Meta-Geek Blog

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Panasonic wants to build eco-friendly city Fujisawa SST by 2018

Panasonic, along with eight partner companies, have announced plans to construct the Fujisawa Sustainable Smart Town (Fujisawa SST) by 2018 - an eco-friendly city for 1000 residents. Fujisawa SST will combine a number of energy-saving methods: A smart power grid; solar cells and batteries in every home; roads designed for bikes, walkers, and electric vehicles; networked public lighting, and more.

Panasonic Plans Bottom-Up Green City Fujisawa SST in Japan | Geekosystem

Goodbye Food Pyramid, Hello Food Plate

The first food pyramid was introduced in 1992 by the USDA, which replaced it now with MyPlate (see below).

Below is the new MyPlate. It shows a plate with the recommended distribution of different nutrients. In my opinion, the plate is much easier to understand than the pyramid as it shows you what your plate should look like. One only wonders if the powerful US dairy industry shoehorned in "Dairy" as being separate from "Protein".

USDA Ditches Food Pyramid for a Food Plate | Geekosystem

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Japanese company developed car that runs on nothing but water

Japanese company Genepax developed an eco-friendly car that runs on nothing but water. The car has an energy generator that extracts hydrogen from water that is poured into the car’s tank. The generator then releases electrons that produce electric power to run the car. The electric powered car can run on any type of water. The car can run for an hour at about 80 km/h on just one liter of water. The Genepax car does not require that batteries be recharged and has no emission.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Emotions and Decision-Making

I came across two seemingly unrelated articles and noticed an interesting connection.

-First, an article in the New York Times celebrated the 300th birthday of philosopher David Hume. The article cited the following quote by Hume: "Hume argued that “reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will.” Desire, for example, “arises not from reason.” And yet it can (and ought to be) “directed by it.”

-> Hume points out that an entirely rational model of decision-making is not feasible.

-Second, a blog entry on geekosystem described a new computer simulation that aims to model schizophrenia. There are multiple definitions of schizophrenia. This simulation builds upon the hyperlearning theory of schizophrenia, which holds that the disease springs from an inability to forget or ignore non-essential information. The human brain uses dopamine to mark certain information as essential. Dopamine is commonly associated with the reward system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities. In other words, the brain connects emotions to certain information to mark them as important. The computer simulation increased the virtual dopamine release which reduced the programs ability to distinguish important from unimportant information.

Both articles address the same idea: Emotions are an important part of human thinking and decision-making. An entirely rational computer program without emotions can therefore never simulate human thought processes. Instead of seeing emotions as an opposition to rational thought processes, they should be seen as complementary (read more here about using emotions for decision making).

My model of decision-making includes five elements: 1) Rational, 2) Emotional, 3) Socio-cultural conventions, 4) available resources, and 5) political strategic. Both "conventions" and "strategic" factors are socio-cultural as we make different decisions depending in which social setting we are.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Geek Zodiac

The Geek Zodiac: Concept by James Wright. Design by Josh Eckert.
Source: geekzodiac.jpg (2000×1517)

You might also like:
-The Geek hirarchy chart:
-The Geek Maslow Pyramid of Needs
-The Evolution of Geek