Veering away from the putsch against democracy, let's have a look at cool science! And reasons why it should engender optimism, not riled-up resentment. Here's your roundup of cool (and maybe some chilling) reasons to pump up your morale about being a member of a wonderful civilization.
== Okay it's (well-supported) propaganda... that we need ==
Bill Gates is presenting 4 million collage graduates with a free download of Hans Rosling's important nonfiction title, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World - and Why Things are Better Than You Think - which argues that our future is more hopeful than we're allowed to realize. Despair is a poison that FDR denounced (and the Greatest Generation listened.)
You know what fear itself fears most? Confidence.
Mathematica maven and brilliant funguy (several mushrooms?) Stephen Wolfram runs a blog that is far deeper-plunging and longer than my own. Always on fascinating subjects. In this one he took on “buzzwords” and whether strings of them can be peered at – with the wondrous ambiguity of English – to actually make sense. In: “Buzzword Convergence: Making Sense of Quantum Neural Blockchain AI.” Try it out (or any of Stephen’s missives) only if you care for serious mental exercise!
Speaking of brainpower, you would not believe the estimates for what fraction of our total electric load goes to server farms for internet traffic and the cloud. Especially for cooling, as those GPUs etc generate vast amounts of heat. There are many proposals for new ways to cool down these massive data centers, offering improved efficiency because, well, Intel is coming out with a new server processor that puts out 3 times the heat of last year's model! But little is invested in the obvious – liquid cooling, where the heat carried off could then be applied to other purposes, like power-generation. One thing keeping data centers from moving to liquid is fear of leaks. Chilldyne's negative pressure system never leaks, watch what happens when you cut the line.
FarmBot!
Uses CNC methods to run your backyard garden, from seeding to weeding to
watering to soil-testing…and alerting you which to harvest. Yeah, as a backyard gardener, I deem it
presently silly. But as a NASA advisor
and scifi author with an eye to the future….
Technology Review offers Ten Breakthrough Technologies for 2018: from 3D metal printing to dueling Neural Networks to zero-carbon natural gas, for example....
Technology Review offers Ten Breakthrough Technologies for 2018: from 3D metal printing to dueling Neural Networks to zero-carbon natural gas, for example....
My friend
Miles Palmer is involved with NET Power’s unique demonstration power plant in La Porte,Texas, that burns natural gas but releases no emissions into the atmosphere.
“How can it do this? The natural gas is burned in pure oxygen rather than
ambient air, and the resulting heated carbon dioxide (CO2) is used
to power a turbine instead of heating steam or gas.” A combustor
then ignites a mixture of natural gas and oxygen, which is extracted from the
atmosphere in a separate facility. This heats up the CO2 in the
loop that drives the turbine. One
product is a stream of pure CO2 that doesn’t have to be separated, to drive
underground oil extraction or use in industry. I asked: “Is your initial air separator (N2 and Argon from O2) more
efficient than a separator taking CO2 out of exhaust gas?” Miles said "Yes."
== New in Robo-Tech ==
See the latest awesome robot videos, including BionicFinWave which swims as fluidly as a fish.
MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can now leap and gallop across rough terrain, climb a staircase littered with debris, and quickly recover its balance when suddenly yanked or shoved — all while essentially blind.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have built a drone that can change shapes, and slither through the air like a snake.
University of Hong Kong researchers have found an inexpensive, nickel-based substance that gan bend or make “actuation” motions stimulated only by light, and lift up to 3000 times their own weight.
Incredible drone footage from a river of lava at Kilauea volcano.
Mars Bioimaging, a company spun out of CERN, has developed a 3D scanner capable of creating full color X-ray images. Based on the Medipix3 imaging chip family developed for particle accelerators and the Large Hadron Collider, the scanner enables better visualization through extremely high resolution scans. When coupled with algorithms for generating 3D images and color coding based on energy levels, MARS is able to visualize different body parts such as fat, water, calcium, and disease markers. In clinical settings so far, this is enabling improved diagnostics and personalized treatments in areas as varied as cancer and heart disease. (From the Diamandis Abundance Insider newsletter.)
Another super visualization company - Nanome - uses AR goggles and manipulators to immerse you inside the microscopic world of molecules, empowering you to manipulate them by hand. (Full disclosure, I'm on their advisory board.)
Apple and Samsung are both developing phones with foldable displays -- expected out in 2019. About freaking time. I hate these slabs of glass.
== Treasure Hunters ==
How cool. A Woods Hole submersible may have found the greatest of all treasure galleons. “On June 8, 1708, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the San José’s gunpowder ignited during a battle with British ships, sending 600 sailors to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — along with gold, silver and emeralds from mines in Peru, a total haul valued at some $17 billion in today’s dollars.”
Niche business or scam? The former Soviet nation of Georgia now consumes more power in mining cryptocurrencies than the United States. (Note, while all the attention in the West has gone to Vladimir Putin's aggressive "deniability wars" of annexation in Crimea and the Donbass... and the high probability he'll do more to Estonia and Latvia, now that NATO is neutralized. Few are aware of how he dismembered Georgia, seizing about a third and then cowing the rest into becoming a mafia-like client protectorate. Hence, a context for the bitcoin mining operations. Putin's rage toward Obama and Clinton had a lot to do with their resistance to these annexations... which Trump has never mentioned.)
On June 21 - solstice day - the Supreme Court of Hawaii heard oral arguments in Honolulu on whether to approve a building permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope, which would be the biggest and most expensive in the Northern Hemisphere. And it is a real fight. Yes, indigenous peoples have a perfect right to be pissed off and suspicious over honkies who want to set up camp on sacred spots. But if truly this is a theological issue, then should it not be argued and settled theologically?
See an expanded version of my proposal for a sensible and culturally respectful answer to this conundrum.
== New in Robo-Tech ==
See the latest awesome robot videos, including BionicFinWave which swims as fluidly as a fish.
MIT’s Cheetah 3 robot can now leap and gallop across rough terrain, climb a staircase littered with debris, and quickly recover its balance when suddenly yanked or shoved — all while essentially blind.
Researchers at the University of Tokyo have built a drone that can change shapes, and slither through the air like a snake.
University of Hong Kong researchers have found an inexpensive, nickel-based substance that gan bend or make “actuation” motions stimulated only by light, and lift up to 3000 times their own weight.
Incredible drone footage from a river of lava at Kilauea volcano.
Mars Bioimaging, a company spun out of CERN, has developed a 3D scanner capable of creating full color X-ray images. Based on the Medipix3 imaging chip family developed for particle accelerators and the Large Hadron Collider, the scanner enables better visualization through extremely high resolution scans. When coupled with algorithms for generating 3D images and color coding based on energy levels, MARS is able to visualize different body parts such as fat, water, calcium, and disease markers. In clinical settings so far, this is enabling improved diagnostics and personalized treatments in areas as varied as cancer and heart disease. (From the Diamandis Abundance Insider newsletter.)
Another super visualization company - Nanome - uses AR goggles and manipulators to immerse you inside the microscopic world of molecules, empowering you to manipulate them by hand. (Full disclosure, I'm on their advisory board.)
== Treasure Hunters ==
How cool. A Woods Hole submersible may have found the greatest of all treasure galleons. “On June 8, 1708, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the San José’s gunpowder ignited during a battle with British ships, sending 600 sailors to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean — along with gold, silver and emeralds from mines in Peru, a total haul valued at some $17 billion in today’s dollars.”
Niche business or scam? The former Soviet nation of Georgia now consumes more power in mining cryptocurrencies than the United States. (Note, while all the attention in the West has gone to Vladimir Putin's aggressive "deniability wars" of annexation in Crimea and the Donbass... and the high probability he'll do more to Estonia and Latvia, now that NATO is neutralized. Few are aware of how he dismembered Georgia, seizing about a third and then cowing the rest into becoming a mafia-like client protectorate. Hence, a context for the bitcoin mining operations. Putin's rage toward Obama and Clinton had a lot to do with their resistance to these annexations... which Trump has never mentioned.)
On June 21 - solstice day - the Supreme Court of Hawaii heard oral arguments in Honolulu on whether to approve a building permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope, which would be the biggest and most expensive in the Northern Hemisphere. And it is a real fight. Yes, indigenous peoples have a perfect right to be pissed off and suspicious over honkies who want to set up camp on sacred spots. But if truly this is a theological issue, then should it not be argued and settled theologically?
See an expanded version of my proposal for a sensible and culturally respectful answer to this conundrum.
