links for 2009-08-04

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Balloon Launch

Via thisisfurious:

Shapeways offers 3-D prototyping in stainless steel

Wanna make a stainless steel Klein bottle like this:

Then check out Shapeway’s new stainless steel printing service.

Innovation Takes the Stage with Metal 3D printing for modelers and creatives
Shapeways offers 3D Printing in Stainless Steel

SIGGRAPH (August 4, 2009) — Many 3D modelers have found their way to Shapeways to bring their personal designs to life by using 3D printing. Until now the materials were limited to different kind of polymers. Today Shapeways becomes the world’s first company offering 3D printing in stainless steel for everyone.

Technique

This is a completely new technique which deposits stainless steel powder in a very thin layer, combining it with a binding material. Printed objects are built up like this, layer by layer, gradually creating the form just as you designed it on the computer screen. When complete, they are infused with bronze and cured in an oven. After cooling, the models can be left in the original steel finish or tumbled to get a great polished look.

Why There Are No Girls In San Francisco #14: Gender Ratio

Via Why There Are No Girls In San Francisco

In 2004 the research firm Teasley published findings that ranked San Francisco as the best place to find a rich, single man in the United States, as measured by San Francisco’s single male “Golden Ratio” of 140%, and specifically accounting for the large percentage of gays (which according to the most reliable figures is considerably less than people tend to believe at about 15%). Similarly a 2004 article in the magazine San Francisco estimated that unmarried straight 20 to 44-year-old men in San Francisco (not including Silicon Valley or Man Jose) outnumbered their female counterparts by about 12,000.

Yet two anecdotal curiosities give us pause: first, an informal study of male opinion and the SF night-life scene describes a ratio that is FAR worse than even the data suggests. Second, and more puzzling, there is widely-shared belief among females that very few eligible/desirable men live in San Francisco.

A study published in in 2007 by two English psychologists (who are better known for a different study that showed the wealthier a man is, the more frequently his partner has orgasms may shed some light. The study looked at marriage patterns in the United States and an interesting trend appeared: unbalanced gender ratios did not seem to problematize proportionally. The research showed that as the sex ratio augmented in favor of women, at first, as you would expect, the women simply turned fussy and went for richer and more powerful men. But at a certain point a curious thing happened: the amount of socioeconomic status a guy needed to get girl increased way more than the math would predict. Specifically when the ratio was tilted in favor of women by 10%, low status men became not 10% less likely to get a girl but 200-300% less likely and high status men 30% less likely.

My Burning Man coordinates

For those of you planning to go to Burning Man this year, I will be in Future Camp in the Playagon village at 9:00 and Fossil.