This show screened on SBS and was fairly interesting. Though I was bugged by what I think were unfair comparisons between the Da Vinci glider and the Wright brothers' flyer. The Wright flyer was a powered vehicle that managed to fly 120 feet in 12 seconds (their first flight, their best was 24.5 miles in 39 minutes). A 30 second, 100 yard hang glider flight down a hill isn't really comparable. I'm sure there were a few hang-glider/kite style unpowered flights before the Wright brothers' that would have been a better match up.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Indonesia
Background Briefing on Sunday the 30th May (RealAudio, transcipt) had an interesting look into the "Jakarta lobby" and the Lance Collins affair.
Historically Australia and the US backed Suharto (or Sukarno?) as they were worried that Indonesia would "Balkanize" and some of the resulting states may turn communist. This presumably explains why Australia was so keen to appease Indonesia at all costs -- even to the extent of angering the US by withholding intelligence information. It's been a while since communism was a threat though, so you would presume that a group of third-world islands fighting amongst themselves would be less threat to Australia than a militaristic nation with 500,000,000 citizens.
Friday, May 28, 2004
Was our universe created by design?
Michael said this better than I could:
Lightweight description of the "chaotic inflation" theory of the universe's origin, which apparently has the implication that the universe could have been created as an experiment, and with few resources, and now be so small that the experimenter has lost it...
The article mentions various ways that the creator could attempt to communicate with his creation, non of them seem to permit him decreeing that gay marriages are a sin, for example.
More reasons to stay away from antibiotics
Not only will taking too many antibiotics breed superbugs, it could give you asthma and allergies, according to this article. So eating dirt is no longer the only way to avoid getting asthma...
Maybe it wasn't just a bad movie...
New Scientist reports that "a US medical team has requested permission to perform the world's first face transplant." Supposedly the face won't look like either the person's original face or the donor's face due to the underlying skull and muscle structure (and hideous scaring I'd imagine...)
Guide to Springfield, USA
This site has lots of information about Springfield and a map, gleaned by watching The Simpsons a little too closely I suspect.
A Neat Camera Phone Application
This software lets you use a camera phone as wireless "mouse" or keyboard. Very nifty idea, the camera is used to detect the motion of the phone through the air. Must kill the batteries though...
Syntax
Lisp syntax ("lots of silly parentheses") (or more accurately, it's lack of syntax) is beginning to look good! Perl 6 is going to have a lot of operators, nicely displayed in this periodic table.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
Fucking computer crashes...
My computer crashed just before posting the following links. Originally there were nice blurbs.
- Wired News: Wartime Wireless Worries Pentagon, "Ban stupidity, don't ban exposing it"
- BBC Archives to be available for pretty much any non-commercial uses.
- What are they hiding in Area 51?
- A super high-res camera.
- An Extensible Programming manifesto.
- Solar power-stations in the Mohave desert.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Toyota Personal Mobility Concept Car
This nifty little concept car has some nice ideas. It's a single person "drive by wire" electric "car" with hubless motors and variable wheel base. This gives it very good manueverability and the ability to recline during high-speed travel and "stand up" to get in and out.
The best bit though, is that they can talk to each other, so you can have one person driving a small train of these cars.
Oil Producing Bacteria and Space Elevators
- Physicists at the University of New Hampshire have found bacteria capable of producing "biodiesel". This reminds me of a small town (on the way to South Australia somewhere...) where they thought they'd discovered oil only to discover it was merely a bacteria that produced an oil like sludge. It's still cheaper to not use oil though...
- JP Aerospace have developed what could be a practical "Space elevator" consisting of a large blimp at a low earth-orbit and other blimps that will carry payloads up to it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Various Tuesday offerings
- Microsoft has payed out over anti-competitive behaviour towards Opera. The analysis of what was going on was pretty worrying.
- No, I will not fix your computer -- I could do with one of these sometimes. I wouldn't wear it though, so please don't bother.
- The Australia Institute -- I've seen/heard Clive Hamilton from this "left-leaning political thinktank" discussing a few issues lately, including Four Corners on over-consumption and Hack on corporate welfare.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Evolution and Action Figures
- New Scientist reports that Archaeopteryx (the first "bird") may have had four "wings" and glided (like a sugar-glider) rather than flown. Makes sense.
- These guys in the homebrew Atari 2600 scene are doing some pretty amazing things -- it's amazing that people were ever attracted to computer games, when that was all that was on offer.
- Need a GeekMan action-figure?
Friday, May 21, 2004
How do we perceive light?
Some simple explanations on how primary colours "combine" and light waves are perceived by our eyes. Also contains this nice point:
People sometimes speculate about extraterrestrials picking up TV signals from Earth and watching our soap operas. But what is transmitted is so finely tuned to the peculiarities of the human ocular and perceptual system that aliens would struggle to make any sense of it.
The Infant Island of Surtsey, Iceland
Interesting that plants started growing on this island before the volcano even finished erupting.
Computerised Grading, um...
Some interesting comments to this Slashdot story:
If grading is intended as a motivator to encourage each student to perform his/her best, then more effort should yield a higher grade. Likewise, if grading is intended to reflect the student's ability to perform in a real-world situation, effort should probably yield a higher grade: folks who work hard tend to do better than folks who are marginally smarter but don't work hard, in real-life situations. But if grading is intended to reflect only the quality of the work that was submitted, then sure -- effort shouldn't count at all.And:
Cool idea. Imagine high school students re-writing their essays until the grader software gives them an A+.This was exactly what we could do in one of my programming classes and it was excellent. We had a deadline, but could make as many submissions as we liked until we were happy with the grade. A nice subversive suggestion in there too:
it would have been my goal to make the most wrong essay I could that would still generate a good grade from the system.
Reading List
Some sites we like:
- Science/Technology/Computers
- Blogs
- Programming/Software Engineering/Design
- Humour
Thursday, May 20, 2004
Next Generation Airships
This New Scientist interview with Hokan Colting talks about airships being used as telecommunication relay towers, much cheaper and easier to install than satellites (with less signal delay too) and with very large coverage areas due to their height.
Quotations on simplicity in software design
There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. -- C.A.R. Hoare
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Corporate welfare
Hack had an interview with Clive Hamilton of the Australia Institute on Monday about the potential $85 million bail-out of Mitsubishi that touched on the issue of "corporate welfare" (The plant hires 3,000 employees with 14,000 in "spin-off" jobs and there was a meeting on Monday.)
Australia spends $16 bilion a year on subsidies (rent relief, tax breaks etc), which is 3% of our GDP. For example, the aluminium industry apparently receives subsidised electricity that works out to be about $40-50,000 per year per worker!
The economics of online gaming
EverQuest players have an average wage of US$3.42/hr, the game is ranked the 77th richest country in the world (with 450,000 "citizens") and it's currency is supposedly rated higher than the Yen and Lira (Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier). That is presumably if everyone "cashed in" for real money, and that probably neglects the labour "imported" from the real world.
This article includes the story of a kid who was bought a $500 level 50 character by his parents and then kept getting killed because he didn't know how play -- the time needed to gain level 50 obviously isn't entirely wasted, as you at least learn how to play the game.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
A curiously unfortunate career
Thomas Midgley had the dubious honour of having invented both leaded petrol and CFCs.
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