Bloggasm

via jon

An 86-year-old man named Les Geddes has invented a new gadget that uses a camera to scan text and project it onto a screen for people with severe eyesight problems:

A GADGET invented by a retired Edinburgh engineer to help his partially-sighted wife read is set to revolutionise the lives of thousands of people.

Created by 86-year-old Les Geddes, the reading device uses a tiny portable camera to scan small print and project it on to a television screen.

Mr Geddes came up with the invention to help his wife Anne see the buttons and display on their microwave oven.

What’s most cool about it is that he’s not trying to patent the machine, rather he’s posting instructions up on the internet so other people with similar problems can create these gadgets on their own.

There appears to be a phantom device that’s being used by car thieves in Malaysia. The unknown technology is able to detect which cars have laptops hidden in them, making their thievery much more efficient. Many people take the time to carefully hide anything expensive from sight, but this won’t keep you safe:

Malaysia’s New Straits Times reports that tech-savvy thieves in the district of Petaling Jaya have been using a “special gadget” in order to identify which parked cars have laptops hidden inside of them, with 255 laptops stolen from cars there so far this year.

The police, who have not been able to get their hands on one of these mysterious devices, are stumped and are recommending that people carry their laptops with them rather than leave them in their cars.

The fact that nobody knows how this device works or what it looks like it adds some spice to the whole mystery.

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The always-excellent Clive Thompson points to a new experiment where a team of scientists make a highly-detailed simulation of the 9/11 attacks.:

Researchers at Purdue University have created a simulation that uses scientific principles to study in detail what likely happened when a commercial airliner crashed into the World Trade Center’s North Tower on Sept. 11, 2001.

The simulation could be used to better understand which elements in the building’s structural core were affected, how they responded to the initial shock of the aircraft collision, and how the tower later collapsed from the ensuing fire fed by an estimated 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, said Mete Sozen, the Kettelhut Distinguished Professor of Structural Engineering in Purdue’s School of Civil Engineering.

The simulation is so detailed that after 80 hours of work, they’ve produced only a half-second of simulation, but already in that half-second they’ve learned a lot. This kicker for 9/11 conspiracy theorists is here:

“Current findings from the simulation have identified the destruction of 11 columns on the 94th floor, 10 columns on the 95th floor and nine columns on the 96th floor,” he said. “This is a major insight. When you lose close to 25 percent of your columns at a given level, the building is significantly weakened and vulnerable to collapse.”

Of course, the experiment wasn’t done to disprove 9/11 conspiracy theories, that’s just a byproduct of it. And a detailed simulation is a hell of a lot better than grainy footage produced in Loose Change.

Rather than using the superior smelling techniques of dogs, air port security will soon be using sophisticated laser technology to find bombs:

A Scottish company has developed sensor technology which it says can “fingerprint” explosives and could be used in airports.

Cascade Technologies believes its system, which uses a laser-based sensor to detect explosives, is at a “critical” stage and is seeking government support, the BBC reports.

The company, which was spun out of Strathclyde University in 2003, says its quantum cascade lasers are more effective at detecting gases in the air than trained sniffer dogs.

The article goes on to say that this technology could be put in place within two years, which is a pretty fast track indeed. Even though it claims that it can out-sniff dogs, it doesn’t say to what degree.

Because the very concept of a perpetual motion machine violates laws of thermodynamics coupled with the fact that so many scientists have issued patents for it, the US Patent Office now refuses to even take patents for them.

A new company called Steorn not only has become one of the many claiming to invent a PMM, they issued a challenge in the pages of the Economist for any scientists to prove them wrong:

Dublin-based technology risk management company, Steorn, has challenged the scientific community to prove it wrong. In an advertisement found in the most recent issue of The Economist it has challenged scientists and engineers to test the firm’s free-energy technology and publish the findings. The challenge appears real, but is the technology?

Steorn states that from all the scientists who accept their challenge, twelve will be invited to take part in a rigorous testing exercise to prove (or disprove) that Steorn’s technology creates free-energy (also known as over-unity). The results will be published worldwide.

Since the company isn’t allowed to patent the device, they’ve patented the individual steps leading up to it, thereby sidestepping the ban against PPMs.

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Back in my elementary and middle school days, I remember watching informational videos at school (these were usually shown whenever we had a substitute) that would always highlight those new bits of technology on the horizon that just never seemed to materialize. According to those videos, everybody’s cars should drive themselves by now, making car accidents non-existent.

One of the more promising inventions was the electric car, which would give off zero air pollutants. Whatever happened to it though? This BBC article explains:

The General Motors EV1 had a top speed of 80mph. It had a range of over a hundred miles. It could do 0-60mph in under eight seconds. And it was an electric car.

Not a milk float or a rinky-dink little two-seater runabout, but a normal car, and a milestone in the development of the electric vehicle, something that could swing the battle against air pollution in California.

And yet the ignominious demise of the GM EV1 is charted in a new film, Who Killed the Electric Car? In his documentary, film-maker Chris Paine, says cynical and conspiring car makers and oil firms, as well as apathetic consumers and weak government and regulators, helped end the electric dream in California.

There was a law made in 1990 (in California) that aimed to get all cars sold in that state to give out 0% air pollution, but GM and others sued until the law was rendered useless. Combine this with strong lobbyist influence, and all work on electric cars have come to a complete stop.

Be sure to read the comments posted by readers at the bottom of that article. They add in good insight on the other side of the story.

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