5 Intriguing Things
An amazing reader of the newsletter—Mr. Jay H.—created an archive of all the things, or at least the intriguing ones. Check out the editions in chronological order, or grab five random things. So awesome. Thanks, Jay.
1. The design and operation of Soviet-era surface-to-air missile systems.
"Because of its purpose as a tactical weapon designed to support frontline troops, it is not connected to national air defense networks and can be operated independently, using its own radar systems, Zaloga says. The missile operators sit inside a very cramped launch vehicle looking at a fairly basic radar screen that shows the various objects the system is tracking. But without the larger network, that information has very little in the way of context. That explains why its operators may not have had enough information to distinguish the civilian airliner from a military threat. 'This definitely could have been an error,' Zaloga says."
"Google’s fleet of city-mapping cars are now working to measure urban natural gas leaks. The technology giant’s collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), announced on 16 July, equips Google’s Street View cars with sensors to detect methane leaking from ageing city pipes, through city streets and into the atmosphere. The sensors were developed by researchers at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. The project has released online methane maps for Boston, Massachusetts; Staten Island in New York; and Indianapolis, Indiana. The team found thousands of leaks in Boston and Staten Island at a rate of roughly one per every mile (1.6 kilometres) of road driven."
+ Robin Sloan, Sept. 2012: "I maintain that this is Google's core asset. In 50 years, Google will be the self-driving car company (powered by this deep map of the world) and, oh, P.S. they still have a search engine somewhere."
3. Cheese (microbial) (ecosystem) engineering.
"So that’s what they did: because there were only a small number of strains and all of those strains could grow on cheese curd, the team could build cheese 'in vitro' and see what bacteria showed up. They created thousands of tiny cheeses in 96-well dishes and added the 6 bacteria and 5 fungi that most commonly appeared in their analysis. To recreate the environment of each kind of cheese, they either made drier curd (natural rind), added Galactomyces fungus (bloomy rind), or washed the curd in salt solution (washed rind). At the end of the experiment, even though all the wells started with the same population of bacteria and fungi, each type of environment — natural, bloomy, or washed — had a population that more closely matched the rind type of regular 'in situ' cheese."
4. 'I just like the digital better than the physical' is not something many people feel they can say.
"If you are interested in the intersection of art and technology, then make Pace Gallery in Chelsea your first stop for the first ever US exhibition of the Japanese collective teamLab. Do not let collective deceive you. This group led by Toshiyuki Inoko is made up of over 300 'ultra-technologists;' a company, agency, and innovation lab all in one, teamLab works on dozens of projects at a time that include animation, sound, internet, interactive and immersive installations. At the exhibition’s opening, Inoko declared, 'I just like the digital better than the phsyical.' The works in the installation are undeniably Japanese, with influences from classical Japanese art, Japanese gardens, the Edo period, and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, all the way to modern day anime. At the same time, as you lose yourself spinning through their 3D worlds or flying through the universe with the crows..."
5. At least one Congressman is worried about killer robots.
"The Massachusetts Democrat is part of a crusade for an international ban on killer robots—machines that can decide without human input whom to target and when to use force. The only way to stop killer robots, said McGovern and a series of panelists he assembled for a Capitol Hill briefing this week, is to ban them before they even exist. Much like drones, once someone gets a killer robot, it's only a matter of time before everyone else is racing to catch up. And despite some countries' commitment to evaluating the technology responsibly, good intentions never won an arms race."
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
carpet. For on the carpet ('under discussion') see GALLICISMS; a disadvantage peculiar to the phrase is that the sense required for carpet (tablecloth) is obs.
Really buried the lede there: tablecloths used to be called carpets!
The Universe With The Crows