NIGEL JAQUISS — Willamette Week

Cameron Smith, archaeologist and anthropology professor at Portland State University

By day, Cameron Smith teaches anthropology at Portland State University—digging fossils in Africa, launching solo voyages in the Arctic or sailing primitive vessels in the open ocean. By night, Smith, 46, is feverishly building a DIY space suit. Working in concert with a Danish nonprofit aerospace organization called Copenhagen Suborbitals, Smith wants to democratize space travel. He has turned his Pearl District apartment into a workshop where a homemade space suit nearly five years in the making lies on a folding table. Next year, he plans to balloon up to 63,000 feet to test the suit. The year after that, the Danes will send it up to 63 miles. And after that?

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Weightlessness in free fall, seen by Einstein in a flash in 1907, was “the happiest thought of my life” as he always said. It implies that gravity can be replaced by ordinary acceleration and hence can be understood from first principles using his then two years old theory of special relativity.

Twelve revolutionary implications follow. They all derive from the following simple abstract scenario described by Einstein: A light ray is ascending inside a constantly accelerating long rocketship in outer space, from the bottom to the tip. During this finite traveling time, the ship itself is picking up speed. That is all. The rest is implications:

# 1) When the ascending light with its intrinsic finite speed c arrives at the tip, the tip is receding at a constant velocity from the point of origin of the light. So a constant Doppler effect applies. Hence the temporal wavelength of a laser beam arriving upstairs is elongated. This is the famous GRAVITATIONAL REDSHIFT (Einstein).

# 2) The elongated wavelength of the photons emitted downstairs implies that their constant energy is lower there from the beginning since nothing happens to them on the way. This is the GRAVITATIONAL ENERGY REDUCTION OF LIGHT (Einstein).

Continue reading “2014: The 12 Miraculous Implications of Einstein’s Happiest Thought” »

Overmanagement by Mr. Andres Agostini

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section o, “…Overmanagement…,” that discusses some management strategies. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

BEGINNING OF EXCERPT.

Question: What other contemporary issues particularly concern you? Do you find signs of
hope or resistance around these issues that, perhaps, you finding heartening?

Continue reading “Overmanagement” »

By Kelsey D. Atherton — Popular Science

Consider it a rough Audubon guide to the mechanical fauna of battlefields. Created by Amsterdam-based designer Ruben Pater, the Drone Survival Guide is, on one side, a rough bird watcher’s guide to the modern robot at war. The other side is a short section of printed survival tips, and the guides are available in Pashto, Dutch, German, Italian, Indonesian, Arabic, and English.

The selection of drones included in the guide leads heavily towards those from NATO member countries, with the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and the United States all represented, as well as NATO itself, for the other member countries that use these drones. Partly because those are the countries that have used drones, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, the most, but partly because they are just the countries where it is easier to get information about the scale and wingspan of their flying robots.

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By Zach Walton — WebProNews

In 2013, we saw the rise of the 3D printed robot. Now students are looking to complete the cycle by making a 3D printed robot that can double as a 3D printer.

A group of students in San Francisco have created a new robot that they call Geoweaver. It’s a hexapod robot that rolls around on wheels and is equipped with a glue gun extruder. When fed instructions, it can roll around on a large surface and print structures that would not be possible on a regular 3D printer.

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Will Conley — Slash Gear

Bitcoin miner Milly Bitcoin has done a little citizen letter-writing, and the results should make virtual currency miners breathe a sigh of relief. Milly Bitcoin’s mining company Atlantic City Bitcoin last June wrote to the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) requesting an official administrative ruling on whether ACB must register as a money transfer service. FinCEN has now replied, and the answer is no.

ACB requested the ruling because there has been much confusion as to whether mining — and spending the proceeds — constituted a money transfer service. This may seem a ridiculous question to virtual currency aficionados, but the confusion arose because some businesses dealing in virtual currencies do indeed operate as money transfer services. Mining and spending virtual currency, however, is not a transfer service. Such was the ruling by FinCEN.

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Dylan Love, provided by Business Insider

This is spooky stuff, but it’s real and it’s already happening.

Humans are augmenting themselves with computers and technology that will expand their abilities, and it’s going to get more advanced and morally complex as time passes.

Imagine transplanting your entire consciousness into a computer. That’s a new type of immortality. Imagine having a robotic exoskeleton that’s not just part of your body — it is your body. That’s a new type of existence entirely.

Continue reading “Transhumanism Will Change Everything” »