For instance, while researching online education tools like the Khan Academy, I found Vi Hart’s 3 part series about Doodling in Math, the spirally things in nature, Fibonacci numbers, and how leaf designs and pine cones show how nature successfully follows the path of least resistance.

Then a few days later, amazed by the number of people who are using Tumblr, I went to the site to figure out what the fuss was all about and saw this article about Greg Dunn, an artist/scientist who was also investigating the way nature follows the path of least resistance, with neurons:

In his second year of neuroscience grad school, Greg Dunn was moonlighting with a different kind of experiment: blowing ink across pieces of paper. The neuron-like pattern it formed was instantly recognizable to him as a neuroscientist. “Ink spreads because it wants to go in the direction of less resistance, and that’s probably also the case of when branches grow or neurons grow,” he says. “The reason the technique works really well is because it’s directly related to how neurons are actually behaving.”

Dunn calls this the “fractal solution to the universe,” which he sees as the “fundamental beauty of nature.” He’s fascinated that this branching pattern holds true across orders of magnitude, whether that’s nanometers for neurons, centimeters for ink, or meters for a tree branch.

Just as plants choose the easiest path, so do people..

There’s Smart Sand and Robot Pebbles: This video showcases a nifty new computer algorithm that could one day allow tiny nano-processors to instantly analyze and assemble an exact copy of any 2D object. What we’re seeing here is the very beginning of that process.

MIT computer scientists Daniela Rus and Kyle Gilpin are behind this new algorithm, which they are currently testing on 2D grids with “smart pebbles”, which are about the size of a cubic centimeter. The key idea here is to get each of these pebbles to communicate with each other and exchange information while using as little processing power as possible. To accomplish that, each of the pebbles are equipped with four magnets, one on each of its sides other than the top and bottom.

Nano 3D Printers:

Making complex large 3D structures used to take hours or even days but with the newly developed 3D laser printer, scientists can speed that up by a factor of 500 or in some cases 1,000 times.

..and 3D Bio printers:

An engineering firm has developed a 3D bio-printer that could one day be used to create organs on demand for organ replacement surgery. The device is already capable of growing arteries and its creators say that arteries “printed” by the device could be used in heart bypass surgery in as little as five years. Meanwhile, more complex organs such as hearts, and teeth and bone should be possible within ten years.

Printers are the Future of Organ Transplants…

Today’s 3D printers, which can produce complex physical objects such as jewelry and airplane parts, are being used to print something even more intricate: human organs.

3D printers work much like inkjet printers. Instead of ink, the machines deposit successive layers of different materials, including silver, plastic, and titanium to form an actual object.

In late 2009, a startup called Organovo developed a bioprinter, which uses human cells to print functional human tissue. The end goal is to print human organs that can be used in transplants, says Chief Executive Officer Keith Murphy.

“There are a series of things that will get us closer and closer to the end goal of human organs,” says Murphy, who will speak in San Francisco on Tuesday at a conference hosted by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine. “The biggest next step is vascularization—creating blood vessels within larger tissues.” Without these blood vessels, the tissue would die, Murphy says.

As people live longer and organ failures increase in number, regenerative medicine is becoming increasingly important.

…and they’re capable of “printing” chemical reactions.

Professor Cronin added: “3D printers are becoming increasingly common and affordable. It’s entirely possible that, in the future, we could see chemical engineering technology which is prohibitively expensive today filter down to laboratories and small commercial enterprises.

“Even more importantly, we could use 3D printers to revolutionise access to healthcare in the developing world, allowing diagnosis and treatment to happen in a much more efficient and economical way than is possible now.

“We could even see 3D printers reach into homes and become fabricators of domestic items, including medications. Perhaps with the introduction of carefully-controlled software ‘apps’, similar to the ones available from Apple, we could see consumers have access to a personal drug designer they could use at home to create the medication they need.”

They’re also self-replicating.

But no matter how high-tech they get, they’ll still find a way to piss us off..

Zenfolio photo collection, being updated..

If you travel back up a rutted dirt road from Kibera and turn right on the Ngong Road, just past the Uchumi Hypermarket, you’ll see a five-story office building completed in 2009. From the patio ringing the top floor, a haze from diesel fumes and the cooking fires of Kibera’s shacks is visible just beyond the crest of a hill. But step inside, and it feels as if you’ve been transported to a Silicon Valley startup. Dozens of twentysomethings toil away on laptops; a few blow off steam at a foosball table; Pete’s coffee bar (not to be confused with Peet’s of the United States) doles out cappuccinos, milk shakes, and slabs of banana bread. This is a business incubator called iHub, the fruit of a homegrown information technology culture that had its coming-of-age moment in December 2007. That month, ethnic violence broke out after a disputed presidential election; at least 1,100 people died and 300,000 were displaced. Ory Okolloh, a human-rights activist, put out a call to Kenya’s loosely knit blogging and technology community to help report on the fighting (see “Frustrated Innovation”). Several people responded, including Erik Hersman, Juliana Rotich, and David Kobia. In 48 hours, Kobia had written the first draft of an incident-reporting platform called Ushahidi, the Swahili word for “testimony.” Now any Kenyan could send in an eyewitness report by text message, and it would be reviewed and then posted on an online map. Ushahidi has since been used widely, in countries including Haiti, South Africa, Russia, and the United States (where it helped map flood-related problems on the Missouri River).

An incident in Ushahidi’s formative days planted the seed for iHub. Ushahidi’s developers had initially offered the technology free of charge to the Kenya Red Cross Society and other NGOs monitoring the violence. But the NGOs didn’t want it; it wasn’t part of their existing plans and funding models. “We had so much resistance,” Hersman recalls. “We kept trying to say, ‘It’s free, we will hold your hand, we will help you communicate with the public to say how you are providing a service.’ They weren’t willing to do anything with it.”

Jackie Cheruiyot (left), project leader for a Nairobi startup, tells a Kibera resident about MedAfrica, an app that provides links to ­doctors, dentists, and first-aid advice. After an investment of less than $100,000, the app is on 43,000 phones. Doctors are scarce in Kenya, but some people get care from storefront clinics like this one in Narok (right). Credit: Frederic Courbet/Getty Images (left); David Talbot (right)

More…

A decade later we can see that this telescopic focus on the elephant in the room missed out on history’s biggest mouse party. The most important fact of our modern media world, the engine of such unprecedented creativity and anxiety-inducing destruction, is that the customer is no longer captive. People create their own media, for the sheer bloody hell of it, and no longer adhere permanently to one of a handful of legacy brands.

That all of this should be self-evident to anyone who can open a Web browser makes it no less relevant to our assessment of media—or, more precisely, to the prevailing assessment of media, which serves as the misplaced starting line for most discussion. Too many media critics are still obsessed with mergers, with ownership percentages, with whatever political slant they think establishment newsrooms are force-feeding down our throats, instead of recognizing that the threats to good journalism in 1972 are vastly different than the threats to good journalism in 2012. For heaven’s sake, we still have a “Project Censored” churning out annual collections, in an era of Wikileaks, ubiquitous camera phones, and homeless guys publishing popular blogs.

To those of us whose career prospects did not depend on media behemoths or academic institutions, whose view was not colored by an over-arching fear of economic and political power concentrated in the hands of would-be 21st century media barons, the AOL-Time Warner merger, like all supposedly frightening media consolidations, was only as relevant as our comparatively minor consumption of the new conglomerate’s products. (I would invite every Ben Bagdikian fan reading this to keep a detailed diary of your media consumption for a full day, count up how many different corporations and human beings compiled the stuff you consumed, note which entities did not even exist in the 20th century, and then try ever again to say or write with a straight face the phrase “media monopoly.”) As I wrote when the merger was announced, “If this is the ‘new totalitarianism’…then we’re the freest slaves in the history of tyranny.”

* Link thanks to Marc Danziger

One of the things about the e-book market right now is that there are a variety of experiences. Perhaps the type of e-book app that will seem most familiar to people would be something along the lines of Penguin’s Amplified Edition of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged. This edition, which is purchased as an iPad app, features things like actual manuscript pages, the ability to share quotes on social media, and audio clips of Ayn Rand on various topics. These materials function similarly to the extras section on a DVD – they’re not integrated in the story, but they’re something that might be of great interest to people who are or become fans of the book.

Increasingly common, though, is bringing about a more interactive experience. For example, The Gift, which was published earlier this year by Persian Cat Press, is reminiscent of an illustrated children’s book. However, it’s not only narrated, but the reader has to interact with various parts of the book to move the story forward. In this case, the enhanced aspects of the book are an integral part of the story. (This one is a particular favorite of my toddler son.)

Perhaps the most wildly divergent book app I’ve encountered so far is Chopsticks, which is another Penguin book, but one that’s vastly different than their amplified editions. It’s described as a novel, but it’s vastly different than a traditional novel. As you turn the pages, you aren’t confronted with a traditional narrative, but rather interact with different pieces of the lives of Glory, a teen piano player, and the boy who moves in next door. The story’s told through newspaper clippings, pictures, songs, and more. It’s a rather fascinating way to tell a story.

More…

Upon receiving notification that my rations would be changed from Fancy Feast to Friskies, I knew what had to be done. My prison was impregnable, my previous attempts to escape, disastrous. This was in spite of the exceptional opportunity to escape in the fog of early morning as the newspaper was brought in. The guard “Marta” and the presence of the summoned constables precluded my success.

I can forgive the humiliation of my failed attempt at freedom, but I cannot forgive the Daily News for calling me a ‘peeved pussycat’. Reporters, you have not heard the last from me. I will gain my freedom and my revenge, or I will meet you in Valhalla!

(Inspired by the Dog/Cat diary & George Takei)

Marc Thiessen at the Enterprise Blog believes that if we retreat from Afghanistan, al Qaeda will follow us home.

We probably could have improved the lives of women in Afghanistan and disempowered al Qaeda if we’d dismantled the infrastructure that supports Sunni/Islamist terrorism in the area; that infrastructure includes the occasional allies of al Qaeda in the Pakistani government; al Qaeda’s good friends within the Pakistani Intelligence Agency; sympathizers in the Afghan government; mafia/terrorist/drug dealing groups like the Haqqani network, wealthy, well-connected financial supporters and government leaders in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar.

But we didn’t dismantle that infrastructure, we worked with it and gave it more money and legitimacy in our efforts to supposedly fight the terrorism it supports. Our efforts were like fixing a rotten shed by painting over the mold and water damage. Whatever good effects we’ve had will be always be temporary because we never really fixed the problem.

Staying longer would be the equivalent of applying more coats of paint. American soldiers are risking and losing their lives in this halfhearted effort. That has to stop.

Why doesn’t brainstorming work? What should we do instead?

I think the failure of brainstorming is inseparable from its allure, which is that it makes us feel good about ourselves. A group of people are put together in a room and told to free-associate, with no criticism allowed. (The assumption is that the imagination is meek and shy — if it’s worried about being criticized, it will clam up.) Before long, the whiteboard is filled with ideas. Everybody has contributed; nobody has been criticized. Alas, the evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of these free-associations are superficial and that most brainstorming sessions actually inhibit the productivity of the group. We become less than the sum of our parts.

However, in recent years, scientists have shown that group collaborations benefit from debate and dissent; it is the human friction that makes the sparks. (There’s a reason why Steve Jobs always insisted that new ideas required “brutal honesty.”) In fact, some studies suggest that encouraging debate and dissent can lead to a 40% increase in useful new ideas from the group.

Why does failure seem to be such an important part of innovation?

Because innovation is hard. If it were easy to invent an idea, that idea would already exist. Creative success is not about the avoidance of failure. It’s about failing as fast as possible, going through endless iterations until the idea is perfect.

What about Silicon Valley’s creativity and innovation allowed it to overtake Route 128 as the tech center of America in the latter half of the last decade?

It’s a really interesting comparison, because if you time travel back to the 1960s, you never would have guessed that Silicon Valley would become the tech center of the world. (It was still mostly walnut and apricot farms.) Those Boston suburbs, meanwhile, were dense with engineering talent and technology firms. By 1970, the area bounded by Route 128 included six of the ten largest technology firms in the world, such as Digital Computer and Raytheon. The “Massachusetts Miracle” was underway.

So what happened? The downfall of the Boston tech sector was caused by the very same features that, at least initially, seemed like such advantages…

Followed by an interesting comment from reader Jason Thibeault:

Great interview and looking forward to reading the book. Being a self-professed creative guy (entrepreneur, author, photographer, and definitely a day-time dreamer) I have found that my creativity has expanded over the years with the more information I consume. News, stories, videos, etc. I read constantly. Everything from physics to philosophy to religious texts (even though I am not). Most importantly, books that I wouldn’t normally read about subjects with which I have no affinity. As I’ve done this throughout the years, I’ve come to postulate that creativity is an outgrowth of pattern recognition and the more information you feed a system that’s good at identifying/forming patterns (which the brain really is built to do; it’s why we stereotype and categorize) the more opportunities for patterns you get. When left to its own devices, the brain will constantly try and make “sense” of all the information it gets through all sensory inputs. I know there has been neuroscience research into synaptic strengthening( and even production) based upon pattern recognition. In short, the creative mind lives constantly in a state of chaos with patterns bubbling up (or expressly looked for).