Oh, Make it So!

Camping Star Trek Style

by Heath Alseike

License: Creative Commons 2.0

How Star Trek will finally come true | ideas.ted.com:  'via Blog this'

This post on TED by Nilofer Merchant discusses how we're about to bring the Star Trek world to life.  We're thirty years out Merchant thinks.

As exciting as the technological inventions that mimic what was once the far-fetched tech on the classic Star Trek--communicators (smartphones), universal language translators, video chatting, replicators (3D printing), using light to diagnose medical conditions etc--these aren't the focus of Merchant's prediction.

She is more interested in the ways the new forms of communicating provided by technology are creating new ways for people to form purposeful associations that have the power to make effective and lasting change that once required the involvement of huge organizations or governments.  Both notorious for lumbering zig-zags toward goals they are as actively resisting as they are pursuing.

The notable characteristics of these groups forming for a purpose are their tendency to celebrate diversity, see the potential of those with different abilities, champion creativity over conformity, value individual and community well being over material wealth, and the ability to envision even the far-fetched and make it so.

This was the heart of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek universe and his vision for our future.  Though I couldn't have articulated that at age eleven that was the heart of my fascination with Star Trek from the classic 1960s series and through each movie and series that followed.

I wanted to live in that world.  I still do.

Nilofer Merchant a two-time book author, former tech executive and blogger at: Yes & Know. Twitter: @nilofer.

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Cold or Flu?

I set out to solve the dilemma once and for all. Is it a cold or the flu? After hours of Googling I'm as confused as ever. Only with a lot more words and images jammed in my head to argue both sides of the debate.

I'm too tired and bored now to regurgitate it all but I thought I would share a few pretty images of viruses and the sites which create and present them as they are both valuable resources and and fascinating to explore beyond the cold and flu virus images.

The first site is 3DScience.com which has a lot of images and animations in 3D of a variety of human anatomy and biology subjects. It was there I found images of the influenza virus.



The second site is The Institute for Molecular Virology at the University of Wisconsin Madison. In their Virus World database they too have a plethora of images and animations but as the name indicates it is all about viruses. Yet I found no images of flu viruses there. Though there were images of both the adeno and rhino versions of the common cold virus.





Those last two bear a strong resemblance to Koosh balls don't they?



{Did you come looking for my Friday Snippet? Try again tomorrow. My intent when I began the research for this post was to throw up a quickie in fifteen to thirty minutes to limit the time and energy expenditure as I'm still quite low on stamina. And to allow me to return to the riveting Stephen King novel, Duma Key for a couple more hours.

I should have know myself better than that. Here I am SIX hours later. Still no answer to the burning question of the week. And still no snippet prepared--it only took me three hour to write and post a hot-off-the-keyboard snippet last week; and around two the previous week. To top off the insults I am no further along in Duma Key which is now on the overdue clock--tick, tick, tick.}

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