In the spirit of leading our nation to technological greatness, I hereby issue a call for your favorite science and technology resources, comprised of either online or traditional media. Please post comments here with links, stories, pictures to your hidden, or not so hidden gems!

The MIT alumni association just hosted a panel with some of the luminaries in the battle to improve elementary and high school science education, and the archive along with several great resource links were posted on the web log.You can watch an online broadcast of the panel here, if you first download and install the free RealPlayer from here.Here is the list of speakers: Catherine Drennan, Associate Professor, Chemistry - Chemistry and Beyond Woodie Flowers ME '73, Pappalardo Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering - FIRST Competition Mitch Resnick EE '88, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, MIT Media Lab - Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group Isaac Colbert HM, Dean for Graduate Students - Introductory Remarks Dedric Carter '99, Executive Director, Office of Engineering Outreach Programs - ModeratorIt is a great panel, where each told of anecdotes and learnings from the K-12 science innovation efforts. Here are some of the comments from attendees:"Very impressed by all of the speakers. I am a physics teacher so it energized me to hear great ideas and wonderful stories." Kelly Forest CE '92 "Great speakers, very timely ...

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Popeil, you may perhaps recall several of his company's products which in total, have pulled in over $2 BILLION in sales. My favorites are Ronco's Pocket Fisherman, the Ginsu, the Vegamatic, and Mr. Microphone.But this one, while currently an independent product, was just too priceless to pass up.Witness the "Twirl-a-Squirrel."

I posted a story a few months ago about a "Vanity Camera With Slimming Effect," that highlighted some simple image warping algorithms to make photo subjects appear slimmer without distorting the rest of the image too noticeably. Another recent post, "Easy on the Eyes, Easy on the Mind," discussed the fact that over large populations, it was the average facial features of the population as a whole that became the standard for beauty.Well a quartet of Israeli scientists has taken these ideas a big step further to demonstrate an automatic beautification algorithm that will subtly adjust the spacing and symmetry of your facial features, i.e. ocular spacing, shape and aspect ratio of forehead, lip position and shape, and so on... in such a fashion as to make your image more "average" and thereby more appealing.The results are astounding. Check out these screen shots of the tool in action, with some of the population database (from which the averages were computed) shown below, and the before and after positioning of the facial features called out on the warped grid. The before and after images tell the story.Now check out the results in higher resolution:I predict it won't be ...

As someone who gives several presentations a week to groups ranging from elementary and high school students to company employees, through senior industry officials, venture capitalists and politicians, it's not often that I hear or read a speech that gives me chills. But this one almost made me cry in how effectively it captured the spirit of my personal dreams and ambitions and the motivations that drive me to build large companies that achieve global impact or work to change education on a national scale. It is a speech by Michael Griffin, the current head of NASA. I had the pleasure of meeting and dining with Mr. Griffin last week in Davos at the World Economic Forum, and I have to say that my first impression of the man was of a reserved yet competent administrator who has done a great job in wrangling a difficult government agency in a time of heady political distraction over the last few years. But read this speech entitled "Space Exploration: Real Reasons and Acceptable Reasons," and I think you will see the true seeds of greatness in the man. If I weren't running MobiTV at the moment, I could almost be convinced ...

Hi all,Sorry for the recent sparseness in postings. Work got crazy for a bit, and now I'm in Davos Switzerland for the World Economic Forum as MobiTV was chosen as one of the Technology Pioneers of 2006.More to come next week on how we techies got a chance to to rub elbows with the powerful and try to explain how technology could help make the world a better place.

Understanding Nanotechnology has a nice chart that compares the scale and complexity of natural structures as compared to artificial ones we can fabricate.

Don't miss this video of a model car factory line that assembles a tiny LEGO car model. It is absolutely fascinating how they have fabricated all of the automated carriage transport, part feeds, and assembly complete with mechanisms for part registration, and stations to move the work in progress.

After watching NASA struggle through the eighties and nineties to finally have a fantastic year in 2006, what with the Mars Rovers, Hubble results, Nobel prizes and whatnot, I tend to go back and forth as to whether privatization of the US space program is a good thing or not. Before this year, NASA's steady decline over the past decade from a technology powerhouse into more of a contract-management shop-oriented government bureaucracy that couldn't engineer a successful program under its whithering budget was a harbinger of a private future. That combined with the current Republican administration's general shutdown of fundamental earth and space science in order to support the "return man to the moon" obsession that offers dubious scientific benefits had me completely convinced that private enterprise was the only long term solution.Of course, just when I had lost hope, the NASA administration changed, and the agency really stepped up to excel this year after a marathon turn-around effort. Was it a coincidence then, that private enterprise also made amazing milestones the same year? Burt Rutan's Spaceship one, funded by Microsoft multi-billionaire Paul Allan, garnered the X-prize,and now Jeff Bezos, of Amazon.com fame has ...

Backyard ballistics are just too much fun. Don't miss this awesome page over at Format C: describing the design and fabrication of a fully functional replica of a medieval siege engine. The designer was inspired by this picture from Wikipedia:And created the replica from the LEGO Technique sets (The Toy of the Century).Here's a video of the weapon in action:For those of you interested in more modern LEGO weaponry, check out this project that created a LEGO machine gun that shoots 96 bricks per minute from a 16 round magazine.I'm not sure where to find more details other than an attribution to "Billy Glenn." But note, you can make ANYTHING with LEGOs.Here are some other siege weapon links for the hobbyists among you:Ripcord's Trebuchet PageThe HurlWikipediaNice Google Video on Large scale Trebuchet models