Things are not as they seem
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Friday, 09 May 08 - 10:52 AM (GMT +12:00) By Marie-Claire Andrews in Slightly geeky |
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Went to an excellent seminar last night by Matthew Gerrie, Cognitive Psychologist at Victoria University - he is working on Vic's Innocence Project, which investigates possible cases of wrongful conviction in the New Zealand legal system and ultimately seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted people.
Pretty cool.
He's a memory specialist and talked with us about the flakiness of eyewitness testimonials, because of the way that we encode, store and recall memories. Apparently 'flashbulb' memories, those that are a result of stressful moments, or pivotal events (where were you when Diana died, when 911 happened, when you were the victim of a crime) are just as susceptible to flaky recall as any others.
And most amazingly, confidence in your memory has nothing whatsoever to do with accuracy. You swear blind to your sister that a family event was the way you remember it, and she swears blind it was another. You're both confident, you could both be wrong.
Unfortunately juries love a confident witness.
Matthew gave us the example of a woman who was raped, who made a conscious effort to look at her attacker, even moving him into the light to see him better, because she knew she'd need to recall this later. She created an identikit picture, someone thought they knew that face, that face was brought in, she identified him in a line up and he was ultimately convicted to life. A similar rape happened around the same time, the police thought it could be him and when he was retrialled on a technicality from the first trial, he was reconvicted, this time for life+54 years (for the second rape) all on the basis of eye witness evidence. He was released after 12 years, when DNA proved he couldn't have done either of them.
Amazingly he and the first victim now travel the world talking about the flakiness of eye witness testimony. Get this, even now when she remembers the rape, she remembers him. Even though she knows it wasn't him.
The seminar was run by a brand agency, which was clever alignment - brand is about perception, so understanding how the brain stores and recalls information is hugely important in that industry. And vital for our justice system...
Google and Ecocho
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Wednesday, 23 April 08 - 08:30 AM (GMT +12:00) By Marie-Claire Andrews in Slightly geeky |
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I have been using Ecocho as my search portal since it launched in New Zealand a few weeks ago. Ecocho plants trees in response to the volume of searches that go through the portal - using Yahoo and Google searches.
Ironically, yesterday was both Earth Day and the day that Google denied Ecocho the option to use its search.
However disappointed, I do understand the value of the specific point of policy that is in conflict: “AdSense does not currently permit sites that offer monetary or non-monetary incentives to users to perform searches on click on ads.” I also understand the the argument regarding the “inability to verify the accuracy of any charitable claims and need to protect the user and advertiser experiences.”
But come on! User demand was so high! Why has Google responded so beurocratically? Ahhhhh......the money......
Experimenting with Brown's gas
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Saturday, 09 February 08 - 04:42 PM (GMT +12:00) By Marie-Claire Andrews in Slightly geeky |
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No we're not suffering from after effects of noxious curry. 
This weekend we were experimenting with making a Water to Gas converter thingy that will mean we use less gas in the car and make less pollution as emmissions...then ultimately we can use it on the boat too.
The picture shows Lee with his HHO bottle - basically it separates each water particle (molecule) into a different arrangement: two “H” for Hydrogen, bonded together, plus one “O” for Oxygen. This combination, in its gaseous state, is called HHO. Also also called Rhodes' Gas or Brown’s Gas after its famous researchers, William A Rhodes and Professor Yull Brown. HHO burns beautifully and provides TONS of energy. The device uses little electricity and very little water… Pound for pound HHO IS 3 TIMES MORE POTENT THAN PETROL!!
It's a technology some 85 years old which simply adds water vapor to the normal mixture of pterol and air. Adding Brown's Gas to the fuel/air mixture in an engine has the immediate effect of increasing the octane rating of any fuel. “Octane Rating” means how much that fuel can be compressed before it ignites. Low grade petrol (91) ignites faster than higher octane fuels (95, 98 or 100). It takes less compression to ignite. This fact causes the petrol to ignite before TDC (Top Dead Centre, the point where the piston is at the highest point of its motion), making it less efficient because the explosion of gas fumes pushes the piston down and out of sequence (it's too early so it goes a bit in reverse) - you might have heard your car “pinging” noise which is how you know this is happening.
Brown's gas or water vapor causes regular low-grade fuel to ignite more slowly, making it perform like a high octane petrol. A higher octane rating means stronger horse power due to combustion occuring much closer to TDC, where it has a chance to turn into mechanical torque (rotary push) the right way and without pinging. Each piston transfers more energy during its combustion cycle, so combustion becomes more efficient – as well as SMOOTH. More efficient combustion translates to less fuel being consumed.
So, this technology does not mean we're running on water, but introducing HHO simply and effectively creates the effect of using the same bad fuel in a more economical way. It supplements and actually corrects the behavior of dodgy fuels [works great for diesels!!!!]. Free energy does exist, but it has to be triggered by something. In this case, the interaction between water and gasoline is how it happens.
Will let you know when we get it into the 1988 Toyota corolla and how it works...
Update: note to self, don't try and light the gas that's coming off to see if it is really working .....!!! Boom, Boom, shake the room.....
Unlimited Potential networking fest
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Thursday, 25 October 07 - 09:32 AM (GMT +12:00) By Marie-Claire Andrews in Slightly geeky |
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The next UP event is on 1 November, hosted by Wellington's Mayor (and with free food and drink as always)
Tim Norton, of PlanHQ is speaking about taking Silicon Welly to Silicon Valley, the man who made Webstock happen will give a sneak preview of what's happening in that space and we hope Kerry will be candid about what the council is doing for the business and tech community...
the AGM will only take two mins honest
RSVP now to secure your spot
... More items are available in my News Archive
