Taoyuan Nights

A rambling mixture of gossip today.

The film “Hot Fuzz” is debuting currently in the UK. By the same people that produced “Shawn of the Dead”, and ‘Spaced’, this film could perhaps be described as a comedy about a top London cop being transferred to a rural village police force, but it’s probably more accurate just to say “Simon Pegg and chums d*cking around in police uniforms, being funny”. Trailers here. Already showing in the UK, but it doesn’t reach the rest of the world till April. Curses!

Finance: There’s gossip going round various respectable mailing lists about the price movement in Shanghai this week. The word on the street is that China’s government deliberately engineered the drop in Shanghai’s market, to try and prick the speculative bubble that is pointlessly sucking in all the free capital in the country. If so (and unlike 99% of what I read about markets, this actually seems like a sensible thing to do), there will probably be more hilarity to follow as Shanghai investors adjust to the idea of being regularly ninja-nutkicked by their own government as a form of therapy. Oh, and if you’re as much of a finance geek as I am, you’ll be delighted to know Warren Buffett’s annual shareholder newsletter is out and quite deservedly slagging off the efficient market hypothesis.

Fighters: The Taipei Times (& Michael Turton) report that America has decided to sell shiny new explody things to Taiwan to counter the large number of shiny new explody things lined up along the Fujian coastline of the PRC. Who knows – perhaps Taiwan’s invasion of the PRC is now merely weeks away from happening. China is responding by implanting electrodes into the brains of pigeons to control them remotely. Missiles, pigeons – where will this military escalation end?

Flat transistors: You’ll be reading a lot just now about some crazy new carbon based transistors that – just like every other idea you’ve ever heard – will revolutionise computing as we know it, for ever. Graphene is actually rather groovy and the story behind the research that went on over the last few years is kind of funny. Basically, Graphene shouldn’t exist. Nano-meter-thick sheets of material (such as the toilet paper found in British public toilets) tend to tear rather easily. Graphene is kind of wibbly shaped though, and not entirely flat, which provides it with structural integrity that makes it fantastically interesting and useful. It has some unusual properties that also allow it to be made into a fast, reliable and low-power transistor at sizes that would be completely unsuitable for Silicon chips. It is so thin, and uses so little power, that it can be easily stacked up into sheets. Electrons don’t seem to scatter in Graphene, so it makes electronic circuits run super fast. And when I say super-fast, I mean, electrons travel at speeds normally only found in the center of collapsed stars or at the beginning of the universe. Great stuff. The future is Graphene, I’m fairly sure.

Anyway, the amusing story. Graphene is just like a single layer of ‘Graphite’, the carbon molecule that your pencils are made from. Some researchers realised that to draw little tiny bits of graphite, you should make a really tiny pencil. They spent tens of millions of dollars developing this ‘nano-pencil’ that could be used – at great time and expense – to draw little areas of Graphene. Then, just as this huge research effort was finally starting to produce some results, some guys at Manchester Uni and Columbia Uni had an idea. They got some bog standard pencil graphite. Then, they stuck some sellotape on it and a thin layer of graphite came off. Then, they stuck other sellotape to the first bit, and an even thinner layer came off. Repeat as necessary till you have single layer Graphite on your sticky tape. Total cost: $0.30. LOL.

However this cheap production method is actually very important in other ways. Current computer processors are made from silicon crystals that are carefully grown at great time and expense, and represent the biggest part of the cost of a computer besides research and development. Sellotape and pencils on the other hand, are plentiful. Anyway, that’s all I’m going to say about Graphene for the moment.

Finally, Frikkin nutcases: “Canada’s ex-defense minister continues to call on governments worldwide to release their extra-terrestrial, UFO-derived technologies for the benefit of mankind. Film at 11.”