mini rant

You know what's annoying? Shaving. It's tedious and irritating to my skin. But for now at least, it is a part of life, so i live with it.

But you know what's inconsolably irritating? Buying razors, or more specifically, razor blades.

If you use an electric razor you know how expensive it can be to replace the blades. Prices from $30-$50 are not uncommon. And you're expected to buy them about once a year! And if you don't buy them you're forced to shave with an unsharp razor which will be even more painful and even more tedious than normal.

How hard can it be to make blades which will not dull so easily! They use some sort of stainless steel. I wouldn't be surprised if the blades are purposefully engineered to dull out quickly. I'm certainly not an expert, but what's wrong with tungsten carbide, ceramic or high carbon steel? I would seriously consider buying blades with industrial diamonds if it meant I didn't have to get a new one so often.

Also, a comment to Norelco: I DO NOT NEED TO REPLACE THE ENTIRE HEAD OF THE RAZOR! There are three little ninja-star blades that get dull. They're about the size of a nickel each. I would be happy to insert them into the razor head myself and obviate the need to replace the environmentally and economically costly COMPLETE razor head.

PS - I would love to buy an aftermarket razor head (hint, hint interwebs).

half baked ideas

Adapt an inject printer to print tattoos directly onto skin. (btw Inject technology is already used to print half strands of DNA).

Have the inside of a tube of toothpaste cling to itself so that it is easy to expel all of the paste.

Create a 'nap' watch which can determine the stage of sleep you are in so you are never woken during stage 3 or 4 deep sleep.

Create a 'void balloon'. That is, a sturdy shell (probably from some nanostructure) which is strong and light enough to create a void inside. This 'void' will have more lifting capacity than Helium or Hydrogen in atmosphere. Additionally, this is 'green' in that no gases need to be mined/synthesized.
-- with enough technology a 'morphing' balloon could transition from round->airplane shape->supersonic airplane shape etc, for optimal performance depending on velocity, function and altitude.


Create a flying craft, the skin of which creates corona wind via high voltage potentials for propulsion and maneuvering.
(update: it seems they've already done a similar idea for ship propulsion. See "Magnetohydrodynamic drive".)

Once I sat upon a promontory

THE INVERSE-TURING TEST

The Turing test measures a machines ability to be 'intelligent'. The test involves a person having a 'blind' text conversation with either man or machine. If the person is consistently unable to determine to whom they are talking, the machine is said to have passed.

To my knowledge, no machine has ever passed this test. In that sense this test can determine whether a 'being' is human. This is because the machine lacks sufficient 'human' intelligence.

Now consider the opposite question. Is it possible to form a test which can prove machinery? IE, humans will consistently fail this test. If we put a few restrictions on the human, I believe this to be so.

That test already exists, it is called the 'Diehard Test Suite'. It sounds like a simple test--can you generate independent and identically distributed random variables? At its simplest, could you generate a completely random series of 0's and 1's? The restriction: you can't image some sort of complicated algorithm in your head and you can't use information from your surroundings. That's it. And my hypothesis is that humans cannot do this because of the fundamental nature of how we think.