Ebola Preparedness

The following is my fears, and my suppositions. It has no basis in fact, I just need to get my worries of my chest.

Is the United States prepared for an Ebola outbreak?

Yes, I believe so. Decades of zombie movies, books, and television shows have prepared the American populace for an epidemic like Ebola:

What the US Has Learned From Zombie Movies:

• Close physical contact is to be avoided.
• Tending to loved ones with visible symptoms will lead to your own demise.
• The diseased are to be treated as plague carriers, not people.
• There is no escape.
• There will be survivors.

At the workplace...

• The number of people who work from home in white collar professions with dramatically increase.
• Coming to work with even a sniffle will become a firing offense.
• Communal snacks and coffee makers will disappear.
• Person-to-person sales calls will dramatically drop.

At the hospital...

• There will be an immediate rush of people to hospitals and ERs with phantom symptoms when the first real cases in the U.S. appear in the media. This influx will overload most major metro hospitals, and make it more difficult to treat the actual cases.
• After the first major outbreak at a hospital, few people will visit their family doctor or other medical services for even routine check ups.
• The hesitancy to go to health care providers will lead to a number of 'hot spots' where an entire family/neighborhood is lost due to lack or reporting an Ebola case to medical authorities.
• As the number of 'hot spot' cases is reported in the media, the social norm quickly becomes one of 'isolate yourself, protect your loved ones'. Plastic sheeting and duct tape for home isolation units becomes a hot commodity.
• After the first few months, effective isolation of sick individuals becomes a reflexive social response, and overall Ebola cases rapidly decline.

At the school...

• Public and private school attendance drops to 90% after the first U.S. case is reported.
• Cyber-school gets a massive increase in demand, and providers struggle to keep up.
• School attendance drop to 50% after the first major metro area hospital has an outbreak.
• School is cancelled for the 2014-2015 year in the U.S. after the first 1000 U.S. Ebola deaths.

At the grocery store...

• 'Free For Your Health' disposable nitrile gloves become as common as Purelle dispensers in most grocery stores.
• Home bleach washing stations for produce become hot selling items.
• Stockpiling of canned goods, starches, frozen meat, and sugars outstrips supply for a few weeks.
• After the first Ebola case confirmed to come from imported food is widely publicized, 'Proudly Grown in the U.S.A.' becomes a bigger draw than 'Organic' in many stores.
• After the third Ebola outbreak from imported food occurs, food imported from South America, Africa, and other global hot spots is banned from U.S. shores.
• A series of articles about a resurgence of scurvy in January 2015 causes a run on vitamin C sources, leading to rationing of orange juice, lemons, and cabbage.

At the restraunt...

• After the first few outbreaks that are tied to infected food service personnel or produce, restraunts cease to be viable business until late 2016.
• A 'foodie' that wants to dine out or eat fresh produce is looked upon as an excessive risk taker.

At the home...

• Dinner parties, children's birthdays, and other social occasions occur via video conferencing, if at all.
• Those that can, move from urban areas to rural areas. The population surge in rural areas exceeds the available medical, food, and fuel infrastructures, and lead to several incidents where starving trespassers are shot by landowners fearing infection by those that have fled the cities.
• 'I love you - please do not attend my funeral!' becomes a common sentiment.
• Groups that have social norms that include handshakes, pats on the back, cheek-to-cheek kissing, and other intimate behavours are severely affected during the initial set of outbreaks, and become ostracized by other social groups.
• Due to the above, conspiracy theorists go nuts claiming that Ebola was specifically engineered to attach the most affected social subcultures.
• A large portion of children will spend 2014-2016 without ever stepping outside their home.
• The 'man cave' becomes a survival strategy - households with the space will make separate entrances for the primary supply runner, who will not directly interact with his family, but will go outside the home to fetch food and other supplies.

How Long Will It Last?

The last U.S. Ebola case will be in late 2016, but it will take till 2020 until it it considered to be contained on a world-wide basis.
By 2021, it will be completely eradicated (either via vaccine or... other means) and not permitted to be retained for study in live form.

North Korea's Nuclear 'Accident'

North Korea is, as of this writing, setting up a missile to firing position.

I predict a few things about this:

1. It will be fired.
2. There will be a nuclear detonation after the missile is fired.
3. The nuclear detonation will not be from a device attached to the missile, but North Korea will claim that it was.
4. The detonation will be near the border with South Korea, on the North Side - prevailing winds will push the radioactive cloud into the east coastal North Korean mountains, with some minor amount trailing to Japan and South Korea.
5. North Korea will claim that the missile was sabotaged by the CIA (or some other US Spook Agency), and they will appeal to the international community for humanitarian aid and cleanup.

As far as I can tell, this is the only logical sequence of events for North Korea.

Therefore, I must be wrong.

iGlasses - The Essential Technology Portfolio

If Apple Computer was interested in Augmented Reality systems (AR), I believe these would be the essential classes of invention that they would need to make a iPhone quality of device, which I will call iGlasses for the sake of this discussion.

1. iPod-Nano style controller
   

   Has a few IR LEDs to tell the glasses where it is in 3D space, a battery pack, on/off switch, and GPS/CPU/Network/Storage for the iGlasses. Would be used like a WiiMote or Sony Motion Controller. Other IR generating accessories could be used (ie, a glove with several LED lights). The IR on the controller would blink in a specific per-device pseudo-random pattern to prevent confusion with ambient IR sources.

   An alternate configuration could be to have IR LED emitters on the frames, and IR reflective paint strips, dots, or ARID patterns on the controller or accessories.

2. Accelerometers (one per temple)
3. Tri-color laser projector (already available from MicroVision)
4. LCD shutter glasses, switching between partially reflective and fully reflective on the inside of the glasses.
   

   This is needed to provide both AR (overlay) and cinematic 3D (full screen) modes.

   To prevent possible violation of local driving laws, the fully reflective mode cannot be used if the user is in a moving vehicle. (GPS, video analysis, accelerometers, etc can detect this).

5. Micromirror laser scanner
   

   This directs the laser light to reflect off of the inside of the glasses. (Adaptation of Texas Instruments MEMs technology, spinning mirror, or many other solutions).

6. Miniature adjustable focus optics.
   

   This is one of the two critical technologies. By defocusing the incoming laster light on a per-pixel basis, the AR overlay can be placed at the correct depth for a comfortable focus by the eye. (Off-the-shelf models are available from VariOptic). This will also be a killer feature, enabling the Hyperreal 3D and Optometrist App features described below.

7. Binocular 4-color cameras (IR+RGB), fixed infinity focus
   

   Two cameras mounted on the eye frames will provide the data for AR and other applications (ie Mood Snaps). RGB for normal video, and a separate IR channel for interacting with the iPod-Nano style controller/battery in 3D space.

8. Piezoelectric microphone/heart rate/skin temp & conductivity pickups
   

   At the temples of the iGlasses would be gold plated piezoelectric pickups, designed to pick up the jawbone sounds, heart rate, and skin conductivity at the wedge at the top of the human ear. This is the other criticial technology, which when combined with voice stress analysis, allows the Mood Snaps application to be created.

9. External microphone/earphone
   

   Over the aural canal itself would be the earbuds/external microphones. Used as expected, with built-in noise cancelling technology.

10. Mesh networking
    

    Mesh networking would allow low-latency communication between multiple close proximity users, without the need for a WiFi base station or using cell network bandwidth. This is essential for outdoor events such as live-action gaming. (Think "Virtual LaserTag")

Killer Apps:

1. Mood Snaps - "Never miss another moment"
   

   The iGlasses would take a 3D video of the last 15 seconds (adjustable) and following 10 seconds when a 'mood inflection' is sensed. Rapid change in hear rate, changes in vocal stress, very loud noises, changes in skin temperature, etc would be used to compute an 'inflection' point. Users could edit and post these automatically snapped videos at their leisure, or individuals in high risk occupations could have them automatically uploaded to a private location.

   
   

   I expect this to be the primary driver behind most sales in the first year

2. Optometrist App - "Your prescription is always correct"
   

   In fully reflective mode, the iGlasses paints the incoming camera image on the inside of the glasses, and uses the dynamic focusing to automatically correct for the user's nearsighted or farsightedness. For most users with mild correctable vision, they would not need to wear their prescription glasses nor contact lenses while wearing the iGlasses.

3. Hyperreal 3D - "Be There"
   

   This feature destroys the 3D television market. By using the laser projected 3D with dynamic focus, the most vivid and comfortable to the eye 3D projection is possible. Combined with 'fully 3D' machinama technologies and the head mounted accelerometers, the user can now 'look around' during 3D movies, for a truly immersive experience. (And a new raft of headaches for the Hollywood editing room!)

4. AR Anywhere
   

   The feature that will grow the slowest, but be the real driver of sales after the first year. Augmented Reality video games; 'pop up' labelling of stores, products, (people in bars!); an arbitrarily infinite number of virtual monitors for the workplace; and even more are possible. Huge opportunities for work and play applications, that are impossible for any other platform.

The market for this device could support a price as low as $700 USD and as high as $1200 USD if produced by year end 2011.

The couch is now brown.

Two dreams. One too disturbing for this blog, but the other was pretty fun.

... I get off the plane, and am introduced to my Internal Translators team. They've all been fitted with masks that perform the neccessary audio and visual translation. One of the Internal Translators remarks to me that she's happy to be on the project, because the car accident left her face mangled, and she'd been out of work for a long time.

We're lead to our first testing room, where we have to assemble a shuttle craft from the components present. After a rocky start, and much politics, we finally get a system together and start assembling the shuttle craft....

This is a long one.

.. Down the dark road I drive, and notice a group of people standing, blocking the road on a small bridge with a jacknifed semi near it. I can barely see them, but there's something wrong with them. They're not waving at me to help them, they're not moving out of the way. They're just staring at me, as I approach.

I go faster. Something's wrong here.

More and more people seem to be infected now. They've become distant and slow. I've hidden my self with two of my friends, and we've managed to evade the hunters so far. "They're looking for movement.." I say to Alan as he pulls aside the curtain to look outside - drawing the attention of the hunters.

We must be resistant, or special to the Hive somehow. Some guys from the Air Force, or Nasa, or something came to take us away after the hunters captured us. They're not infected.

As we travel to the government base, we learn that our captors are afraid of what's happening too. And just as powerless. Those infected by the Hive are everywhere now, and their faces are getting puffier, eyes beadier, nose flattening, grin widening.

We enter the base, and learn why we have been spared. The initial infection came from a spacewalk, and Patient Zero is in the final stages of his change. His puffed flesh sheds, and reveals a gossamer being, insectile. But it is not made for this place. The gravity of earth crushes it before it's exoskeleton can solidify, it's huge saillike wings, only nanometers thick, clump into useless piles of tissue. It's dead within moments.

We have been spared because we are needed. We have the creativity and drive to build the ships, corral the infected of Earth - the new members of the Hive - on board, and make sure that they emerge in the vacuum of space, their natural habitat.

This is the last task for humanity. We, the Spared, are all males. We will be the midwives for that which exterminated our race.

Last night...

.. I was in a large white junction between long white hallways, and at the center of the junction, I would teleport - 3 inches forward - to other hallways. I commented to some of my friends in the dream about the fact that if you turn around after you teleport, and look at the light in just the right way, you can watch a shell of skin oil (which wasn't teleported) shaped just like yourself slowly collapse to the floor. They were not impressed, and asked me to quit making the "Whoop!" and "Barmm" noises during the otherwise silent teleport process.

.. I was on a political prison on Pluto, where everyone had to wear a red fez with a gold cord and talk in an outrageous Turkish accent.