Category Archives: Blog

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Bucky Fuller would be proud: geodesic urban agri-architecture

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We’re starting to see a lot of these urban agriculture concepts cropping up (arf!); the Plantagon is (or, rather, might be) a geodesic dome containing a spiral ramp covered with fresh-grown foodstuffs, and its designers believe its food output would pay for its construction.

Plantagon: geodesic urban greenhouse

According to Plantagon, the farm “will dramatically change the way we produce organic and functional food. It allows us to produce ecological [food] with clean air and water inside urban environments, even major cities, cutting costs and environmental damage by eliminating transportation and deliver directly to consumers. This is due to the efficiency and productivity of the Plantagon greenhouse which makes it economically possible to finance each greenhouse from its own sales.”

No word on how exactly the Plantagon system works, but the company says that consulting engineering firm Sweco has helped untangle the technical kinks of the project. Plantagon hopes to have its first vertical farm up and running within three years.

Call me cynical, but I doubt the Plantagon as it appears here will ever make it into production. That said, the sheer number of urban agriculture concepts that are being kicked around at the moment suggests that there’s enough interest in the idea for it to become a reality at some point in the relatively near future… once pragmatism and the harsh economic truths of the world beyond the drawing-board brainstorm have shaved down the budgets a little bit, perhaps. [image by Plantagon]

Or maybe the construction of urban farms will be started in blazes of publicity and viridian glamour, only for the funding to be pulled (or embezzled, or just plain “lost”) half-way through, leaving huge Ballardian lumps of unfinished futurism lying around on the urban landscape, waiting to be colonised and turned into squelettes…

Blog

Zoning out: the brain’s science fictional mode

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pensive statueHere’s some good news for those of you who, like myself, are prone to losing mental focus; apparently “zoning out” is an important mental state, as well as being intrinsically linked to the way we think about the future.

The regions of the brain that become active during mind wandering belong to two important networks. One is known as the executive control system. Located mainly in the front of the brain, these regions exert a top-down influence on our conscious and unconscious thought, directing the brain’s activity toward important goals. The other regions belong to another network called the default network. In 2001 a group led by neuroscientist Marcus Raichle at Washington University discovered that this network was more active when people were simply sitting idly in a brain scanner than when they were asked to perform a particular task. The default network also becomes active during certain kinds of self-referential thinking, such as reflecting on personal experiences or picturing yourself in the future.

The fact that both of these important brain networks become active together suggests that mind wandering is not useless mental static. Instead, Schooler proposes, mind wandering allows us to work through some important thinking. Our brains process information to reach goals, but some of those goals are immediate while others are distant. Somehow we have evolved a way to switch between handling the here and now and contemplating long-term objectives. It may be no coincidence that most of the thoughts that people have during mind wandering have to do with the future.

Well, that’s a relief – I can stop castigating myself for getting distracted by stuff while I’m… oooh, look, a new entry on TVtropes.com! [image by Spojeni]

Blog

Beleaguered bank sues itself

Wells Fargo BankProof (if such were needed) that the financial sector is utterly batshit insane: Wells Fargo is suing Wells Fargo over a condominium mortgage.

Being a taxpayer-subsidized, too-big-to-fail institution, it’s possible that one of the few ways for Wells Fargo & Co. to know what it is doing is to notify itself with a court filing.

In this particular case, Wells Fargo holds the first and second mortgages on a condominium, according to Sarasota, Fla., attorney Dan McKillop, who represents the condo owner.

As holder of the first, Wells Fargo is suing all other lien holders, including the holder of the second, which is itself.

“The primary reason is to clear title and ownership interest in a property to prepare it for sale,” Waetke said in an email exchange. “So it really is not Wells Fargo vs. Wells Fargo.”

Yet court documents clearly label “Wells Fargo Bank NA” as the plaintiff and “Wells Fargo Bank NA” as a defendant.

If you tried to write that into a story, people would think you were doing satire. The truth really is stranger than fiction. [via SlashDot; image by TheTruthAbout]

Blog

News cycle identified

lipstickonapSome glorious and fascinating reportage-porn at memetracker that shows how news stories are taken up and how long they last and what their impact is:

They found a consistent rhythm as stories rose into prominence and then fell off over just a few days, with a “heartbeat” pattern of handoffs between blogs and mainstream media. In mainstream media, they found, a story rises to prominence slowly then dies quickly; in the blogosphere, stories rise in popularity very quickly but then stay around longer, as discussion goes back and forth. Eventually though, almost every story is pushed aside by something newer.

There is something truly wonderful about seeing this information laid out in such an intuitive manner. This kind of analysis of the growth, spread, and retention of ideas is certainly an area that will expand and grow over time.

[via Physorg, from MemeTracker]

Blog

Memristors – is the “missing” fourth electronic component the key to AI?

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I guess I never got far enough with my failed degree in electronics to discover that there’s a fundamental component missing from the metaphorical toolbox.

But apparently there is… or there was. Now, though, the memristor is more than just a concept, and realising it may provide a key to building artificial intelligences… with a little help from slime molds:

Four interconnected things, mathematics says, can be related in six ways. Charge and current, and magnetic flux and voltage, are connected through their definitions. That’s two. Three more associations correspond to the three traditional circuit elements. A resistor is any device that, when you pass current through it, creates a voltage. For a given voltage a capacitor will store a certain amount of charge. Pass a current through an inductor, and you create a magnetic flux. That makes five. Something missing?

Indeed. Where was the device that connected charge and magnetic flux? The short answer was there wasn’t one. But there should have been.

It’s a fairly lengthy article that covers a lot of ground, so it’s hard to summarize with a quote or two. Go read the whole thing; not only is the science itself quite intriguing, it’s also an example of the better sort of journalism that New Scientist puts out.