Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from July, 2008

Thought 2 - Rat Gambling

Warning: Do NOT read this if you are offended by animal experiments. What started out as an conversation about probability and statistics, lead to gambling, then to whether you can study gambling addiction in a controlled lab. This conversation then got a bit out of hand. What follows is how this might be accomplished, and a history of the conversation. First you train a rat to press a lever that dispenses food or a treat or some other reward. Once this is established, you then introduce a penalty for "losing" on a gamble. This could take the form of a mild shock. Randomly either give the animal a reward or punishment with about a 50/50 ratio. Then slowly change the percentage over to increasingly more punishments than rewards until the rat no longer presses the button, it has learned that gambling is not a good idea. Well that seemed like a decent start, but then we discovered that we were missing the element of a jackpot. This lead to either wiring up the rat's

Thought 1 - Future Bike Helmet

Now that I have a motorcycle, I realize the potential future possibilities of the helmet. Wherein the helmet can become more than just mere protection, but a useful interface and aid to the rider. The concept stems from three currently available, but edgy technologies: transparent displays, blue tooth, and EEG recording. Technology 1: Transparent Displays Transparent displays are just now being put into high end cars and modern aircraft to create a dashboard on the windshield allows the driver or pilot to view the instruments, like speedometer, radar, engine problems, etc. This is typically done with a projected display onto a special film on the window. It can also be performed by simply building the LCD into the screen. The built in is not done because it is more costly in terms of construction of the display and a crack or chip in the display becomes an LCD ink blot. The projector could potentially be built into the visor of a motor cycle helmet, especial now that mini projec

Thought 0 - A Blog

In order to blog about thoughts, one must have both thoughts and a blog, there the first thought must be the thought to blog, and thus follows the creation of a blog with thoughts. Now, the thought is completed and the first blog is posted.