Farewell, Farewell

This post marks the conclusion of this blog. In a weeks time I'm shutting off the lights. That's right. Lights off. While I appreciate the brevity of the blogging experience, and the community-based aspect of the overal design, I feel whenever I write within the context of a blog I always feel as though something is amiss, that I forgot something, or that I'm not necessarily one for regurgitating information. I don't know. Maybe I'm different. Weird, even, due to my predisposition for writing in lengthier, more exploratory modes.

Don't take this as criticism, I can appreciate the clockwork of blog-posting, but I enjoy playing with other types of clockwork, cockwork that typically includes 1) drama 2) characters 3) utter disfunction or 4) any combination of the aforementioned.

Does anyone else feel the same about blog posting? Am I just being a technological scrooge?

New Site

You can check out my site here (I will get the link up and working when I get home late tonight). It's entitled the Hydra Project. I know I stated in a previous post about my interest in physics, specifically centripedal force, but my mind (the ever-tangling spiderweb it is) has jumped tracks.

You can see the result of my non-linear project here:



I'm satisfied with how it turned out.

Ridiculous dancing aside, my brain now turns to a script (the Hydra Project) I was working on for class (I'm continuing to work on this script outside of class, due to my interest in it). Many aspects of the script itself, as well as the technology required to run what I'm pushing for, deal with another of my obsessions: Neuroscience.

The progress of my script is going to require some neurological devices to read the familiarity of a participant. The term "familiarity" runs under the term "Familiarity Heuristics" in psychology and Neuroscience arenas.

So, what do you think about the possibility of gauging someone's familiarity of images/subjects? Scientists have already conducted studies to indicate a difference in brain process when the participant is introduced to familiar/non familiar environments.

Busy, busy.

I will have a full post up within the next few days. I've been busy with a device I've been constructing for my 3D design class. The solution for the project deals specifically with centripetal force, and this has me thinking my next post is going to search for questions pertaining to basic physics...

Hauling Trash

Alright, so waste management doesn't sound too exciting? Well, you're right and wrong. While the trash itself proves as appealing as attempting to spit on flies, the development and distribution of said waste is more important than most understand. To us regular Johns and Janes, the thought-process associated with "trash" is reduced to either the crap we see on daytime television or to a big black bag filled with disgusting "stuff" that we toss into some receptacle hiding out somewhere on our lawn or driveway.

After that, we forget about it. Just remember: it does continue to exist. Those garbage trucks aren't feeding the trash to black holes or blasting it off to the sun, it is being transported to your city's backyard. And that requires land. A lot of land.

Also, we can consider waste management, in many ways, an issue that humans chose to tackle within the past hundred years. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act passed in 1976, to give you a sense of how recent we considered laws to govern our trash!

What if this was your front yard?

Prior to these laws and discussions, our society had limitations on where it placed its trash. Without a place to store it all, such as landfills, the trash always accumulated in the same place anyone without a sliver humanity left in them would suggest: in the working class slums. They simply "pushed" all the trash towards the outer circumference of the city, where the lower classes lived (the higher social tiers lived nearer to the factories, the city centers, due to a closer commute). This caused innumerable deaths due to disease and infection from exposure to growing bacteria, dead carcasses of horses, dogs and pigs, and discarded chemicals.

Suddenly, the three R's (Reduce Reuse Recycle) coded into our brains in childhood comes to make sense, it haunts us, even. By investigating the past, we witness the consequences of the logic that runs contrary to this set of  moral and cultural assignations. 

Check out this site.

Trash is important. And even more important, where we put it and how we dispose or recycle it.

Yeah, we've come a long way.

The Mystery of Fat Free Cheese

Alright, so this week's blog consists primarily of...a rant. I never thought myself to stoop to the level of taking shots at dairy products, but seriously, this stuff is gross. It looks like plastic. It doesn't melt. And it tastes as though it came out of a Lego's factory.

I am writing about Fat Free cheese.

What's in it? Primarily cheese, one would think, but no. It contains over 15 different ingredients, half of which are starches of some form. Two notable ingredients, which are not included in regular cheese, are sodium citrate and modified corn starch. These ingredients must do something to the cheese to make the texture equivalent to chewing on tires. Actually, after tonights casserole, I'd prefer nibbling on tires to the alkaline aftertaste this crap leaves behind. It doesn't go away either, it settles in the recesses of the mouth, only to resurface every few minutes reminding you of what you shouldn't have eaten. Its like a culinary Montezuma's Revenge, packaged and pristine on the grocery isle shelf.

Does diet food have to taste so bad?

Nobel's Blasting Powder

A little known fact is that Alfred Nobel, the Swede creator of the Nobel Prize, invented dynamite.

Is it ironic, then, that such an award associated with peace and betterment for humanity was initially funded by what has often been construed as a weapon?

Nobel never invented dynamite with the intention of it being a weapon. Dynamite allowed safer distribution of explosives to carve out tunnels, shell out reservoirs, and push away large chunks of land. The usage of dynamite as a weapon came later.

Prior to dynamite, humans had no means to safely harness the awesome powers of nitroglycerin. Many people died due to its instability. Dynamite helped solve the issue, but not without problems and regrets.

Nobel’s own dynamite factory happened to blow up, as did many others.

And, the final negative, whether Nobel wanted it to happen or not, his invention helped drive forth the R&D for military weapons. 

Delayed.

This weeks post is going to be delayed for a few days...I've had a severe sinus infection all weekend and am now working to catch up on other obligations. If your curious as to what the topic will be, lets just say it deals with history, chemistry, and things that blow up.