[TheForge] nukkin' skeeters OTOTOT

Sun Mar 15 11:28:48 EDT 2009

Umm, NONE.

This was done by Nathan Myrvold, former "chief technology officer" for  
Microsoft.
He spends his money, and he has lots of it, on whatever he pleases,  
and somehow seems to keep making more money.
He gets interested in ice cream, and installs a $45,000 gelato machine  
in his home kitchen. Then he spends months scientifically testing  
recipes.
He gets interested in killing mosquitos, and hires the ex-Reagan Star  
Wars scientist.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_27/b3991401.htm

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

crazy dude.

If you have read the book "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson (and if  
you havent, you should)
the character who lives in a mansion in Bellevue with the Lockerbie  
747 in pieces hanging from his ceiling, who has a warehouse of every  
computer ever built- thats Mhyrvold.

ries

On Mar 15, 2009, at 4:39 AM, Bruce Freeman wrote:

And HOW many millions of our tax dollars did it take to create this  
fly swatter?

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 3:35 AM, Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer
<artgawk at thegrid.net> wrote:
> Some good may come of "Starwars" after all.  pf
>
> Schade wrote:
>> Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With LasersHumans,  
>> Butterflies
>> Remain Unharmed; The 'Star Wars' Connection
>> By ROBERT A. GUTH
>> BELLEVUE, Wash. -- A quarter-century ago, American rocket scientists
>> proposed the "Star Wars" defense system to knock Soviet missiles from
>> the skies with laser beams. Some of the same scientists are now  
>> aiming
>> their lasers at another airborne threat: the mosquito.
>>
>> In a lab in this Seattle suburb, researchers in long white coats
>> recently stood watching a small glass box of bugs. Every few seconds,
>> a contraption 100 feet away shot a beam that hit the buzzing
>> mosquitoes, one by one, with a spot of red light.
>>
>> The insects survived this particular test, which used a non-lethal
>> laser. But if these researchers have their way, the Cold War missile-
>> defense strategy will be reborn as a WMD: Weapon of Mosquito
>> Destruction.
>>
>> "We'd be delighted if we destabilize the human-mosquito balance of
>> power," says Jordin Kare, an astrophysicist who once worked at the
>> Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the birthplace of some of the
>> deadliest weapons known to man. More recently he worked on the
>> mosquito laser, built from parts bought on eBay.
>>
>> The scientists' actual target is malaria, which is caused by a
>> parasite transmitted when certain mosquitoes bite people. Ended in  
>> the
>> U.S. decades ago, malaria remains a major global public-health  
>> threat,
>> killing about 1 million people annually.
>>
>> Efforts to eradicate the disease languished for years until recently.
>>
>> Big-money donors like Bill Gates, the United Nations, the U.K. and  
>> non-
>> profit such as Malaria No More re-launched the war on malaria,
>> devoting billions of dollars to vaccines, methods of prevention and
>> novel ways to kill mosquitoes.
>>
>> "You can say we are very lucky -- the right place at the right time,"
>> says astrophysicist Szabolcs Márka, a Columbia University specialist
>> in black holes. He has a grant to develop a "mosquito flashlight"
>> designed to knock out the bugs' eye-like sensors.
>>
>> Scientists around the world are testing ways of thwarting mosquitoes
>> with microwaves, rancid odors, poisoned blood and other weapons that
>> disrupt the sense of sight, smell and heat mosquitoes use to find
>> their prey.
>>
>> There's work on genetically altering a bacterium to infect and kill a
>> mosquito, and a project to build a malaria-free mosquito genetically
>> enhanced to overtake the natural kind.
>>
>> There's also a researcher in Japan who thinks mosquitoes can be a
>> force for good. He is working on transforming them into "flying
>> syringes" that deliver vaccines with every bite.
>>
>> The mosquito laser is the brainchild of Lowell Wood, an  
>> astrophysicist
>> who worked with Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb and
>> architect of the original plan to use lasers to shield America from
>> the rain of Soviet nuclear arms.
>>
>> President Ronald Reagan embraced the idea in the 1980s, dubbing it  
>> the
>> Strategic Defense Initiative.
>>
>> Senator Edward Kennedy mocked it as "Star Wars." Eventually it became
>> a footnote in history.
>>
>> Its rebirth as a bug killer came thanks to Nathan Myhrvold, a former
>> Microsoft Corp. executive who now runs Intellectual Ventures LLC., a
>> company that collects patents and funds inventions. His old boss, Mr.
>> Gates, had asked him to explore new ways of combating malaria. At a
>> brainstorming session in 2007, Dr. Wood, the Star Wars architect,
>> suggested using lasers on mosquitoes.
>>
>> Soon Dr. Wood, Dr. Kare and another Star Wars scientist teamed with  
>> an
>> entomologist with a Ph.D in mosquito behavior and other experts. They
>> killed their first mosquito with a hand-held laser in early 2008.
>>
>> "We like to think back then we made some contribution to the ending  
>> of
>> the Cold War" with the Star Wars program, Dr. Kare says. "Now we're
>> just trying to make a dent in a war that's actually gone on a lot
>> longer and claimed a lot more lives."
>>
>> The scientists envision their technology might one day be used to  
>> draw
>> a laser barrier around a house or village that could kill or blind  
>> the
>> bugs. Or, laser-equipped drone aircraft could track bugs by radar,
>> sweeping the sky with death-dealing photons.
>>
>> They now face one big challenge: deciding how strong to make the
>> weapon. The laser has to be weak enough to not harm humans and smart
>> enough to avoid hitting useful bugs. "You could kill billions of
>> mosquitoes a night, and you could do so without harming butterflies,"
>> says Mr. Myhrvold.
>>
>> Demonstrating the technology recently, Dr. Kare, Mr. Myhrvold and
>> other researchers stood below a small shelf mounted on the wall about
>> 10 feet off the ground. On the shelf were five Maglite flashlights, a
>> zoom lens from a 35mm camera, and the laser itself -- a little black
>> box with an assortment of small lenses and mirrors. On the floor  
>> below
>> sat a Dell personal computer that is the laser's brain.
>>
>> The glass box of mosquitoes across the room is an old 10-gallon fish
>> tank. Each time a beam strikes a bug, the computer makes a gunshot
>> sound to signal a direct hit.
>>
>> To locate individual mosquitoes, light from the flashlights hits the
>> tank across the room, creating tiny mosquito silhouettes on  
>> reflective
>> material behind it. The zoom lens picks up the shadows and feeds the
>> data to the computer, which controls the laser and fires it at the  
>> bug.
>>
>> In a video, researchers showed what happens when they deploy deadly
>> rays.
>>
>> A mosquito hovers into view. Suddenly, it bursts into flame. A thin
>> plume of smoke rises as the mosquito falls. At the bottom of the
>> screen, the carcass smolders.
>>
>> There's ready supply of fresh recruits nearby, where an intern  
>> feeds a
>> saucer of goat blood to a colony ofanopheles stephensi, one species  
>> of
>> mosquito that transmits malaria.
>>
>> Not only can the laser target a mosquito, it can also tell a male  
>> from
>> a female based on wing-beat.
>>
>> That's a crucial distinction, since only females feed on blood and
>> thus transmit disease. Males in the wild eat sugary plant nectar. (In
>> the lab they get raisins.)
>>
>> "If you really were a purist, you could only kill the females, not  
>> the
>> males," Mr. Myhrvold says. But since they're mosquitoes, he says,
>> he'll probably "just slay them all."
>>
>> Write to Robert A. Guth at rob.guth at wsj.com
>>
>> Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A1
>>
>> ______________________________________________________________
>> TheForge mailing list
>> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
>> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>> Post: mailto:TheForge at mailman.qth.net
>>
>> TheForge mail list group photo site is
>> http://www.photoaccess.com
>> Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
>> Password: anvil
>>
>> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>>
>
> ______________________________________________________________
> TheForge mailing list
> Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
> Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
> Post: mailto:TheForge at mailman.qth.net
>
> TheForge mail list group photo site is
> http://www.photoaccess.com
> Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
> Password: anvil
>
> This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
> Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>

-- 
Bruce
NJ

The total lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is  
working.
______________________________________________________________
TheForge mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/theforge
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:TheForge at mailman.qth.net

TheForge mail list group photo site is
http://www.photoaccess.com
Login: blacksmithblacksmith at hotmail.com
Password: anvil

This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html

Ries Niemi
Industrial Artist
http://www.riesniemi.com/