What one sentence best describes your idea?

Let’s actually apply 21st century technology to democracy by continually polling the voting public on the top issues affecting their community, and gathering the best ideas for government to implement.

Describe your idea in more depth

A website wherein registered and authenticated citizens can state and debate issues, vote them up and down in priority, propose solutions/actions, and generally have a say in the thousands of government decisions that affect their lives.

Hierarchies of representation per issue or problem domain can be formed. Citizens can delegate their decisions in specific and fine-grains areas to knowledgeable and trusted representatives (education, energy, pet-control, etc..), or override default votes on an issue by issue basis. Citizens or groups of citizens become experts in certain areas and gain trust in that area and gather support, others default to voting the way their wife or husband does.

Initially, elected officials use the output of the system as their mandate. Then it replaces municipal boards, school boards, city council meetings, etc. Eventually, politicians become obsolete and the government departments themselves present feasibility and impact analysis on competing solutions for voting on budget approval and acknowledgment of trade-offs as an issue moves through the pipeline.

Is this just as silly as letting the general public write an encyclopedia? Or is it just as powerful? Would it stall any progress, or provoke communities to rally together and move forward? Is it giving too much power to the unwashed masses, or is it giving them the responsibility the are capable of shouldering?

What problem or issue does your idea address?

We vote far too infrequently and far too coarsely. We vote on all issues at once by voting for a candidate that we agree with the most. Voting today is an expensive process. Make it cheap, easy and frequent. Remove the power of relatively few lobbyists/corporations from influencing the real decisions.

If your idea would become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

The majority of people would benefit from having their voices heard of the range of topics they care about. People who elect a candidate using this system to gather feedback define their mandate would be empowered and become a willing participant in the democratic process. It would increase their sense of community and their trust in government.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

Build a prototype system and find political candidates (most likely a brand new breed of politician) willing to use it. Start at a municipal level to demonstrate value, gain community buy-in and work out issues.

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Communities will vote for individual solutions, not politicians to represent them. The government becomes reactive to the needs of the people. Politicians become moderators and advocates and subject matter experts is their areas of specialty, but do not make the final decisions.

Metrics include voter participation. Satisfaction with government. Belief that they have a say in what happens in their community, city, state, province, country and the world. Lower crime, higher productivity, higher quality of life.

Why eat in the shower?

Eating while showering is the foundation of a healthy lifestyle, but until now it’s only been known to the filthy rich and very silly.   Sure, your food choices are limited, but that’s a good thing.  Most shower-inappropriate foods are not at all healthy.  Cake, cookies, potato chips, hamburgers and french fries lose their appeal when drenched in warm water.  You are gently forced towards a diet of fruits and vegetables, perhaps cheeses too, and the occasional bonbon.  Salty, sugary, fatty toppings like mayo, ranch dressing and ketchup are washed away.

Being naked while eating has it’s benefits as well.  One becomes more aware of their own weight when naked, providing that extra incentive to eat less.   Cleaning up spills is much easier too.  You are already close to a bar of soap, so who cares if you spill a little on yourself.  No laundry, and no need for that lobster bib.

One also tends to imbibe more water while eating in the shower than at a dry dusty dinner table.  Splashing around with your mouth open eating damp food means you just need to drink 7 glasses of water a day instead of the recommended 8.  Now if that isn’t a time-saving, I don’t know what is. 

Sounds good.  How do I do it??

First you’ll need to prepare your showering environment.  Unless your drain contains a garborator, a strainer to catch large chunks of food is a must. You will also need some form of shelving for your food and drink.  One of those wire shelves that hang from the shower head is a good start.  Alternatively you can use hooks and place your food in strainers or mesh bags that can be hung-up.   If you plan to eat anything that produces garbage (watermelon, apples,  fruit-rollups), make sure you have a waste receptacle within reach.  Finally, you may want to consider a small bottle of dish soap and a dish rack so you can wash up any cups and containers after you are done eating.   (Tip: Don’t try to dry the dishes while the shower is running, especially not with a hair dryer.)

When preparing your meal, it’s a good idea to cut the food into bite-sized chunks ahead of time.  Knives sliding around the bottom of the bathtub are hard on the toes.  For beverages, you’ll want to consider a sports bottle to avoid excessive watering down.   On the other hand, drink mixes that require just adding water can be mixed right in the shower!

When you’re all set to shower and devour, place your food on the shelves or hooks and get in.  The goal is to multitask.  Always be chewing and swallowing as you wash.  If you like your showers hot, try to eat any foods that are better served cool first.  Eating the messiest foods first is a good idea was well.

 What types of food should I choose?

Choose foods that don’t soak up water and get soggy or get eroded by splashing water.  Most fruits and veggies are great in the shower.  They are usually grown outdoors where it sometimes rains, so they are naturally water resistant.  Grapes, carrots (especially mini ones), green pepper, cucumber and lettuce, to name a few.   (Tip: Lettuce can also be used as a makeshift shower cap.)   Other finger foods you might find as hors d’oeuvres at a bris or seance work well, such as cheeses, pepperoni, hard-boiled eggs, and hotdog pieces with toothpicks in them.

Unfortunately most breads don’t fare too well in 100% humidity.  Pita can withstand moderate splashing, and may be used by the daring SFFer, but in general it is best to avoid breads altogether.  However, pasta loves moist warm locations, but you will have to forgo the sauce.

We all heard the expression “oil and water don’t mix”.  Usually if it’s fried or dipped in oil, it probably won’t work in the shower.  Fried foods are often covered in batter, breading or sauces that will wash away - the protective oil coating doesn’t prove to be water resistant enough.  But some oily substances can be used to your advantage.  For example, peanut butter, when used properly, can enhance the shower dining experience, especially when used to prepare the delicacy Ants on a Log.

Some “junk foods” stand up semi-well and might be worth trying as a treat once in a while.   Cold, well-cheesed pizza might be okay, if you avoid spraying directly with water.  Non-crispy chicken wings, the kind drenched in sauce, may not fair to badly either.

For those with insatiable sweet-tooths, you can get away with jelly-beans, hard candies, and if you are careful, chocolate bars and dense cheesecakes.  You make loose a little bit due to splashing, but you shouldn’t really be eating it anyways, right?

(Tip: if you don’t like the taste of healthier foods, stick the shower head in your mouth to rinse the taste away.)

Do you really eat in the shower?

No.  Of course not.

And a less dramatic one:

Now the longer story. I started buying parts with absolutely no idea what I was doing.  Because my original intention was to build a fabber, I obediently ordered the main electronic items from the Fab@Home bill of materials, starting with a Xylotex 4-axis stepper controller, some stepper motors, an LPC2148 ARM processor and a JTAG adapter.  While waiting for that stuff to arrive, I did some research and realized that although it would be super cool to make the Fab@Home machine, the blobs of rasterized silicone it produced looked like crap and I really couldn’t think of anything I wanted to make with that particular look.  In the meantime, I saw all these videos of CNC routers - a much better fit with my penchant for woodworking.

After several false design starts, I found http://buildyourcnc.com/ with videos of a guy building a CNC from start to finish with just a vague idea of the dimensions he wanted and a measure-as-you-go attitude.  This was perfect. I followed his general approach but with a much smaller footprint, ending up with about a 13″ x 11″ x 3″ toolspace, as well as a few other modifications worth mentioning.

I didn’t bother making notches for the bearings, opting to bolt them on instead, as others have done.  I also used bigger bearings, which were the smallest I could source locally.

I embedded the transmission nut in a piece of plastic rather than bore a long hole through the MDF.  I didn’t like the idea of the threaded rod going through the board - partially because the insertion of the transmission nut seemed to cause the MDF to split in the videos, and partially because I didn’t trust myself to drill those long straight holes.   It turned out to be a non-issue since I was using a larger diameter threaded rod that would have required too large a hole. 

I went with a solid block of wood for the motor mounts.  Dangling the motors off the end of four bolts didn’t seem very solid.  I didn’t even try it, so I could be wrong.  For the motor couplers, I cheaped out and used clear tubing and small clamps.

For the router mount I went with two brackets on the front instead of one, making for easy plumb adjustment.  Actually, I didn’t have enough room for cross dowels if the front bracket were on the same plane as the inside due to the bolts holding the inside bracket on, so this design deviation was a necessity.

Once it was mostly together, I took it apart to paint it, but not before some test runs with a Sharpie on paper, noting areas that needed tweaking during reassembly.  It’s painted and back together now and running nicely. The only thing left to do is mount some limit switches.. and spend some quality time with the software.

Here’s a hasty video of it drawing in sand.

Oh, and I didn’t end up using the ARM microcontroller, but I have other ideas for that.  Stay tuned.

Admittedly, I have spent a few hours doing this, and being a naturally lazy guy, I immediately started pondering ways to automate the search.  Apparently software to do just that was part of the original Stardust proposal, but in the end they didn’t get the budget to develop it.  They also claim the task is not susceptible to programmatic distillation… a plausible excuse. 

While a completely automated searching program would be a daunting task, tools to make it easier for humans to pick out the desired anomalous features seems quite a bit easier.  The website teaches us that one of the primary features of a collision track is that it extends below of the surface of the gel, so my first thought was to stack the frames coloured by depth.  This made the tracks easy to spot within the sets of images I chose.  (If you haven’t seen Stardust@Home movies, these will seems quite unremarkable)

(These were done manually, tediously, in PhotoShop.  Frames were layered and to each the Find Edges filter was applied, then all blue and green removed leaving red outlines.  The hue of each frame was then shifted by an ever increasing amount, giving each frame a different colour.  Finally, the blending option on all frames was set to Lighten.)

Granted this is just a small sample. The movies I chose may very well be ideal candidates for this type of filtering.  Regardless, it gives me hope that a filter of this sort would be useful in helping spot tracks.  The next step would be to write a little app to do this in real-time to see how this technique holds up.

Regardless, it’d be nice to see something like this and other filtering options alongside the current focus movies.  Here’s a list of other filtering ideas.  Many of these could be combined.

1. Layer the frames and allow interactive dragging of the top frame with decreasing movement of the lower frames to produce a pseudo-3D or parallax effect.  This might help the eye pick out features with depth.

2. Side view.  Take the same row of each frame and stack them to produce a new side-on image, and allow for scrolling through the rows.  Again, this may make it easier to spot details below the surface, especially if layered.

3. Allow the viewer to select the frame, and using the known optical properties of the microscope, calculate the expected blur on higher and lower frames and subtract it away.  Perhaps this is getting a little too fancy?

4. Correct Tilt.  I find sloped movies the most difficult to search, so by specifying a location that is in-focus on two different frames, the entire set of images could be tilt-corrected, making it easier to spot tracks.

5. Zoom, brightness, contrast controls.

.. til next time.