Ready for READY PLAYER ONE?

I don't read much science fiction, so true sci-fi lovers may scoff--but I loved this book by Ernest Cline. I am vision-impaired, so listened to the audio read by Wil Wheaton, who did a fine job sounding jejune.

It's 2044 and things have gone to pot. The protag Wade Watts, known by his avatar name Parzival--after the knight who found the Holy Grail-- is living in a stack of double-wides in Oklahoma City.

That's his Wade body, the gooey fleshy one. His real self "lives" on The Oasis, a huge virtual world of thousands of planets and quests, many centering on the music, video games, TV shows and sentiment of the 1980s. He even goes to HS in The Oasis, while his real body half-freezes inside an abandoned van. You got it--the gas ran out.

The builder of The Oasis dies and leaves his gigantic fortune to anyone who can solve three quests. Of course, Wade gets into it and is lucky at first, solving the first one and getting some endorsment deals allowing him to live in an apt.

This is lucky because the evil industrial baddie is also trying to ace the three quests and get the money. This crew blows up his trailer stackpark and kills his friend, a nice little old lady, not knowing Wade did not stay there during the day.

I liked this because it detailed a world in which this youngster never left his apartment for six months--his real life WAS his unreal life. And it didn't seem that bad.

And he's smart, although smitten by a woman (he hopes) he has never seen in person.

We are getting there, aren't we?

Yes, this is The Big Bang Theory on 'roids. But it's fun.

Pickings from the creative garden

Ideo is that idea place--they are very clear on that--they are creative!

It also looks like a pretty cushy workplace--their Chicago office has a rooftop garden.

Naturally, being creative, they linked their garden with principles of creativity.

As they put it, "Gardening is generative, iterative, and user-centered." This means if you pick something, it better grow back. They also noticed, the less people had to work, the more they picked. Grab a berry and eat it. The eggplant--didn't that require cooking? Leave it.

Gardening hints at the approaches of the future instead of those tired old industrial rev things. We have to tend and steward creativity--encourage it. Humans must not overpower nature. (Is "steward" a verb?)

The creative leaders will be gardeners, not architects, letting products and systems evolve and unfold.

Careful guidance, not under someone's thumb. Even if it's green.

Do you think this stretching a point a little? The strawberries look good, though.

Some other readers thought this tripped the BS meter a little...Check out http://designthinking.ideo.com/?p=1110.

Geniuses are everywhere--there's one!

We all want to get out of that box! In fact, that is now such a cliche, the real deep thinkers are thinking of going back in.

The Mensa Bulletin cited a story from MoneyWatch on the genius deal.

First, the term is context specific. A revered "genius" in one field would not even get noticed in another. Picture Stephen Hawking giving advice to Wendy's on how to increase sales.

Geniuses--so-called--are often a 9 or 10 in one thing, but a 2 or 3 in another.

This article cites three types of geniuses. First, the gregarious type--they have an opinion on everything and don't suffer fools gladly (a fool would be someone with a different opinion). These usually work best as consultants because if they are on staff, someone might go beserk and do them harm.

The second type is the isolated genius. They make few sounds. People wonder if they can even talk. They do not like teams, meetings, or writing reports. They don't interview well.

The third type is the unpredictable genius. You could say, unstable. They can be warm, welcoming of ideas one day, then the next, slow and pessimistic.

If you are one of these three, you need someone else to sing your praises. If you do it yourself, it could be a disaster.

If you hire one of these, make the rules clear--no tantrums, no special treatment.

Check out A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi.

Rats catch a break

Jonathan D. Rockoff, WSJ, June 18, 2013, says researchers are figuring out how to test new medications on a little computer chip--rather than enlisting the involuntary assistance of rodents.

They "spool together" the chip version of the important cells in say, a lung, and see what impact a potential drug has on those functions.

At the moment, the FDA does not consider this sufficient to decide if a drug warrants human testing, but it allows pharmcos to rule out large numbers of compounds internally, saving time, not to mention rats.

Merck is an early adopter, working hard on feasibility of concept. They are trying to create 10 organs and see how they interact in the presences of certain drugs.

In the case of the "lung on a chip," researchers can make the thin silicone rubber layer go in and out and let air anf fluid pass.

This may work better, when perfected, that the rat-based system. For one thing, rats don't get asthma. It's a human disease. So some medications based on rats has not worked in humans.

The chip might produce better results.

Pretty cool? The rats are excited.

Very tricky--lenticular printing

Remember those Cracker Jack toys--a little picture that "moved" and changed back and forth if you tilted it this way and that?

OK, you don't even know what Cracker Jack is. Never mind.

Anyway, printing that can only be seen from one angle is being used in a clever poster by Mexico's ANAR Foundation--on the subject of child abuse.

It's a large poster of a boy's face--from the height and viewpoint of an adult, it's just a kid. But if a child is standing there, from a lower angle, the lenticular process shows the kid's face bruised and abused. There is also printing only the child can see that tells the tot where to go for help.

The printing is done on ridged material--when the ridges face down, the message only shows from below.

Can you think of other uses?

Go to http://www.anar.org for more info.

This fly is a great listener

Ever wonder why we have flies? Except for the use of their "babies" to clean out burn wounds?

Well, according to the Acoustical Society of America, a parasitic fly called Ormia ochracea, which is native to the Southeast United States and Central America, has ears that sense sound pressure--much like human ears do.

Ronald Miles, a professor of engineering at Binghamton University, and his team, studied the way this tiny fly could target sounds coming from different directions.

They designed a microphone small enough for a hearing aid that does the same--pivoting inside the ear in response tro changing sound pressure.

Of course, this took a ton of tinkering--the creative part. That, and saying, "Hey, I think that fly is listening to that guy over there--what a great idea for a hearing aid."

The paper will be presented at the 21st International Congress on Acoustics in Montreal June 2-7.

For more...check out: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/603695/?sc=dwhn.

Bomb-sniffing bees

Dusan Stojanovic and Darko Bandic, AP, write about how a professor at Zagreb University is training honeybees to sniff out landmines.

Croatia is joining the European Union in a month or so and 466 square miles of it are still studded with mines from the Balkan Wars of the 1990s.

Bees have a perfect sense of smell that an sniff out explosives. They are being trained to associate the explosive smell with a food smell.

To test the trained bees, the researchers put out pots of food and pots of food laced with TNT. The bees go for the TNT mixture.

Of course, they admit, it's easier to train one bee than thousands.

Creative? Maybe a little wacky--but yes.