Even More Creativity on the Energy Front

I have never been a big fan of blade dependent wind turbines. At the very least they are low density power generation precisely because of the limits of blade surface area with which to receive air molecules, and thus to translate their kinetic energy to a drive shaft. This post from Gizmag.com illustrates what thinking outside of the blade can come up with (be sure to check out the related wind power links on the same page).

Saphonian bladeless turbine boasts impressive efficiency, low cost

Amazingly Clever Egineering

Got to give a hats off to Scott Rumschlag for coming up with this ingenious way to add surface area to a table. This is truly D.I.Y. creativity at its best. Way to go Scott.

Amazing Creativity via Neural Nets

This article from medium.com's Backchannel portal is one of those descriptions of new creative effort you just have let simmer in your head for a while.

This is the one, of course, that chronicled Alexander Mordvintsev's inspired idea of letting convolutional neural nets go off on their own exploration of visual input, instead of simply trying to arrange the complex set of synaptic weighting, and eventual neuron firing, that would allow the whole to correctly identify desired image elements. To say that the results are stunning is to hardly do them justice at all.

Please do give this a read. It is fascinating, as well as stimulating a good number of delightful questions.

Inside Deep Dreams: How Google Made Its Computers Go Crazy

Why the neural net project creating wild visions has meaning for art, science, philosophy — and our view of reality

A Cover of "The Sound of Silence" truly worth the listen

A bit of powerful emotion about the bereft of meaning in our world. Mr. Simon called it the sound of silence but I'd like to think of it as the lack of meaningful connection. Enjoy.

Disturbed "Sounds of Silence" cover