Engineer/economist Bill Phillips, a New Zealand native, built a machine to model the British economy in 1949. Although it was high-tech for its time, today the Phillips Machine seems a little…nutty. What’s odd about the machine is that it used water power — hydraulics — to model the flow of money through the British economy. Here are some snippets from yesterday’s Guardian article about the machine (emphasis added):

The prototype was an odd assortment of tanks, pipes, sluices and valves, with water pumped around the machine by a motor cannibalised from the windscreen wiper of a Lancaster bomber. Bits of filed-down Perspex and fishing line were used to channel the coloured dyes that mimicked the flow of income round the economy into consumer spending, taxes, investment and exports. Phillips and Walter Newlyn, who helped piece the machine together at the end of the 1940s, experimented with treacle and methylated spirits before deciding that coloured water was the best way of displaying the way money circulates around the economy.

Read the rest for some great tidbits about Phillips, including his engineering exploits as a P.O.W. The article also includes an anecdote explaining how, if monetary and fiscal policy were out of whack, water literally overflowed from the machine onto the floor. Way to make a (literal) mess of economic policy, guys.

The Phillips Machine is also known as the MONIAC. You can read more about it at Wikipedia. (See also: Bill Phillips.)

The CERN Large Hadron Collider made the news last month when a lawsuit was filed by Walter Wagner, over his concerns that the LHC’s experiments might destroy the Earth. Wagner hypothesized that the LHC’s experiments could create a planet-consuming miniature black hole. Long story short: most physicists think it’s quite unlikely that the LHC will kill us all…but because they’re scientists, they can’t categorically predict what will and will not happen. (There’s a good NPR Science Friday program digging into the controversy.)

But what is the Large Hadron Collider, and what does this “biggest scientific experiment ever attempted” actually do? Physicist Brian Cox explains in a TED talk from March 2008:

See also: the very 90’s-style LHC homepage. Check out the Photos section for some amazing big-machine pics.

I, like most everyone else, am really looking forward to May 22, when the new Indiana Jones movie hits screens. Indy is the perfect hero, except for that one flaw: his fear of snakes. After some research, though, I found that he may not have been too far off in being scared of snakes. Here are some reasons he was right.

They might take over the country

It sounds like something out of a horror movie: deadly snakes slither into an unsuspecting town, slowly killing the poor citizens. Unfortunately, it’s really happening. A drought in Australia earlier this year started pushing snakes into cities in search of water, where they took to biting the people they saw. The number of snake attacks went up during the drought. And not even the Americas are immune from the snake attack. In two events that would shock Captain Planet, deforestation in Brazil is making deadly snakes flee to cities, while global warming might force Burmese pythons to expand their habitat to the southern third of the United States. Ironically, extreme climate change may have created one of Indy’s safe havens. Contrary to the popular St. Patrick explanation, Ireland may be snake-free because of the Ice Age. The temperatures were too cold for snakes to survive for years, and once the earth warmed up, the surrounding seas probably kept the snakes away. After all, this was long before snakes discovered air travel.

They’re really, really, really deadly

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Ray Kurzweil is probably best known for his 70’s era reading machines — early speech synthesizers that could optically scan printed words, recognize them (despite being in multiple typefaces), and speak them back. (We had one of these gizmos at my public library when I was a kid — it was an amazing piece of gear.) He’s also famous for inventing music synthesizers, and it’s not unusual to see the name Kurzweil emblazoned on a digital piano.

These days he’s typically referred to as a “futurist” because of his confidence in a coming singularity: a moment when human life changes radically due to advances in technology. At his current age of 60, Kurzweil probably has some years left in him — but he’s not taking any chances. He’s actively working to prolong his life in order to be around when the singularity occurs.

Wired recently ran an excellent profile of Kurzweil. The profile explains a lot about what Kurzweil thinks is going to happen in coming years, but also spends a good deal of time on the specifics of his health regimen. Here’s a snippet:

Kurzweil does not believe in half measures. He takes 180 to 210 vitamin and mineral supplements a day, so many that he doesn’t have time to organize them all himself. So he’s hired a pill wrangler, who takes them out of their bottles and sorts them into daily doses, which he carries everywhere in plastic bags. Kurzweil also spends one day a week at a medical clinic, receiving intravenous longevity treatments. The reason for his focus on optimal health should be obvious: If the singularity is going to render humans immortal by the middle of this century, it would be a shame to die in the interim. To perish of a heart attack just before the singularity occurred would not only be sad for all the ordinary reasons, it would also be tragically bad luck, like being the last soldier shot down on the Western Front moments before the armistice was proclaimed.

[…] He has unlucky genes: His father died of heart disease at 58, his grandfather in his early forties. He himself was diagnosed with high cholesterol and incipient type 2 diabetes — both considered to be significant risk factors for early death — when only 35. He felt his bad luck as a cloud hanging over his life.

Read the rest for lots more on Kurzweil, the singularity, and photos of all the pills the man takes. There’s also an extensive Wikipedia page on him, including a list of his fourteen honorary doctorates. Finally, if you have the mental_floss magazine Vol 6, Issue 1, check page 28 for our take on him.

(Photo by Michael Lutch, courtesy of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.)

It’s always stunning to me when scientists discover new species. And unlike the recent hexapus (the 6-legged octopus) that got so much press over a birth defect [click here to read about Henry the Hexapus], a recent expedition by New Zealand scientists to Antarctica’s Ross Sea has uncovered all sorts of new and unusual species. Apparently, the scientists were on a 35 day census of the region, and traveled 2,000 miles collecting over 30,000 sea creatures. In any case, National Geographic has a terrific gallery here, but I’ve pulled 2 of my favorites below: a pic of giant starfish, and one of the stareater, which uses that dangling luminous chin appendage to lure fish close, before gobbling them down! Link via the always reliable BoingBoing.

By Erik Sass

Construction on the Soviet Union’s secret cities began during the early 1940s, and by the 1980s there were at least 57 secret settlements with a total population of 1.5 million scattered across the nation. Hidden in remote areas, their existence remained a matter of conjecture among ordinary people until the collapse of the USSR. Since 1991 some of the cities have been opened to visitors, but Western security experts believe there are still 15 secret cities whose names and locations the Russian government refuses to disclose. Here’s the scoop on the little we do know.

Hiding from Hitler

After Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and occupied key industrial areas in 1941, Stalin came up with a crafty solution. He had hundreds of factories disassembled and shipped far from the front, to safe locations beyond the Ural Mountains in Siberia.Stalin’s pre-fab towns established the pattern for later secret cities. People who entered them were totally cut off in self-contained “closed administrative units” that included apartment blocks, clinics, gyms, schools, stores, theaters, restaurants, and power plants. Factory employees, including managers, were forbidden to leave, as all activity was closely monitored by the predecessor of the KGB, the NKVD. Surrounded by fences and guard forces, the cities were identified with only a name and a number indicating general location – and even these coordinates were false since they were changed frequently to deceive spies and saboteurs. Only key officials knew the actual location of the cities, or how to contact them via a secret phone network.

Version 2.0: The Birth of the Atomgrad

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The late Sir Arthur C. Clarke was loved by nerds and normals alike for his contributions to literature, film, and technology. Here’s a rundown of the five biggest reasons we’ll miss him.

1. Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World

Clarke kept extensive files on mysterious events, objects, and locations throughout the world. Starting in the early 1980’s, he mined these files to bring us Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, a thirteen-part TV series covering topics ranging from UFOs to crystal skulls. The show told fascinating stories and Clarke classified them according to his three categories of mystery (dubbed, simply enough, the first, second, and third kinds) depending on how well they’re currently understood.

While the show is very dated (and a few of the “mysteries” have since been definitively explained as hoaxes), it’s great fun, and Clarke’s sober introductions to each story are fascinating to watch. I remember watching the show after school when I was growing up, and it brings back memories — the series gave me a sense of wonder, and introduced me to notions of scientific skepticism which have served me well. Today you can watch bits of Mysterious World on YouTube. Here’s a clip from one episode, in which Clarke narrates a solar eclipse (a “mystery of the first kind” — one that was a mystery to our ancestors, but is understood now):

In 1985, Clarke returned with Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers featuring another thirteen episodes on strange topics, and again in 1994 with Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious Universe, his final series on the weird.

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Douglas Hofstadter is the author of Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, a now-classic work on how the mind arises from mechanical parts. While I’ll admit I haven’t gotten through the entire book, I recently enjoyed Victim of the Brain, a 1988 docudrama featuring interviews with Hofstadter.

It’s a strange little film, following Dutch director Piet Hoenderdos as he struggles to understand philosophical questions about consciousness through interviews as well as (slightly cheesy) adaptations of stories from The Mind’s I, a book which Hofstadter wrote with philosopher Daniel Dennett (who also appears in the film).

The film’s title comes from an interview with Hofstadter featured in the film (starting around three minutes in), in which he says:

“I watch my own decisions and I feel, sometimes, as if decisions come from parts of me that I realize are not under what I would call my control. I realize that my own self is really not under my control. I look at what I prefer in life — my tastes, my interests, my aesthetic preferences — and I know that those things come from places that I certainly don’t decide upon. I am just a victim of my brain. [smiles] But I have to live with that. And, I mean I’m a victim of my brain in that I can’t play music as well as I would like to be able to. But I don’t know, it’s a very complex thing. I think being a good human being seems to be the much more deep thing in life than being able to explain human beings. But still, trying to explain them is a fascinating thing.”

Victim of the Brain is available in its entirely via Google Video. If you’re into philosophical issues of human consciousness (or awesome 80’s fashion), you’ll probably enjoy it. I do warn you — it’s dated and nerdy, but if you’re like me you’ll appreciate both of those supposed shortcomings.

If you’re planning to worship a dead scientist today, you might as well give it up for Lord Kelvin: Giver of Laws (of thermodynamics). According to the brilliant Kelvin is Lord! website, Lord Kelvin is our only salvation from entropy:

The only path to Conservation from Entropy is through the Lord Kelvin! Only He may Transgress the Immutable Laws of Thermodynamics and allow you to escape the Increase in Entropy that is the Fate of all those who are without Him in their Minds & Hearts. To be Conserved, all you have to do is ask Him. That is all. Ask the Lord Kelvin to come into your Mind & Heart, give yourself over to His Infinite Beatitude. He will instruct you further on how to LIVE your life according to His wishes.

But what is the best method to ask? The road to knowing the wonder that is the Lord Kelvin can be got to via the on-ramp of Kelvinian Meditation (KM). With KM, a scientifically validated technique to cause a local decrease in your personal Entropy, you will lay Trans-Oceanic Communication Cables to the shores of the Land of Kelvin Consciousness. He will hear and see your desire to be Conserved from Entropy and will help you to reach a state of Non-Entropic churning cheerfulness because He Loves and Values you, His Creations!

Lord Kelvin be praised! I can feel the entropy draining from the Æther surrounding me!

Read more on Lord Kelvin, and be sure to check out Kelvin’s Kids Club.

For a more, uh, impartial reading of Our Lord Kelvin’s life, see Wikipedia on William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin.

In 1958, Project Orion was formed at General Atomics (a defense contractor), seeking to design spacecraft powered by nuclear pulses — in other words, bombs. The project designed incredibly large vessels, with theoretical sizes ranging up to 400 meters in diameter and weighing 8,000,000 tons. The ships were intended to travel to Saturn and Venus carrying large crews — but the project ended in the early 1960’s without building a full-scale vehicle.

The project involved, among others, physicist Freeman Dyson. Nearly forty years after the project was canceled, you can listen to Dyson’s son George describe Project Orion in a TED talk from 2002. He includes a variety of insider info, and it’s fascinating stuff (if you can get past his somewhat haphazard delivery):

George Dyson went on to write Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. You can also learn more about Project Orion on Wikipedia, or at this fan page.