Quick Decisions!

Remember when mom kept telling you that you need to play less video games and focus more on your classes? Well guess what? Mom is finally (and probably only ever, according to her) wrong! Playing a lot of video games does have its benefits after all. No I don't mean that you can hopefully become a game designer/tester dude or that you will be able to perform ridiculously complex medical surgeries with your extreme hand-eye coordination accuracy (lets face it, World of Warcraft isn't going to get you into med school). I'm talking bigger and better; more like upper management or even CEO positions.

A new study in Current Biology journal (it's in the library reserves!) states that general gaming helps people make better probabilistic inferences a.k.a decisions based on incomplete information. That means people who play video games can make quick decisions better in the heat of the moment than most other people who don't. Never mind that your social skills will most likely falter but on the other hand, you could probably be a great CEO and be rich, all from playing video games. Who would have thought?

Now that you've got your parent's credit card with the new found knowledge of splurging on your "Future CEO Investment," might I suggest you hold off until the new PlayStation Move becomes available. It's essentially Sony's answer to the Wii Remote which should be available as an add-on to the PS3. Check out the video to see what you're in for!



You might as well improve your decision making ability with the latest gaming devices available.

Happy Gaming!

The Bad Man Notice: I do not work for, nor am I affiliated with any publications or hardware that has been mentioned in this post.

Wing Tech

Remember the Jet Pack? Oh the wonders if you owned one of those marvels of human invention that have almost no practical purpose whatsoever (check out one of my earlier blog posts for more info). Regardless of whether or not we will ever use them, I think its safe to say that they are just downright cool! And I want one, if only to grandly display it hanging in my living room to say "Yeah, I've got a Jet Pack in my living room!"

But I digress; the reason for the jet Pack was, among others, to allow a greater distance to be covered faster than walking or running and preferably something to do with flying. As such, I found what could be the next coolest thing to a Jet Pack. A Wing! (I agree, it doesn't necessarily have that ring to it.)

Jacked from wired.com

That, dear readers, is one cool wing. Much like strapping into a parachute, one can jump out of the plane on this wing and be able to glide through the air before deploying the parachute for landing. Its called a Gryphon, and even though it is still in its infancy and is currently in testing only stages for the military, the possibilities that it brings to the table, or battlefield for that matter are endless.

With a heads up display for navigation and built in guidance systems, the Gryphon can be used to tactically land into enemy area without being detected by radar. This is because of its insignificant heat signature and also its stealth like properties. Unfortunately, there are no offers on making this available to the public but that could change later. Imagine that! Now what am I going to use to glide over to my friend's house?

Pretty cool huh?

Space Flight Tech

I've had this strange fascination with space ever since I was a wee little tike. What does it feel like to look down on planet earth from 500 miles away? Can we vacation in space? What is there to do in space? Certainly floating around can only be fun for so long. But I digress, if one wanted to go to space today, what would you have to do? Well, you would have to be a billionaire willing to throw money at either NASA or the Russian Space Agency and hope that one of them will train you and take you into space.
Or...
You could wait a few years, if you're still somewhat young, and hop on the new Virgin Galactic SpaceShip Two, set to commence commercial space flights in a few years time.



The video is an animation of what a typical trip to space might be like once that whole thing takes off. Literally. There are actually two crafts that are required to make regular spaceflight happen. There is the Mother Ship pictured below called the 'WhiteKnightTwo.'

Picture stolen from wired.com

The space in the center is for the other craft, 'SpaceShipTwo' that will actually travel into space. Once the Mother Ship takes off, it travels to an altitude of 50,000 feet which is where SpaceShipTwo will break off from WhiteKnightTwo and blast off into the Thermosphere that is between 95 to 600 kilometers above the surface of the Earth. Gravity at this level is rather low and floating around the cabin should be possible.

Space tourism is about to become a reality. However there are still some lingering questions that are till left unanswered such as: How much G-force will be applied during the catapulting shot into the Thermosphere? Is there going to be any training required for the passengers? What would happen in an emergency? And most importantly, how much will this cost? Granted these will all get answered in due time but imagine, in a few years, instead of booking a ticket to the Caribbean, you might be booking your ticket to space.

Wind Tech 2

So we are using the wind. Big Deal. The sun is great too, yeah yeah. We have wind power, and solar power and we make dams to harness the power of water. But that is manipulation of water flow, which requires the flooding of acres upon acres of land. As a matter of fact, with the amount of dams already built and more in the works, there is already some proof that the earth is being slightly tilted more on its axis than before due to the immense weight of dam water accumulated in one area, multiplied over by the amount of dams in one area. Good thing we can't "fall out" of the rotation...

Now, we have fast moving water all over the world in the form of rivers, seas with strong currents, or tidal forces. What if there was a way to harness that power too? Why would such a small amount of power be important? Because in the near future, our energy sources will be just that: multiple sources. It's going to be a combination of wind, water, sunlight, fire, etc. It's not going to be just nuclear or just hydrogen. While researching this, I came across another form of promising energy source.

Image jacked from: popularmechanics.com

Under water windmills or wind turbines that harness the flow of river water have been steadily making their way into bodies of water across the world from Arctic villages near Norway to the East River in New York City. They might not be as powerful as wind based turbines but they show promise in supplying power from sources that would otherwise be left unconsidered. Even if it ends up powering a mere 40 homes, as is the case in Norway, it is still doing that without burning any fossil fuels of any kind.

Although it is too early to speculate on the effects of such "watermills" on fish behavior or water currents, one study cited that the East River devices were bright and visible enough that fish would merely steer past them. In addition, the blades of the turbines turn at slow speeds that fish would not be harmed by them. One of the advantages of such watermills is that the amount of energy generated is almost predictable whereas with the sun or wind, it is a little bit more complicated. It will be very interesting to see this new technology in action around the world to reduce the burning of fossil fuels and decrease our carbon footprint.

Wireless Power Tech

Two words that do not go together, "wireless" and "power." But it might be possible. The previous post before this about universal cell phone chargers got me thinking: what if we don't need chargers at all? Before you think I'm crazy, hear me out.

The Palm Pre was able to achieve a version of this by removing the tethered aspect of the equation with their "Touchstone." You simply place the Palm Pre phone on the charging device and it starts charging without the need to connect a wire or insert the phone into a slot of some sort. It does this through a technology called inductive coupling which is much more popular in electric toothbrushes to keep out water and moisture. The way this works, in a nutshell, is that when the rate of current changes in one wire, it induces another wire that is similarly configured to have a charge.

There are already plans by some furniture makers to make the surface areas of their furniture compatible with inductive coupling technology and manufacturers are slowly getting on the wireless power bandwagon and creating flat surfaces that can be used as charging stations. Minor modifications are necessary to current devices for this to work but the potential for wireless power is huge. Check this out to get a sense of what I mean:



Imagine sitting at home and your TV, your cell phone, light bulbs, and anything else that needs power is not tethered to anything. There are current theories that state this to be a possibility perhaps with microwaves beamed down from space. But more of that after a break, besides, I wouldn't want to "overload" your brain.

The Bad Man Notice: The Palm brand and Palm Pre product was merely used as an example of the current use of the mentioned technology and in no way do I endorse nor am affiliated with the above mentioned products.