A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer

I’m reading this book now and if your looking for a great book about a nanotechnology ‘what if’, this is it. The idea of a feeder line of raw material coming into your home like water or electricity is today is very cool concept. Need a basic meal? Punch it into the matter converter and you get it. Need some clothing? Same thing. When your finished with it, toss it into the decompiler and its gone, back into the feed. I’m assuming that you would get a matter credit, like making your own power and selling it back to the electricity company. Because the items created in the MC are tagged, only those things can be decompiled back into its basic components. Stephenson is a brilliant man. His ‘tribe’ idea is fascinating, I wonder if such a thing could actually happen in this world. I suspect that many other base things would have to also happen before society would form nodes such as these.

The Diamond Age, or A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson

Links to some of his works on line

Artificial Muscles

This article is notable for the sponsor: DARPA. “Artificial limbs for amputees.” Right.

Research On Artificial Muscles Could Lead To Advanced Limbs For Amputees, Robots

-Greg

(From what I have read the military is looking for a device that will let a fighting man carry his own body weight in equipment without slowing him down or running out of power in a short time. Think ‘techno trousers’ – John)

Packing

Here I am packing my bags for another trip to the big apple. I mention this because if you hear of a guy that makes the news because of suspicious frozen food in his luggage, its me.
Thats right, my plan for world domination involves frozen food. Not just any kind of frozen food mind you, but Marie Callenders Chicken pot pies. You know, the kind you can get in an eight pack from Costco for $9.00.
Now you might be wondering why I’m packing four of them in with my socks and shirts. World domination needs a snack? No. My wife likes them. Thats right, my wife likes them. To be sure, I suspect that one could locate a supply of them in New York and not have to have the schlepped all the way across the country in checked luggage. I ask my self the same thing. No, its because of love that I take these soon to be golden brown savory pies of chicken goodness all the way there in my luggage. Love.

New Domestic (In)Security Concern

You ever get the feeling that someone is doing this just as a personal joke? I mean, I can see some guy sitting around the house betting his buddies that he can make the US government chase it’s own tail. The bet is accepted and we get news like this:
watch-lighters and watch-altimeters
Anyway, if you think about it (no, I suspect that the TSA people are not asked to do this) the only way you could use a watch with a barometric altimeter as a trigger mechanism would be to have the watch loaded as luggage in an unpressurized cargo hold. I think the big idea about all the hoo-haa you go through when you check your bags is to make it impossible for a passenger to get anything into the holds once its been through security. Thus, why check your watch to see if it is an altimeter? Does the TSA think that this kind of watch is being used as some sort of terrorist marking device? I must be missing something… Next thing you know laser pointers will be outlawed because they could dazzle a pilots eyes. I’m waiting for those to be pulled off the market… Baka.