Waffling on Miniatures 2

Hi there! 

Welcome to another installment of the Miniatures Waffle Series: where we take a break from critical thinking and abstract waffling, and waffle instead on miniatures!

After all the emails, I can finally share an update on the tabletop figures front.

To Right: A Naga Monk Forms...

How do you feel about the accuracy of this piece? I'm impressed with the detail and accuracy to the comics depiction. I look forward to revealing the sculptor and where you can get the minis once the project is completed, so stay tuned!

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on this piece and on the generic lizard mutant figures as they come (they'll be similar scale, and either pewter or resin...).

Now I've shared the good news first,

 onto the less good news:

there are some technical and quality problems with the translucent minis projects I have on the back burner: these are the 'holocronicular dice', the thrown lightstick, irregularly shaped lightsticks and lightwhips, double ended lightstick and jetpack contrails... the 'objective marker' set/customising components set.

The materials thickness and resolution for clear printing is not at a fidelity that you or I might like for our customising efforts... there is also a problem with the glues we can use with these plastics: its not entirely ABS or whatever that spool is, so with the pieces I've got as prototypes, regular glues like araldyte and tarzans' grip are melting the mini and warping the surfaces/making the mini turn brown...

Have you had similar experiences when using 3d Printer printed extruded plastics? Have you had problems when adhesing pieces of clear detail plastic: to other plastics, to other surfaces such as MDF or Acrylic?

I have a feeling these 'plastic problems' will spill over to the vehicle projects...

Hopefully they can be resolved swiftly, I feel they can be worked around or overcome.

Moving to the Chodak minifigs... 

there's 3 variants at this time. I feel its a  dynamic concept, and you could do a lot with the figures.

the internal splines and curves for transparent plastic are too small for most 3D printing at the moment;

we could upscale (not an option)

we could change the profile and shape (not a preferred option)

we can make the components separately, as the cavity in the 'mech suit' does pass the bar... whereas the suit plus an internal translucent mollusc do not. (my preferred option).

we can sacrifice the translucentness of the internal mollusc (I don't want to compromise finish).

Also, the same gluing problem arises, and these things are more brittle than resin (so, extra precautions will need to be taken in shipping).

What do you feel about these? Have your say via comments or emails.

Its full steam ahead otherwise!

So, for the vehicle projects,

it looks like the Dagger and the Dianoga will be up next:

I want the endprice manifold to be around the same as a papercraft version of these figures: I want it to be great detail for dirt cheap, and a solid base that customisers can then tinker with as they like, so we can have more 1/48th scale vehicle options.

You can still send in your suggestions for vehicle and miniature figures concepts or requests here or at bloomilk. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, which might be the case here.

Bear in mind the key selection criteria (must have a 'what the?!' factor, and be something we can't get elsewhere and are unlikely to ever see elsewhere).

A small sketch or series of sketches helps to envisage the concept: maybe you link to existing images, or you make a rough sketch yourself...

I look forward to seeing your suggestions!

Could Mangroves be used in mitigating sea level rises?

Hi there!
This waffle is about a topic that I recently overheard at a couple of different meetings
(an environmentalist group, a freethinking/communication skills club, and a skeptical thinking club)
and I wanted to further investigate/deconstruct the elements in the claim... mainly so I can understand what they're meaning more and engage at the next meeting.

So,
some people were converging on sea level rise: they were arriving at that conclusion from a number of different perspectives (climate skeptics were playing devils advocate, to try and understand the hypothetical and get into some numbers).
Some people brought up Seawater Greenhouse, desalination and mangroves of all things...
as potential offsets for sealevel rise etc.

In the past, I've heard some spurious claims about mangroves, from use as a natural pump in elevating water (along with Oak Trees and Cacti, etc) which can be plausible depending on the claim made,
through to a 'natural liquid-separating device', which separates liquids according to viscosity (so, you could get salt water to separate into wine, for example...) - this can get quite technical with discussions of capillary functions etc

Proponents of mangroves essentially argue that
"if you must plant trees, then why not plant the 'triple threat' tree of mangroves, since mangroves will ward off sea level rise, will also act as desalination sources (to increase availability of drinking water), and will act as natural carbon sinks, if indeed carbon is behind warming phenomena". an interesting claim...

So, lets waffle a little about this;
I'm approaching from an ERoEI perspective: how many mangroves would we be needing to plant and raise here... for there to be any effects approaching that which the proponents describe? Is this feasible when compared with other processes?...
Mangroves are admittedly pretty awesome plants, they look cool, and do some awesome stuff.
But you'd need a lot of them to be planted along coastlines for a long time, and they'd have to survive... and you'd then have the classic 'unforeseen sideffects' because Mangroves are not native species in all landmasses.
Mangroves also require certain environmental conditions to thrive and survive... and this is where the technocrats/Meliorists show their true colours.

"But we could genetically modify the mangroves..."
here we go.  Genetic engineering to the rescue!
It's fun, and I find it a worthwhile aside to ask at this juncture a couple of questions;
does that individual like to drink recycled water when given the choice between 'natural water' and recycled water?
does that individual like to eat GMO food sources, from a human security perspective (knowing that our food sources are becoming less biodiverse and more vulnerable to 'contagion')?

Okay, digression aside,
lets assume we could modify the mangroves, to both optimise those mitigating effects, its survival chances in a wider range of climates, reproductive clumping rate etc... (so this plant would potentially be part artificial plant/biological fluid separator and catalytic converter?, part sunflower, part cacti, part bamboo/weed and part mangrove?)

That still won't allow you to plant anywhere near enough mangroves in the coastline areas in which they are required, to achieve the desired effects. Bare in mind this discussion has until this juncture, eschewed the ERoEI/Fossil Fuels required to both produce the mangroves (which goes up if we need to GMO the mangrove) to then go and plant... the planting energy costs would also be quite high...
what sorts of fertilizer quantities and nutrients would be needed to sustain all these mangroves? 

When you compare this with other methods and approaches to
'combating climate change'/mitigating some of the potential impacts of climate change...
such as doing nothing/adapting to the rate of change,
reducing the number of people (who generate demand on climate/experience the climate change) via a plethora of ways;
using seawater greenhouse technologies, or technologies along with desalination,
redirecting the water (either underground, to some other geographical region ala Panama Canal style project) or even
literally blowing up the water...
other methods are much more ERoEI efficient and/or have fewer sideeffects.
 I find it all to be a fascinating discussion, because then you get the next order of discussions - combinatorics! You then get people who say that perhaps a combination/configuration from the set of these partial solutions will emerge the set of 'optimal solution'...

This becomes entertaining;
so what ratio of 'genetically engineered mangrove planting' to 'cloud seeding' to 'reduction rate in people' to 'desalination plants/seawater greenhouses', to "diverting the water" to 'literally blowing up the water' do people envisage as this 'optimal solution'?
"I feel 15% of the optimal solution is apportioned to 'literally blowing up the water'"... and so on.

So,
what do you think?
I'm keen to hear from a wide range of people on this subject, what's your take on it?
Could mangroves be used to mitigate climate change? If so, how do you arrive at that conclusion (as it would be fascinating to see the ERoEI justification for those technologies).

And now, to ramble on collecting the Arts!

Time to change topics for a moment, from waffling to other things;
the arts, and in this case, miniature tabletop Fallout gaming. 

I like the arts; I like tabletop games, like Chess. I'm addicted to many variants of Fallout rpg atm, very fun and can be used as scenario tools for people to visualise, if they are paranoid and prefer to not use computers (yes, there are still Y2K people out there... *shudders*)
 I acquire many different mixed media miniatures from all around the world: New Caledonia, Germany/Spain, USA, Russia, China, Argentina, UK and Japan. and Norway, can't forget Norway! It's like a win-win: penfriends, and you get a figure too!
There are so many talented people out there, that have so many skills. For example, some whittle out of wood... some use mixed glues and clay polymers... others a type of papier mache. Some of the rarest figures in my collection are napoleonic mixed media tin soldiers, along with some from circa 1920-1940s germany (they made rare mixed media toy soldiers, with hideous bodies but porcelain heads; they're worth a mint, and my favorite minis). I even have some Ivory minis from long ago: back when whaling and ivory were cool, and thought to keep the populations of animals down. I certainly hope they don't make those today... but as they're heirlooms, I enjoy keeping them.

I prefer 1/48th-1/52scale for most things; its just a nice scale, has a lot of utility and lets you trade across a bigger spectrum. My partner collects ATC's, artists Mixed Media Trading Cards. These things are one of the coolest aspects of secret womens (and increasingly, all kinds of artist) business;
they're made from a huge range of mixed media from jewellery (pressed and embossed metal) through to fabrics and translucent materials. They're cool, and if you're into trading cards, these might just be the best thing!

So here's a new acquisition for my collection;
Below, a naga monk custom made for my fallout campaign that will be set in Harlan Ellisons Middle-East-Asia. He's a statue come to life, turned pirate. The toothpicks will be replaced with maces and axes at a later stage, (and armor and an eyepatch, he's a pirate afterall)... This baddie lurks around Angkor Wat or Wat Arun, Wat Pho or any of the other Wats they're building over there: its all concrete, to replace the wooden ones...

When he's not bumming around the temples, he'll be on his own custom boat, surfing and plundering the high seas. The Fallout probably mutated him, or I'd like to think it was an animatronic statue in a Wat that came to life. I was tempted to have another made with many guns, but don't we see enough of those already?

So, once this figure is done, I'll have to see if other naga monks and pirates can be made to tag along... I'm looking forward to painting this when i receive it.

I'll be sure to keep you posted, and I'll have to give a shout out once this is done,
cheers!

Q's for the Reader:
Do you collect anything? any numismatists out there (coin collectors)? What about stamps, crystals/minerals? Tektites? Skulls... (only a few people I've met have come up to me and said: "hi there! Do you want to see my Human Skull collection?" Cool collectables for sure).
Are you into tabletop gaming or RPGing with people, face to face?
Do you collect ATC's?

What do you think of the Naga Monk? Should the face be a little different?
I feel its reminiscent of one from a Wat I've been to, and if I can find the photo I'll have to put it up.
Should the mace be mid-air posed - like Heroclix action poses they have now (they've really set the bar in terms of all my other 1/48th scale stuff now)? or should the mace be flat on the ground, being dragged behind this roboslug?

I'm also hoping to have some objective markers made, to match a bunch of the stat-cards that are on the forums.

EDIT: PROGRESS!

We can see above, with a WOTC mini for scale (no coins or tapemeasure to hand in the lab).
The maker is making the mini, and they're doing a great job! This space pirate Naga Monk will be up in no time making an appearance at the LGS or at RPG outing. If the arms are right, and the weapons look generically sci-fi, I could probably also use it as a Fallout Mutant for asianic campaigns.
I'm told there could be many generic insect variants etc... and that there might be female versions as well... I'll be sure to keep you updated on the wheres and whens as they unfurl.

New Layout Feedback Waffle

Hi there!

I wonder what you all think of the layout: 

is it more readable?

Are there too many fonts?

Do I need more useful links? I've put a translate button down the bottom of the page, as this was requested... it makes complete sense.

I might put a rotating poll up and schedule it to coincide with layout changes as they happen...

 

 

Reflections on an Evening with Kaku

Hi there,

this is a waffle about the excellent futures waffles that were had as part of the "An Evening With Michio Kaku" event, what a fun time! Do forgive the fanboy gushings here; as critical as I can be of technocrat/Meliorist perspectives... I do respect the awesome hardwork that many have made, as there's much to be thankful for.

Having this once in a lifetime opportunity to meet one of the fathers of String Theory was a chance not to be passed up - a real win win situation, as much of the 'exorbitant' fees and costs involved went to charity and to supporting science. Exorbitant though, is relative, as rock concerts are much more expensive for not nearly as much fun!

The event was sold out to capacity: complete with huge queues that snaked down to the mezzanine. something around 2000 odd people?

The gender ratio was ~ 55:45 in favor of women; loads of smart beautiful women, 

though the age range of the crowd as a cohort seemed to vary widely, with the youngest being 3 or 4 (no babies?! none that I saw and if there were, they were well behaved!) and the older being in their 90s... at conferences, or 'significant events', I like to gather pertinent data, such as the composition of the overall cohort, and any influential persons there, and gender ratios etc... just never know when that stuff might come in handy further down the line, and so few of these conference proceedings either gather that data or share it freely...

I use that initial impression of data to estimate what a statistically significant random sample from that group might be, then I try and sample random conversations (as politely as possible) so as I can learn as much as possible! Others might try to hit specific marks or whathave you; but talking with people is one of those fun things about conferences and events.

I had about 60 conversations over the night, with more women than men, 

and the topics ranged widely. It was great to see so many women interested in and studying sciences and statistics, particularly medicine, computers/cybernetics and law/humanities.

Many males were individuals, very few came in groups. I made a choice to try and talk to the males that were part of larger groups, predominantly so as to cover more people for the limited sample time...

As to the evening itself,

what a fun event! The 1 hour public lecture was much the same as those of the past 5-6years, similar to the ones you can find on Google or TEDx. This was a little saddening, as it felt the material was staged as against authentic or off the cuff. Flipside of the coin; kudos to Kaku being able to so consistently hit the same marks for all these years!

The ~1.2Hr public Q&A and Meet and Greet was much more interesting; there were a lot of technical questions about String Theory and the implications for combinatorial materials science etc... very interesting stuff there.

Yours Truly wanted to ask about Riemann Manifolds, Lorentz Transforms and more specifically about Harold White (warp field interferometer) and the Alcubierre Drive... but instead chose to ask the one question about Kaku's stance on Population Growth.

 For context, I had 15 questions prepared for the "Suppose you meet God and can only ask one question, what would the question be?" scenario... the gatekeeper said "no technical questions." so that ruled out 7 of em... 

The Gatekeeper, she wasn't wanting me to ask the question I did... but I thought why not ask, because Kaku has spoken on the topic many times before but never stated much of how we can realise these things... only that we shouldnt repeat the mistakes of the past and should afford science more respect, primacy and less persecution.

So I ask: What does he [Kaku] think of population futures, in the context of another great physicist Al Bartlett's work, The Essential Exponential! ?

To which Kaku said: A technical question, and the answer is yes! hahaha,

In all seriousness though, there's no reason to give up hope entirely just yet...

He then outlined that population figures were in decline in many places, with decline rates maintaining an S-curve and stabilising around 2030-2045, and that women empowerment (a very cool thing) would pretty much solve the whole population problem for us, along with an innovation rate that exceeded More's Law.

That was great, and I felt I had teased more of an answer out, as its such a taboo topic to discuss in a public place, in part due to the nature of misunderstandings that tragically all too often occur when applying critical thinking: I wanted a great scientist to be able to talk more about population freely (in the state they were talking in especially).

So, the rest of the questions were great,

an American (Canadian?) asked about how Kaku envisaged modelling the innovation rate; the answer was great, and so I must thank them the next time I see them for a great question. It was essentially similar to what Dave Coutts has written so eloquently over on The Exponentialist!  Basically, a variable compounding, polynomial thing, that implies it could be a negative innovation rate for potentially prolonged periods of time...

Some technical questions and a little maths were discussed briefly in the Meet and Greet on a whiteboard; just a little enumeration or some Lorentz stuff, I think college professors or skeptics were testing Kaku to see if he could do some 'simple' math... it was a good few maths jokes though.

Then it wrapped up, and before I could get to waffle with some more people, they'd all dispersed into the night! It was a shame, as I felt many wanted to waffle some more and had the distinct impression they wanted to vent or talk to someone who'd listen (as they'd spent nearly 3 hours listening).

I did manage to squeez in a few more random short conversations, which was awesome! People were talking about cybernetics and energies futures and all sorts of stuff. We exchanged a few emails! It was great!

I happened to wind up talking with two quite learn-ed first year uni guys, and we happened to be talking about their take on futures. I waffled (perhaps too much?) and we used the iPad to have a look and bookmark interesting websites...

When we look up and who should happen to cross the foyer but Mr Kaku himself?!

The poor guy, he looked exhausted from all the travel and so many questions... everyone wanted a piece of this guy...

Luckily, graciously, he happened to be headed the same way we were headed, and the traffic lights were red. Here we all were on the corner, and I happened to say, isn't that the you-know, the guy?

And he pipes up: who me? Why yes I am me, who are you?

and we got to talking, and he said we could walk and talk and we all had 5 minutes or so for sure (no problem) -that he had to hop in a plane to get to the next speaking engagement the next day, but for fans of science he always had time. He wondered what we thought of the presentation, it went well we told him. He had a standing ovation (2minutes of thunderous applause), so it must have gone well!

I waited my turn to ask a few questions, 

thanked him again (both as a Japanese American and as an innovator) and got to ask a few questions, such as about the warp interferometer and about energy futures as followups to my population growth question. 

He gave candid, pragmatic and succinct answers (that I'll not forget, especially the warning and the well wishing for troubling times ahead). He spoke about how "braindrain" was a terrible thing and would hopefully one day not need to happen. He commented I seemed widely read, and wondered what I thought might be the outcome for futures. I said my part. He wagered that progress was slightly more likely than collapse, but remarked he probably wouldn't be around to collect on our wager. He then kindly offered to autograph anything we had on us, and I was able to shake his hand.

We also spoke about SLAC and the extended periodic table, 

Kaku felt that the eka-actinides might be reasonably synthesised in the near future with 'decent' ERoEI ratios... and we both laughed/remarked that science would be the better investment than in the military-industrial complex. 

This was a lot of fun for sure... I could waffle some more on this topic, or about meeting great innovators/thinkers more generally (or on other topics, such as brushes/meeting famous persons, and trying to really "let them be" as much as possible, or at least treat them like people and have a regular old conversation). I try not to follow tabloid things, and try to talk with persons of interest directly.

----

So, bizarrely, as interesting as actually meeting the guy behind String Theory was, the conversations had with other people were as fun or even moreso!, 

these unsung heroes, from all over the world and different backgrounds, who had really neat ideas and made great conversations!

Thanks for them, and I wish events like that happened more like once a fortnight or once amonth: lifes to short to have them once a year or once a lifetime!

Thats what I want to aim for and strive for with waffling here and elsewhere on the web, and in waffling in real life:

a fun time, an informative time, and a sharing space where people can waffle.

 

What do you think about academia?

Have you had brushes with influential people, famous people or thinkers? What is a protocol for coincidental happenstance meetings? Do you try to "leave people be", or do you think its good to let them know you care and have a brief encounter/chat?

If you could only ask one question; what would yours have been and why? How do cull the options down for that question?