4D printer - Maxwell's Angels....

so we've all heard about 3D printers, and pretty naff they are too - and soon we'll have 3D fax machines (poor man's matter transporter)

but what about a 4D printer?

This would basically extrude reality - it could be a nascent universe in a box, with an output being a stream of space time continuum - the settings (God's Dials?) would be quite complicated....perhaps the implementation would entail use of Maxwell's Angels (a bit like his demons, only without sense-of-humour failure).

alien consciousness (machine intelligence or extraterrestrial)

so reading What Have You Changed Your Mind About?: Today's Leading Minds Rethink
Everything
by John Brockman , Brian Eno (Introduction)
Amazon Reference
I was struck by the similarity of arguments about alien and artificial intelligence - how do we know something is conscious? how can we make something conscious? what is society but the combination of the theory of other and a model of self?

meanwhile, perhaps Drake's famous equation, promoted by Carl Sagan, and dismissed by some because of lack of detection of any
other is because once you reach singularity, you become
dark matter, and society is simply dark energy.

there's a theory for you to munch on.

sci fi game on google sky map

would be neat to play a sort of
plan your sci fi plot game using google skymap o na bunch of smart phones -

basic model would be to take plot of any classic space opera SF book or film, and tag the journeys in it (most space opera is basically an adventure trail, challenge, journey -) on the skymap visiting relevant planets or stars and see who can get it most right....

3 masters 3

so in my life i've been lucky to meet
3 masters of trinity college cambridge

interestingly (imho)
one was afraid of women
one was afraid of men
one was afraid of god
as far as i could tell
but i'm not telling who or which

horizon is getting weaker

not a good recent edition of horizon - here's an idea for a decent edition

get ben goldacre (or someone similar)
to do something on
what is medical science?

what constitutes evidence and what constitutes grounds for
accepting a theory (or rejecting it)
and what constitutes waffle -

could start with historical perspective - e.g.
John Snow et al...and give some
homeopathic and placebo lessons
and explain
statistical significance
and risk, properly....

remember, the stuff those folks did has contributed more to human happiness/quality of life than just about anything else except the invention of the electric guitar and the football.

can 3D printers print 3D printers

and can they print robots that can turn off 3D printers?
and if not, why not?

cf. those of you familiar with Philip K. Dick's dystopic visions of consumer society will recognize the rogue post-war autofac meme, here

oribtals & flat earth and the ecliptic

you know i never could understand how people worked out all the orbit stuff when I was a kid - it was coz noone ever told me that all the orbits were in the same plane! - if you think of the planets goin round in arbitray planes, like hurts your brain....meanwhile so does xkcd
http://xkcd.com/658/