Printer On Fire

According to Wikipedia, the chemical name for titin, a protein which gives inactive muscles stiffness, is the longest word in the world.

It starts like this:

Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyltyrosy…

More after the break.

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Well. Your technologically advanced society is about to run out of [neon|magnesium|silicon|oxygen] for your superweapons or starship drives. You need more than you can get by extracting it from planetary crusts and atmospheres. What are you going to do?

My answer:

Go and find a star that’s near collapse. You ought to be able to do that; if you can’t, why are you needing so much of the element?

Use one of your advanced methods to accelerate a cloud of dust at relativistic speeds towards the star. It ought to be pretty big.

Wait for the dust to hit the star and blow it apart. Then wait for everything to cool before you wade into your new artificial nebula.

Now go and collect the material that got spewed out of the star you just ablated apart. You ought to be able to find enough of whatever element you need.

While I was doing my school work the night before last, I had an idea.

I was reading about the difference between normal population density and arable land population density, and how Egypt had a huge arable land population density and a tiny normal one because most of the people lived in a tiny strip of land along the Nile, while the rest is desert.

Here’s my idea:

Set up a huge photovoltaic array. The panels would deliver their power by cables along the ground, with a monitoring line in each one to detect breaks.

Each panel or set of panels would have a wireless mesh transceiver that linked with all of the panels around it. Each would monitor voltage, current generation, panel integrity, and that sort of thing.

This would keep the various panel systems running at night, and in case of blockage of the sunlight.

Each panel would have a rotating brush to clear sand off of it. This would be sealed to keep the sand out of the mechanism. Each set of panels would have a sun tracking system, also sealed.

Every few miles would be a shortwave transmitter for monitoring of the panel array. The entire array could be monitored remotely, and by stations in or around the array (through the mesh network). This would allow for on-the-fly changing of power routing.

Egypt could fund this by exporting the power to other countries as the solar array was being built.

This might help the energy crisis a lot.

My calculations show that Egypt’s desert area recieves 503.250 gigawatts of energy. Assuming a twelve percent efficiency, and no loss of power from malfunctions or transmission lines, and zero power consumption of the wireless and other panel maintenance systems, this would yield 60.39 gigawatts of energy for Egypt, about the same as sixty nuclear power plants. That would mean energy production of 529,367 gigawatt-hours per year.

I’m not sure how much energy Egypt consumes and imports, but I think that this could reduce their energy needs by a significant amount and bring them a lot of money from exports.

Why don’t they do it?

I may or may not have ADD. I haven’t been in for a professional diagnosis, but many of my problems in school seem to stem from it. However, whatever I suffer from seems to have several advantageous side effects, as well as bad side effects (which can be overcome with some effort).

• I can have 2 or 3 ongoing trains of thought in my head at once, placing others “on hold”
• I can multitask - 4 or 5 minor tasks at once; this can impact my schoolwork if I try it, analogous to a runaway process (what I want to do) on a computer seizing all the resources from the others (boring school work)
• My lines of thought can branch and jump - splitting one line into two and following them both
• I can jump from topic to topic in my mind extremely quickly if they have even the slightest association, like the “six degrees of seperation”. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on what I’m doing; for instance, it can help with essays and creative writing
• Paradoxically, extremely strong focus on some things
• I read incredibly quickly (about 700 words per minute, with full comprehension); can read even faster (1,100 WPM) with an RSVP program
• Music affects my state of mind - not in a “state ofconsciousness” way, but “mind-dissonant” music makes it so I can barely work on anything, and “mind-associative” music makes me more effecient with my school work & makes me want to do things.
• I’m able to do long division in my head; first discovered this when I needed to convert fractions and found that I could do it without a calculator
• Intuitive learning; if you give me a game or a new OS or UI for a computer or program, I can learn it quickly.

Unfortunately, this also comes with the effect that it’s hard to concentrate; especially on things that I don’t like doing (like schoolwork). It’s like “obligatory multitasking”: Quick! Check Reddit! Hurry, any new posts on your thread? AAHGAHG! Work, work work! Any new emails?

However, with hard work I can overcome this (as evidenced by my recent grade increases in Science and Social Issues). The only way is hard work and perseverence. There is hope!

P.S.: No, I don’t take any drugs (such as Ritalin), and I don’t plan to. I like my mind pliable, not rigid.

In my experiences with my (very large) bunny, I’ve found several places that she really likes to have rubbed and petted.

1. The top of her head — Most furry animals and pets like having their heads rubbed. Bunnies are no exception.
2. The bridge of her nose — Apparently, bunnies have a desire to submissively put their heads under other bunnies’ chins. Rubbing her nose and forehead put her right to sleep.
3. Under her ruff/dewlap and chin — She loves this, and will vigorously lick the person who does this. This probably stems from the fact that it’s one of the one places she can’t lick by herself.
4. Her back — Again, most furry pets like being rubbed on the back.
5. Special: Scruffly-ruffly! — To do this, you have to have a big, fat bunny (ours is 14 pounds), with a lot of excess skin. Just put your hand on her back, press down slightly, and rub back and forth so that her skin is moving, but your hand isn’t moving in relation to it; i.e. move her skin back and forth on her body. She really likes this, as it’s a kind of super bunny massage.
6. Paws — If you’re really comfortable with your bunny, you can rub her on the tops of her front paws, or just pick them up and hold them. They really like this.
7. Her stomach — Again, you and your bunny have to be comfortable with each other. Take your bunny and flip her over gently, and support her between your legs. Then just rub her stomach - she’ll lick you and lick you until she decides she’s had enough and flips over. Help her back over when she wants to be put down.
8. Under the ears — There’s a little spot, right where a bunny’s ears connect with her head. Just rub her here with one finger, and she’ll squint her eyes and practically fall asleep.
9. Rub her ears! — You can either hold one ear in each hand, and rub your fingers together with one ear in between each pair of fingers, or take both ears in one hand and rub your fingers together with the ears between. The second method allows you to recieve the copious licks produced, as this is the place that bunnies like to have rubbed the absolute most.

Have fun!

Picture 198
atomicthumbs

This picture that I took of a spiral aloe at the San Francisco Botanical Garden proves that nature likes fractals. Fibonacci numbers, too. Lots of things grow in sequences of fibonacci numbers.

Ok. E = mc^2. You’ve heard of it.  Now I’ll tell you what it means.

E is energy. M is mass. C is the speed of light. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.

The top ”meaning” of this equation is that mass consists of a large amount of energy. If we could convert matter directly back to energy, it would solve the world’s energy problems forever. To find the amount of energy in something, take the number of kilograms of that something and multiply it by 299,792,458. Then you’ve got the energy contained in that thing, in joules.

When you accelerate something or make it faster, that adds energy to it. Consequently, something going fast has more mass than something standing still.

Got it? The faster you go, the more you weigh. It’s a bit more complicated than that, though.

As you go faster, and increase in mass, it gets harder to accelerate. Things that didn’t have mass to begin with (such as photons) are the only things that can go at the speed of light. To accelerate anything with mass to the speed of light would require infinite energy. Got that?

This is called energy-mass equivalency. There’s more to special relativity, and general relativity is way beyond the scope of this post.