"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

Albert Einstein

The wikiquest for innovation: Part 2

September 9, 2009

Books and Stuff to Read, Society, Some Comments

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Wikinomics

Some more interesting quotes from the book Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams:

“We must encourage innovation without eroding the vitality of the scientific and cultural commons. We need an incentive system that rewards inventors and knowledge producers and encourages dissemination of their output.” Pg. 240

“The culture of generosity is the very backbone of the Internet.” Pg. 274

“Innovation is less about inventing and building physical things and more about orchestrating or coordinating good ideas.” Pg. 290

Trash Building

September 4, 2009

Society, Some Comments

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Dan Phillips builds houses…out of recycled or discarded materials. This New York Times article profiles Phillips and talks about his work. He uses things like picture frame corners that he got from a frame shop who was getting rid of samples and small pieces of wood that are leftover from the ends of boards that other construction companies discard. Phillips tries to sell all of his houses to low-income families, though after a while many of them cannot afford the mortgage.
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(Photo is from Our United Villages and the Rebuilding Center, which also has a cool warehouse of recycled and reclaimed materials, see pictures here.)

One thing that I found to be very interesting was that he requires that the future owners help with the building. This adds another dimension to his projects that makes it more of a human project than anything else. People who help build their own homes will appreciate it more, and in turn they will appreciate the materials and things that go into building the house. Maybe I am being too hopeful to think that they will appreciate where the materials come from and think more environmentally, but this is a good start towards a more sustainable lifestyle.
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Molecular gastronomy…is not your typical food science

August 30, 2009

Books and Stuff to Read, Science, Some Comments

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Also an article in the book The Best American Science Writing 2007 is a piece called “Cooking for Eggheads” by Patricia Gadsby on molecular gastronomy, which is the study of the physical and chemical processes that go into cooking food.
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It is interesting to think about this field of science and compare it to what nutritionists do. Nutritionists try to break food down into their essential parts and attempt to inject things where they do not naturally belong. Molecular gastronomists, on the other hand, are scientists who want to know what is happening to the molecular structures in food when they are cooked or otherwise manipulated.

Gadsby talks about how one person she interviewed, Hervé This (pronounced Tiss), demonstrated that the texture of cooked eggs is completely determined by the temperature, not the time, at which they are cooked. A few degrees make a difference because different proteins in the yolk and white coagulate at different temperatures in the range of 142-184˚F.

Hervé This makes the point that what molecular gastronomists are interested in is figuring out the mechanisms, but people who throw around the term molecular gastronomy to describe fancy cooking techniques essentially should not be considered representative of this field of science. Molecular gastronomists are more like the physicists who are looking to find the laws of the universe, just instead of the universe they are interested in the laws of food and cooking. But like nutritionism giving the false perception of understanding the composition of food, showy restaurant chefs are giving the public a misconstrued image of molecular gastronomy.

But there is a good side to everything, and exposing people to new techniques draws attention and recognition to the field. The tricky part is then to convince those people that there is a greater purpose to experimenting with food than to just have a cool trick to show. Molecular gastronomy brings us closer to understanding the complex nature of different types of food applied to heat and other external forces. By understanding these processes, we may get closer to finding out what makes food nutritious and how to maximize that nutritional value.



Image credit:
Flickr user Marco Veringa

Detecting lies in the 21st century

August 25, 2009

Books and Stuff to Read, Science, Society, Some Comments, Technology

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I am currently reading the book The Best American Science Writing 2007, and in it was an article about lie detecting by Robin Marantz Henig entitled Looking for the lie that was published in the New York Times Magazine. (Just so you know, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that polygraphs can detect lies at very high accuracy.)
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Towards the end of her piece, Henig discusses some of the evolutionary implications pertaining to deception and the development of the brain. Advanced social interactions are complex and often deception needs to be part of the equation and might be somewhat related to skills that make individuals socially adapted and intelligent.

This idea is interesting because it would explain a lot of the selfish behavior that we see in humans today. Social groups that are small enough may not suffer as much from serious deceptive offences, though they definitely have their share of gossiping, etc.

But as social groups get bigger, relationships are not as much defined by kinship but by association and profession. Being able to lie or deceive may have become adaptive in these settings where it would be the difference between gaining an advantage over a competitor or getting the short end of the stick.
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The chickens in the yard go cluck cluck cluck

August 14, 2009

Science, Society, Some Comments

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This NYT article talks about the trend that is becoming more popular now of keeping chickens in backyards across the nation, such as Chicago, Brooklyn, and the rural West.
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From the article, the general sense is that most of the people who recently started raising chickens in their backyards are doing it because of the economic recession. A common sentiment that is repeated in the article is that people want to feel secure, just in case they lose their job or the recession gets worse.

Possibly the most difficult thing about raising animals is feeding them. The problem with raising the chickens in backyards is that you spend nearly as much as you could make just by buying feed for the chickens. There are also the initial costs of providing shelter and purchasing the chicks.

Compared to farms that purchase feed in bulk or have enough land to rotate the chickens on plots of grass, raising your own chickens is inefficient. You are hardly saving any money while increasing the hassle for your household.
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Just when we think we might make progress…

August 4, 2009

Society, Some Comments

1 comment

The Senate is in a position to pass a climate change bill aimed at the energy industry. There are some things that were changed through much of the politicking going on, and it is unsure whether the bill would be successful at doing much in the way of reducing emissions.

Here are a few opinions:

Whichever method is chosen, something should be done soon. If cap-and-trade policy is less effective than taxing carbon, then we will find out and should be flexible to adapt our policy.

We WILL NOT get things right the first time around! We cannot expect to! Policy should not be written and left stagnant anyway! But we can’t afford to argue back and forth about which policy will work better. That would take way too long to make anything happen.

We are missing the point by debating over what type of policy would work better. We should be open and flexible while ensuring that whatever policy is implemented is as strong as it can be, predicts any abuses, and doesn’t have any loopholes.
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