inkbluesky

The Walking Machine

In 1817 Baron von Drais invented a walking machine that would help him get around the royal gardens faster: two same-size in-line wheels, the front one steerable, mounted in a frame which you straddled. The device was propelled by pushing your feet against the ground, thus rolling yourself and the device forward in a sort of gliding walk. The machine became known as the Draisienne or hobby horse. It was made entirely of wood. This enjoyed a short lived popularity as a fad, not being practical for transportation in any other place than a well maintained pathway such as in a park or garden.

This may have been the first bicycle. I say may have been because we're talking about two wheels and a frame that someone could sit on. How many times was this done before 1817 and nobody took the time to document it.

Lost In MySpace II: Gen X Revenge?

Back in March I wrote that MySpace was nearing the tipping point of becoming “uncool” in the eyes of the fickle but huge Gen Y demo that comprises the bulk of its massive 70mm user base. Since then, that sentiment has picked up steam — not by the twentysomethings who use the service. Au du contraire, I believe this hate-on is being driven by the generation known for perfecting irony and collective cynicism - my demographic: Generation X.

While I'm just watching the MySpace phenomenon from the sidelines it was inevitable that it would go through a popularity and been-there-done-that phase. The idea of on-line community is a good concept, but there is a shallow and kind of sad side. Within the community, at least with some members, popularity becomes a kind of social currency. Popularity becomes valued over qualities that go a little deeper then being appealing to the herd. Gen-Y or Gen-X'ers are probably not any more shallow then any other generation, but there is always the chance we'll get one of those regrettable short lived trends where Gen-Y throws up their hands and embrace shallowness. Thus giving Gen-? a topic for many poorly written senior papers on how their parents lost it on MySpace.

update: reading back over this its easy to get the impression that I'm equating MySpace's popularity with the number of members while I was thinking in terms of, for lack of a better word, cool-ness factor. MySpace is incredibily popular destination on the net. That is one of the reasons why everyone talks about it. This was recently posted over at Techcrunch, MySpace, The 27.4 Billion Pound Gorilla  

MySpace has 75 million users (see somewhat dated comparison stats here), 15 million daily unique logins, is growing by a massive 240,000 new users per day, and is generating nearly 30 billion monthly page views (that’s 10,593 page views per second). 

Dogs and Their Fine Noses Find New Career Paths

Engineers are still years away from creating instruments as sensitive or as flexible as a dog's nose. Until then, Mother Nature remains the master engineer. "You can train a dog for anything that has a unique or mostly unique odor," Dr. Myers said. In the case of DVD's, the smell that Lucky and Flo have been trained to detect is polycarbonate plastic. In the case of cancer, scientists believe that dogs may be picking up biological compounds, like alkanes and benzene derivatives, that are not found in healthy tissue.

The cancer detection research is in a preliminary stage, but some early tests with a variety of cancers like lung and bladder show a success rate better than conventional tests'.

Because dogs have 20 to 40 times the number of nasal receptor cells that humans do, they can detect the tiniest levels of odors, even a few parts per billion, Dr. Myers said.

I used to have a dog that could hear the opening of a pack of deli sliced chicken from the other side of the house.