The Miracles of Science

Did anyone catch 60 Minutes last night? I saw what was, perhaps, one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. One of the segments was about the advances being made in measuring the neuron path of movement-thoughts. To way over-simplify it; your brain sends electrical impulses throughout your body to create movement. You see a pen in front of you, you think about picking it up, your brain sends those thoughts to the muscles in your arm and you pick up the pen, all of which, of course, happens in a split second. People who lose limbs often talk about "phantom limbs" which is your brain not recognizing there is no limb. Your brain isn't damaged when you lose an arm, so the impulses are still there. Science has already known which area of the brain motor skills are found, so all we had to do was determine which neurons caused which movements, and we can begin to use the brain to recreate those movements. They have developed something called brain-computer interface, or BCI which does just this. Its still in early stages of testing, but basically, they can hook a computer up to your brain and your brain can control a mouse. This of course gives you control of a computer, which with you can control nearly everything from the lights in a room, to the TV, and even wheel chairs! Imagine the possibilities!

They've also extended this research into bionics. They took a monkey and determined which neurons were firing at the precise time of individual movements. They then developed a robot arm that could duplicate these movements and interfaced it to the monkeys brain. They restrained the arms of the monkey and with a little training, taught him to use the robotic arm to get the food they placed in front of him. I'm sure with a few more years of technology and development, we will begin to see bionics used in day to day life.

They are already working on a way to reverse the signal. This means, not only will we be able to use our brain to operate a prosthetic limb, but we will also be able to use that limb to send signals to our brain, such as temperature and pressure. Its truly amazing!

Here's some videos!

ChaCha

I don't know if you've heard of this service or not, but its the latest and is becoming the biggest mobile search engine out there.

If you've ever got a question that you need the answer to, you send a text message to ChaCha (242242) and ask whatever you need to know. On the other end of that text is a human being who will answer your question, so even if you ask a subjective question, like "Where can I find the best Mexican food in Tulsa, OK?" you can still get an answer back usually within 5-10 minutes that would say "Try Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy at 10909 E 71st St. There phonenumber is (918) 307-1373. Adios!"

I heard about this service through a friend of mine and the first opportunity I had to use it was last night. Me and some guys were sitting around talking about cars while eating grilled meat and lighting things on fire... you know, usual guy stuff... and for some reason, the question of what tiny car was used on Family Matters came up. We wondered what it was so I sent the text "What type of car did Steve Urkel drive on the show "Family Matters". About 7 minutes later I recieved, "It is said that the lovely "clown car" that Steve Urkel drove was a BMW Isetta."

Get Ready Chris Hansen!

I have been seriously considering deleting my myspace for a while now, or at least going off line with it. I basically only use it to post surveys when I'm bored and I really think I can find a better way to spend my time. If it weren't for the 2 or 3 people I actually do talk to, I probably would have dropped it long ago.

My biggest complaint is the junk you get. I moderate the myspace page for the radio station I work for, and every single person who sends me a friend request, I have to look at their profile first because of all the junk I get. Well, now myspace is making it easier for both sides. The teen flueseys who find it takes too much time to record a disturbing video and post it to myspace; and the 52 year old pedo who is looking for a quick thrill but just simply doesn't have enough material!

I saw the following message posted by the myspace god, Tom. Behold, "we have a new webcam video recorder feature on MySpaceTV. You can now record videos directly onto MySpace using a webcam. We’re already working on the next phase where you’ll be able to post these videos directly into bulletins, blogs, and MySpace messages as well as directly save pictures taken with your webcam."

No good can come of this. I can already feel the predators lurking in the shadows. What the ef, Tom? What the ef?


**note: I am tagging this blog with prison, both because I can't see many opportunities I will use that post again, but also, if you are over 14 and excited about this new feature, thats where you're going.

Blackberry to the Rescue!

Let me start out by saying, I absolutely love my phone. Proceeding to the blog:

If I had to sum up my job in one word it would be "coordinate". Any concerts, or live events. CD giveaways. Or in this case studio performances.

We have a band coming in to the studio to kick off their CD release on Tuesday and will be doing a live interview and lunch with the staff and ten of our listeners who won their spot last week. As in typical fashion when working with these bands, things change last minute. I got an e-mail Sunday evening that the band would need to leave promptly at 2pm, the scheduled interview time. We had already secured the catering for 1pm so rather than move everything, we simply moved the interview time to noon and kept the lunch the same. Not a huge deal, but it took several e-mails between myself, the tour manager, the band manager, the label rep, and my boss to figure out just what we were going to do. Crisis averted from the comfort of my own home.

Thanks Verizon Wireless Blackberry!