Show Notes: Episode 9

Hey everyone, I’m going to start releasing the show notes shortly before we record the show as one big unified post. Hit us up with comments or suggestions below the notes and maybe we can talk about whatever is on your mind when we record the show.

This Week in Star Trek

Star Trek and the Power of the Book

The top 20 growing Facebook pages included Rihanna, Harry Potter, Shakira, Texas Hold’em Poker, Spongebob Squarepants, and Star Trek. The Trek beat out MTV, Bob Marley, AKON, and Katy Perry.

Couples Beaming to Vulcan, Canada

A little town that shares the name with Spock’s home planet is becoming a hot spot for Trek-themed weddings. This all started this past summer when Spock himself paid a visit. ”I figured it was about time I came home,” Nimoy joked.

Weird Science

Life Made with Arsenic

All living organisms on this planet use six elements for almost all of the chemical structures of DNA, RNA, proteins, and lipids […] Surprisingly, a team of scientists provide evidence in Science that another element, arsenic, can be incorporated into the basic chemical makeup of the macromolecules of life, replacing some of its phosphorus.

Terrifying Military Tech

An EMP Will Soon End Civilization

“Not even a global humanitarian effort would be enough to keep hundreds of millions of Americans from death by starvation, exposure, or lack of medicine. Nor would the catastrophe stop at U.S. borders. Most of Canada would be devastated, too, as its infrastructure is integrated with the U.S. power grid. Much of the world’s intellectual brain power (half of it is in the United States) would be lost as well. Earth would most likely recede into the ‘new’ Dark Ages,” states the report by James J. Carafano, the deputy director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, and Richard Weitz, senior fellow and director of the Center for Politial-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute.

Artificial Brains, for Real this Time

Researchers have suspected for decades that real artificial intelligence can’t be done on traditional hardware, with its rigid adherence to Boolean logic and vast separation between memory and processing. But that knowledge was of little use until about two years ago, when HP built a new class of electronic device called a memristor. Before the memristor, it would have been impossible to create something with the form factor of a brain, the low power requirements, and the instantaneous internal communications. Turns out that those three things are key to making anything that resembles the brain and thus can be trained and coaxed to behave like a brain. In this case, form is function, or more accurately, function is hopeless without form.

Video Games with Cord Blomquist

Inception, the video game

Inception director Christopher Nolan has been considering putting together a video game based on his mind-bending film for a while, but it looks like those plans have gone one level deeper: He now tells Entertainment Weekly that the project is a go. Nolan says he’s working with a full team on the game as “a longer-term proposition” and that he’s excited to “explore” the medium of gaming by creating a new story set in the world of the movie.

Netflix Testing 3 Different PS3 Interfaces

Netflix is reportedly showing off three different user interfaces to users of its service on the PlayStation 3, in order to test out the various recommendations systems and how they’re both created and delivered to users. Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt says the “Play” and “Add to Queue” buttons’ size, placement, and functionality can vary from build to build, and even things like load times and streaming start times are being adjusted among the various test UIs running on real-life PS3s, providing direct feedback to the company about how customers use the video streaming app.

Everyone is Using Stupid-Old Computers

But now, with the Xbox 360 having turned five, and the PS3 and Nintendo’s Wii both having just hit their fourth birthdays, many industry observers see the ongoing success of each of the three major platforms as evidence that neither Microsoft, Sony, nor Nintendo have any intentions of following up in the next year or so. And why should they? Consumers are still buying the machines by the hundreds of thousands each month, and ramped-up online initiatives are breathing new life into the systems.

Two Nerds Briefly Talk About Sports

Did Stats Nerds Ruin Cy Young Award?

Traditionally, the Cy Young Award has gone to the pitcher with the gaudiest record, like Randy Johnson’s 18-2 mark in 1995. Hernandez’s record was just 13-12, but he led the league in ERA and fewest hits per nine innings. The stats community, growing in influence in baseball circles, championed Hernandez’s candidacy as a break from the hegemony of wins, which naturally are dependent on how good your team is.

Apple News

PC World Says So Long iPhone

I believe Apple’s iPhone is rapidly becoming a niche device. Its restrictions are too numerous, its approach too condescending, and its choices too few to have the broad appeal it needs to succeed on a grander scale in the long run. In short, Apple may always have its share of fans among consumers who don’t mind living in its “walled garden,” but there’s no way it can compete in the market as a whole with the diverse, compelling and powerful platform that is Android.

Medical Tech

Ultrasound for Your Smartphone

Such a device would be useful for emergency responders, who could scan an injured person to detect internal bleeding or other trauma, and then immediately send an image to the hospital so physicians could be better prepared for the patient’s arrival. Or a nurse practitioner visiting a pregnant woman’s home could ask a specialist stationed elsewhere to weigh in on anomalies in the scan.

Spread Your Legs 70 Degress Apart

The three positions they tried were: sitting with the laptop on the lap with legs together, the same position with a laptop pad under the computer, and sitting with legs spread 70 degrees apart. They found that the open legged position was the best at lowering testicle temp (a total of about half a degree on the left, and a little less on the right).

[…]

And while a few degrees doesn’t sound so dangerous, it’s actually enough to effect sperm quality (a rise of about two degree Fahrenheit can be an issue), especially given the length of time most people spend with their laptops.

Vitamin D deficit doubles risk of stroke in whites, but not in blacks

If vitamin supplements are used, Michos says that daily doses between 1,000 and 2,000 international units are generally safe and beneficial for most people, but that people with the severe vitamin D deficits may need higher doses under close supervision by their physician to avoid possible risk of toxicity. The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) previously suggested that an adequate daily intake of vitamin D is between 200 and 600 international units. However, Michos argues that this may be woefully inadequate for most people to raise their vitamin D blood levels to a healthy 30 nanograms per milliliter. The IOM has set up an expert panel to review its vitamin D guidelines, with new recommendations expected by the end of the year. Previous results from the same nationwide survey showed that 41 percent of men and 53 percent of women have unhealthy amounts of vitamin D, with nutrient levels below 28 nanograms per milliliter.

Obits

King of Deadpan now Dead, RIP Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen passed away Sunday at the age of 84. He’ll always be remembered as Lt. Frank Drebin in “Police Squad” and the “Naked Gun” films, and, of course, Dr. Rumack in the 1980 film “Airplane!

Irvin Kershner

The man who brought us the greatest Star Wars film has now become one with the force.

Nerd Rage

In Conversation

Show Notes: Episode 9