Ned Gulley's Blog. Resident buzzwords: wise crowds, accelerated design, swarm robotics, synthetic biology.
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 13th, 2011
Buckaroo Banzai was a physicist, rock star, neurosurgeon, rogue inventor, and presidential advisor. He was also fictitious. A little bit closer to home, Jesse Ventura was a Navy SEAL, professional wrestler, and 38th governor of Minnesota. He even had a political action figure. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as we all know, was a governor who played action [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 29th, 2011
The rain forest is shrinking. Right, you knew that. But did you know this? Google Earth lets you research the topic on your own. Like Superman, you can spin the globe forward and backward in time to see what the yesterworld looked like. I zoomed in on a region around Ariquemes in Rondônia, Brazil. Once [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 18th, 2011
What do borders look like? We know that they are lines on maps and checkpoints on roads and sometimes walls and fences. But can they be seen from the sky? In The Sword in the Stone, T.H. White tells the story of young Arthur and his mentor Merlin flying as birds across the countryside. Arthur [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 15th, 2011
I once saw a documentary about skyscrapers where the architect says, “It’s not that hard to make a 100 story building. You just need to make a one story building 1500 feet up in the air, and the rest is easy.” Sometimes it’s easy to miss where the real work is. Makani Power is a [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 10th, 2011
The Eleonora Maersk is one of the very biggest ships in the world. At 1300 feet long (the Titanic was a mere 880), it can carry 15000 twenty foot trailers. And how big is the crew for the Eleonora? As explained in this Economist post, the answer is 19. Shortly after reading this, I happened [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Nov 1st, 2011
Quadcopters are the hottest thing going in radio-controlled aircraft. Everybody wants one, partly because they’re new and crazy-looking, but mostly because of the insane stuff they can do. Until very recently, our mental image of a helicopter has been a thing with a single great rotor on top. But as it turns out, quadcopters have [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 27th, 2011
Backpacking is appealing partly because it forces you to simplify. You consume only what you can carry on your back, and for the most part it’s a low-tech experience. But even if you can be pried away from your phone, iPod, and GPS device, there’s a big chunk of the petrochemical industrial complex you take [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 21st, 2011
My brother-in-law Joe sent me this one. Pulaski Academy is a high school in Arkansas that punches above its weight when it comes to football. Part of the secret of their success is their unconventional game play. Here’s an example. On September 9th, the Pulaski Bruins played the Cabot Panthers. They scored on their first [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 19th, 2011
I saw this video of dancing quadrocopters, and it made me think of the new sport of synchronized indoor skydiving. Or as I prefer to call it, upside down square dancing. You’ll notice they got the music all wrong. Just mute the volume on this video and open up Turkey in the Straw in another [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Oct 12th, 2011
In the early days of aviation, airports would paint their name in big letters on the roof of the terminal. Incoming aircraft had few navigational aids at the time, so turning the territory into something resembling a map was a clever expedient. I like the fact that nobody on the ground ever saw the sign. [...]
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