Michael Brandon Scanlon's Page

BBC News – Scientists make laboratory-grown kidney.

This is cool. Making progress. Maybe by the time I’m old enough that I might need something replaced they’ll be able to grow my own.

This is neat! It’s an old video that explains how a car’s differential works to keep tires on different radius turns spinning together.

How a differential gear works — a-ha generating video – Boing Boing.

This is cool!

Jimi Hendrix on a gayageum – Boing Boing.

I like this idea. It’ll never happen in reality but I wonder if a website could be setup where models in blank coveralls have their heads replaced with Congressional heads and then the logos photoshopped in.  Combine this with info from the sunlight foundation and I think we’d have a great start on straightening out congress.

Petition: force Congress to display logos of their corporate backers on their clothes – Boing Boing.

He’s huge!

KQEDScience • Galapagos tortoise hits the open road in winning….

Very interesting. NdGT’s thoughts on Nasa and space exploration set to various videos related to it.

Neil deGrasse Tyson – We Stopped Dreaming (Episode 1) – YouTube.

Clearly people bother them terribly.

Magic meerkat moments – Planet Earth Live – BBC One – YouTube.

Raspberry Pi Dynamic Bike Headlight Prototype and Test – YouTube.

This is great! Semis get 5-6 mpg loaded, this one gets about 10mpg. If my 30mpg Acura was updated to get 40mpg I’d be thrilled, or if the Prius’s 50 mpg changed to 100mpg, that’d be great! A sidenote, Hummer H2′s are horrible and thus discontinued. They got 10 mpg and carried 4 people.

SuperTruck semi achieves 54-percent increase in fuel economy.

Amazing image taken today from space. Equinox, spring in the north, fall in the south.

Earth from Space on the Spring Equinox | Satellite Images | LiveScience.

Ok now this is the sort of technology that I like to hear about. An under skin sensor that can detect blood sugar level changes (diabetes), cholesterol levels, chemo therapy effectiveness and potentially warn of heart attacks BEFORE they happen by several hours.

Wireless ‘under the skin’ prototype implant beams instant blood test read-outs to your smartphone.

So this is a ram chip stacked on top of a processor. This means that instead of the processor being in one spot on the board and the ram being several inches away, they are effectively one chip. The article mentions that the data of a full bluray disc could be moved from the ram through the chip in 1/50th of a second. THAT is Fast! This is the future in general of chips, stacking and mixing layers of logic and memory. This means very good things for customers.

NVIDIA reveals Volta next-gen GPU platform.

Adventures after dark on Vimeo on Vimeo

KQEDScience • Science on the SPOT: The Glowing Millipedes of….

Amazing looking lizard. Actually looks like drawings of dinosaurs from the 80s and 90s.

KQEDScience • New Lizard Species Look Like Evil Dinosaur….

Ancient underwater forest off Alabama is much older than scientists thought | al.com.

So this is awesome! 50,000 years ago there was a massive forest off the coast of Alabama, meaning the coast wasn’t in the same place it is now.

Hilarious!

California for Beginners | Burrito Justice.

Haven’t tried this yet but it looks like a good weekend project. I wonder if I can convince the old Tivo I have that I get both cable and antenna channels at the same time.

The Pietenna HD Antenna Looks Terrible but Gets Great Signal.

Does the Universe Have a Purpose? feat. Neil deGrasse Tyson – YouTube.

Amazing timelapse in infrared

Karst Country – infra-red timelapse on Vimeo on Vimeo

via Karst Country – infra-red timelapse on Vimeo.

I’ve never seen crows, or any birds, go sledding:

This would be welcome from phones to laptops to electric cars!

USC battery wields silicon nanowires to hold triple the energy, charge in 10 minutes.

Short video at the link here demoing an new coating that can be put on just about anything. You’ve maybe seen hydrophobic coatings that make water bead up on something and not be absorbed? This does that with water and oil, which are basically the two main solvents that get onto things and make them dirty. I could see this being put just about anywhere. Neat stuff! (More reasons I went into engineering, to be part of stuff like this at some point.)

Hydrophobic, dirt-shedding spray is indistinguishable from magic – Boing Boing.

Reasons why the internet is awesome: I’m sitting in Salt Lake City, watching waves, surfers and whales in Hawaii, listening to KEXP in Washington, chatting with friends and family around the the country.

All-cheese grilled cheese sammitch – Boing Boing.

2:32 of time well spent. A round up of some of the best science on the net. Good for you, good for sharing with someone you know (big or small) that is interested in the world around them.

The BEST Science Online (Henry’s List) – YouTube.

xkcd: Expedition.

You should watch this short Ted Talk on what is wrong with our modern medicine system and how you’re being lied to.

Ben Goldacre: What doctors don’t know about the drugs they prescribe – YouTube.

I just spent half an hour on Comcast’s, DirecTV’s and Dish’s websites comparing offerings. My conclusion is that they don’t exist to provide a product or quality service. They exist to extract the greatest amount of money from “customers” through lack of competition. I don’t watch a whole lot of TV but I do watch some and for me I don’t see how any of the packages are remotely worth my money.

I’ll be spending the next little bit seeing what’s on TV that is also available on the internet and then how to stream that from my computer to TV, or set up my smart TV to automatically get it. I know The Daily Show and Colbert Report already stream online one day later. Now to find other good content that doesn’t require 2 year agreements or signing up to pay for a whole bunch of channels I won’t watch.