Matt’s Blog

Slashdot linked to an article in New Scientist today theorizing about a possibility to create a Harry Potter like cloak of invisibility: http://www.newscientisttech.com/article/dn10816.html

I’ve always been pro technology, never counting myself among those who think that creating technology takes something away from humanity (including jobs).  But here is one piece of work that I hope never leaves the realm of science fiction.  A cloaking device could only be used for evil, and most surely would, whatever the practical application intended for.   Perhaps we could beautify our cities by hiding the many less aesthetically pleasing artifacts that we need for survival, perhaps by the time we achieve this technology we would have space ships that need cloaking for protection from alien races, who knows?  But I for one hope that along with the technology to bend light around an object, comes the technology to detect things using techniques more sophisticated than our own eyes.

Some friends and I have gotten into bowling a little fanatically lately. We’ve been having a lot of fun, mostly me losing and trying to convince my friends to start curving the ball with me, even though I’ve been pretty streaky with it. During the course of play however, we started to wonder how the automatic scoring works (even though wondering how the pinsetting works is a lot more interesting). HowStuffWorks says that many pinsetters have a ccd camera positioned with looks at the pins and relays the information. Alternatively, some pinsetters use “fingers” on the pinsetter itself to simply feel which pins are still standing after the roll.

I’ve also bowled in Brazil before, and there they have an interesting setup. The pins are actually hung on strings. And after the roll they are all stood up with the strings.