Robohazard ~ Cold Arbor. Power Tool. Word.

Charles ships robohazard "power tool" Cold Arbor. Watch it cut...

Playing With LN2 ~ Handy Leiden-Frost Effect

Theodore Gray plays with liquid Nitrogen on PopSci... Momentous Scientist Daniel Rosenberg of In Demo Veritas fame at Harvard cautions that any joker stupid enough to try this for themselves should take extreme care and not do anything really foolish like have on metal rings, watch, bracelet, nor sleeves that might trap LN2 long enough to give a serious cold-burn.

Giraffe Dissection ~ Inside Natures Giants Episode

Wow, Inside Natures Giants features a Giraffe Dissection... Thanks to Discovery Blog for the spot.

Hacking Barbie ~ Extracting Cool Spy Gadget!

LOL, Cynical-C spots Hacking Barbie by Kipkay!

Smartphone Census ~ Brazil Gets Data All-Digital

Thanks to Engineering for Change (plus Slashdot, etc) for spotting Parminder Bahra's piece Brazil’s Smartphone Census...

"...the Brazilian government has embarked on the world’s first fully digital national census. It has achieved this ahead of countries like the US whose digital trials failed and resulted in it reverting to an old-fashioned paper based census. The Brazilian census is another example of how developing and emerging countries are using technology to address the challenges they face and leapfrogging developed countries. [...] The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), who conducted the survey, opted for off the shelf technology. It ordered 150,000 LG 750 GM smartphones which are widely available and retail at around £180 (US$280). Census interviewers collected responses onto the smartphones which in turn were used to send the data via GPS to one of 7,000 data collection units. The Brazilians say that the digital census has several advantages over paper and pen methods. They say that the data is more accurate since GPS data will pinpoint the exact location of a household. The GPS data is cross-referenced with satellite images to ensure that responses are correctly geo-tagged. The digital approach allows changes to areas, streets and buildings to be incorporated. This is particularly pertinent in the slums as these areas tend to change quickly and their density mean that printed maps are quickly out of date. The use of digital technology means that mapping is considerably more accurate and that adjustments and changes can be made all the time to ensure that the coverage is as comprehensive as possible."

Great! This enables ever more sophisticated socioinformatics and is an excellent example of building higher-level functionality on top of mobile phones and networks.

Science on Screen ~ IgNobel Commentary Too!

The Coolidge Corner Theatre launches this season's Science on Screen series next week Monday, September 6 at 7 pm with a special presentation of The Man in the White Suit...

"...a classic satirical comedy about a mild-mannered but single-minded chemist -- Alex Guinness -- determined to bring progress to mankind by developing a new kind of fabric that never gets dirty and never wears out. Before the film, Marc Abrahams, editor of the science humor magazine The Annals of Improbable Research and founder of the Ig Nobel Prizes, will discuss some of the world’s most unusual inventions. [...] He will be joined by Harvard chemist Daniel Rosenberg [of Moments of Science and InDemoVeritas fame], who will address a key question, especially for all those prone to spillage: Is it scientifically possible to create everlasting, dirt-resistant clothing?"

Price? Less than $10! See trailer for a taste of The Man...

Complicated Mechanisms ~ Simple Animes!

Thanks to Richard Willey for spotting this cool World of Technology post on Complicated Mechanisms, for instance, the Maltese Cross used in clocks to move second hand...

Greatest Rivalry ~ Winning Friendship Via Sports

Great to read A Winning Friendship by Kate Meyers in Parade this Sunday. Tennis superstars Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova rocked the 70s and 80s with greatest rivalry, but one which was complemented by remarkably close ties...

"Chris Evert -- We’ve been through so much history, so many layers of emotions. We were such opposites, it enabled us to get closer. She has my back; I have hers. I think people forget that we were left alone in the locker room every Sunday after we played final matches, and one of us would be crying and the other would be comforting -- nobody saw that.
Martina Navratilova -- You always had to guard yourself because you didn’t want to be too destroyed when you lost or too gloating when you won, because you didn’t want to upset the other person. Now we don’t have to guard anything.
So you always wanted to beat her at her best?
Martina -- That’s what it’s about. I’ve always said that, and people don’t believe me.
Chris -- And God love her. Here’s an example: When my first marriage was ending, I was kind of down, and Martina said, “Come on up to Aspen” and taught me how to ski. We would ski from 9 to 2, play tennis for two hours, then be in the gym for two hours -- and she showed me what she was doing with weights. We did this for a week. Not many people who are No. 1 and No. 2 competitors would do that."

Glorious!

PEZA ~ Philippine Economic Zone Authority...

I'm quite interested in the powerful, multiplying role special economic zones have in national and regional development. Today we spotlight PEZA, the Philippine Economic Zone Authority...

"The Philippine government agency tasked to promote investments, extend assistance, register, grant incentives to and facilitate the business operations of investors in export-oriented manufacturing and service facilities inside selected areas throughout the country proclaimed by the President of the Philippines as PEZA Special Economic Zones."

They're all over the country...

M-Kesho ~ Mobile Finance Revolution Continues!

Many thanks to Harvard colleague Calestous Juma for spotting this timely piece by Jamie Zimmerman and Jamie Holmes in the FP on The M-Banking Revolution ~ Why cell phones will do more for the developing world than laptops ever could. This is centrally about dominant Kenyan mobile operator Safaricom and their M-Pesa mobile payment offering...

"In May, Safaricom took it one step further, partnering with Equity Bank and offering M-Kesho, an interest-bearing savings account, to all M-Pesa users. Subscribers can now use their cell phones to transfer money from their M-Pesa accounts -- using Safaricom's existing network of nearly 20,000 licensed card vendors -- into their M-Kesho accounts. M-Kesho users are also able to access mobile microinsurance and microloan products."

Very compelling indeed! A consumer finance revolution, even...

Future in 2050 ~ Imagining the Possibilities...

Imagining the possible Futures in 2050...

Kharkov Projections ~ Beautiful Beamed Artshow!

Miss Cellania spots another beautifully projected artshow...

MakerFaireAfrica 2010 ~ Projects Showcase...

Thanks to Lars Torres and Engineering for Change for spotting this MakerFaireAfrica 2010 project showcase...

Maker Faire Africa 2010

Dutch Design ~ Craft, Fashion, Architecture++

Thanks to amy in .nl for spotting this intro to Dutch Design...

Rattlesnake Roundup ~ This Ain't Disneyland;-)

UniqueDaily delivers with this spot of National Geographic clip on the Rattlesnake Roundup! Only in the USA...

Brazilian Agriculture ~ Economist on Big Farming

Great piece in The Economist on Brazilian Agriculture spotlighting the vast transformation of that country's agri-sector enabled by research organization Embrapa plus systems-thinking plus savvy venture investment...

"Brazil’s agricultural miracle did not happen through a simple technological fix. No magic bullet accounts for it -- not even the tropical soyabean, which comes closest. Rather, Embrapa’s was a “system approach”, as its scientists call it: all the interventions worked together. Improving the soil and the new tropical soyabeans were both needed for farming the cerrado; the two together also made possible the changes in farm techniques which have boosted yields further. Systems are much harder to export than a simple fix. “We went to the US and brought back the whole package [of cutting-edge agriculture in the 1970s],” says Dr Crestana. “That didn’t work and it took us 30 years to create our own."

Also, see here an earlier piece in Businessweek by Joshua Schneyer on Brazil's Answer to Global Hunger.

Rosling's World ~ See the Gapminder's Story...

Watch the Gapminder's story! Hans Rosling's World...

Civil Matters ~ Properly Paying Indian Engineers...

Vikas Bajaj writes in the NYTimes about India, A High-Tech Titan Plagued by Potholes. No surprise, though, since they don't properly pay for talent.

"India’s full economic potential is stifled by potholed roadways, collapsing bridges, rickety railroads and a power grid so unreliable that many modern office buildings run their own diesel generators to make sure the lights and computers stay on. It is not for want of money. The Indian government aims to spend $500 billion on infrastructure by 2012 and twice that amount in the following five years. The problem is a dearth of engineers -- or at least the civil engineers with the skill and expertise to make sure those ambitious projects are done on time and up to specifications. Civil engineering was once an elite occupation in India, not only during the British colonial era of carving roads and laying train tracks, but also long after independence as part of the civil service. These days, though, India’s best and brightest know there is more money and prestige in writing software for foreign customers than in building roadways for their nation. [Says a representative Indian engineer] "It was fun doing that," he said of the construction job. "My only dissatisfaction was the pay package."

Hello, isn't it blindingly obvious that quantity of compensation attracts quality of talent?!

Deep Endurance ~ Rescuing Chile's Miners...

South American copper mining country Chile is in the middle of an epic attempt to rescue 33 miners from nearly a klick down underground trapped in the San José Mine since 5 August 2010. 18 days later an exploratory drill probe finally found them in remarkably good shape -- a record-setting period. While it may yet be months before -- under the best of circumstances -- they will be extracted, we can already draw hope and inspiration from their resilience, camaraderie, inventiveness, and deep endurance. ¡Fuerza!

R.I.P. Jack Horkheimer ~ Sayonara, Star Gazer...

Alas, Jack Horkheimer has passed on. As Stephen Miller in the WSJournal salutes...

"For millions who watched his weekly TV show, Jack Horkheimer was the Star Gazer, a slightly cracked character who delineated the night sky with humor and cheesy graphics. Mr. Horkheimer, who died Friday at 72, was as celestial guide at Miami's Space Transit Planetarium since the 1960s, and in 1976 started his weekly five-minute PBS show, billed as the only national program devoted to naked-eye astronomy. "Jack was the consummate pitchman for the stars," said Dave Weinrich, president-elect of the International Planetarium Society. The show's seeming low-tech approach and chirpy intro music by Isao Tomita set the stage for a performer so enthusiastic about the heavens that Mr. Horkheimer originally billed himself as "The Star Hustler."

R.I.P. stellar showman! "Keep looking up!"

Watts Up? ~ We Misallocate Conservation Acts

The latest Economist asks-answers Watts up? People habitually underestimate their energy consumption...

"Environmental asceticism has created a vogue for upgrading light-bulbs and tweaking thermostats. But according to a new piece of research, many of these actions -- however virtuous -- arise from faulty perceptions of energy savings. [...] When asked to rank the single most effective way to save energy, participants typically endorsed activities with small savings, such as turning off lights, while ignoring what they could economise on larger devices. This suggests that people misallocate their efforts, fretting over an unattended lamp (at 100 watts) while neglecting the energy they could save by nudging their washer settings from “hot” to “warm” (4,000 watt-hours for each load of laundry). A quirk of human psychology could help to explain these persistent underestimates. When calculating such things, people often adopt a familiar unit as a mental yardstick and then generate predictions based on that unit. As a side-effect, their estimates cluster too closely around the yardstick measure -- a phenomenon called 'anchoring'."

This regretably reminds me of the largely ineffectual Greening MIT initiative, with its overemphasis on irrelevancies, for instance, encouraging us to use rotating doors which are stupidly locked over half the day.

Rush Hour ~ Civilized Copenhagen Cycling...

Copenhagenize spots a wonderfully civilized Rush Hour...

Common Good ~ Restoring Human Sensibility!

Thanks to The Economist Democracy in America blog for spotlighting Common Good in their Swimming and Freedom piece...

"Here's a regulation I hate: you're not allowed to swim across the lake anymore in Massachusetts state parks. [...] I would gladly join any movement that promised to do away with this sort of nonsense. For example, Philip K. Howard's organisation "Common Good" [whose] very bugaboo is useless, wasteful legal interference in schools, health care, recreation, and so on. But what you quickly note with many of these issues is that they're driven by legal liability concerns. [...] The problem here, as Mr Howard says, isn't simply over-regulation as such. It's a culture of litigiousness and a refusal to accept personal responsibility. When some of the public behave like children, we all get a nanny state."

Yes, all the more reason why we desperately need a planet-wide libertarian freedom and civic enlightenment movement. Here's more...

Equal-Access Science ~ Deepwater Data Blackout

Professor Linda Hooper-Bui, an ecosystems biologist, opines in the NYTimes about A Gulf Science Blackout, the despicable prevention of open, independent, and equal-access research playing out right now in the aftermath of the grossly incompetent British Petroleum Gulf Oil Spill Disaster...

"Although we are all doing needed research, we’re not receiving equal money or access to the affected sites. Those working for BP or the federal government’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment program are being given the bulk of the resources, while independent researchers are shoved aside. The problem is that researchers for BP and the government are being kept quiet, and their data is unavailable to the rest of the community. When damages to the gulf are assessed in court or Congress, there might not be enough objective data to make a fair judgment. Transparency is vital to successful science: researchers must subject their proposals to the scrutiny of colleagues, and publications require peer review. When it comes to field research, scientists need equal access to the same sites to test competing hypotheses. But BP, which controls access to the Deepwater Horizon site and vast stretches of the water around it, seems unconcerned about those principles. Some suspect that the oil company is focusing its research on gathering material to support its legal case; we can’t know for sure, though, because researchers who get money from BP must sign strict three-year confidentiality agreements. In any case, whatever research comes out of BP’s efforts will be tainted by secrecy."

Come on. Our modern civilization depends on objective science, intellectual freedom, and systemic competence. We need to move beyond backwards, dictatorial, and medieval methods.

Fox Fumbles ~ Conspiracy Stupidity Revealed;-)

Thanks to Yezdi Lashkari for spotting Jon Stewart's brilliant Ground Zero Mosque funding network expose...

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Parent Company Trap
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

Making Do ~ Kenya's "Informal" Innovators!

Interesting to read posts about Making Do, a new book by Steve Daniels on innovation in Kenya's informal sector...

"In Kenya, engineers in the informal economy are known as jua kali, Swahili for “hot sun,” because they toil each day under intense heat and with limited resources. But despite these conditions, or in fact because of them, the jua kali continuously demonstrate creativity and resourcefulness in solving problems. [...] Daniels illuminates the dynamics of the sector to enhance our understanding of African systems of innovation. The result of years of research and months of fieldwork, this study examines how the jua kali design, build, and manage through theoretical discussions, visualizations of data, and stories of successful and struggling entrepreneurs."

Book release is at MakerFaireAfrica later this month, appropriately enough;-)

Global Education City ~ Korea's English Focus

Interesting to read Choe Sang-Hun's NYTimes piece Western Schools Sprout in South Korea. They are prioritizing English as world business language...

"By 2015, if all goes according to plan, 12 prestigious Western schools will have opened branch campuses in a government-financed, 940-acre Jeju Global Education City, a self-contained community within Seogwipo, where everyone -- students, teachers, administrators, doctors, store clerks -- will speak only English."

Very cool. And an impressive commitment.

Space Pollution ~ Junk Satellites Orbiting Earth...

Thanks to latest Economist for spotting Junk science: Scientists are increasingly worried about the amount of debris orbiting the Earth. Last year an Iridium satellite was hit by a defunct Cosmos sat...

"... the two craft collided and the result was hundreds of pieces of shrapnel more than 10cm across, and thus large enough to track by radar -- and goodness knows how many that were not. This accident came two years after the deliberate destruction by the Chinese of their Fengyun-1C spacecraft in the test of an anti-satellite weapon. That created over 2,000 pieces of junk bigger than 10cm, and an estimated 35,000 pieces more than 1cm across. Together, these incidents increased the number of objects in orbit at an altitude of 700-1,000km by a third."

Congratulations to China for deliberately being the biggest single polluter. Welcome to the space age, you idiots. Qian Xuesen would not be proud.

Garden City ~ Singapore's Green Urban Vision...

See here more about Singapore, the Garden City with beautiful parks and botanical garden, green and clean everywhere, skyrise greenery...

"The luxuriant greenery that Singapore enjoys today is no accident of nature. Neither did our Garden City happen overnight. It took some 40 years of strong political will and the sweat and toil of many to sustain the effort."

A city in a garden, the model for a new millennium...

Top Gear ~ Humorous BBC Vehicle Reviews

Thanks to Anmol Madan for pointing out these Top Gear episodes. First, ridiculous street football with the Toyota Aygo... Second, the Ariel Atom, street-legal sport racer...

Nawsa Mad ~ Paul Polak's Rural Water Solutions

Social entrepreneur and innovator Paul Polak spotlights the need for rural smallholder farmer water solutions, what he calls Nawsa Mad, or Aswan Dam backwards, asking...

"...can we do the same thing [water storage, like the Aswan Dam, but instead distributed] on-farm for the 450 million farms in the world that are smaller than five acres? This would make a game-changing contribution to ending extreme poverty and food insecurity at the same time."

This means two things:

1. Radically affordable small enclosed water storage technology
2. Small plot, low-cost drip irrigation systems

Delightful Inhabitats ~ Bring on Green Design!

Time for another dose of Inhabitat's delightful designs...

Cool Vehicles ~ Future Transport Modes...

Thanks to Thomas Annicq for spotting these cool vehicles...

Barbie vs Canon ~ Comparison of the Cameras

Thanks to Miss Cellania for spotting this...

Can't Get Enough ~ Copenhagen Cycle Chic!

One can never have too much Copenhagen Cycle Chic!

Renaissance Project ~ Hope For Haiti @ MIT...

Good to see Gerthy Lahens, Jan Wampler, and team of the Renaissance Project: Hope For Haiti at MIT making progress on their goals to build:

• Vital, self-sustaining housing and community;
• Local skills and entrepreneurial action;
• Places of learning and housing for Haitian students;
• Sustainable food, water, and energy solutions.

Here's their recent interview on NNN...