Make money not war

I just recently realized that the location of the Biblical village of Cana is still in dispute. It seems to me that someone should just decide on one spot and arrange to build a large reception hall there to accommodate destination weddings (or, at least, destination wedding receptions) for couples of a New Testament spiritual bent, thus bringing in tourist revenue to a region somewhat deficient in resources and hard by the contested region of the Golan Heights. Surely a lucrative commerce, tastefully done, could serve to ease international tensions in the region, though it might be too much to ask for actual miracles to occur in the process.

The past as it shapes the present

Another Kickstarter project under way, a feature-length film by someone whose family is from Iran.
Update: the project successfully met the creator's funding goal.

The physical artifact arrives

The literary production mentioned previously here has not only taken shape in the real world but has negotiated the supply chain issues successfully. And of course Annabel Scheme (broken link) makes for a good read. But it's not the San Francisco I remember....

A written work your actions can affect directly

Another Kickstarter project has caught my fancy, this time along literary lines. And the interesting thing about it is that it is already guaranteed (as near as anything in life is for certain) to come to fruition, though the precise form that will take shape is not settled at this time. Depending on the amount of money that will be raised by the deadline, the form of the physical book that Robin Sloan will write will take various forms. Already at the time time I write this it has passed the point of a routine print on demand volume, and with the remaining time and additional backers it could turn out to be something much niftier. It is an interesting model, not completely unique, I know, for a fiction writer to be engaging the audience during the act of writing itself, and not only on promotional tour only after the work has been put to bed. It is my guess that if it receives much more of a push from its backers it may cause some amount of commotion among those pondering the future of publishing itself.
I will spare you my further opining on complementarity between observer and phenomenon. It's really just a book.
The author has also written the very entertaining short story Mr. Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store featured recently and memorably. at Escape Pod, which I recommend to SF fans.
Update: Funded! Hundreds of percent over! And it seems as if the literary production is keeping pace as well, so it should all culminate in one fine-looking edition soon.
Update II:It is arrived and it is great.

Construction kits for big kids

It's a project to develop an open source hardware standard for builders, hobbyists, and anyone else who needs to create structures with lightweight, sturdy, reconfigurable and extensible metal parts. They are now in the process of raising funds through Kickstarter through October 24th. If that goes well, look for the first production runs to be done before the the year is out.
Update: Funded, with plenty of room to spare! I'm happy to be one of the first backers of what should be a fantastic enterprise.
Update to update: Still waiting in 2024.

Someone's ringing the bell

Designer Li Jianye has designed a pair of doorbells for computer people (an Enter key) and for musical people (piano keys). I say, "why stop there?" How about a doorbell which sends you an SMS message when someone pushes it, so that if you are away from home, you would know about the event? It could have a little webcam to snap a picture of your visitor to send to you via MMS, and if you chose, there could be a little screen where you could message your visitor back.

I'm pretty sure that it could be implemented pretty easily with an Arduino Diecimila and a home computer.

Probably you would want an option to lock out the messaging functions if the doorbell gets pressed too often, to frustrate any annoying pranksters in your neighborhood.


Update: This was also posted on the Make: Blog. Also, I have an Arduino coming in the mail soon, so we'll see what doorbell-related tricks we might be able to have it do.

Eclipse pies

1. Print out high resolution pictures of the moon in eclipse using food-grade inkjet ink and edible paper in a Canon or Epson printer.


2. Apply the illustrations to traditional Moon Pies.


3. Share with fellow lunatics.

More information on high resolution edible printing here.

Update: A warm welcome goes out to all my visitors from evilmadscientist. I have not pressed forward to make this astronomically themed dessert a reality because I lack the prerequisites, but would love to hear from anyone who has in fact been able to construct this or something similar in reality.

Or maybe "your hair - it's so awesome."

I do like this guerrilla art item: anonymous plaques in public places. Here are a few other sayings one could put on a plaque.

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As you can see, I favor the creepy/morbid angle here.

Art with broad appeal

I read about the Maserati covered in shattered glass via The Cellar and thought that an artist over here should buy a car from an DEA auction (like the Porsche 911 Turbo described here) and cover it in thousands of hypodermic needles. If it is possible to get thousands of crack pipes without too much trouble, you could bust these up and sprinkle some of these on too. People will love it either because of the free speech aspect or because of the anti-drug angle. Or because there's a hot car underneath!

Signs for the colorblind

I'm putting this out now even though the cool illustration of the concept has not worked out to my satisfaction.

Color blindness is a condition that a bit over 1% of the population possesses, something like ten times more prevalent among males as compared to females. Here is a typical colored dot test for one of the most common types of color blindness:

If you see the number 21 instead of 74, you probably have red-green color blindness.

The issue is one that web designers need to be concerned with as they put together websites. Here is a tool (broken link) that lets you visualize what a given website looks like under the different types of color blindness - you can try typing in the URL of this page to see what happens. It would be cool if they could build this into a head-mounted display so a person could go out into the world and experience what it is like to see things with altered color perception.

My idea is to use this phenomenon to make signs that display different messages to different people. For instance, suppose a couple is made up of a normal vision wife and a red-green color blind husband. We could make a design for the bathroom floor out of appropriately tiles that would show the word UP to those with normal vision and DOWN for the color blind viewer, as an aid to behavior modification. My discovery last night is that even though it isn't terribly hard to make words when you're working with just two colors of tile, one needs a hell of a lot of tiles - hundreds, preferably - to display even a short word in a random color pattern in this way legibly, and as tiresome this would be to depict in a drawing program on the computer, it would be even more of a chore to do in actual colored tiles. (Even if the tile-setter isn't color blind.) Perhaps it would be better just to reproduce a pattern in miniature, as a wall hanging instead.

Another idea would be to make little tags which you would sew into your clothing, identifying which tops and bottoms go together when viewed by someone of the majority group - the color blind person would just have to match A with A and B with B instead of relying on their own distinctive color sense.

I think there are probably other applications if one just thinks about the subject for a bit more. I look forward to the comments.

Update (June 2008): In this post I have tracked down a source for those original color plates, if anyone is interested in owning a second-hand set.

Update (December 2010): This T-shirt (broken link) incorporates some of what I had in mind, although the non-textual part of the design kind of makes it less cool than the full-blown concept, along with a bit of a bad attitude.

Little horsies

I have found just the place to provide the essential ingredient in my plan for peace in Iraq. The evildoers will be crushed by our massive superiority in cuteness!


[Via monkeyfilter]

A modest proposal to help bring peace to Iraq

When I read about the Ohio police dog who helps socialize inmates (among other things she does), I started to think about other individuals who might benefit from the loving contact of a pet. Top of the list: the warring factions in Iraq, a place which is on course soon to be known as the former Iraq.

One hitch in the plan: many Muslims consider dogs to be unclean. And cats don't have the same kind of social nature, not being pack animals. So, instead, why not go all out and use horses (or, rather, ponies) in their place? Nearly everybody knows about the noble Arabian horse, so what warlord or insurgent leader would turn down a chance to accept a gift equestrian

Every fairy child may keep ....,
originally uploaded by Lynn Morag.

Let's run the numbers. The increase in war spending is estimated at $80 billion, and let's assume that 10% of that can go to this project. A pony might go for something like $25k, and with the overhead of getting the animals over there, supplies, veterinarians, wranglers, and whatnot, we might imagine a total upfront cost of $250k per animal. That translates to 32000 pretty ponies we could send over there (assuming there are that many to be had). Some estimates of the number of insurgents range up to 17000, that would be enough for nearly every insurgent to be given a pair of ponies of their very own.

Now taking care of a pony is a lot of work, which would take time away from such things as constructing and planting IEDs, firing RPGs, and blowing up oil pipelines. Also, you can ride a pony, which would help relieve the gasoline shortage that many Iraqis have to face, even among those who wouldn't personally be receiving the actual pony. Finally, the nonviolent and pastoral image of ponies trotting in public in places like Baghdad and Basra would radically change the image of Iraq, particularly if rebel cells could be induced to spend at least part of their time giving pony rides to children.

Once the animals are old enough to breed, Iraq could develop a thriving commerce that would help bind the different regions together. So it would be important to make sure that healthy animals go to the Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish areas fairly.

Of course, we would still need to have US forces there to help out, not least of their new responsibilities involving helping with the shoveling. But perhaps we could persuade outside contractors to take on some of this load until the revitalized Iraqi nation can take care of its own needs in this regard.

You may think of it as a crazy plan, but I feel that if it is presented in the right way to the American people, they would see the underlying old-fashioned common sense behind it and support it. If you agree, I urge you to write your Senator and Representative in Congress so we can get started on this new direction.

Don't let them get me!

When I was a kid there were are few movies which would sometimes get me scared at night, with the common old fear of the thing lurking under the bed. This crafter has created a monster under the bed plushie which I feel deserves to be popularized, as a way to help children (and others) get over their night frights maybe. Maybe some purple electric tentacles and slime glands would be nice accessories to add - I'm willing to act as consultant!
(Image not available)

Sterilized for your convenience

I was looking at this transparent German knife block (broken link) at about the same time I was reminded of Laura Splan's Blood Scarf and devised this hybrid.

The red fluid would be dyed grain alcohol, sealed into the space between the clear acrylic panels, which would serve to help sterilize the cutting edges as well as providing the festive color accent. You would fill the thing with a big syringe, which you would also use periodically as the alcohol evaporates.

Thumb piano piano

Neatorama has this item pointing to a Flickr photoset showing some artsy kalimbas or "thumb pianos" made of such things as briefcases, lamp parts, cameras, and other items not normally associated with musical instruments. Lots of them have pickups (they are ekalimbas broken link).

I'm thinking that the next time I see an old piano offered on the local freecycle group (another broken link), I might want to pick it up and make a thumb piano out of it. Don't think that's been done yet.

Where to put that fat leg

The Fat Leg Cable Table has four legs, one of which enlarged and hollowed to accept cables for electronics. [Via Make.]

It seems to me that a more elegant solution would be to use a pedestal table design instead. If one objects to having the cables routed to the center of the table, there are double pedestal designs as well. The pedestals are already hollow, so you just have to put an appropriate-sized hole in the table top and Bob's your uncle.

Book plate

I was thinking very literally when this bookplate site came up on Monkeyfilter: has someone made a plate (or other item for the table) out of an actual book? There was a recent article in Make about how to hollow a book, and perhaps the technique could be adapted. I am thinking that one would scoop out the innards of a thin book, leaving a rim, and pot the whole thing in clear resin. Conceptual art!