The Gregg Zone !!

1) Are you or have you been interested in Seti? Been involved with the “Seti at home project”? Maybe you were involved in the star-dust at home project helping to sort out the dust particles obtained from NASA’s Comet Wild-2 Mission? Well there is a new one that started earlier in the week on Tuesday July 10^th. They are looking to the internet for volunteers to help classify a million galaxies, seems the human brain is much better at identifying patterns than computers. This is really a very cool thing you get to see pictures of galaxies for the first time. There is a short test to be sure you understand the nuances between the images you will be sorting into categories. It is a little harder than it looks, I missed eight of fifteen on the test round, need to practice some and try again. Anyway check this out even if it is not your cup of tea, you might pass it along to someone else who might like to help out. http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

2) This site is something I found after watching a program on T.V., the show was called “The Boy Who Sees with Sound”, I think it was on the science channel; anyway it was about human echolocation. This was something I had heard about some time ago, but it had dropped off my radar because of time, and other interests. When I saw the program on the tube it raised my curiosity to the point of a google search. You can see the 25 min. video here, and also learn more about what has to be one of the most interesting subjects I have seen in a while. Being sighted all my life makes it very difficult to imagine learning a technique involving the art of compensating sound for sight to this degree. If I had not “seen” it, I would have trouble believing it. This really makes me wonder how much of the world around me goes totally unnoticed, just because I’m not focused enough to perceive what is in front of me. Or how much do I miss due to not developing my senses to the limits of their abilities. The link is to the video page, you might like to hit the home button to see what else is there. http://www.worldaccessfortheblind.org/

3) The internet can help you keep in touch with some very interesting directions our society is headed in. A case in point the other day I ran across something called cultured meat, this term refers to growing meat in the lab. Evidently you could in theory feed an entire nation from only two cells. Eliminating most of the undesirable by-products produced by the raising meat, freeing agricultural land to feed people directly, rather than using an animal to turn the suns energy into food. No methane, no anti-biotic related problems, and much less transportation of support goods to keep the herds, the list of that type of advantage is very long indeed. And then one must consider the lack of need to kill, or mistreat animals. I can see several hours of future reading on the many issues this line of research brings to mind, from technical advancements to the ethics of cloning, creation, and the relationship to the animal consciousness groups. http://www.reuters.com .

4) Okay here we go full speed ahead, if you thought those sites were a little tame how about building your own replicater, yea that cool little dumb waiter kind of machine from star trek, that made what ever you ordered. I read a preliminary article about this a couple of years ago, decided to do a little search to see if I could find an update, never expected to find free online plans to build my own. This site is an open source site dedicated to how to build your own 3-D printer; this is one of those places where you can find the future today. Sometimes I wish I was a little younger, just to see where all this is going. If you decide to build one of these I sure would like an occasional update. http://www.fabathome.org