Tecnopolis.eu

Jon Bohmer [photo] has invented a cheap, solar-powered cardboard cooker for rural Africa called the Kyoto Box. The invention seems to be very useful and promising.

The Kyoto Box, a $6 solar cooker made from cardboard, has won the Financial Times-sponsored Climate Change Challenge.

Black paint on the inner box, and silver foil on the outer one, help concentrate the heat. The trapped rays make the inside hot enough to cook casseroles, bake bread and boil water [CNN]. Covering the cooking pot with a transparent cover retains heat and water [BBC]

more details on Discover Magazine

img credit: cnn

Popularity: 73% [?]

for those of you who are sceptic about Psychohistory:

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Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence

May Lim, Richard Metzler, and Yaneer Bar-Yam*

ScienceMagazine - September 2007

[the link requires a subscription to sciencemag.org, but you can ask the article per email to the authors from here)]

*New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI)

Abstract:We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose membersprefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict to the area. This model also points to imposed mixing or boundary clarification as mechanisms for promoting peace.

Prediction of  regions of most probable ethnic violence (red areas) in the former Yugoslavia  by a model based on the population distribution of ethnic groups in 1991.  Credit: © Science

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I personally believe, socio historical patterns of human particles are statistically predictable.

I think Science has to focus more on this promising area which could  benefit mankind quite a lot.

AZ

PS: thanks to MS for the tip!

Popularity: 84% [?]

For all those who want a first-hand opinion on all that is going on in Gaza,

http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com

a blog (in Italian) by Vittorio Arrigoni, a journalist who lives in the strip.

Popularity: 84% [?]

Hello Physics&Philosophy Freaks! this is the first post of my old friend Max, bio-engineer with a passion for Physics and “itself” an advanced positronic brain. But he missed the proper name of HeiseNberg, probably due to the U.P. … [Ok ok, I've corrected the spelling, NdMax]

..btw, if you don’t know Heisenberg&Co, either you commit directly suicide or you just do it after watching “Electrons Are Weird“ ..[ anyway this nice vid from BBC is also recommended to all of you]

c h e .. r s!
AZ

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W. Heisenberg, “Physics and philosophy” (Der Teil und das Ganze,1954)

The author of this book doesn’t even need a presentation. The style is definitely very smooth and accessible, and fancy maths is removed altogether.

The purpose of the whole essay (written in 1954) was to give a summary about how the evolution of physics, throughout the centuries, was able to revolutionise the very idea of reality, and how the early cartesian “Weltanschaung” heavily influenced the successive development of natural sciences and of the scientific method itself.

The first chapters are a fast-paced summary of 2500 years of epistemology (philosophy of knowledge), from the ancient Greek to the present (well, at least the present as it was in the ’50s).

In the following, Heisenberg takes the reader by the hand and introduces him/her to the most counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics. He then explains how and why such results required, in order to be interpreted, a radical philosophical revolution within the scientific community, a revolution that, at the time when the book was written, was still at the center of white-hot debate.

Einstein is regarded as the man who first introduced a radical Ockham’s razor-like approach to physics, that first produced the Special Relativity by removing the (physically unnecessary) dogmatic belief in the absoluteness of time and space.
However, according to Heisenberg (and we educated 21st-century people can respectfully agree), Einstein himself was not able to take his approach to the extreme and shocking consequence, namely the necessity of removing the principle of deterministic causality in order to interpret some of the observed physical phenomena (an operation that led to the birth of quantum physics).
All his life he remained skeptical about the metaphysical implications of the new theory.

And here comes the most interesting thesis proposed by the book:
Heisemberg tracks the difficulty of this paradigm shift, back to the “original sin” committed by Cartesius, when he divided reality into “res cogitans” (human mind) and “res extensa” (all the rest), and assuming that the laws of physics would apply only to the second (at the time the distinction appeared necessary in order to cope with the problem of free will).
This -in itself, illegitimate- assumption would have then propagated through the centuries, producing a widely accepted view of the physical world that was lacking a solid justification both on physical and phylosophical ground.
Of great interest is also Heisenberg’s insight in the foundations of the experimental method, where a suggestive (and quantistically corrected) version of Immanuel Kant’s “a priori” is proposed.

A highly recommended reading.

Popularity: 97% [?]

Signore & Signori, Homini e Donne sapiens sapiens sapiens,  Amanti, A-Mantidi e Procarioti,

ecco a voi il Mik, talento introspettiv-nucleare-darwiniano, affabile et ironico, mai casualmente maldestro, e da oggi esimio collaboratore di Tecnopolis.. basta non indulgiamo oltre.. viel Spass! AZ

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È ora di basta con queste informazioni inutili sugli elicotteri mai costruiti [o sui video fantaidealisti dello Ziller - NdAZ]. Cominciamo uno o piú discorsi seri.

Per esempio: la vita, la morte, le tasse, la fi… ehm, il sesso. Vi aspettavate anche l’amore? Ebbene vi svelerò un segreto. Ma non ora.

Ah, ho dimenticato la sciènza (come lo direbbe Crozza che imita Zichichi) nell’elenco suscrittomenzionato.

Pensavo alle lumache. Sapete che si mangiano anche, no? sono un piatto prelibato, le ho mangiate alcuni giorni fa. Funziona così:si raccolgono da terra o da ovunque si fossero arrampicate e le si chiude in una gabbia a purgare. Il che significa che devono espellere/metabolizzare il più possibile prima di essere cucinate e mangiate senza doversi sorbire anche tutte le erbette che hanno mangiato loro. Poi le si mettono in acqua, sale e aceto e si scalda fino a bollore. Loro, ad un certo punto di una di queste fasi (e meno male aggiungerei io coi miei buoni sentimenti), muoiono.

Ho ripensato alla morte. Capita spesso, in fondo è il nostro fine ultimo. Si nasce, si fa un po’ di rumore e balletti per far finta di lasciare un bel segno, divertirsi, fare un bel “viaggio”, tramandare ad altri la propria esperienza e i propri geni (se va bene), parvenze di immortalità, e poi, inesorabilmente si crepa. Mai provato quel senso di angoscia che insomma, prima ci sei e poi tutti i tuoi pensieri, emozioni, corpo, non ci sono più. Bella inculata, eh?

La differenza con le lumache è solo che noi lo sappiamo, loro no. Ma credo che facciamo di tutto per NON pensarci. Intendo non pensarci veramente. Domani (tra poche ore) visiterò Monaco, poi scriverò delle belle mail, più in là canterò sotto la doccia e nel coro, forse copulerò e trasmetterò un po’ di Mik in futuro. E poi un bel giorno, dopo aver letto tanti libri e soddisfatto (spero almeno un po’) del mio viaggio nel mondo, morirò.

Non troppo diversamente dalle nostre amiche lumache, dalle quali non siamo poi così diversi in fondo.

Buon appetito agli dèi.

Popularity: 99% [?]

Popularity: 26% [?]

Non nascondo la mia contentezza per la vittoria di Obama.

Ma non nascondo nemmeno le mie preoccupazioni, in primis per la sua vita.  

Lo Zeitgeist é un animale difficile da domare e che puó sempre impazzire, specie quando gli devi insegnare cose nuove e fargli cambiare direzione.  Servirebbe trapiantare il ghost di Obama in un cyberbody Megatech protetto dalla Section 9.

Intanto accontentiamoci della DTS2006, una  Cyber-Cadillac corazzata (previsti sviluppi futuri per decollo verticale tipo Delorian “BitF- part 2″):

dal Corriere:

“..la sua corazza in titanio, acciaio, alluminio e ceramica resiste ai colpi di mitra ma anche di lanciagranate. Per ingannare eventuali attentatori, il Secret Service ne può usare più di una all’interno dello stesso corteo. ” 

In bocca al lupo, Obamax!

[img credit: Ghost in the Shell 1]

Popularity: 27% [?]

Nonostante i sondaggi, rimane ancora qualche dubbio. Dopo la scioccante rielezione di Bush del 2004, non ci stupiremo piú di nulla.

Beppe Severgnini “se non lo vede non ci crede“.  Bel reportage sulla situazione in USA a pochi giorni dal voto e ottimo esempio di real journalism. Highly recommended.

Popularity: 23% [?]

era il 1923 ed era tutto un altro contesto (quello della Germania post prima guerra mondiale).. inoltre non é affatto detto che l´attuale crisi si tradurra in (iper)inflazione, peró trasmette bene quel “valore aggiunto” di precarietá che ci tarla il cervello da qualche giorno..

img credit: gottiswelt.de

Popularity: 19% [?]

Enjoy the speech (especially the final part) of one of the most visionary mind of the past century about problems which we wrongly consider as belonging to the past (cold war, self-distruction, etc..).  Ladies and gentlemen: Isaac Asimov !

I think this video, particularly the final part, very well fits the spirit of Tecnopolis. It is curious that Asimov, the father of robotics and an advocate of technocracy, has been wrongly perceived as representative of cold “iperrationalism”, while as you can see he was endorsing “humanism” and he was himself “humanist” like true technocrats are.

Take one of his most famous sentence (I put it on my master thesis and I am going to do it again for the phd..)

“I do not fear computer, I fear the lack of them”"

You may be surprised or disagree, but I think, this sentence has a profound sense of humanity.

AZ

Popularity: 16% [?]