How Fast Are You?

No, in a good way!

Quoth the creator, John Boswell:

A musical tribute to two great men of science. Carl Sagan and his cosmologist companion Stephen Hawking present: A Glorious Dawn -- Cosmos remixed. Almost all samples and footage taken from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s Universe series.

RIP Dr. Sagan, you will be missed!!

Please, click HQ to watch in better quality.

Go here to download the track:
http://www.colorpulsemusic.com/youtube.html

Via @JaneWiedlin.

Neodymium on Wikipedia

Interesting news from Reuters:

Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tonnes annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed…

Among the rare earths that would be most affected in a shortage is neodymium, the key component of an alloy used to make the high-power, lightweight magnets for electric motors of hybrid cars, such as the Prius, Honda Insight and Ford Focus, as well as in generators for wind turbines…

Jack Lifton, an independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert, calls the Prius “the biggest user of rare earths of any object in the world.”

Each electric Prius motor requires 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of neodymium, and each battery uses 10 to 15 kg (22-33 lb) of lanthanum. That number will nearly double under Toyota’s plans to boost the car’s fuel economy, he said.

Via GreatDismal (William Gibson) > Gromit01.

Researchers at Toshiba’s Akimu Robotic Research Institute created a humanoid robot called Kenji, designed to emulate human emotions. At one point, Kenji’s creators claimed it he could feel love. Things quickly took a turn for the worse, as you might imagine.

Quoth MuckFlash:

After some limited environmental conditioning, Kenji first demonstrated love by bonding with a a stuffed doll in his enclosure, which he would embrace for hours at a time. He would then make simple, but insistent, inquiries about the doll if it were out of sight… As of last week, Kenji’s love for the doll, and indeed anybody he sets his ‘eyes’ on, is so intense that Dr. Takahashi and his team now fear to show him to outsiders.

The trouble all started when a young female intern began to spend several hours each day with Kenji, testing his systems and loading new software routines. When it came time to leave one evening, however, Kenji refused to let her out of his lab enclosure and used his bulky mechanical body to block her exit and hug her repeatedly. The intern was only able to escape after she had frantically phoned two senior staff members to come and temporarily de-activate Kenji.

Ever since that incident, each time Kenji is re-activated, he instantaneously bonds with the first technician to meet his gaze and rushes to embrace them with his two 100kg hydraulic arms. It doesn’t help that Kenji uses only pre-recorded dog and cat noises to communicate and is able to vocalize his love through a 20 watt speaker in his chest.

Japan is indeed a strange land, and Japanese robotics labs are clearly not for the faint of heart.

Via JR > CrunchGear.

We’re still not 100% convinced that we’re not being fooled by something here, but if it’s good enough for National Geographic, who are we to question?

Opisthoproctidae are even creepier in HD.

Via ECTOPLASMOSIS!.

Via feigning interest.

Coming soon (well, in a couple years) LED light bulbs that are 12 times more efficient than tungsten bulbs¹, three times more efficient than CFLs, and will last for 100,000 hours. All for about $3.

They also avoid using any toxic materials, like lead: The new LEDs use gallium nitride, which until now was too expensive to obtain because it had to be grown on sapphire wafers, which brought the cost of the lightbulbs to $28 each.

The new method, developed by Cambridge University-based Centre for Gallium Nitride, uses silicon wafers, bringing the cost down to $3 each. And if you think this is a thing of the future, think again: Prototypes are already being produced and the light bulbs may reach the market in a mere two years.

Teh rawk.

Via “The Dread Pirate Black Bryant” > Gizmodo > Daily Mail.

Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing says:

Linda Stone — a superconnector of great insight — coined the term “Continuous Partial Attention” to describe a new phenomenon, distinct from multitasking. It’s the attempt to stay involved in as many connections and networks at once as possible, and it can be nerve-wracking, though the temptation to indulge in powerful. Now Linda’s started a wiki devoted to the subject.

From the introduction of said wiki:

What is continuous partial attention?

Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We’re often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch — we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive.

To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.

We pay continuous partial attention in an effort NOT TO MISS ANYTHING. It is an always-on, anywhere, anytime, any place behavior that involves an artificial sense of constant crisis. We are always in high alert when we pay continuous partial attention. This artificial sense of constant crisis is more typical of continuous partial attention than it is of multi-tasking.

Via Boing Boing.

Damn I post a lot of stuff from Boing Boing. Maybe y’all should just read that instead of this!

There was the post on the MAKE: Blog, er, ten days ago, which means it’s old news, but it’s still pretty darned cool.

You remember those merry-go-round thingies in the playground or park when you were a kid? You put your sibling on there, tell ‘em to hold on for dear life, then try your hardest to make them puke? Ok, maybe that was just me.

Anyway, think of all the free energy generated by sibling rivalry that’s just being wasted! When there are thirsty kids in Africa! “Wait,” says PlayPumps International. “Maybe we can use that…”

And they did!

Via the MAKE: Blog.

I frequently use video games to relax. Somehow grabbing a NPC by the arm, ripping said arm off of NPC, and then beating the living tar out of said NPC with its own arm is very relaxing, not to mention cathartic.

Simmer Down Sprinter by Steve Lambert is a different kind of video game: no catharsis, but plenty of relaxation for the winner. Here’s how Mr. Lambert describes the game:

Simmer Down Sprinter is a two player, sit-down, arcade style video game I designed and programmed in which players compete to move runners around a track. The game is controlled by player’s bio-feedback. The more relaxed the player becomes, the faster the runner moves around the track. Essentially it is a game of competitive relaxation.

No arm-ripping-off/sniper-shooting/chainsaw-wielding catharsis, but I’d still like to try it. There’s even build notes so you can make your own biofeedback-controlled game. I like Cory Doctorow’s implementation concept:

It would be perversely great to do one that’s wired to so you win the more stressed-out you become, and attach it to an espresso machine, and a monitor that shows nothing but comments from Slashdot that have been ranked -1 or lower.

I also think it would be great to use the biofeedback to determine how agro the player is, and use that to determine how much damage is dealt to the NPC, ranging from flipping the bird, through ripping off its arm, beating the NPC to death with said arm, jamming the arm up…never mind.

Via Boing Boing.