Hazel’s morning lecture has thrown up yet another thing to think about, in the generation of ideas. We have been given a new method of creating ideas, that looks someting like this:

I doubt I’ll be using this method to create more ideas for this project inparticular – any more things buzzing around my head at the moment and I might explode! – but I will definitely be using it for the next one!

Something I forgot to mention a while back:

We were all asked to design something that DaVinci never got around to doing. DaVinci was clearly a busy man.

For a bit of inspiration in what was a very vast spectrum, I decided to link this back to my food project. After several ideas along the lines of packaging, and making comfort  food, I settled on a doughnut hole puncher. You just know Leonardo loved his doughnuts!

This will hopefully be exhibited alongside the Museum of Science and Industry’s Da Vinci exhibition that’s going up sometime soon.

Other than that, the food cushions are coming along well, looking nice and squishy, just like I intended.

Will be looking into making a life-size gingerbread man, for a bit of a change from cushions. He could be used as a hug-buddy, a rug, a scarf…

Our Mindsparkz inventions colleagues visited the Business Startup Show at Earls Court London on 26th November 2009.  Business Startup is the UK’s biggest show for anyone starting or expanding a business.  With two days packed full of seminars from leading entrepreneurs, many of whom have now reached celebrity status, the show was packed with advice for businesses fighting to survive in the current climate.

The show provided speed-networking sessions, one-to-one meetings with experts, a Dragon’s Den type pitching event and a vast number of exhibitors all looking to help.

More news to follow and maybe a few inventions in the coming months.

Origins of Democracy in Paleolithic Hunter-Gatherer Groups

A paper by Doron Shultziner, PhD, referenced in Part I of this essay and entitled, “Evolution and Liberal Democracy,”  highlights the shortcomings of definitions of democracy in the 20th century that ignore and obscure the evolutionary nature of democratic ideals.  The discussion is found in a section labeled, “Setting Democracy in a Larger Evolutionary Context,” 

Democracy at the beginning of the 21st century is a term that denotes a variety of regimes that share similar main characteristics. Democracy has a thin procedural definition and thicker definitions. The thin definition of democracy is a political system with universal suffrage and “whose leaders are elected in competitive multi-party and multi-candidate processes in which opposition parties have a legitimate chance of attaining power or participating in power” [citation in original]….Thicker definitions of democracy require effective and enlightened participation as well as human rights and freedoms beyond what is necessary for a democratic process [citations in original]. Thicker standards of democracy usually relate to liberal-democracies, namely democratic countries which are free and respectable to human rights. The two categories, however, are not necessarily synonymous [citation in original].

Defined by these criteria, however, democracy is a very recent invention that appeared only in the 20th century after women gained voting rights. The merits of these definitions have been recognized by political scientists for providing a useful analytical tool and for distinguishing democracies from other types of regimes, at least since the 20th century [citation in original]. 

Unfortunately, 20th century definitions of democracy, useful as they may be to distinguish democracies from nondemocracies at present, are not applicable to democracies prior to the 20th century [citations in original].  The famous democracy of Athens (and other Greek cities) about 2500 years ago is not a democracy by today’s definitions because not all men, women or slaves were allowed to vote or have any say about matters that influenced their lives. For similar reasons, the American democracy was lacking significant characteristics prior to the 20th century. In Switzerland, men gained suffrage as early as 1848; women in Switzerland, however, began gaining suffrage only in 1971 and the Swiss canton Appenzell Innerrhoden was forced by the Supreme Court to give women voting rights as late as 1990.  Still, it would not make much sense to argue that Switzerland became a democracy only in 1971 or 1990. 20th century definitions of democracy detach democracy from its historical roots for reasons of analytical clarity. It is not that these historical roots are not unacknowledged; rather, they are perceived to be irrelevant for the purpose of analyzing the unprecedented number of democratic transitions in the 20th century. This logic, as I intend to show in the following pages, is flawed because it fails to recognize seminal historical democracies as forerunners of a much deeper and profound phenomenon….

Egalitarian Social Structures in the Paleolithic Era

I believe that much of our ability to understand the transition to democracy is impaired by the focus on 20th century standards of democracy. I argue that shared features exist between 20th century democracies, democracies prior to the 20th century, and ancient forms of human egalitarian societies.

Estimates for Homo sapiens appearance are between 200,000 and 100,000 years ago [citation in original].  We know that all human beings lived throughout this period, known as the Paleolithic era (2 million -10,000 B.C.E), in small nomadic societies of hunters and gatherers (i.e. foragers) who were usually of an average group size of 25 people, although at times of festivals group size could reach over one hundred [citations in original].  Human beings in the Paleolithic era have [sic] had the same physiological and psychological capabilities as us (“biologically they were us” [citation in original], although their cultures and ways of life were obviously different.  These forager bands sustained their ways of life and social structures into the 20th century. Forager bands, albeit influenced to different degrees by external factors, were extensively studied around the world by anthropologists, and these studies provide valuable information regarding behavior and social structures in the Paleolithic era. 

An important characteristic of forager bands, which has become a topic of interest especially since the 1990’s, is their egalitarian social structures.  Wide agreement exists that the social structure of small nomadic societies in the Paleolithic era was egalitarian [citations in original]. Even at the present, after a long period of environmental influences, only a few examples of nonegalitarian foraging societies exist, and these too are affected by high population density and large group size, sedentary life, and other specific characteristics [citation in original]. As Boehm [citation in original] puts it, “Indeed, this egalitarian approach appears to be universal for foragers who live in small bands that remain nomadic, suggesting considerable antiquity for political egalitarianism.”  No strict hierarchical structure existed in foraging bands: decisions had to be reached through consensus, leaders usually had little, if any, substantial power over other group members, and people could come and go as they pleased [Emphasis added].

The Linkage Between Technology and Democracy

As Shultziner points out:

The Paleolithic era, however, ended with the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, human beings began to settle permanently in one place and to grow plants and animals for their subsistence. This period in human history is known as the Neolithic era. Gradually, sedentary agriculture became the dominant mode of life in most areas of the world inhabited by humans (but not in all areas). The invention of agriculture revolutionized the environmental conditions human beings once lived under, and consequently remarkably changed social structures. Small egalitarian foraging societies were replaced by larger scale sedentary settlements, some of which later became empires. As these sedentary settlements developed and grew, central authoritative power of large scale societies came into being. Put differently, the invention of agriculture resulted in far-reaching consequences on the social structures of human beings.

Shultziner aids understanding by putting the “entire time-span of human history, into an intriguing, one-day, temporal scale.

In order to put the emergence of democracy, and the transitions to democracy, in the right context, then, it would be helpful to compare the scope of this phenomenon to the entire time-span of human history, namely at least 102,000 years (if not 200,000) since Homo sapience began to dwell on the earth. A helpful perceptual scale and illustration would be to compare the relative portion of historical periods to their equivalent in a one-day scale. For more than 21.5 hours of the day (more than 90% of human history), human beings lived in small egalitarian societies of foragers. The emergence of agriculture and the beginning of the Neolithic era occurred in the last 2.5 hours of the day. The Athenian democracy briefly emerged and disappeared 36 minutes before midnight. The modern territorial sovereign state system that began to crystallize after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) was created in the last 8 seconds of that day. Democracy, as a type of regime that qualifies to 20th century definitions, emerged barely 2 seconds ago! In this context, and by 20th century standards of the term, democracy is a very recent development in human history [Emphasis added].

Shultziner goes on to state:

Although democracy by 20th century definition may be a very new phenomenon, I argue that its historical roots and causes lie in ancient times, long before the Athenian democracy came into being [citation in original].  In order to gain a better understanding of why we witness a fast rate of transitions to democracy in recent history we are required to look more closely at the egalitarian social structures under which human beings lived through the Paleolithic era.

In Part III of this essay, I shall discuss the development of these egalitarian social structures as they relate to the culture of early man and their linkage with what is known about social behavior in other species.

I got a nasty comment on one of my posts the other day by a Kevin P Ward, who is apparently the director of something called the Aspen Science Center. You can read the post for yourself as it is distasteful. So like most people, I wanted to know why he said what he said and looked him up on the internet.

The goals of the center seem noble; educating both children and adults on the sciences. Having been a technologist  for 30 years I believe this is one of the most important responsibilities in our nation today. The Science Center have had some pretty good speakers who appear to be experts on their subjects. I also found that Mr. Ward gained some notoriety during the 2008 election when he called for a science debate between the presidential candidates. He was quoted in the Aspen Times as saying President Bush “has legitimized scientific ignorance in the public arena” in emphasizing the importance of his own vision of science.

Accusing the president of dismissing global warming as “just another theory”, Ward said ” So’s gravity. I invite him to walk off the roof of a 3 story building”.  Last I looked, it was called Newton’s Law of Gravity. Whatever the eventual truth, AGW is still only a theory. Mr Ward was both wrong and condescending. And there, you see lies the rub. Too many people in the earth sciences either have either forgotten the the importance of  accuracy and fact or simply don’t care. They are also often very rude to those who differ with their theory.

Forty years ago, my father, a rocket scientist, served as acting director of ARPA (now DARPA). Even then, he was deeply concerned with the new field known as earth sciences. He pointed out that even in the mid to late 1960’s, some of the instrumentation available was so sensitive that in many cases the presence of certain elements and compounds was statistically meaningless. X parts per million or even parts per billion can have very little meaning in most cases. He would liken detection levels of some equipment to finding a grain of sand in a dumptruck.

The determinant, he said was the application. The same principles and technology that can, as an example, sniff plastic explosives and nuclear materials and the carbon in a core sample can be misapplied and the data manipulated either inaccurately or improperly. The tool must be used properly and the facts verified. And as Disraeli once raged  “lies, damned lies, and statistics”. The misuse and misapplication of the data has been a common issue at the Environmental Protection Agency and here in California for many years. When making decisions on science, the data must be sacrosanct. The problem seems to be far too common when it comes to earth sciences. The cost/benefit discussion, as well as a number of more fundamental issues, have in many cases been lost in the statistics.

And now we find perhaps the greatest scandal of all is based upon scientists playing fast and loose with the facts. I do not know the truth of anthropogenic global warming, but at the very least that the data has been corrupted, and one of the fundamental principles of scientific research has been violated. That they may have then manipulated and falsified that data is cause for the most serious of criminal charges.

Make no mistake about it. Trillions of dollars are at stake. The Cap & Trade bill in this country has already been damned by some of the leading climatologists as ineffectual. This is as much about money and power as it is about the environment.  In 2 weeks representatives of most every country on the planet will meet in Copenhagen on Global Warming, and the countrywith the most at stake is the United States. And now the data on which all of the decisions will be based has been irrevocably tainted.

A couple of years ago I read Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. I was amazed that virtually everything in it was anecdotal. The charts and graphs were subjective. In a book on an issue of science, it did not present a clear, logical case. This has been a running theme in the global warming debate. The science is rickety, fast and loose. The worms are squirming out of the can.

We rely on scientists to do their jobs scientifically. Unfortunately, it seems we are dealing with educated morons such as Mr. Ward. I believe Alex Trebek would agree this is the ultimate game of Jeopardy.

The idea behind this exercise is to find gaps in column 2 that might be filled by innovative technology and invention. (Work in progress)

TAG TENNIS: Organizer’s journey

Release Date: 25 September 2009 Genre: Comedy Cast: Ricky Gervais, Jennifer Garner, Jonah Hill, Tina Fey, Patrick Stewart Director: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson Writers: Ricky Gervais, Matthew Robinson Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Plot: A comedy set in a world where no one has ever lied, until a writer seizes the opportunity for personal gain.

So you know I LOVE Napoleon HIll. I am working on my Thinking and Growing Rich. My goal is to manifest $480 million dollars in the next 4 years. The book says to name your price, so I named one I think would make me happy. Whatever it is. Name it. Named it. Claim it. Claiming it. Manifesting what I think.

Part of getting the money–the main part really for me is gaining my freedom. Freedom to do what I want to do from moment to moment. Feeling freedom now–what will it feel like–working at the things I LOVE to do–inventing, business, working out, personal coaching, helping people with weight loss, and this…manifesting their dreams.

I have experienced this already. Sure it sounds nuts, but it’s not really. I manifested a size 10 from a size 20 and have maintained it after seeing it in my head I made it happen. The book says this and I knew it before I read the book as I experienced it from time to time previously. You have to feel what it’s like. I felt what my smaller body was like.

I know it works. I’m now working on a size 6–ripped and lean for good.

Anyway…so far I’ve been manifesting good parking spaces. Not $480 million dollars. But it’s a start.

Alissa

I wonder how many folks saw this article yesterday on the Stop the Cap! site:

Cable Companies’ Big Internet Swindle: They Charge You $40 For Broadband That Costs Them $8 To Provide

I had sent this article to a friend and his response was, “if all these huge profit margins are true, then why is Charter in bankruptcy?” Well, a possible reason is that even what ought to be a hugely profitable company can be sunk by bad management and horrible customer service (and I have seen allegations of both with regard to Charter).  But in a way, Charter is the reason for this article. As I mentioned in a previous article,  Charter wants to move to what they call “cunsumption based billing.”

I just want to point out that while people may be slow to react, they are not stupid.  America is littered with the remains of once-great corporations that in their day were at the top of the heap, but then got greedy.  At one time, the American railroads controlled much of the country, especially the in the west.  It took a while, but shippers finally figured out that trucks were less expensive and more practical.  The thing is, the railroads at one time had all the advantages, including friends in government and economies of scale, but they just plain got greedy and priced themselves out of the market.

I’ve previously mentioned Western Union, which at one time owned electronic text-based communications within the U.S.A.  But even as they became more automated, moving away from guys pounding brass keys and into the age of teletypewriters, fax machines, and microwaves, they kept raising the per-word prices for telegrams. At the same time, the price of a phone call kept falling.  Had Western Uninion been a bit smarter, they might have been a major player in today’s world of electronic communications.

Then we have landline phone service.  While this is a bit of a unique story, since in part it’s a story of the landline business being cannibalized by the wireline side of the business, it still is an example of many customers finally getting sick to death of being overcharged for service.

So what do we have today? We have cable companies and phone companies that overcharge for service, particularly with regard to broadband and cable television. The cable companies complain that they are being practically held up at gunpoint by the broadcasters and content providers, who demand higher fees, and therefore they need to pss those fees onto customers – however, they won’t even consider the one easy solution that would virtually eliminate that problem – allowing customers to pick and choose the channels they want, rather than being forced to subscribe to tiers of channels they don’t want in order to get channels they do want.  If customers were allowed to vote with their wallets, a lot of the alleged extortion by content providers would quickly end.  Yet the cable companies fight the very idea of à la carte programming tooth and nail.

As for metered billing for broadband – it’s totally unnecessary and it leaves customers open to possible fraud by the provider (this is sometimes even a problem with utilities where you can physically see the meter, so how much more of a problem will it be when the meter exists only in software, and customers have no possible way to check the accuracy of that meter).

But what I see here is a convergence of a “perfect storm” that’s going to totally reshape communications in the U.S.A. Here are a few, somewhat related points:

• Many other countries, particularly our competitors in Asia, are providing far higher broadband speeds to their customers, at a lower monthly rate.  Only so much of that can be explained by population density; I think a larger part is that in many of those countries it’s just not socially nor politically acceptable for companies to exhibit unbridled greed, and to gouge their customers for every penny they can get. The U.S.A. simply cannot afford to have its citizens giving up their broadband connections to avoid being gouged.
• The much-hated Universal Service Fund should be abolished, but instead it’s going to be expanded to include broadband.  However, the possible silver lining is that any time the government doles out money, it gains more control.  If the government used that control in a beneficial manner — by, for example, imposing network neutrality and a prohibition on metered billing on those companies that receive USF subsidies — it could nip some of these gouging attempts in the bud.  That’s not a long-term solution, however, since those regulations can and do change depending on the party in power.
• It looks like competitive broadband providers are finally going to be allowed to use “white space” (e.g. unoccupied television channels) to provide wireless service.  If the FCC can make sure that smaller providers get a fair shake, this could allow competitive wireless providers to offer broadband service at reasonable rates (note to such providers – PLEASE don’t assume your users will be happy with an upload speed only one-tenth of download speed.  People want to make and share thir own content, and you should allow them to do that without making them die of boredom).
• Also, when the large cable and DSL companies start gouging their customers, it creates a market for all available competitive services delivered via more traditional means (competitive DSL, current-technology wireless, etc.)
• Then there is “the ‘x’ factor” (see below).

What do I mean by “the ‘x’ factor”? I mean the new technology that’s not been fully explored yet.  Technology doesn’t stand still, and there may be a breakthrough soon that will cause all existing technologies to essentially become obsolete. Have you ever noticed that the SETI project, and other attempts to “tune in” to advanced civilizations “out there” haven’t met with any success? Maybe that’s because the aliens aren’t using old-fashioned radio waves. Our current forms of electromagnetic radiation are very inefficient and often, very power-hungry. I suspect that the world of quantum physics is going to provide us something much better, if our governments will allow it.

For example, Google “quantum entanglement” – now suppose there were a way to place two particles in a state of entanglement, such that when you change the state of one particle, the other changes instantaneously, withour regard even to the speed of light limitation on traditional electronic communications.  Imagine that you had a box at your ISP, and a companion box at your location, and each box contained two (or more) matched pairs of entangled particles (probably in some kind of plug-in module) – at least one pair of particles for transmitting data, the other for receiving.  These boxes wouldn’t use radio waves or the electromagnetic spectrum, so there would be no bandwidth limitations to worry about.  Furthermore, communications would be totally secure, because only the entangled particles would communicate with each other. That last part is why some governments would hate it – no more intercepting data mid-stream. But if that principle were developed commercially, your ISP could be on the moon for all you’d care, running off solar power and providing communications for half the planet – and if they started gouging their customers, someone else could set up a competing system, anywhere in the world. Maybe you could set one up in your basement, if you wanted to.

Sure, it sounds farfetched now – but so did the whole idea of radio before it was developed. We’re not talking some nebulous idea here, “quantum entanglement” is now a known principle of quantum physics. It’s just so new that either it hasn’t been commercially developed yet (much like the laser in the middle of the 20th century), or it’s being used in secret for totally secure communications, and the governments that are using it would rather you (and their enemies) didn’t know, not that there’s much an enemy could do about it.

My point here is that if today’s communications companies want to be around for the next revolution in technology (which will surely bring about opportunities that haven’t even been considered yet – who could have envisioned the opportunities the World Wide Web would create?), they had better re-think their ideas about alienating their customers. Sadly, American companies are notorious for not thinking ahead – as long as the current C.E.O. gets his golden parachute when he retires, what does he care what happens to the company in the future?  But the stockholders ought to care, and customers ought to care, and the government ought to care if they don’t want America to become a third-rate nation.

It will be interesting to see which companies survive the next few decades, and which ones kill the golden goose to get the immediate big windfall. But if I had to take service from one or the other, I’d rather get it from the one that plans on being around for the next century, and treats their customers accordingly.

วันนี้ซีมีชุดราตรียาว ที่จะสว่างเจิดจรัส จนใครๆก็เห็นแต่ไกลๆๆๆๆ

มานำเสนอค่ะ

ชุดราตรี ชุดนี้ อันที่จริงไม่ได้ออกมาจากแคทวอล์คไหนหรอก มันเป็นของจัดแสดงในหัวข้อ “Fast Forward : Inventing the Future” ที่พิพิธภัณฑ์วิทยาศาสตร์และอุตสาหกรรมแห่งเืมืองชิคาโก้ ประเทศสหรัฐอเมริกา

นับเป็นจอ แอลอีดี ดิสเพลย์ ชนิดสวมใส่ได้ ที่ใหญ่ที่สุดในโลกเลย

ชุดราตรีที่มีชื่อว่า GalaxyDress นี้นะคะ ใช้หลอดแอลอีดีชนิดบางพิเศษ ขนาด กว้าง 2 มม.ยาว 2 มม.จำนวน 24,000 ดวง และ มาพร้อมกับแบตเตอรี่ติดตั้งอยู่ตรงไหนไม่ได้ให้รายละเอียดไว้อ่ะคะ แต่บอกว่า สามารถเจิดจรัส และ เต้นรำกับเจ้าชายได้นาน 1 ชม. ก่อนที่จะต้องรีบถลกกระโปรง+ทิ้งรองเท้าไว้ข้างนึง แล้วขึ้นรถกลับไป

…ชาร์จแล้วมาซ้ำอีกรอบค่ะ

ราคาหรือต้นทุนการผลิตไม่ได้ลงไว้ค่ะ

อยากลองใส่ดูจัง

via : Book of Joe

Today, President Obama announced a new national science fair for young inventors. He wants to show kids how “cool” science is and give them the same treatment as sports stars when they win a championship. A noble goal, but one that doesn’t get the point. Obama decries the lag in science scores, but ignores the more important reality, a culture of innovation. As a lawyer and politician, he just doesn’t get it.

Someone else who didn’t get it and lost her job because of it is Carly Fiorina, now running for the Senate seat occupied by Barbara Boxer of California. Ms. Fiorina came out of the marketing and sales group at ATT/Lucent. When she began at AT&T, it was one of the country’s crown jewels of technology and included Bell Labs.  Cutting edge innovation in microcircuitry and telecommunications took place there every day. It was exciting and amazing. Over the years since it was started by Thomas Edison, Bell Labs invented radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, the photovoltaic cell,  and the UNIX operating system and 100 other basic technologies. There was no specific brief on where they could go, and a lot of the “pure” research that was done ended up paying huge dividends.

With outsourcing and offshoring, the MBA’s, including Ms. Fiorina, decided that the scientists and engineers and lab techs were too expensive and that emphasis should be placed on applied research. Thus began the downsizing and dismantlement of much of Bell Labs. Today it is a shadow of it’s former self.

Ms. Fiorina led the spinoff of Lucent from AT&T to “enhance shareholder value”. From there she leapt to Hewlett Packard, where she again cut back on the R&D side. Agilent, the scientific instrument business, was spun off in 1999 and she was the center of it. She then proceeded to purchase Compaq Computer, a commodity computer manufacturer to go with what was left of HP. All of these bad decisions have been reflected in the price per share of these companies for years afterwards. HP had effectively lost its soul. From the days of Bill & Dave using Stanford as their minor league system and creating the ultimate engineering culture, it went to Ms. Fiorina’s infamous  “does anybody have a good idea for a new product?” memo.

What neither Mr. Obama nor Ms. Fiorina understand is that invention and science spring from a certain culture. Tinkerers, designers, machinists, basement chemists, slide rule jockeys, and geeks are all a part of this. But management has quite successfully outsourced most of this to a point where even leading technologists no longer have a fundamental understanding of the means of production, which is essential to invention and manufacturing. Today, we have some of the smartest people in the world working in the labs with almost no understanding of how biotech and nanotech and all sorts of other tech translates into the real world.

There is a certain joy in making something faster or watching a chemical reaction or putting things together in new ways. But you have to have the ability to translate those ideas into reality effectively. and this we have lost.

We don’t have the factory floors to prowl or the conference rooms to BS in or the processing lines out back to see “what if”. Even DARPA is a closed loop devoted to “applications” oriented research instead of the blue sky “let’s fund this crazy idea for $1,000,000, Dick” organization it was 20 or 30 years ago.  Management and government thought of maximizing shareholder value and COTS (Commercial, off the shelf) instead of optimizing manufacturing, and the cross-pollination of ideas that creates breakthroughs. The bureaucrats and MBA’s are firmly in charge now.

Now, when a lot of the infrastructure is gone, the President wants to encourage invention once again. It’s a noble cause, but the horse is to a good degree out of the barn. Ms. Fiorina wants to be a Senator well, just because she wants to. Kids can’t even access a proper lab these days because of liability issues and the fact that chemicals and electricity and making things can be “so dangerous”. Gouges and scrapes and burns used to be badges of honor in the manufacturing/engineering class. Now they are causes for lawsuits.

American exceptionalism was defined by the opportunity to fail or make it big. Opportunity of outcome doesn’t work in science and technology. There were over 100,000 people on the Apollo program who were dedicated and failure truly was not an option. With  millions of parts on a Saturn rocket, 99.99% reliability still meant that hundreds could fail, any of which could lead to disaster. The miracle was that we got any rockets off the ground and that we had so few failures. Instead, as a counterpoint, today we are presented with a climate research scandal in which results may have been tainted and data faked. The deterioration of the scientific culture itself is an issue.

MBA’s and lawyers are probably the least qualified to address these issues. Both Ms. Fiorina and Mr. Obama are of the type who think that steaks come from the supermarket rather than cows. This is not getting out there and addressing our country’s desperate need to regain our mojo. The old guys are still out there. Technology has not changed so that we are irrevocably behind, but we must act now. As the government blows trillions of dollars propping up decrepit companies and paying off political allies, our country must once again focus on what made us great. On so many levels, the clock is ticking. We should really be taking those billions and investing in manufacturing and technology rather than things like cash for clunkers and make work highway projects.

Yet another Genius emerged in the world of Technology from India. His name is Pranav Mistry – The inventor of Sixth-sense device, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data, a device that is worn like a pendant and super­imposes digital information on the physical world.

Unlike previous “augmented reality” systems, it’s in­expensive, off-the-shelf hardware. Two cables connect an LED projector and web-cam to a Web-enabled mobile phone, but the system can easily be made wireless.

1. Camera: A webcam captures an object in view and tracks the user’s hand gestures. It sends the data to the smart phone.

2. Colored Markers: Marking the user’s fingers with red, yellow, green, and blue tape helps the webcam recognize gestures. Mistry is working on gesture-recognition algorithms that could eliminate the need for the markers.

3. Projector: A tiny LED projector displays data sent from the smart phone on any surface in view–object, wall, or person. Mistry hopes to start using laser projectors to increase the brightness.

4. Smart Phone: A Web-enabled smart phone in the user’s pocket processes the video data, using vision algorithms to identify the object. Other software searches the Web and interprets the hand gestures.

Here is a video which explores this technology:

Video

Someone truly said ” Necessity is the mother of Invention”

A. J. Beard’s Jenny Coupler

A. J. Beards's Jenny Coupler

Patent No. 594.059 Was Awarded November 23, 1897, To Black Inventor, Andrew Jackson Beard.

Despite Having No Formal Education In Engineering And Metalwork, Beard Invented An Automatic Railroad Car Coupling Device Called The Jenny Coupler.

Prior To The Jenny Coupler, Trains Were Joined Together Manually, Causing Thousands Of Railroad Workers To Lose Hands, Arms And Even Their Lives.

Born In Eastlake, Alabama, In 1850, Beard Labored For Years In Railroad Yards Where He Personally Witnessed Tragic Accidents, When Workers Tried To The Rapid Procedure Of Manually Coupling Train Cars With A Pin.

Beard Sold His Lifesaving Invention To A Company For $50,000.00.

“In Order For Black History To Live, We Must Continue To Breathe Life Into It.” — Hubert Gaddy, Jr.

Hugh Gaddy

Create Your Badge

This week, one of my more amusing reads has been “Complete and utter Zebu” by Simon Rose and Steve Caplin (to find out what Zebu is, you’ll have to buy the book). It’s a catalogue of the sometimes scary lies told by businesses, politicians and publicity gurus to part us from our money, our morals, or our votes. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable read.

It seems odd for me to pull a business lesson out of a book which spends much of its time holding a sceptical eye up to some of big business’ more dubious tactics; but towards the end of the book I found a delightful chapter devoted to quotes from some of history’s most influential businesspeople and inventors- getting things wrong. And because they’re quotes, I can repeat some of them here for you.

“The Phonograph has no commercial value” - Thomas Edison

“This ‘Telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a practical form of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us”- Western Union Memo

“That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced”- Scientific American, 1909

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”- Harry Warner, head of Warner Brothers, 1927

“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”- Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century Fox, 1946

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”- Ken Olsen, founder of Digital Equipment, 1977

So – you can rightly giggle to yourself at these pontificating pronouncements from the great and the good. Edison, of course, is forgivable for many of these comments – he successfully patented a raft of inventions; and watched several more reach a mass audience with somebody else long after he had discarded them.

Several more of these comments, though (particularly Warner and 20th Century Fox) are paradigm examples of big companies sticking their heads in the sand when a new, threatening technology comes along; hoping the danger will go away.

The quote from Scientific American about cars is also by no means alone – in the 1800s, the British Society, then the world’s foremost platform for scientific discourse, almost closed its doors, claiming that “everything there to be discovered has been discovered”.

What makes these comments so interesting is that we’re all experts when we’re armed with hindsight. In the fray of business, these big players are at an inherent disadvantage. They move slowly and ponderously. It’s small, agile companies which create game-changing new business models. Some smarter large businesses see this, and create innovation labs to check out new ideas. They fund offshoots without the burden of the big corporate architecture, to accelerate new ideas to fruition.

Fashion brands even employ young style consultants who are so close to emerging trends that they can spot next year’s playground uber-trend while it’s still incubating in just one urban club.

But if you’re looking for the Next Big Thing, you can do no better than to ask yourself, all the time, “Why does it have to be this way?” By thinking differently, by challenging received wisdom, by questioning the assumed and obvious; that’s where so many innovative new ideas and their subsequent businesses can be allowed to emerge. And that thinking needs no money: just an open mind.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Want to invent the next iPod? Then don’t try too hard. We may be able to train our minds to be better at generating ideas, according to recent thinking on how we think, and often the best way to foster a brilliant idea is not to push it. Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman used to visit a topless bar, sip a soda and scribble quantum mechanics on a napkin. Einstein’s theory of special relativity came after he imagined himself a child riding on a beam of light.

Read the full article here.

Recently, I had the privledge to enjoy the Dallas Nasher Art Exhibition with my
mother and sisters. Thanks Debra for suggesting we go visit the Nasher Exhibit.
There was an exhibit which pressed on me. . .
  Antony Gromely’s ‘Quantum Cloud XX’.

With all the activity taking place around the CERN this November 2009,
in France, I looked around and found ‘Higgs Field Bosons’  while watching the video below.
The Bosons immediatly reminded me of my encounter with the ‘Quantum Cloud XX’ of Gromely.

Prediction: The appearance of the Higgs Field/Bosons is a response to Will (Intellect and Emotion united). 
Related to: Law of Attraction, mind over body, cause and effect, Intelligent Design, Creation, Creator, faith healing, invention, desire, energy, mass

 A little bit of E=MC2 , ontology and mind over body all mixed up. Enjoy the Ah Ha!

Antony Gormley working on Quantum Cloud XX

The Higgs Boson and Mass

Cela faisait presque 10 ans que René Granion, plombier-zingueur dans la Marne, travaillait secrètement sur sa toute dernière invention. C’est donc avec une certaine fierté, et non sans émotion, qu’il présenta Jeudi dernier devant le public ébahi de la XIV^ème Convention des Inventeurs de Demain, sa Décourbeuse.

Une machine extraordinaire qui annule la courbure des bananes, mais aussi courgettes et autres haricots, sans leur faire perdre de leur goût, ni de leurs propriétés énergétiques. Une véritable révolution dans le monde scientifique.

« Tout a commencé quand j’étais gamin, raconte René. Je m’amusais à dessiner mon nom avec des fruits. Pour le “i ” j’utilisais une banane. Les gens se moquaient en pensant que c’était un  “c”. J’ai juré de me venger.»

Interrogé, Pierre Desmonges, actuel secrétaire du Syndicat de Transporteurs de Végétaux, témoigne : « Nous étions tous sous le choc. Il nous a fallu quelques instants avant de réaliser ce qu’il se passait. Cette découverte marque une nouvelle étape dans l’histoire de notre combat. Après des années d’exploitation et d’insécurité, nous allons enfin pouvoir augmenter le chargement de nos cargaisons tout en conservant un équilibre parfait. On ne se rend pas compte, mais la courbure des bananes, ça fait sacrément tanguer les camions. ».

Justement, et suite à l’enthousiasme suscité par cette invention, René Granion a été immédiatement contacté par de nombreux groupes industriels. Parmi la liste des investisseurs figurait la société BananaSpliff, actuel numéro 2 de la vente de fruits et légumes à courbure dans le monde.

Le site de vente de sex-toys organiques loveyourorgan.com se dit « intéressé ». Clark Wimphrey, directeur design du groupe, déclare : « Nous suivons de très près cette nouvelle invention. Des pourparlers avec M. Granion sont en cours, au sujet d’une éventuelle coopération dans le développement d’une Courbeuse. »

A  l’AIRC (Agence d’Innovation et de Recherche sur les Cucurbitacés) on est intéressé, mais sceptique. Adamo Koblewsky, directeur de la division Apparence, déclare qu’il est « trop tôt pour se prononcer sur l’avenir de cette technologie ». Cependant l’excitation face à l’annonce de la percée historique de René Granion est palpable.

Néanmoins, certaines voix se font l’écho de la vague de doute qui accompagne cette découverte. « C’est un camouflet affirme-t-on dans les couloirs du CNRS. Jamais une courgette droite n’égalera la saveur d’une authentique courbée. Surtout pas en ratatouille. »

A l’Académie Française, on est inquiet. « “Avoir la banane” est une expression fondatrice de notre identité française. Si elle perd son sens, nous courrons un grand danger » avertit Jean d’Ormesson.

René, malgré les critiques de ses détracteurs, se prend déjà à rêver de grandeurs. « Il y a tellement d’applications s’enthousiasme-t-il avec passion. Vous imaginez pouvoir ranger vos bananes dans des rouleaux de PQ ? Le gain de place est immense. Ou encore créer des crucifix à partir de cornichons. Très utile pour Halloween. » Mais son plus grand espoir de conquête de nouveaux marchés nous confie-t-il, est ailleurs. Combinée avec un système de grill, sa Décourbeuse peut en effet garder les merguez et saucisses droites pendant leur cuisson. Non sans fierté, il s’exclame : « Finies les chipos qui dépassent des baguettes en mettant du ketchup partout ! »

Le début d’une nouvelle ère.

“The Harvest of Seasons”,  part two of Jacob Bronowski’s “The Ascent of Man” (1973), covers the rise of civilization from agriculture.

For two million years man wandered the face of the earth. With fire and stone tools he had some control over the physical world. With the agricultural revolution he learns to control the biological world: how to plant grain, like wheat and maize, and to keep animals, like goats and sheep. With that came a social revolution: villages, towns and cities sprung up.

Civilization can never grow up on the move. A good example is the Bakhtiari in Persia. Every year they must cross six mountain ranges with their sheep and goats to get to the summer grasslands and then come all the way back to get to the autumn ones. The worst part is not the mountains but the Bazuft, a wild and deadly river they must cross. Those who are too old to cross starve to death at the river’s edge.

Because the Bakhtiari are always on the move they have little: they must be able to pack and carry everything they own every day. So everything they have is simple and lightweight. Their life is so hard there is little time for invention, even for a new song. Every man becomes like his father, every day is like the day before.

With planting man could grow more food than he needs. He could live in one place and build a house and have a home. His wanderings were over. He could own way more things. He had time for new songs, for creating new things. Even the simplest village has all sorts of little inventions that we do not even think about: needles, pots, nails, screws, string, knots, hooks, buttons, shoes, etc.

One of the oldest cities in the world is Jericho of the Bible. By 6ooo BC it had 3,000 people. Joshua would not arrive for another 4,600 years. It was made possible by two things: wheat and water.

The wheat that we know, the wheat we make bread out of, did not grow anywhere in the world in 80oo BC. It came about by a true fairy tale of genetics: first Emmer wheat came from crossing two wild grasses. That crossed again with yet another wild grass and then mutated to give us bread wheat. Like maize, it needs man to plant and care for it.

Some dates:

• 8ooo BC: Emmer wheat, sheep, goats
• 7000 BC:
• 6000 BC: towns: Jericho has 3000 people
• 5000 BC: pots
• 4000 BC:
• 3000 BC: wheel, horse
• 2000 BC: men riding horses
• 1000 BC: the time of King David

The horse was faster and stronger than any other animal man knew how to control. The best horsemen were herdsmen, like the Scythians and the Mongols. They did not respect civilization. From time to time they would come out of the grasslands in the middle of Eurasia, destroying all before them. They were an empty whirlwind: they had nothing of their own to give. The future of man did not lay with them.

See also:

• YouTube: The Harvest of the Seasons
• Jacob Bronowski: Lower than the Angels – part 1
• guns, germs and steel
• A Guide to Turks

Back in the mid-1970s’, gifted inventor Richard Clem was working for the city of Dallas, operating heavy equipment when he noticed that a heated asphalt sprayer for paving streets would continue running for many minutes after the gas engine was turned off. This aroused his natural curiosity and from this, he designed and built a closed system engine that was purported to generate 350 HP and run itself.

The engine weighed about 200 pounds and ran on cooking oil at temperatures of 300 F.. As the years have passed, we have accumulated slightly more information, such as the fact that he first tried engine oil but found it would break down too soon due to the high heat produced by the engine, so he used Mazola cooking oil which would operate over many months at the requisite +300 degrees F.. Roughly four years have passed with no new information coming in about the Clem engine until around Halloween of 2009.

Two introductory emails followed by a phone call from Jim Ray, President of Micro-Combustion, Inc., we have since exchanged many emails and he sent me about 25 documents of his company’s work with what he personally knew of working with Richard Clem and his famous engine and how he had taken it much further, building several working models, which were tested and validated by NASA and by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

It was in 2005 that a NASA scientist and Jim Ray saw on the Internet the picture of the actual first engine and noticed it had a double chamber. As the president of Micro-Combustion he then figured out how to build this engine with the double chamber, but did not have sufficient funds or shop capability to complete or rebuild this design, instead concentrating on the physics and chemistry of the original engine.

Richard had claimed that it was perpetual motion but since there is no such thing Jim felt there was some unknown factor in the equation of the Laws of Physics. The company has now postulated a theory complying with these equations and Laws of Physics as to what made Richard’s engine run without air induction and/or combustion of any given amount or type of fuel.

Micro-Combustion, Inc. was formed in 1997 and privately funded to continue research on the engine, it has produced several hundred prototype versions that have resulted in an excellent understanding of what has now been identified as Cavitation Ignition Bubble Combustion (CIBC), and hence the likely ability to take this breakthrough technology to commercialization.

“The Cavitation-Ignition Bubble Combustion (CIBC) engine is a new discovery in green energy technology that holds the potential to replace fossil fuel altogether. The basic idea behind this new engine is simple but revolutionary:

it utilizes a small air bubble in a fluid (the fuel) as the combustion chamber to compress, ignite, and capture the energy (heat) released by the combustion of the fuel-air contents of the bubble.

The fuel also happens to be the working fluid, which drives the turbine blades to extract power. The CIBC engine can run on just about any liquid hydrocarbon fuel, including plant, mineral, or recycled oils.

Although the CIBC engine can operate on petroleum-based fuels, they are not required. Its ability to operate on alternative liquid fuels holds the potential, if fully realized, to transform the transportation sector by reducing or eliminating our nation’s reliance on domestic or imported petroleum-based fuels.”

No doubt you can see many correlations throughout history and today, Keely’s Molecular Dissociation and his Cavitation Engine, Schauberger’s Implosion Engine the Zokwendle, Griggs Hydrosonics and several more which adds that much more credence to this new Clem Engine understanding.

Imagine an engine the size of a basketball running your car, truck, boat, etc.. And it is scaleable, meaning the bigger it is the more power it produces so we could power trains, shipping freighters, even airplanes, but the best part is to hook it up to a generator and produce all the power for your home.

Finally we could get off the grid which would lead us toward the mythical ‘Autonomous Home’ where you generate all the power you need for heating, air conditioning, cooking, condensing water from the air and dissociating waste.

When such an engine is available and in use worldwide, what then of solar, wind, wave and other, in comparison, primitive forms of energy collection?

This rebirth of the Clem Engine in the form of the ‘Cavitation-Ignition Bubble Combustion (CIBC) Engine’ by the good folks at Micro-Combustion, Inc. is a major stepping stone on that path and I will do all I can to help them complete their work and get these amazing engines on the market. Visit the Micro-Combustion, Inc. website for additional fascinating details and company contact information. – Full ‘Clem Reborn’ Article on KeelyNet

It is ready to be launched as a single-seater for sale in Shanghai in 2010 for a mere RMB 4,000 (US$600). Interested? Wait till you learn that it will cruise at 100-120 Km/Hr with an unbelievable 0.99 litre/100Km (258 miles/gallon)!

Better than Electric Car – 258 miles/gallon: IPO 2010 in Shanghai
This is a single seat car
From conception to production: 3 years and the company is headquartered in Hamburg, Germany
Gas tank capacity = 1.7 gallons (7 litr)
Speed = 62 – 74.6 Miles/hour (103 klm/hr)
Fuel efficiency = 258 miles/gallon
Travel distance with a full tank = 404 miles (674 klm)

(Thanks to Duncan Roads at Nexus Magazine for this headsup! – JWD) – Full Article Source

This is a wonderful 2 hour DVD which presents one man’s lifelong study of pyramids, crystals and their effects.

Several of his original and very creative experiments are explained and diagramed out for experimenters.

These experiments include;

1) transmutation of zinc to lower elements using a tetrahedron,
2) energy extraction from a pyramid,
3) determining mathematic ratios of nature in a simple experiment,
4) accelerating the growth of food,
5) increasing the abundance of food,
6) how crystals amplify, focus and defocus energy,
7) using crystals to assist natural healing,
how the universe uses spirals and vortexes to produce free energy and MORE,

This DVD is available for just $20 + Shipping and Handling /” Source to Buy and Youtube Clip

So how come these guys were given all that money expressly for the purpose of electric cars, now they change their mind and get to KEEP the money? No way, they need to return it as it was gained under false promises..that is FRAUD!

If you believed all the talk from Chrysler about how our tax dollars would help finance its fast-track electric-vehicle future, you’re in for a big disappointment. Chrysler has disbanded the engineering team that was trying to bring three electric models to market as a rush job, Automotive News reports today.

Chrysler cited its devotion to electric vehicles as one of the key reasons why the Obama administration and Congress needed to give it $12.5 billion in bailout money, the News points out. – (So GIVE THE MONEY BACK, YOU LIARS! – JWD)”
- Full Article Source

A few years ago, my company sent me to Georgia to assist in training and setup control systems. I was there two weeks so had time to drive around and hang out with the locals. Everywhere there was this dense foliage covering telephone polls, old houses, barns and other structures. They told me it was a Japanese plant called kudzu and was very hard to control or kill. But some of the locals were using it to make baskets and other items, though they would rather it just be gone because it grew so fast and overtook everything in its path. So this item caught my interest;

“Researchers from the University of Georgia and Dow AgroSciences have identified a kudzu-eating pest in northeast Georgia that has never been found in the Western Hemisphere. Unfortunately, the bug also eats legume crops, especially soybeans. Suiter says the pest’s populations are, for now, contained to northeast Georgia.

It’s an “invasive species feeding on an invasive species.” Introduced to the U.S. in 1876 from Japan, kudzu was planted in the 1930s to control soil erosion. It now tops the nation’s invasive species list. “We have no idea what the long-term impact on kudzu will be, but we also have to consider the fact that it feeds on crops, too,” he said. “

It’s kind of a double-edged sword. It eats kudzu, which is good, but it also stinks and gets on homes. And the ominous threat is that it eats soybeans and other legume crops.”” – Full Article Source