account, and if it was valid, then that section of road gets inductive current turned on, and at the end of the month, the account gets a bill. You're charged per distance of road, which pumped a set amount of electricity into your electric car. This is fair.
The two things I wanted to avoid was accidental contact with pedestrians, which is why I wouldn't put it in ALL sections of road. Basically, the centers of road lanes could at any time become "third rails" (a railroad-based induction charge system), which has killed people in the past. (They touch it, or get very drunk and pee on it, and wind up electrocuted.) I'd also want to make sure this would be safe for gasoline-cars, which show no sign of going away, and even if they were, there would be a long transition period while they were still on the road. If the road set a driver's gas tank on fire, that would be bad.
But: All car journeys in America are either short trips around the city for errands, in which case 50 miles isn't that restrictive a limit, or trips to another city, which involve long freeways that are restricted only to cars. Pedestrians may not set foot on a freeway, as it is simply too dangerous. (Freeway speeds vary from 45 - 85 MPH, with the higher speeds being the more remote highways.) And with these two factors, I came up with a way that the freeway itself could power the car.
Electrical engineers have long had a technique to transfer electricity to things that are nearby, but not quite touching: Inductive current. So we would make the entire highway have inductive-current lines down the middle of each lane. Driving the electrical car down the freeway would charge it up, and use this electricity to go faster still. And at the driver's destination, they still have full batteries.
The devil of how to pay for this rears its ugly head, though. People are going to want a free ride, but the operators of electrical plants understandably want to be paid. I suppose while we're using non-contact technologies, Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID, can come to the rescue. The driver would have an RFID tag on the bottom of their electrical car, which would indicate an account, and if it was valid, then that section of road gets inductive current turned on, and at the end of the month, the account gets a bill. You're charged per distance of road, which pumped a set amount of electricity into your electric car. This is fair.
The two things I wanted to avoid was accidental contact with pedestrians, which is why I wouldn't put it in ALL sections of road. Basically, the centers of road lanes could at any time become "third rails" (a railroad-based induction charge system), which has killed people in the past. (They touch it, or get very drunk and pee on it, and wind up electrocuted.) I'd also want to make sure this would be safe for gasoline-cars, which show no sign of going away, and even if they were, there would be a long transition period while they were still on the road. If the road set a driver's gas tank on fire, that would be bad.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Gedanken Manifest Impossibilities
Apparently, there's a new Human Resources technique in which a prospective employee is asked to determine the weight of an airplane, without the use of a scale, but granted omnipotence to pull it off. Apparently the goal is to "creatively" come to as many solutions as possible to this arbitrary problem.
Very well. I psychokinetically lift the plane onto a giant spring and note the deformation of the spring, this being the closest to a scale allowed in the exercise. Or, I dunk it in an enormous tank of water and note the displacement. Or, I grant it the power of self-knowledge and speech, and ask it what it weighs. (And if it's reluctant, I bribe it with some AVGAS.) I push it with an exact number of newtons and note the distance that it is pushed. Hypothetically, with some physics, any of these can give me the airplane's weight, or at least mass. (Weight=mass*pull of gravity.)
But granted omnipotence, I'm not stopping there. I'm not giving the powers back. Any attempt to take them back will result in me going back in time and beating up one of your ancestors until you cease such attempts. (Let's see your ancestor reproduce with a cracked rib and sore gonads.) And I'm not taking the job, either, because I can now create whatever I want ex-nihilo and no longer need money.
Although for fun I may attempt money making problems anyway. I buy a block of aluminum, go back to the 18th century, and sell it for lots of money. Aluminum was expensive back then because refining it from bauxite was very difficult. I then buy a metric insane amount of lobster, which was cheap at the time, and take it to a modern-day fish market. Any leftover 18th century currency can fetch a considerable price from a numanist, I anticipate a profit of at least $1,000,000 per cycle.
I produce for myself a luxurious house with considerable automation, and use my time-travel funding to pay people to do stuff that I think should happen, including a massive expansion of the international space station, and a floating Venus colony. I also pay for a number of software projects. With the last of my money, I operate a shadowy conspiracy for good fortune, paying people to make the world a better place, and when I run out, I manifest a bar of gold which I sell to keep up the funding.
Of course, with any insane enough premise, you can get any insane result, like Bertrand Russel's famous one:
I guess omnipotence is just too insane a premise.
Very well. I psychokinetically lift the plane onto a giant spring and note the deformation of the spring, this being the closest to a scale allowed in the exercise. Or, I dunk it in an enormous tank of water and note the displacement. Or, I grant it the power of self-knowledge and speech, and ask it what it weighs. (And if it's reluctant, I bribe it with some AVGAS.) I push it with an exact number of newtons and note the distance that it is pushed. Hypothetically, with some physics, any of these can give me the airplane's weight, or at least mass. (Weight=mass*pull of gravity.)
But granted omnipotence, I'm not stopping there. I'm not giving the powers back. Any attempt to take them back will result in me going back in time and beating up one of your ancestors until you cease such attempts. (Let's see your ancestor reproduce with a cracked rib and sore gonads.) And I'm not taking the job, either, because I can now create whatever I want ex-nihilo and no longer need money.
Although for fun I may attempt money making problems anyway. I buy a block of aluminum, go back to the 18th century, and sell it for lots of money. Aluminum was expensive back then because refining it from bauxite was very difficult. I then buy a metric insane amount of lobster, which was cheap at the time, and take it to a modern-day fish market. Any leftover 18th century currency can fetch a considerable price from a numanist, I anticipate a profit of at least $1,000,000 per cycle.
I produce for myself a luxurious house with considerable automation, and use my time-travel funding to pay people to do stuff that I think should happen, including a massive expansion of the international space station, and a floating Venus colony. I also pay for a number of software projects. With the last of my money, I operate a shadowy conspiracy for good fortune, paying people to make the world a better place, and when I run out, I manifest a bar of gold which I sell to keep up the funding.
Of course, with any insane enough premise, you can get any insane result, like Bertrand Russel's famous one:
If zero equals one, I am the pope.
Let us add 1 to each side of the equation, producing the equation 2=1. The pope and I are two separate individuals. But since 2=1, we are actually the same person. Therefore, I am the pope.
I guess omnipotence is just too insane a premise.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Seven Machines
As another crazy idea, seven sins themed machines. The "Seven sins" was an idea from Christian religion of a list of attitudes that are bad (because showing such an attitude enrages God). There were seven of them because of a numerological interest in the number seven.
My readers have probably read these from other sources, but a quick reminder.
Pride is thinking too highly of yourself, to the point where one considers oneself significantly better than other people. This one is seen as the root of the others.
Wrath is being pointlessly angry with other people, and harboring conflict for no good reason.
Envy is about wanting what other people had, be it object, character trait, or relationship, and jealously hating them for having it.
Sloth is thought of as laziness, but it also traditionally included despair, apathy, and being gloomy for no good reason.
Greed is about having money and stuff, but it also traditionally included the desire to spend money pointlessly and/or wastefully.
Gluttony is wanting food, service, and generally just MORE of stuff until you've had way too much.
Lust, today, means wanting sex. Traditionally, it also included desires for luxury and comfort to unreasonable extremes.
So generally, these "seven sins" were problems of excess, and therefore perfect things to create crazy machines about. Here's my work.
Wrath
A shirt that comes with what looks to be a label pin, but has a spring-loaded mechanism behind it. A wire runs down the user's pants into their shoe, and when a button in the shoe is tapped with the user's foot, the lapel pin shoots forward like a cartoonish boxing-glove-on-springs.
Bonus points if you spring it on people unexpectedly.
Gluttony
A chair with a mechanical arm and a weight detector. When the seat is pushed down (by a person sitting in it), it spoon feeds the person. Put it in front of a table with a bowl, sit, and be fed until the bowl is empty. When the bowl is empty, you'll have to get up to refill it, but you're not lazy, right?
Sloth
We take my Skinner-esque bed, add feeding tubes, watering tubes, a television, a video game set, and waste-removal tubes. We hook you up and now all you ever need will come to you. Your entire life will consist of watching whatever you want on television, a video game when you're bored of that, a nap when you're tired. Everything you need to stay alive will be pumped into you, and anything you need to get rid of will be pumped out of you. You need not move, ever.
Lust
A pointlessly luxurious leather couch, with heating, and massage. A large button is on the side, along with a switch with two settings, "Male" and "Female." The button provides what I'll delicately call an "intimate massage."
A small stand by the couch can hold mood enhancing "reading material," and maybe an extra mp3 player for mood music.
Envy
A picture frame, with a bunch of switches to describe the subject. Put a picture of someone you dislike in the frame, set the switches to briefly describe them, and the frame will heartlessly mock the living crap out of the subject, using a speaker and pre-recorded taunts. The user will likely experience a powerful (and evil) schadenfreude.
Greed
A bill-counting machine that transmits a boastful message bragging about how much money it counts to an entire list of people. Occasionally it destroys a bill after counting it, but still records accurately, and taunts the recipients of the message for not having that kind of money on hand. (To all recipients: I have $4,213 today, AND YOU DON'T NYAH NYAH.)
I'm still debating to myself if a cumulative model is eviler, or a daily model.
Pride
A mirror with a heat-detector. When it senses the presence of a human in front of it via the heat-detector, it starts making obnoxious cat-calls, hooting, and other insinuations that the person is immensely attractive.
If possible, the voice should select male or female as appropriate. (Probably user selected.)
My readers have probably read these from other sources, but a quick reminder.
Pride is thinking too highly of yourself, to the point where one considers oneself significantly better than other people. This one is seen as the root of the others.
Wrath is being pointlessly angry with other people, and harboring conflict for no good reason.
Envy is about wanting what other people had, be it object, character trait, or relationship, and jealously hating them for having it.
Sloth is thought of as laziness, but it also traditionally included despair, apathy, and being gloomy for no good reason.
Greed is about having money and stuff, but it also traditionally included the desire to spend money pointlessly and/or wastefully.
Gluttony is wanting food, service, and generally just MORE of stuff until you've had way too much.
Lust, today, means wanting sex. Traditionally, it also included desires for luxury and comfort to unreasonable extremes.
So generally, these "seven sins" were problems of excess, and therefore perfect things to create crazy machines about. Here's my work.
Wrath
A shirt that comes with what looks to be a label pin, but has a spring-loaded mechanism behind it. A wire runs down the user's pants into their shoe, and when a button in the shoe is tapped with the user's foot, the lapel pin shoots forward like a cartoonish boxing-glove-on-springs.
Bonus points if you spring it on people unexpectedly.
Gluttony
A chair with a mechanical arm and a weight detector. When the seat is pushed down (by a person sitting in it), it spoon feeds the person. Put it in front of a table with a bowl, sit, and be fed until the bowl is empty. When the bowl is empty, you'll have to get up to refill it, but you're not lazy, right?
Sloth
We take my Skinner-esque bed, add feeding tubes, watering tubes, a television, a video game set, and waste-removal tubes. We hook you up and now all you ever need will come to you. Your entire life will consist of watching whatever you want on television, a video game when you're bored of that, a nap when you're tired. Everything you need to stay alive will be pumped into you, and anything you need to get rid of will be pumped out of you. You need not move, ever.
Lust
A pointlessly luxurious leather couch, with heating, and massage. A large button is on the side, along with a switch with two settings, "Male" and "Female." The button provides what I'll delicately call an "intimate massage."
A small stand by the couch can hold mood enhancing "reading material," and maybe an extra mp3 player for mood music.
Envy
A picture frame, with a bunch of switches to describe the subject. Put a picture of someone you dislike in the frame, set the switches to briefly describe them, and the frame will heartlessly mock the living crap out of the subject, using a speaker and pre-recorded taunts. The user will likely experience a powerful (and evil) schadenfreude.
Greed
A bill-counting machine that transmits a boastful message bragging about how much money it counts to an entire list of people. Occasionally it destroys a bill after counting it, but still records accurately, and taunts the recipients of the message for not having that kind of money on hand. (To all recipients: I have $4,213 today, AND YOU DON'T NYAH NYAH.)
I'm still debating to myself if a cumulative model is eviler, or a daily model.
Pride
A mirror with a heat-detector. When it senses the presence of a human in front of it via the heat-detector, it starts making obnoxious cat-calls, hooting, and other insinuations that the person is immensely attractive.
If possible, the voice should select male or female as appropriate. (Probably user selected.)
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Weirder Pipelines
I feel weird that I pay so much for liquids. Food sauces, vinegar, gasoline, bleach, Cleaning fluids. And the biggest business I can name immediately is cola. Bottles and cans, by the trillions, of sweetened and carbonated and flavored water. (Okay, gasoline doesn't come in a container, but it's shipped by truck to a tank at the gas station, which is a weird way to do it.)
When I use up the liquid, I still have the container sitting around. Typically, I end up throwing it away. Sometimes I wash it out and reuse it, but usually I don't bother. That's a waste.
I suppose that instead I could have pipelines into my house. Turn on the vinegar tap for the salad, turn it off when I have enough. Steak sauce from the tap for the steak. I have a guest, and he wants a coke? Fresh from the pipeline, fizzed at serving time. At laundry time, I squirt a bit of beach and detergent from the respective lines. At the end of the month, I get bills from the pipeline, which I promptly pay lest I lose service. (God forbid I have to do without vinaigrette!)
Nah, that's too insane. Each house would have hundreds of pipelines going to it and digging would be impossible. Not to mention all the kinds of hell that would break lose if one of the pipes clogged or ruptured.
When I use up the liquid, I still have the container sitting around. Typically, I end up throwing it away. Sometimes I wash it out and reuse it, but usually I don't bother. That's a waste.
I suppose that instead I could have pipelines into my house. Turn on the vinegar tap for the salad, turn it off when I have enough. Steak sauce from the tap for the steak. I have a guest, and he wants a coke? Fresh from the pipeline, fizzed at serving time. At laundry time, I squirt a bit of beach and detergent from the respective lines. At the end of the month, I get bills from the pipeline, which I promptly pay lest I lose service. (God forbid I have to do without vinaigrette!)
Nah, that's too insane. Each house would have hundreds of pipelines going to it and digging would be impossible. Not to mention all the kinds of hell that would break lose if one of the pipes clogged or ruptured.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Remote Strangulation Protocol
There's been a long running joke on the internet that if there was some way to throttle, punch, or otherwise cause harm or pain to people who act like twits, that fewer people would act like twits. After all, many studies have shown that anonymity plus an audience removes most of the social cues that we need to not act like a deranged chimpanzee. There's a reason why Lord of the Flies was mandatory reading way back in junior high school.
While I concede that that is true, and that the internet does suffer from the occasional person whose primary interest is a "freedom from being punched," there are also jerks who would abuse any given system.
Let us say we have a system whereby all computers have a large stick on a rotating pole attached to them, and a universal command to activate this stick so that it strikes the user of the computer. Let us also say that accessing the internet first requires a proof that such a device is active. People at first use this against spammers, trolls, and other obnoxious jerks of the internet. When someone posts "buy viagra" a billion times on your blog's comments, you thump them. When someone posts "F1RST LOLOLOLOL!" on every topic, whack goes the stick. Someone hijacks an interesting topic to whine about how "lame" and "gay" something unrelated is, they get slapped out of it.
Trolls, of course, deploy this against random people, snickering with glee all the while. Others note with horror that people, gasp, disagree with them! On things they like! There are religious haters who whack everyone of a different religion, political haters who whack everyone with different politics, fanboys (and girls) who whack everyone who dislikes their favorite media, haters who whack everyone who likes their most hated media. Also, I suspect anyone who gets thumped will probably feel that it is unjust and whack back. And some people are whacked by mistake due to a misclick, misspelling, or other kind of error.
Pretty soon, everyone gets attacked at least once an hour. People stop using computers because it is too painful, and because their noses are broken and they have two black eyes. A rash plague of offline player killing ensues. The authorities step in and order it to stop, but hurt feelings continue to nonsensically fester.
Another invention ruined by the dark side of human nature.
While I concede that that is true, and that the internet does suffer from the occasional person whose primary interest is a "freedom from being punched," there are also jerks who would abuse any given system.
Let us say we have a system whereby all computers have a large stick on a rotating pole attached to them, and a universal command to activate this stick so that it strikes the user of the computer. Let us also say that accessing the internet first requires a proof that such a device is active. People at first use this against spammers, trolls, and other obnoxious jerks of the internet. When someone posts "buy viagra" a billion times on your blog's comments, you thump them. When someone posts "F1RST LOLOLOLOL!" on every topic, whack goes the stick. Someone hijacks an interesting topic to whine about how "lame" and "gay" something unrelated is, they get slapped out of it.
Trolls, of course, deploy this against random people, snickering with glee all the while. Others note with horror that people, gasp, disagree with them! On things they like! There are religious haters who whack everyone of a different religion, political haters who whack everyone with different politics, fanboys (and girls) who whack everyone who dislikes their favorite media, haters who whack everyone who likes their most hated media. Also, I suspect anyone who gets thumped will probably feel that it is unjust and whack back. And some people are whacked by mistake due to a misclick, misspelling, or other kind of error.
Pretty soon, everyone gets attacked at least once an hour. People stop using computers because it is too painful, and because their noses are broken and they have two black eyes. A rash plague of offline player killing ensues. The authorities step in and order it to stop, but hurt feelings continue to nonsensically fester.
Another invention ruined by the dark side of human nature.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Rotating Closet
Remember that old tacky gift, the rotating tie rack? It would help men select a random tie, powered by an AA battery, and then sat unused in his closet because he didn't give a wet slap?
I have a closet with lots of clothing. I want to wear something different every day. Unfortunately, the layout of the closet encourages a set of "favorites" that get way more usage than another. This is because the edges behind the door are hard to reach. If I want to put the recently washed clothes there, I have to take everything out, put in the freshly washed, slide them to the end, and then put everything back.
So going with the "tie rack," and a thing I once saw at a dry cleaners, the closet is now a loop of chain, that gets pulled by a 5 watt motor when I press a button. I press this button when putting in freshly washed clothes, thereby moving them to the back. This way, I wear a variety of clothes -- the mad engineering way!
I have a closet with lots of clothing. I want to wear something different every day. Unfortunately, the layout of the closet encourages a set of "favorites" that get way more usage than another. This is because the edges behind the door are hard to reach. If I want to put the recently washed clothes there, I have to take everything out, put in the freshly washed, slide them to the end, and then put everything back.
So going with the "tie rack," and a thing I once saw at a dry cleaners, the closet is now a loop of chain, that gets pulled by a 5 watt motor when I press a button. I press this button when putting in freshly washed clothes, thereby moving them to the back. This way, I wear a variety of clothes -- the mad engineering way!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Tinfoil Hat
A common trope of paranoid people is the wearing of a hat made of tinfoil, in order to sabotage attempts to control their mind. MIT did a study proving that actually trying tinfoil hats would make all effects worse instead.
Assuming telepathy and mind control operate with electromagnetic waves, the best defense against them would be a Faraday Cage, preferably with a ground. A brass mesh seems to be the best material for a hat, but since it is uncomfortable to the touch, it is probably best sewn into cloth that makes up the final hat. It can be grounded with a wire that connects to a metal pipe via a connector.
I'm not going to get into the electrosensitivity people just yet.
Assuming telepathy and mind control operate with electromagnetic waves, the best defense against them would be a Faraday Cage, preferably with a ground. A brass mesh seems to be the best material for a hat, but since it is uncomfortable to the touch, it is probably best sewn into cloth that makes up the final hat. It can be grounded with a wire that connects to a metal pipe via a connector.
I'm not going to get into the electrosensitivity people just yet.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Martian SteelWorks
Mars is covered in rust, and would benefit from additional carbon dioxide. Coal, when burned, produces carbon dioxide. Coal + Rust = Steel. Steel could be made into rockets, which we could fly to anywhere in the universe. Plus, the carbon would be gone from the earth, eternally.
Oh wait, the cost of moving the coal. Damn it.
Oh wait, the cost of moving the coal. Damn it.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
A Use For Mercury
When I study why people come to this blog using Google Analytics, I find out some odd things about my readership. For one, something like 3/4ths of the searches are for things I specifically wrote about. Perhaps these people half-remember something they read here and wanted to see it again. Or perhaps my reputation somehow proceeds me, and they've somehow heard of me through non-internet means. Or perhaps they think strange thoughts like I do.
I also learn interesting things about where they are. Most of my readers are American like I am, and the most common hits are New York and California, the two most populous states, and Texas, where I'm physically located. (Some of those Texan hits may have been me, up to all of them.) And then there's the weird parts. One person in Trondheim, Norway, reads my blog 7 times a month. It does not tell me what he or she is looking for, other than the read time is very very fast and that it's one distinct person. I hope he or she finds whatever it is that he or she wanted to read here. I also have hits elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Australia, but they've mostly seemed to have left quickly after a few seconds. Not quite what they wanted, I suppose. But I'm getting off topic.
One person apparently read my article about terraforming Mars and Venus, and was trying to find a plan to terraform Mercury. It was a very interesting idea, and I've thought it over, and I regret to say that no, Mercury cannot be terraformed. For several reasons. There is one bright spot, but first the reasons why it cannot happen.
The first reason is that Mercury is too close to the sun. Powerful solar winds strike mercury at all times, and any atmosphere brought to it would quickly be blasted into outer space. Also, any humans brought to the surface would be dead of skin cancer within a year's time even if the atmosphere was continuously magically replenished.
Two, mercury is semi-tidally-locked. It orbits the sun in a 3:2 resonance, such that 1.5 mercurial days make up a mercurial year. Any plants brought along would die during the 44 day long night. Unlike Venus, if spun up, it would spin back down due to the gravitational effects.
Three, even if we somehow magically solve the first two problems, mercury is smaller than mars. It would have difficulty retaining the atmosphere even without the solar wind, and gravity would be incredibly low, which would have unpredictable results on human health.
And lastly, the vastly closer sun provides 10 times the sunlight that the earth receives, resulting in temperatures about 20 times higher. If you think the desert is hot, wait until you see weather that can melt aluminum. Oh, and if you don't bake to death, you'll dehydrate to death sweating.
However, Mercury is not completely useless for us. In the early 1900s, Nikola Tesla discovered that power could be wirelessly beamed about. So we send in a probe to work on the cold, night side, and have it endlessly construct solar panels that wire together to a beaming station. We have it continuously move along the axis of rotation, staying perpetually on the night side where it is cold enough to operate. On the poles, we build the beaming station that receives all the energy from the panels.
When the panels are rotated into the day side by Mercury's natural rotation, they produce lots of power. Mercury gets 1370 watts per square meter, of which we can hope to capture about 10%. The station changes it into a wireless form that we can pick up elsewhere in the solar system. We can pick this up on Mars for heating, on the ISS for powering scientific tools, or hypothetically even on earth to power our cities. The panels should be replaced every 20 or so years.
Downsides: How to build the power-transmitting station such that it doesn't melt down when in the day side. How to deal with rotation, as Mercury is not perpendicular to the solar system plane, but slightly tilted. (About 6 degrees.) Oh, and getting thousands of square miles of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of feet of power transmitting cable not only into space, but onto Mercury's surface without being damaged. Also, the robot probably needs to be able to build everything without human intervention, which could take up to 12 minutes depending on the distance of our planets at the time. (Speed of light limitations are a bitch, aren't they?)
I also learn interesting things about where they are. Most of my readers are American like I am, and the most common hits are New York and California, the two most populous states, and Texas, where I'm physically located. (Some of those Texan hits may have been me, up to all of them.) And then there's the weird parts. One person in Trondheim, Norway, reads my blog 7 times a month. It does not tell me what he or she is looking for, other than the read time is very very fast and that it's one distinct person. I hope he or she finds whatever it is that he or she wanted to read here. I also have hits elsewhere in Europe, Asia and Australia, but they've mostly seemed to have left quickly after a few seconds. Not quite what they wanted, I suppose. But I'm getting off topic.
One person apparently read my article about terraforming Mars and Venus, and was trying to find a plan to terraform Mercury. It was a very interesting idea, and I've thought it over, and I regret to say that no, Mercury cannot be terraformed. For several reasons. There is one bright spot, but first the reasons why it cannot happen.
The first reason is that Mercury is too close to the sun. Powerful solar winds strike mercury at all times, and any atmosphere brought to it would quickly be blasted into outer space. Also, any humans brought to the surface would be dead of skin cancer within a year's time even if the atmosphere was continuously magically replenished.
Two, mercury is semi-tidally-locked. It orbits the sun in a 3:2 resonance, such that 1.5 mercurial days make up a mercurial year. Any plants brought along would die during the 44 day long night. Unlike Venus, if spun up, it would spin back down due to the gravitational effects.
Three, even if we somehow magically solve the first two problems, mercury is smaller than mars. It would have difficulty retaining the atmosphere even without the solar wind, and gravity would be incredibly low, which would have unpredictable results on human health.
And lastly, the vastly closer sun provides 10 times the sunlight that the earth receives, resulting in temperatures about 20 times higher. If you think the desert is hot, wait until you see weather that can melt aluminum. Oh, and if you don't bake to death, you'll dehydrate to death sweating.
However, Mercury is not completely useless for us. In the early 1900s, Nikola Tesla discovered that power could be wirelessly beamed about. So we send in a probe to work on the cold, night side, and have it endlessly construct solar panels that wire together to a beaming station. We have it continuously move along the axis of rotation, staying perpetually on the night side where it is cold enough to operate. On the poles, we build the beaming station that receives all the energy from the panels.
When the panels are rotated into the day side by Mercury's natural rotation, they produce lots of power. Mercury gets 1370 watts per square meter, of which we can hope to capture about 10%. The station changes it into a wireless form that we can pick up elsewhere in the solar system. We can pick this up on Mars for heating, on the ISS for powering scientific tools, or hypothetically even on earth to power our cities. The panels should be replaced every 20 or so years.
Downsides: How to build the power-transmitting station such that it doesn't melt down when in the day side. How to deal with rotation, as Mercury is not perpendicular to the solar system plane, but slightly tilted. (About 6 degrees.) Oh, and getting thousands of square miles of solar panels and hundreds of thousands of feet of power transmitting cable not only into space, but onto Mercury's surface without being damaged. Also, the robot probably needs to be able to build everything without human intervention, which could take up to 12 minutes depending on the distance of our planets at the time. (Speed of light limitations are a bitch, aren't they?)
Sunday, May 10, 2009
My own cranky beliefs
I've been enjoying Crank.net and the wacky people profiled within. Except that yesterday I noticed that I have a cranky belief myself. Ooh, the hypocrisy, it burns.
I reject Euler's equation, which I will explain below.
So if you take Euler's own constant, e, and raise it to a power involving "i," which is the square root of negative one, you get a complex number based on the variable "x." This of course gives you every mathematician's favorite equation ever:
Since this equation connects five important mathematical constants, so many mathematicians proclaim this the most beautiful equation ever invented.
Mathematical beauty is another idea that I reject. To be rude about it, it's pretty much jerking off over numbers. Oh god, yes, pi and e, so beautiful! Wank, wank, wank. My interest in math is mostly about correct measurements. Poets may claim that beauty is truth, but I expect my numbers to represent something in the physical world, and base my assumptions of their correctness on the correspondence to fact. And besides, the truth is often hideous. People are inhumanly cruel to each other, the universe doesn't care if you live or die, people have done monstrous things to each other for no good reason, and everything in the universe, you included, will eventually die. The universe itself will eventually die.
The "Beautiful equation" revolves around the cosine and sine functions. Cosine and sine are trigonometric ratios first found in triangles. In a right triangle, cosine is the ratio of the side adjacent to the angle to the hypotenuse (the long side). Sine is the ratio of the side opposite to the angle to the hypotenuse. The ratios are the same for any particular angle. Later, the metaphor was extended to circles, allowing for angles greater than 90 degrees.
In high end math, radians are used instead of degrees. In radians, the circle is divided into 2*pi sections. So 2*pi is the entire circle, pi is half the circle, and 1/2 pi is one quarter of the circle. Radians are dimensionless.
Remember Euler's equation?
Plugging in pi would result in the complex number -1 + 0i. Anything times 0 is 0, removing the imaginary part.
However, from goofing off with a calculator, I know that without the imaginary part, e to the power pi is slightly greater than 23. (It's irrational.) Throwing in imaginary numbers seems to be causing an abrupt, inexplicable change.
In fact, raising numbers to an imaginary exponent is so poorly defined that neither calculator nor amateur mathematician can explain how to do it. Natural numbered exponents are "Multiplying a number by itself that many times." a^2 = a*a, a^3 = a*a*a, and so on. Fractional exponents involve roots. a^1.5 is a times the square root of a.
So if "i" is the square root of -1, what would a^i indicate? Would it's result be real, like a, imaginary like i, complex, or something completely different?
Also, I would expect "e^xi" to be linear as x. As x increases, larger and larger results should return. If not larger along the real axis, than in total distance from the origin. However, Euler's equation is cyclical. Sine and Cosine go around in a circle, first increasing, then decreasing, then increasing again, back and forth forever. There should be a reason for this discrepancy.
Mathematicians often have a strange relationship with their numbers, and grow quite attached. When a Greek mathematician discovered irrational numbers, he was thrown off a boat for ruining their sense of mathematical order. That the other mathematicians could not disprove the existence of irrational numbers drove them absolutely crazy. It was proof that mathematics was not the pure orderly truth that they thought it was, and that it also involved messy generalities, just like real life.
I likewise suspect that Euler put together his equation on the grounds that he liked its structure, not because it actually corresponded to anything. Moreso, modern mathematicians love the idea that many of their fundamental constants are closely related. I kind of hope that I'm the one who's wrong about this, because I could take being wrong way more than they could.
I would like any commentators to describe what I got wrong, or describe a proof. A graphical proof would be the easiest to understand, but those are the hardest to construct in the first place. If someone does prove me wrong, I will add the "Stupid" tag to this post and describe their proof.
EDIT: Dr. Phillip Spencer of the university of Toronto's math department proves Euler's equation based on the Taylor series, and therefore this entire post is wrong. Having proved Euler's equation, all else follows. Well done, Dr. Spencer.
I reject Euler's equation, which I will explain below.
So if you take Euler's own constant, e, and raise it to a power involving "i," which is the square root of negative one, you get a complex number based on the variable "x." This of course gives you every mathematician's favorite equation ever:
Since this equation connects five important mathematical constants, so many mathematicians proclaim this the most beautiful equation ever invented.
Mathematical beauty is another idea that I reject. To be rude about it, it's pretty much jerking off over numbers. Oh god, yes, pi and e, so beautiful! Wank, wank, wank. My interest in math is mostly about correct measurements. Poets may claim that beauty is truth, but I expect my numbers to represent something in the physical world, and base my assumptions of their correctness on the correspondence to fact. And besides, the truth is often hideous. People are inhumanly cruel to each other, the universe doesn't care if you live or die, people have done monstrous things to each other for no good reason, and everything in the universe, you included, will eventually die. The universe itself will eventually die.
The "Beautiful equation" revolves around the cosine and sine functions. Cosine and sine are trigonometric ratios first found in triangles. In a right triangle, cosine is the ratio of the side adjacent to the angle to the hypotenuse (the long side). Sine is the ratio of the side opposite to the angle to the hypotenuse. The ratios are the same for any particular angle. Later, the metaphor was extended to circles, allowing for angles greater than 90 degrees.
In high end math, radians are used instead of degrees. In radians, the circle is divided into 2*pi sections. So 2*pi is the entire circle, pi is half the circle, and 1/2 pi is one quarter of the circle. Radians are dimensionless.
Remember Euler's equation?
Plugging in pi would result in the complex number -1 + 0i. Anything times 0 is 0, removing the imaginary part.
However, from goofing off with a calculator, I know that without the imaginary part, e to the power pi is slightly greater than 23. (It's irrational.) Throwing in imaginary numbers seems to be causing an abrupt, inexplicable change.
In fact, raising numbers to an imaginary exponent is so poorly defined that neither calculator nor amateur mathematician can explain how to do it. Natural numbered exponents are "Multiplying a number by itself that many times." a^2 = a*a, a^3 = a*a*a, and so on. Fractional exponents involve roots. a^1.5 is a times the square root of a.
So if "i" is the square root of -1, what would a^i indicate? Would it's result be real, like a, imaginary like i, complex, or something completely different?
Also, I would expect "e^xi" to be linear as x. As x increases, larger and larger results should return. If not larger along the real axis, than in total distance from the origin. However, Euler's equation is cyclical. Sine and Cosine go around in a circle, first increasing, then decreasing, then increasing again, back and forth forever. There should be a reason for this discrepancy.
Mathematicians often have a strange relationship with their numbers, and grow quite attached. When a Greek mathematician discovered irrational numbers, he was thrown off a boat for ruining their sense of mathematical order. That the other mathematicians could not disprove the existence of irrational numbers drove them absolutely crazy. It was proof that mathematics was not the pure orderly truth that they thought it was, and that it also involved messy generalities, just like real life.
I likewise suspect that Euler put together his equation on the grounds that he liked its structure, not because it actually corresponded to anything. Moreso, modern mathematicians love the idea that many of their fundamental constants are closely related. I kind of hope that I'm the one who's wrong about this, because I could take being wrong way more than they could.
I would like any commentators to describe what I got wrong, or describe a proof. A graphical proof would be the easiest to understand, but those are the hardest to construct in the first place. If someone does prove me wrong, I will add the "Stupid" tag to this post and describe their proof.
EDIT: Dr. Phillip Spencer of the university of Toronto's math department proves Euler's equation based on the Taylor series, and therefore this entire post is wrong. Having proved Euler's equation, all else follows. Well done, Dr. Spencer.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Alternative Medicine
Okay, I've noticed that some of you don't like traditional medicine. Please be careful with the alternates. Medical scams go back hundreds of years, it's why we have regulatory boards like the FDA in the first place. Because some people bottle some cheap oil, sell it as all-curing "snake oil," and laugh as the bankroll rolls in and the graveyards fill. Hence the term "Snake oil" to mean "fake medicine."
So what can you do instead if you still hate traditional medicine?
* Herbalism
Before there were chemical pills, people ate plants to help them feel better. See, plants constantly engage in chemical warfare with each other, and some of the compounds they make kill bacteria, get us high, or relieve our pain. Aspirin, for instance, is concentrated salysitic acid, which was derived from willow bark. Why willow bark? Because hundreds of years ago, somebody noticed that if you had a headache and chewed some, the headache went away.
So most chemical pills that a doctor prescribes you, they often were derived from a long-ago herbal treatment. If you must bypass western medicine, herbalism is a reasonably sufficient substitute. Please be cautious that you're less certain of dosing this way, since plants can have wildly varying amounts of their active compound.
* Reflexology
Fancy foot rubs. Now while foot rubs are great for aching feet, they do not, as reflexologists would claim, cure problems outside the feet.
* Chiropracty
Fancy back rubs. Great for mysterious back pain. Useless for non-spinal problems. Practitioners claim that the spine influences the rest of the body, but this is dubious.
* Acupuncture
The ancient Chinese believed that a mysterious energy, "Qi," flowed through the body and that if it got blocked at any point, it would cause problems. So they developed a system of needle-stabbing to unblock this energy.
It works on mysterious pain, but nobody has any idea why, because Qi doesn't exist.
Also even more curiously, it even works if instead of needles, one pokes with fingers on the same spots. Albeit usually less effectively.
* Homeopathy
In the late 1790s, Malaria was a big problem for European explorers. Various remedies were tried, all of them utterly ineffective. A German doctor discovered the effectiveness of Quinine, and then despite being uninfected with malaria himself, took some anyway. To his surprise, he developed malaria-like symptoms, and so concluded that "Like-cures-like." That is, if one has a fever, one should take a treatment that causes fever in a healthy person.
Then the field went totally insane and decided that repeated dilution was the best way to deal with medical shortages. Homeopaths generally believe that solvents somehow have memory, and can remember what was dissolved in them even when diluted so extremely that not one particle of the dissolved substance could possibly remain.
So when you take a homeopathic treatment, you're drinking water that might have been near a poison at one time. Also, we should all be dead from drinking poop water, but for some reason that didn't happen. Maybe because water doesn't actually have a memory. It is a chemical compound, it does not have a brain.
Ultra-cheapskate homeopaths now even claim that "water memory" can be transmitted by sound. Now hold the glass up to the phone, so I can make it believe it's useful medicine. This way I can take your money without you even leaving your home.
* Vitamin theory
In the 1800s, sailors noticed that their typical diet of hardtack and rum tended to make them very very ill. It turns you that you need certain chemical compounds in your food, or you sicken and die. These were called the Vitamins, and were given letter names for easy remembering. Now you can buy tablets with all the vitamins you need, just in case you for some reason need to subsist on a hardtack diet.
Now a cranky theory is engulfing Africa, a continent currently riddled with AIDS and other horrible diseases. The theory states that megadoses of vitamins will cure all diseases. Even Ebola, AIDS, and other diseases that are strongly resistant to treatment.
If this was true, westernized medicine surely would have noticed by now. It's mostly wishful thinking, because a box of vitamins costs $1.83, and the same weight of anti-AIDS drugs costs $224. Africa is not famous for having lots of money.
* Reiki and Faith Healing
Reiki is an idea from Japan that one can move "Qi" from a healthy person to an ill one, therefore ending the ill person's illness. Remember several paragraphs ago when I said that Qi doesn't exist? Still doesn't.
Likewise, Faith Healing revolves around having religion take away a person's illness. It usually doesn't.
* Vibrational Medicine
Supposedly, human beings are made of energy, and changing the "balances" of this energy heals diseases. Pass the bong, man.
* Therapeutic/Magic/Quantum/Whatever Touch
Therapeutic touch claimed to cure illness at a distance through spooky action. An 11 year old proved it to be utterly wrong in 1998. So the practitioners renamed it Quantum touch and went right back to work. People might not understand quantum mechanics, but surely understand that vitalism is wrong, don't they?
* Naturopathy
If there's one thing I've noticed about people over the years, it's that anything they can label "natural," they love, and anything they can label "artificial," they hate. Combine this with outrage at being treated as a bunch of parts by western medicine, and copious bong-passings, and you get naturopathic medicine,
While the official principles are pretty impressive, advocating taking the most effective treatments, working with the self-healing nature of the body for best results, encouraging self-responsibility for health and so on, in practice this tends to be half-baked ideas fueled by what seems to be several doses of hallucinogens, long treatises on long-ago disproven cranky theories, and odd little obsessions like Dr. Kellogs whacked out love of enemas. (Naturopaths often proclaim that one's own intestines are sickening you by retaining some ten to forty pounds of stale poop, and offer to treat this with herbal enemas. Surely we would all be grotesquely ill then?)
* Iridology
Iridologists proclaim that all illness can be diagnosed by analysis of the iris. Most are also homeopaths, naturopaths, or one of the other less reputable branches listed above.
* Color therapy
Feeling bad? Here, look at this colorful poster! Don't you feel better already? See, it realigned your chakras, which are invisible undetectable wheels of light down the center of your body. (Chakras are a common belief in Indian religions, and are likely not real.) Let me shine this colored lamp on you to finish up the process. Man, don't you love these dank nugs?
I'm gonna go with the Herbs. Least ridiculous. Best tested. Natural enough for the chemistry-haters. Thousands of years of testing. Least crank riddled.
So what can you do instead if you still hate traditional medicine?
* Herbalism
Before there were chemical pills, people ate plants to help them feel better. See, plants constantly engage in chemical warfare with each other, and some of the compounds they make kill bacteria, get us high, or relieve our pain. Aspirin, for instance, is concentrated salysitic acid, which was derived from willow bark. Why willow bark? Because hundreds of years ago, somebody noticed that if you had a headache and chewed some, the headache went away.
So most chemical pills that a doctor prescribes you, they often were derived from a long-ago herbal treatment. If you must bypass western medicine, herbalism is a reasonably sufficient substitute. Please be cautious that you're less certain of dosing this way, since plants can have wildly varying amounts of their active compound.
* Reflexology
Fancy foot rubs. Now while foot rubs are great for aching feet, they do not, as reflexologists would claim, cure problems outside the feet.
* Chiropracty
Fancy back rubs. Great for mysterious back pain. Useless for non-spinal problems. Practitioners claim that the spine influences the rest of the body, but this is dubious.
* Acupuncture
The ancient Chinese believed that a mysterious energy, "Qi," flowed through the body and that if it got blocked at any point, it would cause problems. So they developed a system of needle-stabbing to unblock this energy.
It works on mysterious pain, but nobody has any idea why, because Qi doesn't exist.
Also even more curiously, it even works if instead of needles, one pokes with fingers on the same spots. Albeit usually less effectively.
* Homeopathy
In the late 1790s, Malaria was a big problem for European explorers. Various remedies were tried, all of them utterly ineffective. A German doctor discovered the effectiveness of Quinine, and then despite being uninfected with malaria himself, took some anyway. To his surprise, he developed malaria-like symptoms, and so concluded that "Like-cures-like." That is, if one has a fever, one should take a treatment that causes fever in a healthy person.
Then the field went totally insane and decided that repeated dilution was the best way to deal with medical shortages. Homeopaths generally believe that solvents somehow have memory, and can remember what was dissolved in them even when diluted so extremely that not one particle of the dissolved substance could possibly remain.
So when you take a homeopathic treatment, you're drinking water that might have been near a poison at one time. Also, we should all be dead from drinking poop water, but for some reason that didn't happen. Maybe because water doesn't actually have a memory. It is a chemical compound, it does not have a brain.
Ultra-cheapskate homeopaths now even claim that "water memory" can be transmitted by sound. Now hold the glass up to the phone, so I can make it believe it's useful medicine. This way I can take your money without you even leaving your home.
* Vitamin theory
In the 1800s, sailors noticed that their typical diet of hardtack and rum tended to make them very very ill. It turns you that you need certain chemical compounds in your food, or you sicken and die. These were called the Vitamins, and were given letter names for easy remembering. Now you can buy tablets with all the vitamins you need, just in case you for some reason need to subsist on a hardtack diet.
Now a cranky theory is engulfing Africa, a continent currently riddled with AIDS and other horrible diseases. The theory states that megadoses of vitamins will cure all diseases. Even Ebola, AIDS, and other diseases that are strongly resistant to treatment.
If this was true, westernized medicine surely would have noticed by now. It's mostly wishful thinking, because a box of vitamins costs $1.83, and the same weight of anti-AIDS drugs costs $224. Africa is not famous for having lots of money.
* Reiki and Faith Healing
Reiki is an idea from Japan that one can move "Qi" from a healthy person to an ill one, therefore ending the ill person's illness. Remember several paragraphs ago when I said that Qi doesn't exist? Still doesn't.
Likewise, Faith Healing revolves around having religion take away a person's illness. It usually doesn't.
* Vibrational Medicine
Supposedly, human beings are made of energy, and changing the "balances" of this energy heals diseases. Pass the bong, man.
* Therapeutic/Magic/Quantum/Whatever Touch
Therapeutic touch claimed to cure illness at a distance through spooky action. An 11 year old proved it to be utterly wrong in 1998. So the practitioners renamed it Quantum touch and went right back to work. People might not understand quantum mechanics, but surely understand that vitalism is wrong, don't they?
* Naturopathy
If there's one thing I've noticed about people over the years, it's that anything they can label "natural," they love, and anything they can label "artificial," they hate. Combine this with outrage at being treated as a bunch of parts by western medicine, and copious bong-passings, and you get naturopathic medicine,
While the official principles are pretty impressive, advocating taking the most effective treatments, working with the self-healing nature of the body for best results, encouraging self-responsibility for health and so on, in practice this tends to be half-baked ideas fueled by what seems to be several doses of hallucinogens, long treatises on long-ago disproven cranky theories, and odd little obsessions like Dr. Kellogs whacked out love of enemas. (Naturopaths often proclaim that one's own intestines are sickening you by retaining some ten to forty pounds of stale poop, and offer to treat this with herbal enemas. Surely we would all be grotesquely ill then?)
* Iridology
Iridologists proclaim that all illness can be diagnosed by analysis of the iris. Most are also homeopaths, naturopaths, or one of the other less reputable branches listed above.
* Color therapy
Feeling bad? Here, look at this colorful poster! Don't you feel better already? See, it realigned your chakras, which are invisible undetectable wheels of light down the center of your body. (Chakras are a common belief in Indian religions, and are likely not real.) Let me shine this colored lamp on you to finish up the process. Man, don't you love these dank nugs?
I'm gonna go with the Herbs. Least ridiculous. Best tested. Natural enough for the chemistry-haters. Thousands of years of testing. Least crank riddled.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Roadposts
I have more than 100 entries now. Which is awesome, but I'm sure you wanted me to come up with some sort of insane invention.
Fine. I propose a highway consisting of uncountably many little conveyor belts, thereby distributing the energy needs of propulsion between the car and the city power grid.
What's that, the tires might get caught in between the belts? Or the belt would have to be implausibly long? And getting on the offramp would involve an abrupt deceleration of the speed of the belt?
If this seems like a bad idea, it's because I thought of it when I was ten and had studied neither mechanics nor physics yet.
Fine. I propose a highway consisting of uncountably many little conveyor belts, thereby distributing the energy needs of propulsion between the car and the city power grid.
What's that, the tires might get caught in between the belts? Or the belt would have to be implausibly long? And getting on the offramp would involve an abrupt deceleration of the speed of the belt?
If this seems like a bad idea, it's because I thought of it when I was ten and had studied neither mechanics nor physics yet.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Retraction Corner
So it seems a number of my ideas just aren't going to work out.
The melting of the north pole did not occur as fast as was predicted. It was predicted to have completely melted by September of this year. It is now October, and there is still ice on the pole. Less than there was before, and it's still decreasing in an alarming way, but ice remains.
The Radioisotope car would work if most people drove it for what it was, a dangerous and powerful machine. Unfortunately, a look into urban traffic quickly shows that people make excessively risky maneuvers with their car all the time. When their car is powered by hydrocarbons, the way it is now, the absolute worse case error involves their car exploding, potentially killing everyone inside it. Sad, certainaly, which is why they tell you to drive carefully, but not risky to anyone not directly in the car's path.
Radioisotope cars would have a small amount of nuclear waste in them. This waste could be contained so that it would survive a collision with another car without damage, say by using a tough metal alloy. Nuclear waste is currently transported in containers that could survive a direct hit with a minor explosive. Unfortunately, I imagine that if I actually made and sold radioisotope cars, that some fool would attempt to "race the train" by slipping through the safety bars that urge you not to do that and try to make it through the intersection before the train goes through. Trains often go as fast as 90 MPH and weigh hundreds of times more than any car. When a very large, very fast moving, very heavy object collides with a lighter object, simple physics can tell you that the lighter object is going to be pretty much destroyed. So now we have a hazmat emergency, because I can't think of any material offhand that could survive being hit at 90MPH by a train. Raw plutonium on the road would be a horrific emergency for the entire city.
Also, due to power-to-weight ratios, large trucks and large SUVs would be far more practical to isotope-power than station wagons. This style of vehicle is going out of style.
So Radioisotope power should be more restricted to home applications, where it is less likely to be rammed with trains, thrown off cliffs, or run into a wall because somebody decided to go faster than they could readily perceive and interpret.
Although the two could combine again with better batteries, with radioisotopes providing your home power which you use to charge up your electric car's battery.
On the plus side, two of my ideas were used successfully by other people.
The melting of the north pole did not occur as fast as was predicted. It was predicted to have completely melted by September of this year. It is now October, and there is still ice on the pole. Less than there was before, and it's still decreasing in an alarming way, but ice remains.
The Radioisotope car would work if most people drove it for what it was, a dangerous and powerful machine. Unfortunately, a look into urban traffic quickly shows that people make excessively risky maneuvers with their car all the time. When their car is powered by hydrocarbons, the way it is now, the absolute worse case error involves their car exploding, potentially killing everyone inside it. Sad, certainaly, which is why they tell you to drive carefully, but not risky to anyone not directly in the car's path.
Radioisotope cars would have a small amount of nuclear waste in them. This waste could be contained so that it would survive a collision with another car without damage, say by using a tough metal alloy. Nuclear waste is currently transported in containers that could survive a direct hit with a minor explosive. Unfortunately, I imagine that if I actually made and sold radioisotope cars, that some fool would attempt to "race the train" by slipping through the safety bars that urge you not to do that and try to make it through the intersection before the train goes through. Trains often go as fast as 90 MPH and weigh hundreds of times more than any car. When a very large, very fast moving, very heavy object collides with a lighter object, simple physics can tell you that the lighter object is going to be pretty much destroyed. So now we have a hazmat emergency, because I can't think of any material offhand that could survive being hit at 90MPH by a train. Raw plutonium on the road would be a horrific emergency for the entire city.
Also, due to power-to-weight ratios, large trucks and large SUVs would be far more practical to isotope-power than station wagons. This style of vehicle is going out of style.
So Radioisotope power should be more restricted to home applications, where it is less likely to be rammed with trains, thrown off cliffs, or run into a wall because somebody decided to go faster than they could readily perceive and interpret.
Although the two could combine again with better batteries, with radioisotopes providing your home power which you use to charge up your electric car's battery.
On the plus side, two of my ideas were used successfully by other people.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Quasi-Automated Publishing
Most people who want to write a long document use a word processing program, such as Microsoft Word or OpenOffice. The formatting is obvious, and what you see is what you get in a very literal way. Even a person who fears computers can write a novel with a word processor, and they often also know how to email that novel to their friends. This is assuming that they know how to write, of course. Some people are terrible at writing, such as myself.
But publishers cannot directly work with word processor documents. They have their own standard, PostScript, from which they can easily print properly formatted pages at whatever size paper the book happens to be, and any formatting, included pictures, or special considerations will be retained even if other factors are changed. (I will ask a publisher what these factors are, since I can't think of any other factors that would mess with the formatting.)
Both PostScript and most word processor formats are well documented and standardized. Therefore, it is possible to write a program that could easily convert between the two, and furthermore, possible to produce a webpage form that accepts a word-processed document, converts it to postscript, and offers both up to a publisher for consideration. Publishers reject most of the writing they get, on the grounds that most writing they get is absolutely terrible and would not sell very well. However, stripped of this technical limitation, I believe that worldwide literary output would increase. This may also increase worldwide literacy rates.
For best results, the conversion program should be open source so that anyone may use it.
But publishers cannot directly work with word processor documents. They have their own standard, PostScript, from which they can easily print properly formatted pages at whatever size paper the book happens to be, and any formatting, included pictures, or special considerations will be retained even if other factors are changed. (I will ask a publisher what these factors are, since I can't think of any other factors that would mess with the formatting.)
Both PostScript and most word processor formats are well documented and standardized. Therefore, it is possible to write a program that could easily convert between the two, and furthermore, possible to produce a webpage form that accepts a word-processed document, converts it to postscript, and offers both up to a publisher for consideration. Publishers reject most of the writing they get, on the grounds that most writing they get is absolutely terrible and would not sell very well. However, stripped of this technical limitation, I believe that worldwide literary output would increase. This may also increase worldwide literacy rates.
For best results, the conversion program should be open source so that anyone may use it.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Popular, but Wrong
I hear about a number of ideas passing around that are quite popular, but don't have any basis in fact whatsoever. Please stop telling me these stories. They are not true, and repeating them will not make them true.
Water Fuel
Water cannot be made into a fuel. It is a low-energy compound, fundamentally. Hydrogen, which water contains, is high energy, but the only way to extract the hydrogen from the water involves injecting a lot of energy into it. So water is, at best, a store of energy, not a fuel.
There is no pill that will change water into gasoline, and there is no carburetor that can "burn" water. Yes, I understand the temptation, what with gasoline costing several dollars per gallon and water so cheap as to be practically free. Wishing will not make it so.
Cold Fusion
Cold fusion is the idea that you can have all the energy glories of nuclear fusion without the high temperatures and energy-expensive containment. Supposedly, this happens at room temperature, which is far below the temperatures involved in hot fusion. (Hot fusion basically copies the conditions in the sun -- absurdly high temperature.)
However, for all the buzz, it has only operated once, and no attempt to reproduce it has worked. Generally in science, when results are not reproducible, this generally means that either the first experiment was in error (such as having contamination that the performing scientist was unaware of), or deliberate fraud is occurring. This would not be the first time that somebody got a result that nobody else could copy.
Again, the temptation is obvious. Cold fusion would make it worthwhile to electrically hydrolyze water for fuel and would power entire cities with no pollution.
Science Teaches Morality
No, science is amoral in that it might show you the basic principles, but doesn't give you any guidelines in how to use them. Nuclear fission is identical in the atom bomb and the nuclear-powered electric reactor. One is clearly peaceful, the other is clearly a weapon of war. But both operate by the exact same principles.
Morality is left to the philosophers. Do it well, and get a society that is a joy to live in. Do it badly, and get a miserable hellhole.
Decelerating Speed of Light
Creationists, shown proof that certain stars are so far away that we could not possibly see them if the universe was as young as they say, try to escape this by claiming that the speed of light has been exponentially decreasing since the birth of the universe.
This does not work. Theory has implications in science, and a faster speed of light in the past would affect certain things in the present. No decay has been noted in the present, suggesting a certain curve, and if this curve is true, then there are some clusters of stars that prove the universe to be, under this model, no younger than 4 billion years old.
The theory of light being created already halfway to earth works functionally, but is unsatisfying for two reasons. One, it makes God out to be a liar, as he's showing light from a star that never came from the star. Two, it opens the problem of "Last Thursdayism," in which the Universe was actually created last Thursday with signs of being older, or the more extreme version in which the universe is ten minutes old. Clearly, "Last Thursdayism" is ridiculous.
Creationism may work as a religious belief, but it is so painfully obviously not science that it's not even funny. Yes, I understand you'd like science to back your religious beliefs. If you want it to be a scientific theory, it has to make predictions of some kind.
Naturopathic Medicine
Some people distrust doctors and other medical professionals. They're expensive. They talk in a jargon-y fashion. In the past, many of them had bad attitudes from the admittedly impressive training they went through. (I went through the college from hell, therefore STFU and do as I say, peon!)
So instead, these people try to relieve their medical problems through "natural" treatment. Unfortunately for them, they clearly don't know what they're doing, have a major fetish for "natural" treatment, which mostly involves random herbs and half-baked theories that don't really make sense.
Now herbs can be a valid part of treatment, since plants do contain compounds that can modify bodily chemistry. Most existing medications are indeed based on earlier herbal ones, with the active ingredient isolated and refined to avoid side effects.
But the theories are often patently ridiculous. Feeling funny? It must be your intestines "auto-intoxifying" itself with your own poop, which they go on to describe being backed up between 4 and 40 pounds of (which would probably kill you from the infection) and how only an herbal enema (with their patented formula, of course) can rescue you. You will feel so much better afterwards. If only because you were so embarrassed before.
"Toxin" is commonly abused in their parlance, and pretty much anything that they don't sell is labeled as a "toxin." Their theory of "whole body treatment" is also incredibly odd. Your toe is broken, therefore...we must mess around with your sinuses. Yes, of course, it is so obvious.
The government has secret funds for you that you can access by....
No, they freaking don't. It doesn't even logically make sense. Where would this magical money have come from, and if it's really rightfully yours, wouldn't it be easier for them to just give it to you, or discount your taxes?
Enlarge your penis/breasts
Ah, this common spam. Apparently, a number of men feel dissatisfied with the size of their genitals, and a number of women feel disappointed in the chest department, so along comes these companies to send a bazzillion emails to convince them that their pill will help.
A blogger actually tried ordering one of these pills. It was a sugar pill that came with an instruction book explaining exercises that any decent physiologist could have told you how to do for free. The exercises give you, maybe, one or two extra inches through tissue stretching.
Polywater
A Soviet scientist once did an experiment that he claims changed a bucket of water into a polymer-like substance. He further claims that a bucket of water poured into this "Poly water" becomes more of the same.
Of course, just like the cold fusion above, no one else could replicate it, and signs pointed to contamination in the tubes used during the experiment. There are some glues and slimes that, when added to water, might explain the polymer-like behavior.
That there are other explanations does not deter some people from claiming that this is actually a brilliant discovery that "science" is "suppressing" for the glory of "capitalism."
And even if this were true, this would only lead to the eventual doom of the earth if somebody carelessly knocked over the bucket into the drain, which eventually leads to the ocean...
But wait, there's more
There are others, but I lost them when my internet connection cut out and I don't feel like retyping them. This article is long enough already.
Water Fuel
Water cannot be made into a fuel. It is a low-energy compound, fundamentally. Hydrogen, which water contains, is high energy, but the only way to extract the hydrogen from the water involves injecting a lot of energy into it. So water is, at best, a store of energy, not a fuel.
There is no pill that will change water into gasoline, and there is no carburetor that can "burn" water. Yes, I understand the temptation, what with gasoline costing several dollars per gallon and water so cheap as to be practically free. Wishing will not make it so.
Cold Fusion
Cold fusion is the idea that you can have all the energy glories of nuclear fusion without the high temperatures and energy-expensive containment. Supposedly, this happens at room temperature, which is far below the temperatures involved in hot fusion. (Hot fusion basically copies the conditions in the sun -- absurdly high temperature.)
However, for all the buzz, it has only operated once, and no attempt to reproduce it has worked. Generally in science, when results are not reproducible, this generally means that either the first experiment was in error (such as having contamination that the performing scientist was unaware of), or deliberate fraud is occurring. This would not be the first time that somebody got a result that nobody else could copy.
Again, the temptation is obvious. Cold fusion would make it worthwhile to electrically hydrolyze water for fuel and would power entire cities with no pollution.
Science Teaches Morality
No, science is amoral in that it might show you the basic principles, but doesn't give you any guidelines in how to use them. Nuclear fission is identical in the atom bomb and the nuclear-powered electric reactor. One is clearly peaceful, the other is clearly a weapon of war. But both operate by the exact same principles.
Morality is left to the philosophers. Do it well, and get a society that is a joy to live in. Do it badly, and get a miserable hellhole.
Decelerating Speed of Light
Creationists, shown proof that certain stars are so far away that we could not possibly see them if the universe was as young as they say, try to escape this by claiming that the speed of light has been exponentially decreasing since the birth of the universe.
This does not work. Theory has implications in science, and a faster speed of light in the past would affect certain things in the present. No decay has been noted in the present, suggesting a certain curve, and if this curve is true, then there are some clusters of stars that prove the universe to be, under this model, no younger than 4 billion years old.
The theory of light being created already halfway to earth works functionally, but is unsatisfying for two reasons. One, it makes God out to be a liar, as he's showing light from a star that never came from the star. Two, it opens the problem of "Last Thursdayism," in which the Universe was actually created last Thursday with signs of being older, or the more extreme version in which the universe is ten minutes old. Clearly, "Last Thursdayism" is ridiculous.
Creationism may work as a religious belief, but it is so painfully obviously not science that it's not even funny. Yes, I understand you'd like science to back your religious beliefs. If you want it to be a scientific theory, it has to make predictions of some kind.
Naturopathic Medicine
Some people distrust doctors and other medical professionals. They're expensive. They talk in a jargon-y fashion. In the past, many of them had bad attitudes from the admittedly impressive training they went through. (I went through the college from hell, therefore STFU and do as I say, peon!)
So instead, these people try to relieve their medical problems through "natural" treatment. Unfortunately for them, they clearly don't know what they're doing, have a major fetish for "natural" treatment, which mostly involves random herbs and half-baked theories that don't really make sense.
Now herbs can be a valid part of treatment, since plants do contain compounds that can modify bodily chemistry. Most existing medications are indeed based on earlier herbal ones, with the active ingredient isolated and refined to avoid side effects.
But the theories are often patently ridiculous. Feeling funny? It must be your intestines "auto-intoxifying" itself with your own poop, which they go on to describe being backed up between 4 and 40 pounds of (which would probably kill you from the infection) and how only an herbal enema (with their patented formula, of course) can rescue you. You will feel so much better afterwards. If only because you were so embarrassed before.
"Toxin" is commonly abused in their parlance, and pretty much anything that they don't sell is labeled as a "toxin." Their theory of "whole body treatment" is also incredibly odd. Your toe is broken, therefore...we must mess around with your sinuses. Yes, of course, it is so obvious.
The government has secret funds for you that you can access by....
No, they freaking don't. It doesn't even logically make sense. Where would this magical money have come from, and if it's really rightfully yours, wouldn't it be easier for them to just give it to you, or discount your taxes?
Enlarge your penis/breasts
Ah, this common spam. Apparently, a number of men feel dissatisfied with the size of their genitals, and a number of women feel disappointed in the chest department, so along comes these companies to send a bazzillion emails to convince them that their pill will help.
A blogger actually tried ordering one of these pills. It was a sugar pill that came with an instruction book explaining exercises that any decent physiologist could have told you how to do for free. The exercises give you, maybe, one or two extra inches through tissue stretching.
Polywater
A Soviet scientist once did an experiment that he claims changed a bucket of water into a polymer-like substance. He further claims that a bucket of water poured into this "Poly water" becomes more of the same.
Of course, just like the cold fusion above, no one else could replicate it, and signs pointed to contamination in the tubes used during the experiment. There are some glues and slimes that, when added to water, might explain the polymer-like behavior.
That there are other explanations does not deter some people from claiming that this is actually a brilliant discovery that "science" is "suppressing" for the glory of "capitalism."
And even if this were true, this would only lead to the eventual doom of the earth if somebody carelessly knocked over the bucket into the drain, which eventually leads to the ocean...
But wait, there's more
There are others, but I lost them when my internet connection cut out and I don't feel like retyping them. This article is long enough already.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The Melting North Pole
Global warming isn't so bad, they said. It's not like any permanent effect is happening, they said. And then it happened.
The North Pole is melting. By the end of September, it will be gone. The northernmost part of the world will be an ocean.
Don't worry, kids. Santa moved his operations to a series of redundant bases in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Finland, Russia, and Alaska. He's a bit annoyed at the move, but thankful he caught it before the whole workshop sank underwater.
But as for global warming, not only is this bad news, but it will exacerbate the problem. Ice is white and reflects sunlight. Seawater is blue, and mostly absorbs it. So this water will absorb heat from sunlight, and get the urge to flow. Flow southward, since when you're at the north pole, every direction is by definition south.
At the worst, the fresh water from the melting ice will flow southward into the Atlantic, clog up the jet stream, which will cease the flow of warm water into the east coast of the US and the western coast of Europe. Spain, England, and France will no longer enjoy the mild winters they used to have and will get significantly colder. Virginian beachgoers will need wetsuits, much to the manufacturer's delight.
This could even lead to war, as the newly opened northern ocean gets numerous boats from Canada, the US, Russia, and Denmark (which owns Greenland) all jockeying for position. Nations can be very sore losers.
Never fear, though, for I have a plan to reverse this. We sail boats with mirrors around the oceanic part, and place mirrors on the remaining ice. Mirrors should, theoretically, work even more effectively than ice, and if other anti-global-warming measures are also put into effect, would reverse the melt, freezing the pole back over. It would once again be possible to walk from Alert to Novosibirsk, though this would not be a good idea.
EDIT: The north pole's melting was much slower than expected. There should still be ice for 20 years, albeit on a decreasing nature. Post is marked "wrong," even though the pole is still melting, albeit much much slower than previously described.
The North Pole is melting. By the end of September, it will be gone. The northernmost part of the world will be an ocean.
Don't worry, kids. Santa moved his operations to a series of redundant bases in Canada, Greenland, Norway, Finland, Russia, and Alaska. He's a bit annoyed at the move, but thankful he caught it before the whole workshop sank underwater.
But as for global warming, not only is this bad news, but it will exacerbate the problem. Ice is white and reflects sunlight. Seawater is blue, and mostly absorbs it. So this water will absorb heat from sunlight, and get the urge to flow. Flow southward, since when you're at the north pole, every direction is by definition south.
At the worst, the fresh water from the melting ice will flow southward into the Atlantic, clog up the jet stream, which will cease the flow of warm water into the east coast of the US and the western coast of Europe. Spain, England, and France will no longer enjoy the mild winters they used to have and will get significantly colder. Virginian beachgoers will need wetsuits, much to the manufacturer's delight.
This could even lead to war, as the newly opened northern ocean gets numerous boats from Canada, the US, Russia, and Denmark (which owns Greenland) all jockeying for position. Nations can be very sore losers.
Never fear, though, for I have a plan to reverse this. We sail boats with mirrors around the oceanic part, and place mirrors on the remaining ice. Mirrors should, theoretically, work even more effectively than ice, and if other anti-global-warming measures are also put into effect, would reverse the melt, freezing the pole back over. It would once again be possible to walk from Alert to Novosibirsk, though this would not be a good idea.
EDIT: The north pole's melting was much slower than expected. There should still be ice for 20 years, albeit on a decreasing nature. Post is marked "wrong," even though the pole is still melting, albeit much much slower than previously described.
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