February 11, 2011
Omni wheels (or poly wheels) are wheels with small discs around the circumference which are perpendicular to the rolling direction. The effect is that the wheel will roll with full force, but will also slide laterally with great ease. These wheels are often employed in holonomic drive systems (those with ability to move in all direction and rotate independently). Although omniwheels are capable of movement in many directions, they are not true omni-directional wheels, a classification reserved for spherical wheels such as ball transfer units.
A platform employing three omni wheels in a triangular configuration is generally called Kiwi Drive. The Killough platform is similar; so named after Stephen Killough’s work with omnidirectional platforms at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They are often used in small robots. In leagues such as Robocup, many robots use these wheels to have the ability to move in all directions. Omniwheels combined with conventional wheels provide interesting performance properties, such as on a six wheel vehicle employing two conventional wheels on a center axle and four omniwheels on front and rear axles.
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February 11, 2011
The Mecanum wheel is one design for a wheel which can move in any direction. It is sometimes called the Ilon wheel after its Swedish inventor, Bengt Ilon, who came up with the idea in 1973 when he was an engineer with the Swedish company Mecanum AB. It is a conventional wheel with a series of rollers attached to its circumference. As well as moving forward and backward like conventional wheels, they allow sideways movement by spinning wheels on the front and rear axles in opposite directions.
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February 11, 2011
The Parrot AR.Drone is a RC quadricopter with cameras attached to it built by French wireless products manufacturer Parrot. It is designed to be controllable with an iPhone, iPad, or an iPod Touch. Parrot demos the device with 2 games, a virtual combat called ‘DRONE WAR’ with solo and multiplayer mode and a ‘ROBOT’ solo game demo against a virtual Robot. Parrot has launched ARdrone.org Open API game development platform, to gather game studios and developers. It sells for around $300 on Amazon.com.
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February 11, 2011
If a person has one number a and another smaller number b, he can make the ratio of the two numbers by dividing them. Their ratio is a/b. He can make another ratio by adding the two numbers together a+b and dividing this by the larger number a. The new ratio is (a+b)/a. If these two ratios are equal to the same number, then that number is called the golden ratio. The Greek letter 
(phi) is usually used to represent the golden ratio. Like Pi, the golden ratio is an irrational number. If a person tries to write it, it will never stop and never be the same again and again, but it will start this way: 1.6180339887…
Italian mathematician, Fibonacci (1170 – 1250), discovered a sequence of numbers that relates to the golden ratio called the Fibonacci numbers. A person can find the next number in the list by adding the last two numbers together. If a person divides a number in the list by the number that came before it, this ratio comes closer and closer to the golden ratio. At least since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. Mathematicians have studied the golden ratio because of its unique and interesting properties.
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February 10, 2011
Shoegazing (also known as shoegaze) is a subgenre of alternative rock that emerged from the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. It lasted there until the mid 1990s, with a critical zenith reached in 1990 and 1991. The British music press named this style shoegazing because the musicians in these bands stood relatively still during live performances in a detached, introspective, non-confrontational state, hence the idea that they were gazing at their shoes. The heavy use of effects pedals also contributed to the image of performers looking down at their feet (shoegazing) during concerts.
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February 10, 2011
The Buddha Machine is a small musical loop player released by FM3, a China-based music duo. The name and idea derived from a popular Chinese music player that intones repeating loops of Buddhist chanting. The Buddha Machine continuously plays one of 9 ambient sound loops (drones) that range in length from 5 to 40 seconds. Resembling a small transistor radio, the device has a volume control that doubles as an on/off switch; a headphone jack; a 4.5V AC adapter jack; and a switch that, when moved, selects the next of 9 ambient loops. In 2008, the second edition (version 2.0) was released commercially; it replaces the original nine loops with nine new ones (totaling approximately 300 seconds of sound), and includes a new control that allows the user to alter the pitch of the sound.
In 2009, FM3 Productions Ltd released an iPhone app that has similar functionality to the real device. It has the option to select from version 1.0 or version 2.0 of the device and a single button that selects the loop to play. Also that year, Throbbing Gristle & Industrial Records released their version of the Buddha Machine, ‘Gristleism,’ with more loops and almost twice the frequency range of the Buddha Machine. In 2010, FM3 released the third generation Buddha Machine, titled Chan Fang. The music is divided into four loops which were composed and performed on the Gu Qin, an ancient Chinese classical instrument.
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February 10, 2011
Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II is a history book on covert CIA operations and U.S. military interventions during the second half of the 20th century, written by former State Department employee William Blum. The book takes a strongly critical view of American foreign policy. The book covers various US foreign policy ventures from just after World War II onward.
Its basic premise is that the Soviet Union occupied the Warsaw Pact states only to better defend its territory and the American Cold War-era activities abroad were done with imperialist motives. It is an updated and revised version of one of Blum’s previous works, ‘The CIA – A Forgotten History.’ Noam Chomsky called it ‘Far and away the best book on the topic.’ First published in the mid-1980s, it has since been updated several times by the author.
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February 10, 2011
Disco Demolition Night was a promotional event that took place on Thursday, July 12, 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago, Illinois, during which a crate filled with records was blown up on the field. It was held during the doubleheader baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. During the climax of the event, rowdy fans surged onto the field, and a near riot ensued. It would ultimately prove to be one of the most notable promotional ideas and one of the most infamous since ‘Ten Cent Beer Night’ in Cleveland in 1974. The event was the culmination of a popular backlash against disco music.
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February 10, 2011
Lina Medina (b. 1933) is the youngest confirmed mother in medical history, giving birth at the age of five years, seven months and 21 days. She now lives in Lima, Peru. Medina’s son weighed 2.7 kg (6.0 lb; 0.43 st) at birth and was named Gerardo after her doctor. Gerardo was raised believing that Medina was his sister, but found out at the age of 10 that she was his mother. He grew up healthy but died in 1979 at the age of 40 of a bone marrow disease. Medina never revealed the father of the child nor the circumstances of her impregnation. Her father was arrested on suspicion of rape and incest, but was later released due to lack of evidence.
Although the case was called a hoax by some, a number of doctors over the years have verified it based on biopsies, X rays of the fetal skeleton in utero, and photographs taken by the doctors caring for her. Extreme precocious puberty in children 5 or under is very uncommon; pregnancy and delivery by a child this young remains extremely rare. Extreme precocious puberty is treated to suppress fertility, preserve growth potential, and reduce the social consequences of full sexual development in childhood.
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February 10, 2011
A spite house is a building constructed or modified to irritate neighbors or other parties with land stakes. Spite houses often serve as obstructions, blocking out light or access to neighboring buildings, or as flamboyant symbols of defiance. Because long-term occupation is at best a secondary consideration, spite houses frequently sport strange and impractical structures. Spite houses are much rarer than spite fences. This is partially attributable to the fact that modern building codes often prevent the construction of houses likely to impinge on neighbors’ views or privacy.
Probably the most famous spite house was the Richardson Spite House in New York City at Lexington Avenue and 82nd Street. Built in 1882 and demolished in 1915, it was four stories tall, 104 feet (31.7 m) long, and only five feet (1.5 m) wide. Joseph Richardson, the owner of the plot of the same dimensions, built it after the owner of the adjacent plot, Hyman Sarner, unsuccessfully tried to purchase the land. Sarner considered the plot useless by itself and offered only $1000; Richardson demanded $5000. After the deal fell through, Richardson had an apartment building constructed on his land. It was a functional (albeit impractical) apartment building with eight suites, each consisting of three rooms and a bath.
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February 10, 2011
FM-2030 (1930 – 2000) was a transhumanist author, born Fereidoun M. Esfandiary in Brussels to an Iranian diplomat. He became notable in 1989 with the book ‘Are You a Transhuman?: Monitoring and Stimulating Your Personal Rate of Growth in a Rapidly Changing World.’ He also wrote a number of works of fiction under his original name. He changed his name to FM-2030 to reflect the hope and belief that he would live to celebrate his 100th birthday in 2030, and more importantly, to break free of the widespread practice of naming conventions that he saw as rooted in a collectivist mentality, and existing only as a relic of humankind’s tribalistic past. He viewed traditional names as almost always stamping a label of collective identity – varying from gender, to nationality – on the individual.
Many of FM-2030’s predictions about social trends from the 1970s through the early 21st century proved remarkably prescient. He argued that the inherent dynamic of the modern globalizing civilization would bring such changes about despite the best efforts of conservative elites to enforce traditional beliefs. He predicted in vitro fertilization and correcting genetic flaws in 1977; in 1980, he predicted teleconferencing, telemedicine, and teleshopping. He taught at The New School, UCLA, and Florida International University. He worked as a corporate consultant for Lockheed and J.C. Penney. He was a lifelong vegetarian and said he would not eat anything that had a mother. He died from pancreatic cancer and was placed in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Arizona, where his body remains today.
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February 10, 2011
Ingsoc is the political ideology of the totalitarian government of Oceania in George Orwell’s dystopian science fiction novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ Ingsoc (‘English Socialism’) originated after the socialist party took over, but, because The Party continually rewrites history, it is impossible to establish the precise origin of the movement. Ingsoc demands the complete submission – mental, moral and physical – of the people, and will torture to achieve it. It is a masterfully complex system of psychological control that compels confession to imagined crimes and the forgetting of rebellious thought in order to love ‘Big Brother’ and The Party over oneself.
From the novel: ‘The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.’
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