omenti

taping-out in a material world

I was sitting in a restaurant in New Hope on a bright Winter day chatting about some technologies that have evolved dramatically in the past several decades and was asked about the term tape-out.

 

New Hope, Pennsylvania is one of those places that has become something of a tourist trap on nice weekends.  Stores come and go with a few enduring to give the place a bit of flavor, but you get the impression this place is hiding something.  

 

Walk around the back streets for awhile.  A bit of poking around reveals more than a few surprises in architecture, art, crafts and fine instruments.

 

I've found glass blowers, sculptors, a variety of painters, a precision telescope builder, steam engine restoration experts, musicians, lyricists, dress designers, architects and an truly amazing workshop...

 

If you have the time, arrange to visit George Nakashima's workshop.  George was one of the leaders of 20th century furniture design and, although he died in 1990, his family keeps the workshop going and it continues to turn out furniture as fine art.  This is where Steve Jobs finally decided to buy his chairs and tables after years of contemplation.  

 

There are several artisan woodworkers at work and the setting is decidedly old world. But you are struck by the care and thoughtfulness that permeates the place.  Selection of the wood is a borderline religious experience for the people I met.  They will tell you about a specific piece of wood, where it came from and how they intend to honor it.  

 

Seriously elegant pieces.

 

I am often struck by the importance and complexity of material in design.  Function, form and beauty all strongly depend on the proper choice.  Dave and I "know" that carbon fiber is wrong for any bike we would ride - the "feel" of a proper lugged steel frame is entirely different and wonderful for the types of riding we do.  

 

 A fundamental principle of design is that it is the art of compromise and the choice of materials is an important part of that.  There are hundreds of materials that can a used for building a working bike ranging from cardboard, bamboo, and several different hardwoods.  More commonly steel, stainless steel, aluminum alloys, titanium, or any one of a large number of carbon/resin combinations are used.

 

So even if you choose a steel frame it turns out there are several dozen types of steel, each with its own distinctive characteristics.  The special frame that was built for Colleen required a very exotic stainless steel - Reynolds 953 - one that costs considerably more than carbon fiber and is difficult to fabricate, but just the ticket to solve some frame resonance problems that didn't show up in the CAD modeling tools.¹

 

Once material selections have been made construction techniques are important.  Some techniques, like those used a table from George Nakashima's workshop or a making a fine cello, are celebrated as serious art, but even common household objects represent complex choices and construction techniques.

 

Back to the lunch in New Hope...  The conversation had focused on 3D printing

 

My normal observation about 3D printing is that the material selection is terrible compared to those conventional builders have at their disposal - the situation is not unlike a chef being limited to white flour, water, and mustard. She can make lovely prototypes and create designs that would be impossible with normal techniques, but the final result isn't exactly appetizing.  I'm bullish on the technique for certain applications, but not for general use anytime in the near future.

 

But it struck me I had been ignoring a very important form of 3D printing - one that  has already changed the world.  Integrated circuit fabrication.

 

When thinking of the development of technology over the centuries I tend to consider major themes and drivers.  Things like transportation, improvements in power densities and energy conversion efficiencies, and the ability to write fine lines and spaces.

 

Lithography is an important subset of writing lines and spaces and I was lucky enough to have become deeply invovled some of the R&D associated with it when I joined Bell Laboratories.  While IC fabrication is a very technical process, it is conceptually simple.  You shine light at a silicon wafer through a patterned mask.  The silicon is coated with a material that exposes where light strikes it and a chemical process transfers the pattern to the silicon. While this is subtractive, a series of layers are built up forming a thin three dimensional structure.²  Although usually not considered 3D printing, it should qualify. 

 

Many layers are used with very specific material choices.  Up to thirty masks may be required for an advanced processing technique. Large sums are spent on material science, applied physics and several other areas with the progress is recognized as Moore's Law.  

 

This ability to write fine lines and spaces had progressed for centuries driving our capability to increase the precession of mechanical objects and dramatically improve the reproduction of text and images on paper and electronic screens.  Photolithography is merely one branch of a much larger trend.

 

My first involvement with photolithography came when 2.25 micron technologies were used in production chips and 1.5 in development.³  I was interested in the part of the process where information became physical - mask making.

 

The process has strict rules, as do most fabrication processes, but there is enormous flexibility in the capabilities of the circuits that can be produced.  The number of possible combinations of simple logic gates is, for all intents and purposes, practically infinite.⁴

 

And that brings us back to tape-out.

 

When I first heard the term I though it meant writing a digital representation of the design to digital tape which would be used to tell the mask making machines exactly what to write.  It turned out the term had been in use for some time.  At Bell Labs and other places it described the process of making a photomask.   A huge enlargement of each mask level would be from black line tape or cutting rubylith on a table or wall.  These were photographed and reduced in the form of a photomask. Somehow the term tape stuck and has found its way down to us over the years.

 

These early circuits only had a small number of gates.  Well before my time came the first really successful microprocessor - the Intel 4004 with its 2,300 transistors and 10 micron half pitches.  Now we call carry billions of transistors around in our pockets embedded in these rather serious networked computers we call smartphones.⁵

 

Some say tape-out came well before early ICs - that it was used to describe the photolithographic process to make printed circuit boards.  

 

This 3D printing technique based on photolithography has changed our world beyond what seemed possible in the 60s when it was first tried. What we call 3D printing simultaneously solves some hard prototyping problems, but falls short in many others.⁶ This tends to be the rule of many technologies - they find their niches and new ones that we hadn't envisioned while falling short of our original dreams.  We are selective creatures who tend to search for patterns.  The technologies we remember are those that open entirely new areas.  Making bets is a tricky matter.

 

One of the tasks I'm asked to do as part of my work is assist in making these bets.  Everyone has their own approaches.  I find having a deep grounding in some areas through experience creating the technologies or in the fundamentals behind them is important, but not enough.  Increasingly it is important to understand the social element.  

 

These developments seem obvious in retrospect, but are very difficult to create or predict.  They are fundamentally multi-disciplinary - something our education system seems to be moving away from and something that only a few companies have internalized.  I've seen it in the most peculiar places ranging from a workshop that builds tables to a storyteller that makes movies that take years to create.  From a curious consumer electronics company to a massive program that put a human on the moon.  It even exists in workgroups in and outside of companies as well as a few very rare individuals.  A commonality is it is often difficult to easily categorize these organizations as they connect many dots and, as a result,  find interesting new patterns. Much more to say, but this is the theme of this blog so more will be said...

 

Oh - and tape-out again.  I've heard the term applied to what is considered 3D printing in the past week.  Chalk it up to the inertia of language.

 

__________

¹ This is an important point.  Although computer aided design tools have become very sophisticated, they can't handle the variety of compromise in design that is given them.  In bicycles handling characteristics are important and current CAD tools can't perform the level of analysis to understand the dynamics of a bicycle with a specific rider and road.  There needs to be some grounding with reality and test "mules" - sometimes instrumented - are constructed, wind tunnel tests conducted, and so on.   This process can be expensive and time consuming, but it is sometimes essential to produce something that is great.

² The thickness is generally under a half micron at the silicon level and perhaps five to ten microns when the interconnect layers are added.

You can get a sense of the additive nature of the layers created by the successive masks by considering this simple device - a simple CMOS op-amp.  The layers are polysilicon (red), a metal layer (blue), N-doped silicon (green), P-doped silicon (brown) and the X's are connections that cross layers. (The design is from a public domain digital design course.)

³ Design technologies usually refer to the half pitch distance between two identical features in a repeating array.  The dominant production technologies are based on CMOS processing and a series of generations has been identified.  Current leading edge production is at about 0.22 microns (Intel's Ivy Bridge processor line for example) and the next generation will be about 0.14 microns.

The cost of fabrication lines has risen dramatically with each succeeding generation.  When I started in the early 80s a small fab line could be constructed for $10 to $15 million and a leading edge facility perhaps three times as much.  The "steppers" that expose the silicon (they step from chip to chip in a large array on a wafer) cost about $1 million then.  Steppers for 0.13 microns probably cost $100M each and the fab lines probably will cost more than $5B a pop.  The number of companies that can participate has dropped dramatically over the years and the scale of produced has increased even more dramatically to match an enormous demand.

⁴ In addition to the functionality of a fixed chip there are FPGAs - field programmable gate arrays - where chips can be customized by engineers after manufacture for specific applications.

⁵ I remember bringing the first transistor into our house.  I was seven years old and had used some Christmas money and my savings to buy a five transistor AM radio.  I stopped counting after I got my first calculator - a HP-35.  Now there are over a half trillion transistors under our roof.  The mind wobbles.

⁶ Sometimes it is important to consider the "job we have hired something to do" .. in the case of 3D printing it is usually assumed to be extreme customization and/or local fabrication.  These need to be very carefully considered in their own context and the context of the technology.  If the goal is mass customization there are other segments of the economy that will be impacted in large ways well before 3D printing becomes a mass market reality. Included in these are custom specification and fabrication of clothing.  Way too demanding for 3D printing, but addressable using other techniques.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

This used some "wheat berries" - whole grains of wheat.  We have a lot of Kamut berries (I recommend Bob's Red Mill as a source).  The instructions all tell you to soak them overnight, but I find you can get away with simmering them in water or stock for about 45 minutes.  It leaves you with a grain with a very nice texture.  Experiment and find what you like.

 

Kamut and Brussels Sprouts

 

Ingredients

 

° 180g Kamut or other wheat berries

° 700g vegetable broth

° 450g trimmed and quartered brussels sprouts

° 1 large shallot, chopped

° 2 tbl olive oil

° 50 g walnut pieces

° 1 tbl lemon juice from a fresh lemon

° zest from the lemon

° salt and pepper to taste

 

Technique 

 

° Add the both and wheat berries to a pan, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 50 minutes, drain and set aside

° Heat the over to 425°F

° Toss the brussels sprouts with the shallots and 1 tbl of olive oil in a big bowl.  Transfer to a baking sheet and bake about 20 or 25 minutes until browned.   Turn them over at about 15 minutes.

° Remove from the oven and add the walnut pieces  (you can throw them on a couple of minutes before you take out the sprouts if you like them toasty)

° Whisk the lemon juice, zest, 1 tbl olive oil, and salt and pepper in a big bowl.  Add the sprouts and wheat berries and toss them to combine.  

° yumm!

 

why do some models endure even though they're wrong?

π = 3.14

room temperature = 72° F

an adult male needs 2,500 calories a day

an adult weighs 70 kilograms 

...

We live with approximations, but all to often we don't worry about when we require better precision.  3.14 for π works for simple tasks around the home - after all - it offers better than one percent accuracy, but 2,500 calories for an adult male is very crude and can cause havoc with dieting. The 70 kilogram rule of thumb for adult weight is equally crude, but many medications are dosed based on that approximation.  

 

Some nutrition experts argue that a calorie isn't a calorie confusing many who listen and often themselves.  Strictly defined a calorie is a calorie.  Physics works and energy is conserved any time it converts from one form to another, but you have to pay careful attention to the accounting.  More than a century ago it was recognized our bodies weren't completely efficient metabolizing food and careful measurement, by the standards of the day, were made.  It turned out that metabolism could liberate about four nutritional calories of energy from a gram of a carbohydrate or protein and about nine calories from a gram of fat.  This roughly accounted for the energy that was lost to us in the process, but roughly held across food types and people.  The problem of knowing how much usable energy was in a slice of bread or a bowl of ice cream was reduced to tallying up how many grams of carbohydrates, fats and proteins were present .¹

 

piece of cake...

 

It turns out there are several serious problems with this model.  The energy assignments for each main component are crude averages.  Additionally individual people absorb and metabolize food with different efficiencies and metabolic efficiency changes for a single person occur throughout life.²  When you look into the model a bit, you begin to wonder if it has any utility.

 

The trigger for this post was an article a reader sent.  From the Times of London:

 

Being short has always had its drawbacks. There’s the problem of the top shelf in the supermarket, the unflattering “short man” stereotype and the perils of running for the bus in heels. But things just got worse for Lilliputians — more precisely, they just got fatter.

According to a professor of numerical analysis at the University of Oxford, the formula used to calculate body mass index, is flawed in such a way that it makes tall people too fat and small people too thin.

...

 

Body Mass Index again... 

 

Like the assignment of caloric values to food types it has been around for more than a century and is know to be problematic.  Usually you see caveats like "athletes tend to have artificially high BMIs", but you rarely see a discussion of what went into the model.  That turns out to be interesting.

 

If you were to make a simple model that would address how people deviate from what might be an average weight you might start by noticing that people come in different heights, body shapes and weights.  For adults height doesn't change very much, but body shape and weight does.  A good place to start might be to notice that if you just scale up an object, its volume increases by the cube of any length you might measure on the original object.  If you have a cube that is a foot on each side and scale it up by a factor of two, you now have a larger cube that is two feet on a side.  The new cube can contain eight of the originals so its volume has increased from one to eight cubic feet.

 

Now assume you have a tall cylinder.  The same rule holds.  Scale it up by a factor of two and its height doubles as does its diameter.  Its new volume is eight times that of the original. You can pick any measure of length to compare scaled objects so long as their basic shape doesn't change.

 

People have very complicated shapes, but for an individual their height doesn't change so it makes sense to use it as the measurement that is cubed to calculate changes in volume.  

 

Given her height, Colleen is a good example.  She's about 23% taller than the average American woman.  If her shape was the same as someone who was of average height you might expect her to weight about 86% more. She doesn't and the fly in the ointment is her body shape is different.  This isn't terribly unexpected, but how do you account for different body shapes?

 

A quick and very simple approximation is to remember a person's height is fixed, but the shape can change.  If you divide their weight by the cube of their height the number will be larger if they are heavier and smaller if they are lighter.  It is a nice trick to quantify something about your change in shape without going and carefully measuring the volume.  

 

This is the rough idea behind BMI (also called the Quetelet Index) ...  divide a person's weight by a proxy for their volume.  The formula is 

BMI = mass/height²

where mass is measured in kilograms and height in meters.  Converting to English units the relation is 

BMI = 703 * weight/height²

with weight measured in pounds and height in inches...

 

But wait!  Didn't I just say you need to cube the length to get volume?

 

I visited the professor's site and noted his new BMI formula assumed the height was not squared or cubed, but raised to the 2.5 power and adjusted the final result by multiplying by a constant to make the new and old BMIs match for an adult of average height.     for mass in kilograms and height in meters....

new BMI = 1.3 * mass/height^2.5

He didn't have any measurements to go from and noted, while he was far from an expert, he felt this was a better estimate. It was not published as a formal result and he didn't claim it was a piece of serious analysis.

 

Plotting the new and old BMIs over a range of heights for a weight of 175 pounds you notice that the new BMI is lower than the old one for tall adults and higher for short adults.  I picked the weight because if I weighed that I would be average under the new model and overweight with the old one - the difference is nearly a one point change.  

 

The professor did note new BMIs would change for short and tall people.   Somehow a reporter saw the piece and believed it was a serious replacement for BMI.   There must have been no little or no fact checking as it led to the dramatic headline and a bad model became widely reported.  Too many people in the chain had no idea what BMI was...

 

It turns out analyses based on real data from large distributions of people suggest a good approximation to use in the model for adults is the square of the height.  For young children the exponent is between 2.5 and 2.8.  

 

The BMI model is ugly - a person with a technical background looks at it, sees the square, and thinks "area" until they look a bit more deeply and understand what the model really is.³  

 

It almost seems too messy to use, but if you are comparing one population to a similar population it can be a useful tool.  More accurate tools exist, but they are expensive and time consuming.  It would be too impractical to use the better estimates, but gathering BMIs is trivial- just weigh and measure people.  Armed with those numbers you can look at serious health issues like changes in obesity levels in a country. 

 

The connection with BMI and health problems is well established at very high BMIs, but less so in the overweight range and that presents a major problem for specialists and family physicians.  While the measurement has considerable utility, rigid predictions may not apply in your case.  A clear case where understanding what the measurement is and the domain where it is useful.

 

The same is true with nutritional calories (or ANUs).  Going by the textbook may result in dietary guidance that doesn't work for you, but if you establish a baseline and recognizing the thing you might call a calorie really isn't a proper unit of energy, you can create guidance for yourself that can be very robust.

 

There are two messages.  

 

° Models and approximations have their limits!  It is best to understand them in detail before using them for anything important.  In both of these cases the models and approximations are too simplistic and are very domain dependent.  

It is very easy to get cut by Occam's razor:-)

 

° Be very skeptical of science reporting in the popular press.  From climate change to BMI it is best to look at what the experts say.  

__________

¹ This is a simplification of the approximation.  Alcohols and a few other components appear in the model.  Here is an earlier post on the subject.

² When Colleen and I were sorting out how to communicate with this our working term was to reliable the nutritional calorie as an approximate nutritional unit or ANU. We never came up with a clever name, so if there are any suggestions.

If you have been heavy and lose weight, your metabolism compensates by becoming more efficient.  It doesn't seem fair, but it is common that someone who was one heavy must eat less food than if they had never been overweight if they want to avoid weight gain.  This feature of humans prevents keeps many dieters from long term success and help to fuel the diet industry.

³ The model is far from perfect and your composition also changes as you gain or lose weight.  Athletes have a much higher percentage of muscle, which tends to be dense.  Different ethnic groups have different exponents.  The exponent changes a bit with height, and so on... 

⁴ Other methods of measuring things like body fat percentages are expensive and time consuming at the required levels of accuracy

__________

Recipe corner

 

It is Winter in the Northern Hemisphere and many of us have had, or will soon get snow.  Assuming it is under 20° F and your snow is new-fallen and very clean, why not snow ice cream?   I've made this several times - you have to adjust the recipe to the temperature and moisture in the snow, but kids can have fun with it.  It is usually a bit slushy, but fun to make.    I offer two recipes - both depend on the type of snow you're having so you may want to try half batches until you get the hang of it.

 

Fresh Snow Ice Cream

Ingredients

 

° 6 to 10 cups of new fallen snow (depending on moisture content)

° 1 can (14 oz) of sweetened condensed milk chilled to near freezing

° 1 - 2 tbl maple syrup and/or 1 tsp vanilla extract

 

Technique

 

° Put the snow in a large bowl that has been left outside to chill below freezing

° and the condensed milk and flavorings, mix with a big spoon

° serve in chilled bowls and eat immediately!

 

 

Rich Snow Ice Cream

Ingredients

 

° new fallen snow (depending on moisture content)

° 2 pasteurized eggs

° 2 cups of heavy cream or a half and half mixture of cream and whole milk or just whole milk - I've done all three, so it is between you and your cardiologist.

° 1-1/2 cups white sugar

° 3 tbl vanilla extract

 

Technique

 

° Beat the eggs in a large bowl, mix in cream, sugar and vanilla  (it helps of the milk and sugar are pre-chilled to nearly freezing)

° add enough fresh snow for a good consistency and mix with a really big spoon

° serve in chilled bowls and eat immediately!

 

 

beyond 3d printing

4:37 AM - a minute past nautical dawn and a pleasant breeze of negative pions continues from the South Southwest at 17 GeV/c ...

 

We tried to make at least one log entry per shift entertaining for the next shift.

 

This was from a particle physics experiment.  We were colliding negative pions into a target that was mostly protons (liquid hydrogen).  There were millions of tiny collisions that had enough energy that allowed the creation of new particles.  I was specifically interested in finding a few that would say something about the fundamental nature of the charm quark.  The problem was such events were very rare - there was an enormous amount of uninteresting information to sort through.

 

You get rid of most of this - about 99.99%) very quickly by knowing something about what the physics of the interaction you were looking for predicted.  This had to be done quickly as information was constantly flooding in.   Back then we built event triggers out of fast logic elements - literally AND, NOT, OR, and NOR gates.  It looks like a rat's nest as all of this had to be precisely timed.  A one foot long wire provided about a billionth of a second of delay.¹  We also had a more complicated trigger...

 

At the heart of two of our charm triggers was a then huge two megabyte memory array that allowed us to store the geometry of likely charm events directly.  If an event fell within some predicted position and energy boundaries, it was saved to tape - if not we dropped it on the floor. This was a new revolution in physics at the time - programmable triggers.

 

What made it possible was the rapidly falling price of memory and the emergence of cheap microprocessors.  There was a revolution underway with hobbyist computers fueled by eight bit chips like the Intel 8080 and  Motorola 6800.  We took advantage of it and I programmed the 6800 in assembly language to make it run as fast as possible.  We were surfing the microcomputer tsunami.  

 

A few years later I found myself at Bell Labs doing physics and applied physics.  I found myself doing lithography - one of the fundamental technologies of the past few hundred years - how finely can you draw lines and something at the heart of making integrated circuits.  The process was automated with computer aided design tools and the bits became atoms in the photomask.  The process was a form of custom manufacturing.  There were a couple of chemical processes for positive and negative image masks, several sizes of quartz plates, design rules and so on - but it was rare for the writing tool to write the same design unless it was a replacement.²

 

Somewhere along the way I did some work with a computer vision group.  There was an interest in building a 3d copy machine.  What would it take to scan an 3d image and recreate it in atoms rather than bits?  A hot topic in the late 1980s and it continues to be interesting.  Somewhere about 1990 I printed a crude 3d part taken that replicated a scanned model of the Star Wars death star.

 

My little death star wasn't very impressive, but it was an exercise you learn from.  I went on to other things, but periodically tried state of the art printing just to see how it had evolved.  By 2000 it started to make a dent in the prototyping world and, maybe 5 years ago, the hobbyist market began to explode.

 

There have been many predictions on how 3d printing is the next PC revolution or, a bit more conservatively, the next printer revolution.  While it is fundamentally important to some types of design, I don't buy those predictions for a variety of reasons.  Materials, physical limitations of existing and laboratory tools,  and the difficulty of design drive my belief.  But it is a great hobby and it is making a big impact on industrial design.  And for a few like Iris Van Herpen,  those who understand design and art, it is given access to new materials and shapes that influence their creative process.  

 

There is a larger revolution underway that 3d printing is often connected with...

 

The revolution is inexpensive computer assisted manufacturing in low quantities.  Mass customization and even single unit manufacturing.  The barriers to manufacturing anything used to be enormous, but now hobbyists can find a niche. Perhaps a niche that would allow them to quit their day job.  The hard piece -- going from a few dozen examples to thousands is now relatively easy.³  

 

There are still many tools to build and write and people need to be trained in design (STEM k12 education is not sufficient - you need to add the arts - STEAM eduction!).  Good design is approximately hard - most of us have no idea how difficult it really is.  There is great design in physical objects and services, but the best way to appreciate it is simply to get your hands dirty - most of us are functionally illiterate when it comes to articulating design, let alone creating it.⁴  

 

One can go on and on, but a recent interview of Chris Anderson by Glenn Fleishman (52 minute mp3) on his The New Disruptors podcast is a great tour of the new bits to atoms world of mass customization and scaleable manufacture

 

Highly recommended!

 

__________

¹ Rear Admiral and computer pioneer Grace Hopper used to carry around foot long wires and handed them out as "nanoseconds"  In the old charm experiment all of the fast signals were timed to within about a half nanosecond.  Colleen, who is exactly two meters tall, sometimes tells people she's six and two thirds of a nanosecond tall when people ask...

² The lithography tools of choice were electron beam writing machines.  We had a homebrew system called EBES - the Electron Beam Exposure System.  It could write half micron features to about a twentieth of a micron accuracy.  There have been enormous improvements since then.

³ I still regularly build 3d objects.  They are still temperamental and very restricted to design and material.  My larger interest lies in other types of mass customization.  In particular clothing.

For those who are interested in this revolution - even those who just track the state of technology - I  strongly encourage you to get your hands dirty.  You can learn an enormous amount trying to design and 3d print something on your own for example.

⁴ This notion of the learning of design is something that has been fascinating Jheri and I for the past few months.  How is design learned and articulated in apparel and how is that impacted by different types of community? There is a good deal of change taking place.

__________

Recipe Corner

 

Two recipes this time.  The first is so quick, easy and good.  And many variations with topping them.

 

Roasted Brussels sprouts

 

Ingredients

 

° a kilo or so of brussels sprouts

° 3 to 4 tbl olive oil

° sea salt

° ground pepper

° maple syrup or honey

° white wine vinegar

 

Technique

 

° set oven to 450°F 

° cut the brussels sprouts in half, coat in oil salt and pepper 

° arrange face down on a tray and roast for 25 minutes or so until beginning to caramelize

° flip over with a spatula and continue roasting for about 10 minutes

° plate and drizzle a mixture of maple syrup or honey and white wine vinegar

 

_____

 

The second is hardly a recipe, but is way better than store bought peanut/cashew/almond butters.

 

Peanut/Cashew/Almond Butter

 

Find some honey-roasted cashews, almonds or peanuts and throw them in a blender for 5 to 6 minutes, scraping down the sides of the blender as necessary, until you have a peanut butter consistency.  

That's it!

If you like you can roast the raw nuts yourself (7 - 10 minutes in a 350°F oven), but the honey-roasted nuts (or legumes in the case of peanuts) have a little sugar and sweet and work out very well without all of the stabilizer nasties you get in most commercial spreads.  If you roast your own you probably want to add a bit of salt and possibly some honey or maple syrup.

 

 

on creativity

Over the years I've been lucky enough to have known and worked with several exceptionally creative people and a couple of creative organizations.   There seem to be a few components that enable it.  Perhaps the best news is it doesn't seem to be a talent someone is born with.  A few themes emerge:   play, being unafraid to fail (confidence and play perhaps), the opportunity and ability to focus on a single task without interruption, isolation at some times and the right forms of communications at others, and letting the problem become a background task at times seem to be centrally important. ¹

 

This morning I was going through email and an old client wanted a bit on the subject for his organization.²  As an introduction I sent him links to two excellent John Cleese videos.  It seems appropriate to share them, so rather than writing much in this post (no recipe corner today - I need to get to my mini-sabbatical - a critical piece of my own journey to being a bit more creative), here are the videos:

 

from 1991

 

 

 

and from a few years ago ...

 

 

__________

¹ Many of these are connected and simple to state, but many are very difficult to achieve in a conventional workplace and many of us find critical pieces difficult to implement.

² In the past decade I've been asked to help a few organizations enhance and grow the creativity of the organization as well as that of its members.  There have been some successes, but this can be a non-trivial task with many dependencies.  

 

__________

 

your own private air force and a bit on creativity

I'm in the middle of my annual mini-sabbatical, but I spend the evenings and part of the weekends letting my mind wander as well as keeping things running.  That seems to work better than total immersion. I was part of a discussion on great projects for a 10^th grader who wants to impress engineering schools.  UAVs strike me as something potentially fascinating and there are more than a few unexplored areas where a smart teen could do impressive work - the field is very open ended.  

 

Lightweight video cameras and small flying platforms - unmanned ariel vehicles - can be mixed in a variety of ways.  You can put a camera on a RC airplane, fly it around, and watch the video later.  A more advanced flavor is called first person video - you put a camera in the aircraft, stream the video back and use it to control the flight - often watching the view with video goggles.¹  And you can let the aircraft fly autonomously to a pre-planned flight path and either store or transmit the video.  

 

Lots of fun, but there are any number of social implications.  It is still very difficult to fly autonomously in the US and commercial use of these flying cameras is still largely barred by the FAA (although they are working towards allowing it).  There is an experimenter/hobbyist space with certain weight and distance limitations along with a rule that flying must be within line of sight. Thousands participate and a cottage industry has sprung up making the bits and pieces that make this work.  Much of the software comes from research projects at Universities and some of it is fairly sophisticated.

 

a few videos have become popular 

 

 

One has to wonder what was running through the moose's mind - perhaps some lines from the Bullwinkle show are appropriate.  

 

Eirik Solheim -the Norwegian guy who created the video - has a site that is rich in content for advanced hobbyists.²  While there are very small toy class platforms, most of the serious  experimenting is taking place using kits that require something in the neighborhood $500 to $1,000 to build and fly.  Stability and control can be very impressive and the police who were involved in the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations became very nervous when one of these appeared.

 

A number of turn-key autonomous commercial class drones used for police, military, construction, scientific and other work ...  the people who make the toy class AR.Drones (still very impressive technology) are involved in an autonomous UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) product called the senseFly.  Starting at about $9,000, but currently illegal in the US, you get an autonomous mapper.³  These would have been very useful in the wake of the recent  Sandy superstorm.  There is a lot of competition in this area with large increases in capabilities and reductions in prices likely.

 

 UAVs bristle with society and technology issues, but can be a great platform for engineering students.  I suspect hundreds of organizations in the US probably have someone playing with them on salary or as a hobbyist and suspect a lot of activity if the FAA announces regulations with few restrictions (which is expected). Think about any task that uses a helicopter for observation and lower the operating cost by a factor of 100.  And that is just a starting point.

 

This is very much a technology that an amateur can sink his or her teeth into - we're at a period that is similar to PCs in the late 1970s as far as required sophistication goes. Many reasons to get involved and learn if you have the time and inclination and a great activity for kids who are interested in engineering.   I'm a big believer in getting your hands dirty if you intend to learn about anything in depth.

 

Clearly one of those technologies that, while neutral by itself, can easily be used for good or evil...  And all the better reason for learning about it.  Not to mention that immersing yourself in something like this can encourage creative thought - perhaps in areas you may not have expected.

 

 

 

__________

 

 

There is growing evidence that multitasking limits creative thinking.  There is an increasing amount of social research in the field - some of it strikes me as flawed and experimental design can be tricky ... even basic definitions are fluffy ..  but this paper in PLoS is interesting and worth reading.  It has some issues, but the notion of using nature to promote creative thought is an old one that works for many people.  Recommended reading and I'm sure it is far from the final word on the subject.

 

I've been lucky enough to have advised a couple of exceptionally creative companies on increasing their creative level.  There have been some experiments, some failure and a few major victories.  The common thread among the best strategies to date has been allowing people to have the freedom to single task and convincing them to try.  There are a lot of basic components necessary in the first place - great hiring, great problems, certain communication patterns (very open communication paths are not universally healthy!), and a half dozen other things.  But once you have most of these the trick is keeping the gears meshing and tuning the system.   Fascinating stuff - but that's all for the time being.

__________

¹ There is quite a bit of hobbyist FPV these days as evidenced by sites like this

² Notes on his moose video

³ This marketing video from senseFLY gives an idea of their capabilities

 

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Recipe Corner

 

This is really great - parsnips are still good and you can find Granny Smith and similar apples that are ok.  A homemade vegetable stock is, as always, a central component.  I've never come across a good ready-made stock.  You can make it a bit safer by using substituing skim milk and using olive oil rather than butter. It would still probably be excellent.

 

Parsnip and Apple Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 28g butter

° 1 tbl olive oil

° 2 medium yellow onions, peeled, chopped and diced

° 600g parsnips, cut into inchish pieces

° 2 garlic cloves, crushed

° 600g pie class apples peeledand cut into chunks

° 1/2 liter (500g) vegetable stock

° 150g whole  milk

° kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Technique

 

° Melt the butter and oil in a large saucepan. Gently fry the onions and parsnips on a low heat for 15 minutes, until the onions are softened.

° Add garlic and apples and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring regularly.

° Add the stock and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 20 minutes, until the parsnips are very soft.

° Remove from the heat and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

° Blend the mixture with a blender stick or use a blender.  Season to taste

° Cool and serve

 

probing your "failures" a bit more deeply

It is wonderful watching a little kid play with a magnet for the first time.  They have become so used to pushing or pulling something directly to get it to move that this motion at a distance breaks the model they have of the world and brings delight.

 

When people started to ask questions about what was happening, the answers brought fundamental changes to society.

 

You've probably done the experiment in grade school where you can change the direction a compass indicates by placing a current carrying wire next to it.  The other part of the experiment is equally beautiful.  You move a magnet next to a wire and cause a current to flow in the wire.  What is going on?

 

Before going a bit into that, take a look at Richard Feynman's high level comments on electricity.  He has a beautiful and delightful way of expressing himself

 

 

He mentioned Maxwell's equations as one of the most impactful discoveries anyone has made.  About the time the American Civil War started, Scottsman James Clerk Maxwell published a four part work called On Physical Lines of Force.¹ A few additional works were published and the summary of the work did not arrive right away, but we are left with four beautiful equations that are part of the foundation of our society....   If you did any technical work in college you are intimately familiar with them, but even if you didn't you may have seen them on a T-shirt.²

 

For those who aren't familiar with what they're saying, here is a summary in English²

 

° a magnet always has north and south poles

° the strength of an electric field depends on how much charge is in the vicinity

° an electric field is created by a changing magnetic field

° a magnetic field is created by either a current or a changing electric field

 

These are terrifically powerful and much of modern technology rests on electricity and magnetism.  The calculations for real world problems can be non-trivial, but it is all there - all that is required is a bit of curiosity and tenacity.

 

Consider the last two equations.  If you remove any charge you get an electric field is created by a changing magnetic field and a magnetic field is created by a changing electric field.  You can solve these together with a bit of math and the result is astonishing - you get a mutually sustaining electromagnetic field.  The changing electric field gives rise to an electric field which, in turn creates an electric field.  The energy oscillates between these two forms, which turn out to be at right angles to each other, as the wave merrily propagates through space perpendicular to both the electric and magnetic fields.  What is special is the speed of this wave is constant and just happens to be the speed of light.

About 25 years after the papers were published Heinrich Hertz showed that a spark could create such a wave.  Hertz didn't realize it at the time, but others showed that what he created was really a form of electromagnetic radiation - a certain frequency band of which we sense as visible light.  A major revolution in physics was underway, but none of the original people thought it would have practical value - little things like electric generators, motors, radio, television, computing and so on...

 

With this fundamental change came a major problem.  How was this electromagnetic wave propagating?  Waves traditionally required some medium to propagate though.  A material called the luminiferous aether was proposed.  A bizarre substance that filled the universe and had the property of being hugely stiffer than any known substance and very ephemeral - any normal substance could easily pass through it unimpeded.³

 

The whole notion of the aether seems silly today, but a fundamental change in how we thought about physics was required.  Somehow this bizarre substance was not as bizarre as what followed.  It turns out one of the puzzles it seemed to solve was how could light always travel at a fixed velocity.  It allowed the light to travel at a fixed velocity in it rather than worrying about the relative velocities of bodies that were moving at different rates.

 

One of Feynman's better observations was

First you guess. Don't laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.

 

Albert Michelson and Edward Morley did the experiment with something called an interferometer - a device that is very sensitive to movement as well as changes in the speed of light in different directions.   They showed that the speed of light was constant in any direction relative to the moving Earth.⁴  

 

This was such a startling result they spent years working on improvements to the experiment to find any error on their part.  The results got better and better and with it the case for the luminiferous aether vanished and it became clear that electromagnetic waves could propagate though a vacuum^.5  It also gave a certain Swiss patent clerk who was doing amazing physics on the side reason for coming up with something he coined Special Relativity.

 

The Michelson-Morley experiment is one of the fundamental experiments in all of physics.  Its results were so unexpected that it was assumed to have been a failure, but careful probing of it by them and others as well as careful thought about what it really meant changed our concept of the universe on the scale that Galileo or Copernicus did.

 

Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.

 

This is the time of the year when I think of a few things I've done - some of them are predictions.  In retrospect our memory tends to paint a pretty picture of how we predicted the future.  I have been very lucky and have been in on some discoveries as well as inventions.  We had what appears to be a good track record, but a more careful examination reveals more than a few failures.

 

In the past decade I try to spend some serious time thinking about failed - or what appear to be failed - predictions mean.  I've come to place a huge value on my "failures" -what is really going on and what additional information did I need to discover there was a flaw.  

 

This process of learning has given me tools and methods to work on unexpected areas.  This generates serendipity and it exposes ignorance in a way that I can learn from many people and results including the failures of myself and others.

 

Aa observation - this process is similar to weather and climate.  Weather is a short term projection and is extremely difficult to get right.  The particulars are incurably difficult to understand.  Climate is a longer term feature  It is often much easier to predict the climate a decade out than the weather in two weeks.  The same is true for projecting technologies.  Rough directions are much easier than exact particulars.

 

Over the years I've been learning huge amounts from my failures.  The amount seems to increase with time, which seems like the proper direction.  

 

My New Year's wish to you is may you be as lucky with failure!

__________

¹ It is interesting to note that Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published in late 1859.  It is difficult to think of any other discoveries in the last few hundred years that have brought more profound change to civilization than these two...

² Not as precise as it should be, but close enough.  It also turns out there are several equivalent ways to write down Maxwell's equations, so the T-shirts may look a bit different.

³ Upper limits to its mass were calculated - the density was smaller than a hundred trillion times lower than that of air.

⁴ More precisely they sent a limit - the Earth's velocity relative to the aether had to be less than a sixth the Earth's measured orbital velocity.

⁵ luminiferous aether would make a great song title or band name

__________

before the recipe, an image to fire your imagination

Allegory of Winter

Ambrogio Lorenzetti  c.1338-1340

 

__________

 

Recipe Corner 

 

A lassi as delicious as it is inauthentic

 

A Rich Seasonal Mango "Lassi"

 

Ingredients 

 

° a drinking cup 70% filled with a high quality eggnog at just above freezing (I like Ronnybrook Farms eggnog)

° a canned mango pulp at just a bit above freezing (I like Rellure Kesar Mango Pulp)

 

Technique

 

° lightly stir the mango pulp into the eggnog. Finally add a blob and artistically swirl it.

° top with toasted pistachios or sliced almonds (optional)

 

 

epigenetics, story telling as input for a serendipity engine, and dogs and relativity

December 30^th is looming.  An important day for me as it marks the birthday of a close friend and an annual deadline.  I probably need to explain the deadline.

 

When I joined Bell Labs years and years ago my director took me aside and told me I should find a way to think about something different from what I was doing and hopefully different from what anyone else in the labs was doing at least once a year.  Work scheduling was very flexible in those days, but he said he would cover for me if necessary.  He didn't want a report, but felt the exercise of devoting my working hours to something that interested me was extremely important.  The practice was not uncommon, although approaches varied widely.  

 

I spent a fortnight learning about how mother bats located their offspring in caves as millions returned from their nightly feedings. The question had been posed during a lunch table discussion just before Christmas and was something none of us (all physicists) knew about.  

 

My tools were a pad and pencil, the then wonderful Bell Labs Murray Hill library, access to Princeton's libraries, a telephone and a bit of curiosity.  

 

It is silly to think you can learn very much in two weeks, even if you are going seven days a week at twelve hours a day (it was a really interesting problem!).  But I was able to track down a few researchers and get a lot of information on signal encoding in bat calls including some very raw information that I was able to preform a bit of signal analysis on.  

 

It was completely delightful and much better and rejuvenating than a vacation.  Two weeks was long enough to get a sense of the problem and perhaps a bit of direction and no more.  But I was refreshed and sharp for my regular work at the end of the period.  It has become an important element in my education over time.

 

My mini introduction to bat signal processing came in very handy a few years later when some of us were asking some questions about signal encoding.  It is always nice to see a system that just works.  It provided a bit of insight that may have seemed out of the blue to anyone who didn't know about bats, but was obvious when pointed out.  It allowed me to connect a few important dots that would normally be outside the scope of what you might think Bell Labs did.  But it turned out a lot of people were spending some time thinking about very different areas.  I believe it was one of the "secret" core strengths of the old Bell Laboratories.

 

I've been doing it since.  Sometimes I take real vacation time, other times I've been able to manage my work.  Finding a seed question to think about is sometimes difficult and sometimes completely obvious. Some have proven to lead to rich topics and others don't - I don't make the selection on the likelihood of success as the important byproduct of this activity is serendipity over the long term. I don't make the decision until December 30^th and start my mini sabbatical on January 2^nd.

 

Some of you know I do this and have been asking questions about this year's seed.  The simple answer is I don't know yet.  There are a few candidates.  One that I've thought about before that came up again when I was rowing in the pre-dawn darkness today is how to explain important bits of science to non-scientists.  A problem that has been bothering me for a long time and one that is very important to crack.  Most scientists are very bad at it, but a few are excellent.  I've spend some time talking to a few who know what they are doing, but that only leads to more questions.

 

Without going into the different techniques I know about, I'll give some examples.  

 

Anyone who follows science at the Scientific American or even the Science section of the NY Times level, is familiar with epigenetics.  It is fundamentally important, but most people seem to be ignorant of it and most explanations assume more background than the average person has.   WNYC's RadioLab does a most good job of communicating some of these ideas at a very high level.  They do it only using the spoken word - something that is very important to their technique.  Their story telling requires an enormous among of time, but is effective.

 

Listen to these two pieces from a recent show that focused on epigenetics.  The stories are familiar to any science type, but would be mostly ignored in favor of a technical description.

 

I'm lucky enough to have access to some amazing storytellers, so it is an accessible area for me.  I have to think about how I might get started down the path.  

 

There are a half dozen other candidates and I'm sure I won't know until Monday. It almost always comes down to the last moment.

 

Feel free to propose interesting questions - I'm used to a bit of lobbying.   

 

In return I have a suggestion for a bit of mini dive that may be delightful for you if you have never had (or have forgotten) your high school physics,  It is also something any 14 year old who has a bit of trig and algebra under her belt can handle - learning special relativity^.1

 

Somehow "relativity" is labeled as being difficult.  I'll concede that general relativity requires a fair amount of mathematical sophistication if you want to learn and understand it, but special relativity is really just high school level.  It does require some careful thinking and logic in addition to a few hours of study and is an great learning experience.  It may not be important in your field, but working out some of the more interesting apparently paradoxes is great mental exercise and, as such, maybe an important dot or set of dots to add to your arsenal.

 

special relativity is not difficult!

 

I'll recommend two books:

 

How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog by Chad Orzel.  A very gentle introduction that gets at the basics and requires only a bit of algebra and trigonometry - nothing a 9^th grader can't handle.  I do recommend working though it with a pad and pencil and to make drawings and thing about things as you go.  It has a serious impact on our lives even though it is generally regarded as something that only is observable with very fast moving objects.

 Spacetime Physics by Ed Taylor and Archibald Wheeler is a classic for those who are a bit more secure with math (although only high school level math is required) and are used to sorting things out logically.  It is more demanding than the first book and gives you more tools to explore a bit more deeply.  I'd recommend it to someone intending to major in the physical sciences or as a text for a college student in a first year course for science, math and engineering students.  Spendy, but probably good for at least 60 to 100 hours of serious learning, so cheap on a dollar per hour basis.

 

And as a bonus why not treat yourself to learning how to use a slide rule?  Basic rules are available online and regular use will give you and intuitive sense for logarithms as well as sharpen your ability to do mental math.  I was asked by my management not to take my rule to the corporate headquarters for brainstorming sessions (I'm not a fan of brainstorming unless it is carefully constructed) as "it gave too much of an unfair advantage" (his words)...

__________

¹ I note that there must be a desire to learn this.  Not everyone has the motivation and that is just fine as there are so many things worthy of learning. It will take a bit of effort, but there is a real elegance and beauty in its simplicity.  It also runs counter to most people's notion of how the world works, but turns out to be a better description than Newtonian physics.  And the most important point is that we know it is "better" from experiment - the real world really does behave in this strange way.  It is an excellent example of how our senses and experience fail us.  Realizing this is important to many fields.

 

__________

 

Recipe Corner

 

Some time ago I put in some comments on making a good mango lassi.  In the past few days I've made a few variations and have a better version. Most Indian restaurants use canned mango pulp for seasonal consistency.  I've had good luck with Rellure Kesar Mango Pulp.  You can find this sort of thing online or in most Indian groceries.

It is important to chill the ingredients to near freezing - you may even want to slightly freeze the milk.  Also chill the serving glasses in your freezer.

This makes a very rich and thick lassi.  If you prefer lassis that move through a straw easily and are perhaps a bit less rich use non-fat milk and regular (not Greek) non-fat plain yogurt.  Many prefer something even less thick and one approach is to go with the thin regular yogurt and add some crushed ice to achieve the chill.

 

Mango Lassi 2

 

Ingredients

 

° 200g  Fage 2% plain greek yogurt ( I tried whole Fage and it was almost overkill)

° 150g whole milk (near freezing)

° 150g mango pulp (near freezing)

° 25g  white cane sugar (or to taste)

° some ground cardamom to taste - I probably used a tsp.  I tried a holiday variation that was ok - nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger, but prefer cardamom

° slice almonds or chopped toasted pisachios to top (optional)

 

Technique

 

° add incredients (except for the topping) into a blender and blend until smooth

° serve in a chilled glass and top with the nuts.

 

 

books and challenges

With this time of year there is a bit of reflection.  A few readers asked for my current book list and I sent out a note to several regular readers who tend to be interested in such things.  Now that many of the holidays have come some of you may be in a position where you are looking for a gift for yourself...

 

A few readers asked what I've been reading.  I read a lot, but my preference is to work on projects with friends.  Sadly this has been mostly a readying year.  But some of the books have been good.  And as the year winds down a jewel emerged that - at least for me - was above the rest.

A few weeks ago I was sent a preprint of The Lost Carving by David Esterly  - a really fine piece of work on making and doing it well.  He is a gifted writer - a real pleasure to read prose like this.  Up until then I would have recommended Sean Carroll's The Particle at the End of the Universe to non-physicists as a nice current view of the standard model. There are richer books on the subject, but this one is up to date and, with the discoveries at CERN this past year, being up to date makes all the difference.  

It isn't new, but for those who are trying to get a better handle on energy and how humanity relates to it I think the best non-technical book on the subject is David MacKay's Sustainable Energy.  An area that is extremely difficult to summarize at a good enough popular level, he comes closest.  It also may be our most pressing fundamental problem, so a deeper background for the general public is useful.

My favorite book that aids creativity isn't a book, but rather an iPad program - the application Paper.  Completely delightful, but i recommend getting all of the brushes.  The caveat is you have to like - or at least be open to sketching.  This may have one of the best computational user experiences I've seen - but these still are lacking compared to a good set of pencils and a high quality pad of paper. There has been some excellent progress on an iPad program that helps inspire musical thinking.  I'm poorly grounded here, but am spending some time with those who are deeply immersed thinking about, and experimenting with, what it takes to help people think in this space by routing around the conventional education path.

And on education I keep getting asked what computer language should my kid be learning.  Usually - "what book or online course should they use" ...  I have to note that although I've spent a good deal of my life programming, it is a tool rather than a passion and I prefer not to do it.  I have worked with some people who are amazing at the art. Like the fine art and writing there are individuals who are simply so much better at it than anyone else that their work can bring change.  I was lucky enough to have worked with four people at this level and count one as a very close friend.  With that in mind, the "wisdom" I offer is the language isn't important.  Logic and clear thinking is.  I would recommend kids at the high school level study some formal logic first and ideally pick up a bit of a human language that has a similar, but different structure than English - Latin would be ideal. Alternatively play a musical instrument - musicians seem to take to programming naturally.    I see people entering college with backgrounds in Java, Ruby, Basic (yikes!) and so on … but they also picked up a large number of bad habits that need to be unlearned.  When the time comes to learn a language I recommend something that gets you into what programming is rather than the language.  One of the best books on the subject is by a friend (I have to note this as it is a source of bias) - Bjarne Stroustrup's Programming Principles and Practice Using C++.  I've seen 10th graders who *really* want to learn use this successfully and note that people coming at the subject freshly, end up as better programmers than those who come at it with a lot of middle and high school programming experience.  This book does demand serious study - anything less will lead to failure.

Over the holidays I plan to make a tiny dent in some papers I've been meaning to read that are outside my field(s).  Then, on the 29^th, I make the decision on what I'll spend a couple of weeks of study on to get a better sense of the problem space.  That fortnight of study is my gift to myself every year - one that my first director at Bell Labs suggested as a way to become a bit more open to creative thought.  It doesn't generate the serendipity that crazy projects with friends does, but helps with a better grounding on what is happening.

happy holidays to you!

 

There is this issue of why should we be doing something - what is important to us at some deeper level?  What should we be doing as individuals?  Here is a nice piece by Neil deGrasse Tyson 

 

I have an enormous respect for Neil and the work he does as the best cheerleader for science.  I do have some issues with bits of his message, but understand were he is coming from.  It is great to have an environment, unlike the current state of American politics, where you can have great admiration for someone and simultaneously agree and disagree with them.

 

We agree on the need for grand challenges and much better science education.  Exploration has been a huge driver, but so are other challenges.  We need to better understand our relationship with Nature as well as our use of resources.  It is easy to draft a list of a dozen worthy grand challenges, but there is little will.  

 

Neil believes the best challenge is manned spaceflight and, although I think that is an interesting area, I have to disagree.  There are any number of deep challenges facing society that not only need to be attacked, but are large enough that serendipity is likely.  Neil believes that manned spaceflight - something like a mission to Mars - would ignite the imaginations of kids in America and inspire them into STEM career tracks.  I'd be delighted if he is right, but I just don't see it and there would be real problems mustering the political will.

 

I'm frustrated to see so much human energy and creativity go into making it easier for people to consume and to be entertained.  There is much larger game that isn't receiving enough attention.  And it is also frustrating to look at the state of education in America - a country with an enormous gap between those who are numerate and have a basic literacy in science and those who don't.¹  Not to mention there are some extremely serious problems facing us including some that may lead to change that is almost certainly terrible for our children and grandchildren (and us if we are under 40 or so)...

 

I certainly don't have any answers ...  a lot of untested speculation, but nothing concrete

 

Consider this a challenge for you to ponder during your spare time this holiday season.  What are the challenges that can inspire society enough to change everything and are possible and achievable?  What are the challenges that would fundamentally change education?  What would make people welcome such a challenge?

__________

¹ American STEM focused education is far too narrow.  To get at creativity we need to add the arts and change the approach.  Way to much to talk about.  Currently I think Finland has the best model, but I don't see an easy path to make real improvements here.  Some of you are experts in the area and are doing great work.  Such an important area for focus...

__________

Recipe Corner

 

Since many of us are in a sugar induced stupor from the holidays, here is a delicious and simple soup that takes advantage of produce that is seasonal.  As with most soups the amounts shown are just a starting point.

 

Apple Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 25g butter

° 1 tablespoon olive oil

° 2 medium onions, peeled and diced

° 600g parsnips, cut into inchish pieces

° 2 garlic cloves, crushed

° 600g tart cooking apples peeled, cored, and cut into chunks (I like Bramleys if I can find them)

° 450g vegetable stock

° 150g milk  (it works ok with fat free, but is *really* good with whole milk)

° sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

 

Technique

 

° Melt the butter and oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onions and parsnips on low heat for about 15 minutes, until the onions are softened.

° Add the garlic and apples and cook for 3 minutes more, stirring constantly

° Add the stock and bring to the boil. Now reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes, until the parsnips are very soft.

° Remove from the heat and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

° Blend the mixture until smooth.  I like to use an immersion blending stick, but regular blenders work too

 

 

Stir in the milk, adding a little extra if required. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

 

_____

I'm a vegetarian and generally don't miss meat - I'm not attracted to the "fake" meats as too many vegetarian and vegan dishes are wonderful by themselves.  But there are a few flavors I do miss.  Here is one with fake bacon strips.  The amounts aren't critical, so I just used measuring cups rather than weighing

 

Maple Roasted Sweet Potatoes

 

Ingredients

 

° 4 average sized sweet potatoes peeled and diced

° 1/4 c olive oil

° 1/4 tsp non-iodized sea salt 

° a box of Morningstar Farms "bacon" strips

° 1 medium onion, chopped

° 2 large Gayla apples, diced

° 1/4 c Grade B Maple Syrup (you'll want something robust)

 

Technique

 

° Preheat oven to 425 ºF

° Toss sweet potatoes with olive oil and salt, put in a roasting pan and bake for 20 minutes.

° Sauté bacon over medium heat and add onions once the bacon has begun to render its fat.  Continue cooking until bacon begins to become crisp and onions are translucent.

° Throw in the apples and continue to cook for a couple of minutes.

° Add roasted sweet potatoes cook away until potatoes begin to become soft - about five minutes for me.

° Almost there! - toss with maple syrup and serve.

 

trying to make a leap - a really big leap

There are a several loaded words where people often can't agree on precise definitions.  I was in a group where we flagged such words and carefully looked over our publications to make sure we weren't abusing them.  Words like community, data and innovation.  

 

One of the radioactive red flag words was breakthrough...

 

On any given day press releases from Universities and companies speak of "breakthrough" research and products, but if you re-visit them a few years (sometimes months) later, they seem to have vanished.  DARPA has an effective definition - they generally avoid the term (at least internally), but speak of improvements to current technologies that are at least a factor of ten better in at least one important parameter. A technology that cut the cost of an electric car battery from $20,000 to $2,000 would be a breakthrough.  Something that cut it in half, while desirable, would not.

 

Real breakthroughs tend to come out of surprising areas - there is a lot of connecting the dots going on that is often under the radar of large scale focused work.  This can be, but rarely is, cultivated in business and the process leads to a lot of failures.

 

Rather than dwelling on examples and postmortems it is more fun to think about ideas that didn't make it.  They often fail because someone wasn't connecting enough dots - they had missed some crucial bit of information.

 

Negligible Tales, by Ambrose Bierce

The Failure of Hope & Wandel

From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, December 2, 1877.

I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a relay of noses and ears will have reason to regret his mistaken economy in arranging his outfit.

To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff. Fancy, O child of a torrid clime, a sheet of anybody’s ice, three hundred miles long, forty broad, and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie, Pikey dear, but your partner in the firm of Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes, New Orleans, is never known to fib. My plan is to collar that ice. Wind up the present business and send on the money at once. I’ll put up a warehouse as big as the Capitol at Washington, store it full and ship to your orders as the Southern market may require. I can send it in planks for skating floors, in statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for juleps, or in solution for ice cream and general purposes. It is a big thing!

I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you ever see such charming ice?

From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, December 24, 1877.

Your letter was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you forgot to inclose the sample of ice.

I have sold off everything (at an alarming sacrifice, I am sorry to say) and inclose draft for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders at once. I trust everything to you — but, I say, has anybody tried to grow ice in this vicinity? There is Lake Ponchartrain, you know.

From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, February 27, 1878.

Wannie dear, it would do you good to see our new warehouse for the ice. Though made of boards, and run up rather hastily, it is as pretty as a picture, and cost a deal of money, though I pay no ground rent. It is about as big as the Capitol at Washington. Do you think it ought to have a steeple? I have it nearly filled — fifty men cutting and storing, day and night — awful cold work! By the way, the ice, which when I wrote you last was ten feet thick, is now thinner. But don’t you worry; there is plenty.

Our warehouse is eight or ten miles out of town, so I am not much bothered by visitors, which is a relief. Such a giggling, sniggering lot you never saw!

It seems almost too absurdly incredible, Wannie, but do you know I believe this ice of ours gains in coldness as the warm weather comes on! I do, indeed, and you may mention the fact in the advertisements.

From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, March 7, 1878.

All goes well. I get hundreds of orders. We shall do a roaring trade as “The New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company.” But you have not told me whether the ice is fresh or salt. If it is fresh it won’t do for cooking, and if it is salt it will spoil the mint juleps.

Is it as cold in the middle as the outside cuts are?

From Mr. Jebez Hope, from Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, April 3, 1878.

Navigation on the Lakes is now open, and ships are thick as ducks. I’m afloat, en route for Buffalo, with the assets of the New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company in my vest pocket. We are busted out, my poor Pikey — we are to fortune and to fame unknown. Arrange a meeting of the creditors and don’t attend.

Last night a schooner from Milwaukee was smashed into match-wood on an enormous mass of floating ice — the first berg ever seen in these waters. It is described by the survivors as being about as big as the Capital at Washington. One-half of that iceberg belongs to you, Pikey.

The melancholy fact is, I built our warehouse on an unfavorable site, about a mile out from the shore (on the ice, you understand), and when the thaw came — O my God, Wannie, it was the saddest thing you ever saw in all your life! You will be so glad to know I was not in it at the time.

What a ridiculous question you ask me. My poor partner, you don’t seem to know very much about the ice business.

 

 

In 1942 Lord Mountbatten convinced Winston Churchill of the merits of pykrete - a mixture of ice and wood pulp created by the eccentric English boffin Geoffrey Pyke.  The notion was to build an enormous aircraft carrier at least 2,000 feet long and 300 feet wide that could provide an airbase in the North Atlantic  The problem was that it required an enormous amount of wood and, of course, it would eventually melt.

 

...  but the Habakkuk project was given a nod ...

 

£5000 was provided for a small test which took place on Patricia Lake in Jasper in the Canadian Rockies.  I first encountered it listening to an old timer in a tea house near the lake when I was hiking there years ago...

 

When your back is against the wall you are willing to try almost anything..

 

The name is from a book in the old testament and something that puzzles me.  I was told that it is from a verse in the book - something this source agrees with.

 

“Behold ye among the heathen, and regard and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told to you.” Hab. 1:5

 

But I like something a biblical scholar told me when I asked him for a bit of background ...  Habakkuk was the only prophet who questions god's wisdom when he saw a great injustice and asked why god wasn't doing anything about it.  Somehow I can imagine that squaring with the English sense of humor a bit better.

 

There are real breakthroughs out there - but those who find them are frequently not those who complete the innovation - finally taking them to a point where they are realized and successfully used.  So many pitfalls, but it is often how progress is made.

 

Before moving on to the recipe section I'll just note that I find much of the focus of current technology and computation a bit boring.  There is some very clever work going on, but mostly it isn't focused on the major challenges we have as a people.  It would be refreshing to see more serious attacks on the (many) real challenges that face us.  

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Rather than starting with a recipe I'll give a few recommendations for cooking essentials as a few people have asked for comments.  I like to cook and bake and tend towards gadgets, but I've learned that most of the items go unused.   It is possible to do quite a bit with very little.  So with that here are a few...

 

° Proper oven and refrigerator thermometers. 

Our current oven is much colder than its temperature setting.  It is good practice to get an oven thermometer and calibrate your oven.  For me that means a calibration chart I have next to the oven.   A good oven thermometer costs less than $10 - get one with a big dial so you can easily read it.  I also test mine in boiling water and by noting the melting point of sugar.

Ideally you might have an oven that, in addition to temperature, regulates humidity. These are common in professional kitchens, but are way too spendy for me.  I wish I had one though - they can make a big difference. 

The refrigerator has very different temperatures throughout and I baffle the air flow to create zones I trust.  I also know the regions that get a bit too cold for many items.  I have three - two in the 'fridge and one in the freezer.  They were under $10 each and make a difference.

° A nice chef's knife and a good paring knife

I wish I would have started with a good knife and had known you don't need speciality knives. You don't have to spend a huge amount of money (but you can).  I buy mine at Korin in NYC - they have an incredible selection of Japanese knives and related kit and give excellent advice.  Get a good sharpening stone or two and learn how to use them unless you can have a professional regularly sharpen yours.  I like Minsono knives with a Western edge, but there are many excellent brands.  Minsonos are a nice compromise in quality and price and have a nice feel in my hand - I'm sure I'll be using the same knives ten years from now.   Western edges are much easier to sharpen than Japanese edges - so go that way if you sharpen your own.  

Two two chef's knifes - one with a 240mm blade, the other 170mm - and a little 120mm pairing knife are all I need. 

° Cooking thermometers.  

I have a fast reacting probe thermometer as well as an infrared thermometer.  

I can't tell you how useful the IR thermometer is in and out of the kitchen.  I've been using a RayTech for nearly a decade and have given several of them as gifts. 

° A good kitchen scale

These are fundamentally important and every kitchen needs one as volume measurements don't make sense for many ingredients (flour for example).  The $25 Eat Smart is great for general use.  Mine reads to one gram and is reasonably accurate and repeatable.  A gram accuracy is all you need unless you are doing speciality work with spices or food additives.  For spice work I bought a scale that reads to 0.01 grams, but I rarely use it.  

The $25 Eat Smart is great for general use.  

Also if you are counting calories you need a kitchen scale.

° proper height working surfaces

If you do a lot of work with food you might find yourself with a sore back.  It turns out the 36" counter height in most kitchens is a by-product of post WWII standardization that came with the mass production of cabinets.  It reflects the 5'4 height of the average woman at the time (which, it turns out, hasn't changed in the US since).  If you are a bit taller, try going for a 1" or 2" thick cutting board.  If you are more than about 5'10 you might consider an even more raised surface.

I'm 6'1 - not terribly tall, but enough to cause serious back pain when I'm working at my cutting board for more than about 30 minutes at a time.  My friend Colleen is about 6'7 and has a larger problem.

The solution for both of us was a custom raised cutting board.  Mine adds about six inches and her's nearly a foot. You don't lose a lot of counter space as you can store things under them.  I had AWP make both of them in hard maple and strongly recommend the company.

If you are much shorter than about 5'1 it makes sense to stand on something or AWP will make a custom height roll around work surface.  I know a serious cook who is about 5'1 who wears Dansko professional shoes which add a couple of inches - they are comfortable and work perfectly.  In either case the tight grained hardwoods are quite hygienic and studies show probably cleaned hardwood is as safe as other cutting surfaces.  Plus the are very beautiful.

Of course if you are building or remodeling a kitchen, the countertop can be anything you like.  And with remodeling you can also consider kitchen work-flow ... something I've never been able to do.

° a high quality blender

I don't have one as I can't justify the high price, but I've used them in other kitchens - Vitamix blenders are wonderful if you need to blend anything.  If you make soups you probably want an immersion blender (also called stick blenders).  Unless you do it every day something like this model will be just fine. 

° a good pressure cooker

They are completely underrated and I recommend one to save time and cut energy use.  You have to learn how to use them, but once you get the hang of one, you won't turn back.  There seems to be wide agreement that the Kuhn Rikon models are superior.  Stay away from the electrics.

° specialized kit

As you specialize you'll probably find a few really great tools that are great helps and that also make no sense to the normal cook or baker.  I like to make ice cream and have instrumented my ice cream maker - if you are handy with electronics, instrumentation is a nice way to combine hobbies and perhaps get a bit more insight into cooking. One of these days I would like to get into low temperature cooking - often, but improperly, called sous vide.  Something I can't justify due to space and money, but "one of these days"...

But this is getting out there.  Pay attention to the first four items on the list (possibly five) and you can be very happy.

 

 

 

warming up the crystal ball

Regular flight in heavier than air machine, much of medical science and making use of the strong interaction; but certainly not the Internet, television or the car...

 

A few of us were sitting around a lunch table at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey in the early 1990s playing the game where you can transport someone 100 years ahead in time and asking what would surprise them.  For fun we were trying to come up with notions that would really surprise the anyone.

 

We came to the conclusion that communications networks wouldn't be a complete surprise as telephone networks were expanding rapidly.  Science fiction in the early 1890s was full of references to forms of communication that look like radio and communication. Novel as the Internet might seem, it wouldn't be a complete surprise.

 

We debated computers.  The ways computers are used would come as a shock - in fact modern use would come as a shock to most as late as the 1940s before people like Vannevar Bush began to connect the dots of what was happening in research facilities.¹  But the work of Charles Babbage on the difference engine and Ada Lovelace on programming came a full century before Bush's insight.  Digital computation and its use may have well been a shock, but computational engines not.

 

We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate what ever aroused curiosity. - Orville Wright

 

Today marks the 109th anniversary of controlled heavier than air flight.  By the late 1800s people were beginning to advance past semi-controlled flight in gliders, but with no real success. A real stagnation in design combined with desire and over-funding to kill several would-be innovators and strengthen the notion that even with the advances of the Industrial Revolution, flight was only for the birds and lighter than air machines.

 

An airplane, or a bird for that matter, has to properly balance four forces to fly - lift, drag, gravity and thrust.2  It must also have a viable control system.  

 

The early aircraft designs were ok on gravity, but lift, thrust and drag were all problematic and viable control systems were nonexistent.  

 

A huge problem that required advances on multiple fronts.

 

The best way to approach such problems is to address each issue empirically scientifically.  The Wright brothers spent years learning how to build and fly kites, understand aerodynamics and simple fluid mechanics to built good-enough airfoils, to lower the drag on their machines,  to use a good-enough engine, and to build a control system and learn to fly with it. 

 

The investigations took several years and a careful methodical approach.  They built their own airfoils and had the revelation that a propeller could be made much more efficient using a proper airfoil.  Air-cooled gasoline engines could have a very high power to weight ratio for the day. Wing warping could control roll and elevators and rudders, pitch and yaw.

 

By early December 1903 they had enough of the pieces to make the first real flight.  The pieces were far from optimal and several of them had been discovered before by others - but no one else had put together all of the pieces.³ What makes this interesting was their funding was modest.  Some competitors had enormous funding, but were using designs that were simple extrapolations of earlier non-functioning designs.  

 

One can go on and on about the brilliance of the approach used by the Wrights, but it also needs to be underscored that their design, while good enough, was very primitive.  They patented it and proceeded to prove they were as bad at business as they were at fundamental revolution.  A problem was their patents and business model were very restrictive and others, once the fundamental problem had been cracked, made new discoveries that made dramatic improvements.⁴

 

Last year I was part of a panel charged with making projections for technologies five, ten and twenty years out.  While such events are fun (even more fun when someone is paying and the others in the group are smart), they rarely are useful as predicting the future is a hazard at best.  But at the same time it is possible to get a lot of useful information from a well run process.

 

When I look back on some of the things I have done it is possible to say I saw and even invented bits and pieces of the future.  But saying that turns out to be a combination of selective filtering and hubris.  In reality many of us saw and created many pathways to potential futures.  That was the job of pure research at Bell Labs where the rubber met the sky.  Of course innovation is the useful application of these ideas and making the rubber meet the road is much more difficult.⁵

 

I think it is fair to say almost all of the technologies we'll be using in 2022 are up and running in pure and applied research labs around the world.  The combinatorics of factors that come to bear on which will survive are an extremely difficult problem to solve and there is truth to Alan Kay's famous quote - "Look, the best way to predict the future is to invent it..."

 

Many of the discoveries are impacted by something outside of what is considered to be their normal domain.  Television was originally seen as a point to point communication, portable atomic clocks combining with several technologies to create a new class of navigation - the list goes on and on.  Ideally you can gather a group of people with an understanding of the technology being studied, wide ranging interests, delight in connecting the dots and an inquisitive nature.  From that a variety of useful scenarios can be invented that can form a guide for those who must plan for the future.

 

Some are expert at understanding the human side of technology along with the rate of sophistication of component technologies and can create new products and even product categories - Steve Jobs and his team being an example on several occasions. 

 

Rarely something is created where its basic design survives for a long time.  The invention of the safety bicycle is a great example.   In the early and mid 1880s many inventors tried to come up with a light, easy to ride and safe bicycle.  There were multiple failures until John Kemp Starley of Coventry, England put the dots together and came up with the Rover in about 1888.  He had come up with a design and geometry that is basically unchanged to this day... a design that happens to be the most efficient way for a single human to move around on the ground ...  a design that is nearly four times as efficient as walking.

 

On this day it is sweet to note the connection between bicycles and early flight.  The skills required to build reliable safety bikes proved to be one of the dots the Wrights used in their arsenal of ideas.

 

I should probably quit now as I'm nearly out of time, but it is also very important to note the adoption rates of new technologies.  This the percentage of the population using a technology from in years from the first product - a very different number from the first invention!

 

The first chart is from a now defunct visualization site.  The point that is problem important is the ten percent mark as well as the slope from there through fifty percent adoption.  Some technologies compete with seriously mature technologies and require enough further evolution so as to have very gentle slopes, even though they eventually come to become important.  Some forms of alternate energy power production and electric cars are good examples.6

 

The second chart involves consumer "gadget" technologies compiled by Alexis Madrigal - areas that are generally expected to explode rapidly and quickly generate enormous competition. Note the leading examples are all for media consumption rather than communication or creation. There are a variety of interesting reasons why this is so, but there is not enough time to probe that here.  Gadget spaces where first moves often are not those making money as the technologies mature.  Ideally companies in this space have a deep understanding of how and why people use these things.  If they can add this information to the other dots they're connecting they can create more serious contenders.  Apple is a prime example as were Polaroid and Sony back in the day.

 

So while an accurate prediction of winners a decade out is nearly impossible, it is easier to eliminate losers and the process, properly done, can offer a good deal of illumination into just how you think about the future.  On the other hand surrounding yourself with narrow subject matter experts frequently leads to noisy blindsidings. ⁷

 

__________

¹ Vannevar Bush was an amazing mind - inventor, scientist, engineer and brilliant administrator.  A real renaissance person.  He was one of the people who started the Manhattan Project, ran NACA, CMU, the MIT school of engineering, the NDRC, the OSRD and was a core force behind the creation of the National Science Foundation. His article As We May Think article that appeared in The Atlantic on information indexing and processing was a brilliant piece you should read if you are unfamiliar with it.

² Gliding only requires three - thrust isn't used.

³ This is a critical point. Some of the tricks had been uncovered at places like MIT and Stevens, but were only known to ship designers.  Very little of this was known in the aviation community.  Orville and Wilbur, with their experiments, created a problem relevant body of information that was revolutionary in their field.  

⁴ Ailerons are a prime example.  There was considerable prior art, but the other pieces of powered flight had not come together.  They proved to be superior to wing warping, but accomplished the same basic task - roll control.  The Wrights fought this tooth and nail in the courts.  They won in the US and demanded very heavy fees fundamentally crippling aircraft development in the US for about a decade as the Europeans quickly caught up and moved forward.

⁵ Bell Labs had a good mechanism for that -  linkages between pure and applied research and applied research and manufacturing.  The problem was the last link became weak through a series of consent decrees and the value of the place was diluted.

⁶ These are rich connect-the-dot regions and I spend some time worrying about them.  Get in touch if you have an interest

⁷ There are a few individual subject matter experts who have enough outside areas of interest and their own forest of dots to connect that they can not only be useful in these investigations, but often central.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

With the holidays nearly on us I've been experimenting with gingerbreads.  The one I offer here is a recipe in progress - I'm on the third version, but this one appears to be a keeper.  Unlike many gingerbreads it isn't great warm, but shines after chilled in the refrigerator for at least eight hours.  Sukie thinks it is even better with eggnog poured over it or with peppermint ice cream on the side (yes - I've made a batch of peppermint ice cream).

 

There is an issue of what to do with the holiday experiments as we can't eat all of them ourselves.  The trick is a group of always happy-to-try-it-out neighbors. 

 

This one makes a lot.  A nine inch round pan is marginal, a nine or ten inch square pan probably works and making it in a two piece angel food cake pan may be best.  Be sure and put a sheet pan under the cake pan!

 

I've begun to measure cake temperature with a thermocouple.  The cake is done went the core temperature is about 88° C - don't let it get as high as 90° for any prolonged period.

 

Ginger-Ginger Refrigerator Cake

 

Ingredients

 

Cake 

° 85g (3 oz) peeled an sliced fresh ginger

° 200g (1 cup) white cane sugar

° 3/4 tsp fine un-iodized sea salt

° 1/2 tsp ground ginger

° 1 tsp ground cinnamon

° 1/4 tsp ground mace

° 225g (1 cup) water

° 2 tsp baking soda

° 340g (1 cup) dark molasses

° 2 large eggs

° 225g (2 sticks) melted unsalted butter

° 275g (about 2-1/2 cups) all purpose flour

Glaze:

° 125g (1 cup) powered sugar

° a pinch of fine salt

° a splash of milk

° a bit of vanilla extract

 

Technique

 

Cake

° Preheat the oven to 350°F and butter or pam a cake pan

° Put the fresh ginger, sugar, salt, ground ginger, cinnamon and mace into a food processor and pulse until the ginger is ground into the sugar

° Microwave the water for about a minute, stir in the basking soda until dissolved and then the molasses until well blended. Set it aside

° Add the eggs to the food processor one at a time pulsing it a bit to blend them in.  

° Turn on the food processor and stream in the melted butter.

° Stop the food processor, add the flour and then pulse until just blended - don't overdo it!

° Turn on the food processor and stream in the water and molasses stopping when it is just absorbed.  Again don't overdo it.  

° Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake until a toothpick comes clean - about 50 minutes to an hour for me depending on the pan.

Glaze

° Pour the sugar into a big enough bowl, add the salt and whisk in some milk until it is on the verge of being a liquid.  Add a bit of vanilla and whisk to blend.

° Drizzle the glaze over the top of the cake and put it in a refrigerator for at least a few hours.