At the tail end of the summer I connected with Robo Robb via Maker Faire Detroit. He subsequently interviewed me for WXOU, which is 88.3FM in Auburn Hills, MI. I’d thought we were going to talk mostly about maker/DIY stuff, but it ended up being a really fun, wide ranging chat. Robo Robb is a really excellent, laid-back interviewer–which, compounded with my sprung sleep schedule (travel, new baby, etc.) meant that, about four minutes into the interview, I totally forgot that we were recording. When he grabbed his digital recorder off the table as we were leaving–the coffee shop had shut down and wanted to haul their tables in–I suddenly realized I had *no idea* what I’d said. So, everything at this link is gonna be news to both of us.
DISCLOSURE: This tape is long–more than an hour, as I recall–and I have a terrible, nasal Jewish Kermit the Frog voice and creaky geek laugh. It’s downright *punishing* to listen to me go on about this stuff. Also, I go pretty far afield on education policy and race in America and clockwork robot war crimes–the whole thing is a hot mess. But Robo Robb is an excellent interlocutor and solid dude. If you ever get a chance to talk with him, *jump at it!*
Interview with David Erik Nelson – Robo Robb
*thx Robb!*
Author: dave-o
XKCD’s “What If?” Is an Excellent Soft Sci-Fi Template
I *love* these about 32 billion times more than XKCD itself–which I do, in fact like. But these I *really* like. Like all good scifi, they address the human ramifications of physical, scientific facts. SF, more so than any other literary sub-sect, seeks to directly address the question of how humans react to the things humans have done, and to try to fully imagine and enact how that plays out.
Everybody Jump
What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant?
—Thomas Bennett (and many others)
This is one of the most popular questions submitted to this blog. It’s been examined before, including by a ScienceBlogs post and a Straight Dope article. They cover the kinematics pretty well. However, they don’t tell the whole story.
Let’s take a closer look.
At the start of the scenario, the entire Earth’s population has been magically transported together into one place.
This crowd takes up an area the size of Rhode Island. But there’s no reason to use the vague phrase “an area the size of Rhode Island”. This is our scenario; we can be specific. They’re actually in Rhode Island.
At the stroke of noon, everyone jumps.
As discussed elsewhere, it doesn’t really affect the planet. Earth outweighs us by a factor of over ten trillion. On average, we humans can vertically jump maybe half a meter on a good day. Even if the Earth were rigid and responded instantly, it would be pushed down by less than an atom’s width.
Next, everyone falls back to the ground.
Technically, this delivers a lot of energy into the Earth, but it’s spread out over a large enough area that it doesn’t do much more than leave footprints in a lot of gardens. A slight pulse of pressure spreads through the North American continental crust and dissipates with little effect. The sound of all those feet hitting the ground creates a loud, drawn-out roar which lasts many seconds.
Eventually, the air grows quiet.
Seconds pass. Everyone looks around.
There are a lot of uncomfortable glances. Someone coughs.
. . .
—Thomas Bennett (and many others)
This is one of the most popular questions submitted to this blog. It’s been examined before, including by a ScienceBlogs post and a Straight Dope article. They cover the kinematics pretty well. However, they don’t tell the whole story.
Let’s take a closer look.
At the start of the scenario, the entire Earth’s population has been magically transported together into one place.
This crowd takes up an area the size of Rhode Island. But there’s no reason to use the vague phrase “an area the size of Rhode Island”. This is our scenario; we can be specific. They’re actually in Rhode Island.
At the stroke of noon, everyone jumps.
As discussed elsewhere, it doesn’t really affect the planet. Earth outweighs us by a factor of over ten trillion. On average, we humans can vertically jump maybe half a meter on a good day. Even if the Earth were rigid and responded instantly, it would be pushed down by less than an atom’s width.
Next, everyone falls back to the ground.
Technically, this delivers a lot of energy into the Earth, but it’s spread out over a large enough area that it doesn’t do much more than leave footprints in a lot of gardens. A slight pulse of pressure spreads through the North American continental crust and dissipates with little effect. The sound of all those feet hitting the ground creates a loud, drawn-out roar which lasts many seconds.
Eventually, the air grows quiet.
Seconds pass. Everyone looks around.
There are a lot of uncomfortable glances. Someone coughs.
. . .
These are also quite nice; the “one-way” mirror section is a little weak, but the final answer is rock solid: Short Answer Section
Neat! A Whole New Angle on Consumer-Grade 3D Printing
As we were working on putting together our Printrbot kit the other day, one of the guys mentioned this whole new tack on consumer-grade desktop 3D printing. Instead of building up parts via fused deposition modeling (which, in this case, means running ABS plastic feedstock–which looks like weedwhacker line–through a hot point that layers up your form using a rig that’s a lot like a pen-plotter), it uses stereolithography: Your part is super-quickly cured out of a bath of liquid, ultraviolet-sensitive resin by a UV laser beam. Very high resolution, crazy-slick tech–but well out of our price range. Anyway, he followed up with a link today, which I thought was worth sharing just to show that there’s more than one way to skin this cat. I’m increasingly wary of product-based Kickstarter projects, but this seemed too neat to ignore.
FORM 1: An affordable, professional 3D printer by Formlabs — Kickstarter
(*thx Phil!*)
Your #FridayReads: Get THE SILENT HISTORY on your iPhone, enter the STEAMPUNK III sweepstakes, and more #scifi
Fiction news!
First off, The Silent History–and app-based serialized fiction project–launched for iPad/iPhone this week. I’m one of the “Advance Reporters” contributing to the geolocated “Field Reports” (as of right now half the stories located in Michigan are mine–all centered around Ann Arbor). There’s a nice concise description of the project over on Contents Magazine:
The Silent History is a serialized electronic novel that debuted this week on iOS devices. The story at its heart is big: beginning right around now, some of our children stop developing language, and no one knows why. The novel is an archive of first-person accounts told by parents, doctors, teachers, and neighbors, and they’re released on a schedule, one at a time, from the beginning of the epidemic through to 2043.
Orbiting the body of the novel are dozens of “field reports”—stories written by readers and connected to specific physical locations. To read them, you have to show up, device in hand, at just the right spot on the built-in map.
Orbiting the body of the novel are dozens of “field reports”—stories written by readers and connected to specific physical locations. To read them, you have to show up, device in hand, at just the right spot on the built-in map.
That’s actually the lead-in to an interesting interview with the project editor Eli Horowitz, e.g.,:
Once you start thinking about it, the project is full of semi-comprehensible little resonances like that. I mean, it’s a lengthy book about the failures of language. It’s an oral history about people who can’t talk. It’s a digital book that is dependent upon engagement with the physical world. Etc.
If you want details (or to get the app), check out the official Silent History website and Tumblr blog. There’s also a video trailer with voice work by Ira Glass (!!!):
The Silent History from Richard Parks on Vimeo.
Also, along with Morgan Johnson and Fritz Swanson
I also have a story in Ann VanderMeer’s upcoming anthology Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution, co-written with long-time co-conspirators Morgan Johnson and Fritz Swanson in the guise of our dear Giant Squid. The antho is sort of a post-steampunk re-imagining/re-examination of steampunk’s blind spots. You can buy it come Non-Denominational Gift Giving Holiday time, or enter the Tor.com Sweepstakes and win one pronto. Check out an excerpt from the antho’s intro and see what you think. FYI, I’ve got a story in the second antho in this series, too:
Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded
Finally, we’ve dropped the price on my novella Tucker Teaches the Clockies to Copulate–you know, to celebrate Sukkoth, or something. Happy October, everyone!
On Building a Sukkah with a Six-year-old
It’s Sukkoth this week and, at the urging of my six-year-old son, I’ve finally fulfilled the mitzvah of building a sukkah.
Statistically speaking, 98 percent of you have no clue what I’m talking about. Briefly: Sukkoth is a Jewish harvest holiday. It generally happens in October-ish[*] and lasts about a week. To celebrate Sukkoth you build a sukkah (basically a little shanty) outside your house. This is because the ancient Hebrews lived in towns, with their fields held communally elsewhere. During harvest they’d build little shanty encampments out in the fields, rather than schlepping back and forth every evening. Building a sukkah is a reminder that this is how folks lived before CSAs and office jobs; eating dinner and chilling out in the sukkah is de rigueur (and likewise a “mitzvah,” a word many folks erroneously translate as “good deed.” Mitzvot are, literally, “commandments.” Just let that sink in. The Lord said unto us “Listen, I need you to build some shanties, and to drink beer and stuff in them. Amen.”)
The qualifications for a sukkah are pretty loose: It needs to be big enough for at least one person to sit in it comfortably (technically the minimum size is seven “handbreadths” deep by seven wide by 10 tall, or roughly 2.5″x2.5″x3″ [!!!]), it needs to be open on one side, it needs to have walls that can “withstand the wind,” and it needs to have a roof that is 1) made of natural materials and 2) blocks half the sunlight in daytime, yet still makes it possible to see the stars at night.
Inspired by several picture books, his religious school, and a local sukkah contest, my son got very hyped on building a sukkah. So, we headed down to the lumber yard, got a dozen six-footers (actually, for supply and cost reasons, we got six 12-footers and had the yard cut them in half, but you get the picture), and then went home and built this slightly modified cube (you’ll note that we transposed one 2×4 from the threshold, instead using it to stabilize the roof). The walls are scrap lumber that was left in our garage by the previous owners (when we moved in a decade ago) and leftover canvas from the PVC Teepee project in Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred. The roof is a base of jute twin piled high with wildflowers harvested from the yard of the abandoned house next door.
All told, it took us a couple hours spread over two days to erect this, and a very limited assortment of hand tools (a saw, power drill, hammer, a rag-tag fistful of mismatched nails, some decking screws, and a stapler). Cost: about $20.
This is certainly a project that requires a little care–you can rip up a finger with a power drill, and even a janky little stick-frame shanty can give you a good clunk if it keels over–but it’s one that basically any first-grader can assist on. Two lessons naturally arise in the process:
Finally, my wife–who is not Jewish–*loves* the way the roof changes as the sky changes, and insisted I include at least one picture of this. So, here’s a shot from this morning. The Michigan sky is a featureless grey mat, and the roof itself had taken a beating in an early-morning rainstorm:
Cardboard Bikes!
Made In Israel: Recycled Cardboard Bicycle F $9 | Environment News
The primary use, like any bicycle, is to prevent pollution while encouraging physical activity and exercise. In an interview with Newsgeek, Gafni said that the production cost for his recycled bicycles is around $9-12 each, and he estimates it could be sold to a consumer for $60 to 90, depending on what parts they choose to add.
. . .
Judging based on the prototypes leaning on the wall during the interview with Gafni, it seems that his hard work paid off. The prototype in the room was impressive. It was hard to believe there was any relationship between that bicycle and cardboard. The bicycle is coated with a strong solid layer of brown and white material, making the finished product look like it is made of hard lightweight plastic.
In Tel Aviv, for example, where all but a few cyclists have had their bikes stolen at some point, low-cost bikes are all the more attractive and also weaken the sting of a steal. If the bicycle costs less than the lock required to keep it safe, the appeal and potential profit from stealing a bicycle are significantly reduced.
. . .
Judging based on the prototypes leaning on the wall during the interview with Gafni, it seems that his hard work paid off. The prototype in the room was impressive. It was hard to believe there was any relationship between that bicycle and cardboard. The bicycle is coated with a strong solid layer of brown and white material, making the finished product look like it is made of hard lightweight plastic.
In Tel Aviv, for example, where all but a few cyclists have had their bikes stolen at some point, low-cost bikes are all the more attractive and also weaken the sting of a steal. If the bicycle costs less than the lock required to keep it safe, the appeal and potential profit from stealing a bicycle are significantly reduced.
And this bike has a cardboard transmission! *SO RAD!*
We think of cardboard as cheap, throwaway stuff, which is why a project like this is so worthwhile: it reminds us that cardboard, when treated properly, is really no different from any other particle board (such as MDF–which, off-gassing concerns aside, is a wonderful building material, and a great use of what was once thought of as useless byproduct). All of this puts me in the mind cellulose nano crystals, a sort of refined wood pulp that shows good potential as a multi-use material for everything from grocery sacks to ballistic barriers.
My Latest Column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle, on School Busing and Its Ramifications
I continue to write a column for the Ann Arbor Chronicle. It’s a small-town kinda column, ’cause we’re sort of a small town, but it’s also got an egregious deployment of number theory and nested footnotes, ’cause it’s a small town with a big damn university crammed into it. Anyway, this month we meditate on America, austerity, education, efficiency, transience, transportation, and the Traveling Salesman Problem–but, you know, it’s all *for the kids* and their *FUTURES!!!*
The Ann Arbor Chronicle | In it for the Money: School Transportation
. . .
If you’re looking to so weaken a society that you can drown it in a bathtub, I suppose you have two options: You can hammer on it with artillery and air raids until it is too shattered and skittish to get out of bed and get anything done, or you can slowly bleed it dry with a million little, seemingly insignificant mosquito bites.
No one flees their homeland over mosquitoes. No one takes up arms against a sea of mosquitoes. We just slap and scratch and kvetch and toss and turn and keep on keeping on.
Until one day we collapse, probably while carrying our kindergartners to school.
. . .
If you’re looking to so weaken a society that you can drown it in a bathtub, I suppose you have two options: You can hammer on it with artillery and air raids until it is too shattered and skittish to get out of bed and get anything done, or you can slowly bleed it dry with a million little, seemingly insignificant mosquito bites.
No one flees their homeland over mosquitoes. No one takes up arms against a sea of mosquitoes. We just slap and scratch and kvetch and toss and turn and keep on keeping on.
Until one day we collapse, probably while carrying our kindergartners to school.
. . .
Not-OK Craft Project Alert!!!
Although, let’s be fair: Dogs being how they are, Rex probably thinks this is *rad* as *HELL!!!* This reminds me of when I was little and we all thought garbageman was the raddest possible job, on account you got to ride around clinging to the back of the truck. Now, of course, we all know better: Garbageman isn’t the raddest job because you get to cling for dear life to a truck; it’s the raddest job because you are vital to city life, and earn benefits, a living wage, and have a modicum of job security.
Got Maggots in Your Compost?
Ugh! I know, gross as Hell, right? And the compost–which is normally devoid of any smell, and certainly not offensively odorous–had taken on a distinct “bad septic field” aroma. It . . . it was pretty not OK (although the maggots seemed happy). But, as it turns out, maggots in your compost aren’t disastrous, they are tiny messengers.
I’m not a passionate compost evangelist–am, in fact, a pretty mediocre and neglectful gardener–but I like minimizing our garbage output, and I like the fact that a few scoops of our kitchen compost, when dumped into a pot with some soil, reliably produces volunteer kale and tomatoes. Since volunteers self-select for heartiness, and because all the seeds are coming from food I already ate and enjoyed–well, I’m basically guaranteed a free, low-effort crop of things I like. This is all I want from gardening. So, I was upset–in addition to being at least a little totally grossed out–when maggots infested my free lunch.
I’d always been told that maggots in your compost were basically cataclysmic, that this indicated that someone had tossed meat or grease or lard or bones in there. Maggoty compost, I’d been assured, was unrecoverable, likely harbored food-born pathogens, and you’d need to dispose of the whole batch and start over. A little poking around online wasn’t terribly helpful: A few sites indicated that *some* maggots were beneficial–specifically the big, biting horseflies–while others (like the common houseflies I was supporting) were still Bad News. But I really didn’t want to start over, so I kept digging and, with the help of several Ag Extension websites confirmed that maggots are totally benign.
If you have maggots–any sorts of maggots–in your compost, what it indicates is that your pile isn’t getting turned enough (unlikely in my case, as I use a Tumbleweed compost bin–both a design and a brand I heartily recommend), or is too wet (which this poop-stinky pile certainly was; it was a mucky mess). So, I tossed in just a few scoops of top soil and pine needles (i.e., the dirt right next to the compost in–remember, I’m really lazy), gave her a tumble, and two days later:
*BOOM*
No smell, no maggots, back to business as usual.
White House Ale and a Short Lil Diatribe on Keeping It Simple
I know I’m about a week late on the White House Beer Recipe story, but I wanted to chime in just in case anyone missed it:
Ale to the Chief: White House Beer Recipe | The White House
(I’m including the recipe for the Honey Ale below because it looks better to me, but this PDF of the beer recipes includes both.)
I brew a bit, and am constantly annoyed by how meaninglessly technical homebrewing is. This is a prime example of hobbyists getting so wrapped up in gear and minutia that they out-professional professionals and out-tradition the traditions themselves. This is especially true with beer, which is why I stick to wine–incidentally, brewing it in plastic buckets and glass jugs using plain-old bread yeast. With my hardware-store gear I have roughly the same success rate as any other novice homebrewer–which means some recipes and batches are shockingly good, others skunk vinegar. But, seeing as how my way costs about 15 cents per bottle, I’m fine with a few batches that go straight into the compost.
These recipes are pretty straightforward, but still strike me as a bit dandified, so I offer you this, the bare-bonesiest beer recipe I’ve yet found. I haven’t tested it yet, but it’s on my list for this fall. I’ll report back when I do–and if you happen to give this recipe or the White House Ale a try, howsabout you tell me how that goes?