Professor Whoopie Rides Again

Mechanisms are exciting for their own sake.  Folks like Arthur Ganson have shown us that machinations have their own mesmerizing magic built in.

But there's a special power in understanding what's going on in there.  This video is a perfect example of a clear, well paced mechanical explanation that starts at the beginning and moves in traceable, gradual steps towards an increasingly complex concept.  Its a perfect example of the kind of explanation Professor Whoopie, the man with all the answers drew on his 3D blackboard all those years ago.

Can iCarly or Hanah Montana explain how a rocket works?  Or why a sailboat goes forward?  Or how a lightbulb lights?  I didn't think so

Flying like a Bird is Hard

Our friends at Festo have done a lot of cool stuff.  Inflatable architecture.  Pneumatic muscle.  But this is really incredible.  Its hard to fly like a bird for lots of reasons, but mostly its power to weight.  Watching Boston Dynamics' terrifyingly determined, gasoline powered dog-bot you get some idea of how much power it takes just to walk.  It takes a chainsaw's worth!

But festo's bird has somehow gotten enough juice in a light weight enough package to fly.  Amazing!  A chain saw is a pretty lightweight power source.  What's in the bird?

Bigger First Aid Kits

I am beside myself in anticipation of the America's Cup racing that's coming to the bay.  And seeing the first fleet of AC45s racing in New Zealand is a nice taste of the racing to come.  Yeah, I bet they are "very physical."  And yes, you are going to need a serious first aid kit.  Not to go all NASCAR, but it will be amazing to see what happens when these things make contact at 30+ knots.

Can Data Take the Place of Hypothesis?

For years, folks have been talking about the analysis of huge data sets (and by huge, I mean really, really huge) superseding our ability to hypothesize.  A hypothesis to prove or disprove, that essential building block of the scientific method, is becoming less important than just knowing everything you can know about the problem.

This is the best example I have seen so far that this might be the case.  Deb Roy's analysis of his son's language acquisition yielded several simultaneous findings because the data was so rich and there was just so damned much of it.  Sure, you have to decide which axes to measure.  But what makes massive data manipulation so interesting is you don't necessarily need to know why you're interested in those axes.  Science becomes a more improvisational, reacting to the data-shapes changing right in front of you.

You still have to see the results, you just don't have to predict them quite as much.

If you build it they will ride

I've been working on a bicycle project lately, and as a result, I've been thinking about and riding bikes a lot more than usual.   As someone who still doesn't ride to work enough, I'm no expert.  But it feels like we're close to a tipping point.  I mean, San Francisco is the 6th most bike friendly city in the US.  But we're not there yet.  We'll be there when we have a real bike infrastructure.  I'll risk my skin in the (relatively) safe (mostly) bike path route to the studio.  But I won't take my kid.  If we had separated, car-safe bike lanes, like they do in Holland and other civilized places, we'd be much of the way there.

But in the mean time, I had a burst of optimism when I saw this video about New York's attempt to build it so that they will come.  The best part is that riding a bike is a fix for so much of what needs fixing about early 21st century urban life.

Dumb Prototypes are Brilliant

Prototyping for Elmo's Monster Maker iPhone App. from IDEO on Vimeo.


Low resolution prototypes are the bomb.  The quicker you can turn your ideas into something other folks can experience the better.

Here some of my old colleagues from IDEO are demoing their idea for a dancing Elmo iPhone app.  This is a classic example of "puppet show" prototyping.  All they did was have an idea, make an iPhone cut out and press record.  Brilliant.  You could have coded the whole thing and made it 5% more realistic.  But it wouldn't have been more fun.

And the X Prize goes to...a gas powered car!

Edison 2 X-Prize from Johnny St.Ours on Vimeo.

Electric cars have their good points.  And plenty of bad ones.  The conviction of many that they are a panacea for global warming is infuriating.  Only 27% of the US's carbon emissions come from the transportation sector, and cars are just a portion of that.  The embodied energy of batteries is HUGE.  Their efficiency and energy density leaves much to be desired.  Plus I'm just bothered by people who believe in silver bullet solutions to complex problems.

So it put a smile on my face when I read today that the winner of the Progressive Automotive X Prize was an aerodynamic, light weight, low power, gasoline car.  Not electric.  Not Hybrid.  Light weight and low power are the classic formula for fuel efficient vehicles like the Nuovo Fiat 500 and Morris Mini of the 1950s.  But there's a special place in my heart for the Citroen 2CV, the "umbrella on four wheels," which was designed in the 1930s, but released after WWII.  The design brief was for a car that could carry 4 peasants and 220lbs of farm goods at 37mph and get 78mpg.  That's right, 78mpg.  In a way, its sad that we are only shooting for 100mpg, almost 80 years later.  Many, Saul Griffith among them, think that its not nearly enough. 

Hats off to the Edison 2 team and their 250cc wonder.  Less is indeed more.  As the Edison folks themselves say, "There are only two absolute virtues.  The first is light weight. The second is aerodynamic drag.  Everything else is a desperate compromise."


Amen.