Ficticious World Governments.

A couple of years ago, in anticipation of TorCon3, _sps_ and I were asked to devise an entry form and a few example entries for a contest to invent a world government. We wrote 3 draft entry examples (note that the job was not to try and WIN the contest, but to show a range of possible entries) and presented them for discussion, but the contest idea was dropped from the plan and so no further work was done on them.  I recently came across them on a CD, and thought I would post our 3 ideas for world government here, since we were quite proud of them:

• Democratic Meritocracy
  
• The Techno-Despotic Concensus
• Global Canadism

Now if one of these comes about, I'll be able to point to these and say 'see, I told ya!' (Unless its #2, in which case I'll either be disallowed from pointing things out, or disinclined to do so, depending on whether I'm a citizen or your benevolant ruler...)

Crypto Resource.

I've seen the name Nick Szabo before in various cypherpunk discussions, but I've never had reason to visit his home page before. It looks like an interesting site full of useful crypto ideas. I haven't had time to look in depth at anything, but he sure seems interested in all the right stuff.

Favorite Quote for Today.

I just came across this:

I asked my law students whether a person with plant or animal genes would
still be protected by the US Constitution. One replied, "If it walks like a
man, quacks like a man, and photosynthesizes like a man, it is a man."

For those wondering, its from this article.

Sleep?

I'm supposed to be asleep now, but as one particularly perspicacious person on my LJ list has just pointed out, I'm not.

Oh well, I suppose that I'll be asleep soon, and will try and be up and about by noon at the latest. Yawn.

Yawn! Awake...

Well, I am awake again! Slept in more than I wanted, due to being awake more than I wanted last night. I missed an (unexpected) call from the guy who's hiring me, but he left a number. After I've finished my coffee and gotten some brain cells working, I'll call him back.

Falling off the Memewagon.

My LJ commenting stats, if you're interested:

( Click, 'cause ya wanna know! )

Pramming Song Parodies.

Bad Song Parodies:

Does your ISP lose your data, from your Web page overnight?
If you insist they back it up, do they format it in spite?
Can you cache it on your hard drive? Or defrag it left and right?
Does you ISP lose your data, from your Web page overnight?
(With apologies to Lonnie Donnigan.)

I actually have a huge collection of programmer-related song parodies, including such gems as:

• You Can't Parse This (MC Hammer)
  
• Both Sides Now -- "I've looked at Cobol from both sides now..."
• The DEC man cometh. -- "... when the DEC man came to call. The VAX wouldn't boot, I wasn't getting VAX at all."
  
• Boot it. (Michael Jackson)

But I've decided not to torture you with them further.

Scrith?

Every once in a while I go looking for works on the theoretical ultimate strengths of materials. This is difficult because material science is still more experimentation than theory and because phrases like 'ultimate strength' have technical meanings in material science which make other uses of the terms hard to impossible to google for.

Yesterday though, I found a doozy of a statement. In an article about strengths of materials, that reported a theoretical carbon substance that was 8 orders of magnitude stronger than carbon nanotubes!. Now, I *KNOW* that sounds incredible, and I've already emailed the guy and asked him for further information. Unfortunately, he replied that he got the information from a materials scientist who came across it in an obscure materials journal and noted down the numbers, but hasn't ever been able to find the article again.

Frankly, I suspect that the numbers were written down wrong and the substance isn't that much better than nanotubes. On the other hand, I can do enough of the math in my head to know it WOULD be better than nanotubes, and that alone should be worth reporting. For those who don't want to read the article, the secret is to make benzene-like rings with double-carbon bonds and then link them together like chainmail, but in a 3D mesh, not just 2D. The results means that the individual carbon bonds are not only stronger than those in carbon nanotubes, but that the inter-ring repulsion forces increase the stiffness and strength of the material. 8 orders of magnitude seems really high, but I can imaging the results being one or two higher than 'traditional' nanotubes, and that could prove useful indeed!

Still, if the numbers are accurate, it means that we could someday make something that might even be strong enough to build a ringworld or dyson sphere out of.