Erich Prem interviewed me in Singapore during our book sprint on the role of ethics in robotics and artificial intelligence.
LEGO Brick Dimensions and Measurements
The LEGO bricks are precisely designed to fit perfectly together. There is a 0.2mm gap between bricks next to each other. The gap between two bricks stacked on top of each depends on how careful to pressed them down. Of course there are several websites that show you the exact measurements, but some of them were a bit confusing or even broken.
LEGO 2×4 Brick (3001)
I enjoy working in 3D so I used Fusion 360 to create this technical drawing of the LEGO Brick. You can download the model over at GrabCAD and the PDF file from here.
lego-2×4-brick-dimensions-measurements-3001LEGO 2×4 Plate (3020)
This plate is 1/3 of the height of a normal brick. You can download the model at GrabCAD and the the PDF file from here.
lego-2×4-plate-dimensions-measurements-3020LEGO 1×4 Technic Brick (3701)
The technic bricks have a hole in the side for pin connectors or axles to go through. I had to cut open a brick to get the exact design of the inside tubes right. The model is available at GrabCAD and the PDF file from here.
lego-1×4-technic-brick-dimensions-measurements-3701How religious is Christchurch?
While driving around Christchurch I noticed a church on almost every corner. The name of the city could have already given me that hint, but it is better to check the facts first before jumping to conclusions. Christchurch was named after the Christ Church College at Oxford University.
There does not seem to be any register for churches in New Zealand and hence I searched the Charities Register for charities that provide religious services. The results contain more than 7000 charities, but many of them are no longer registered and/or have stopped operation. After some cleaning of the data I was left with 5590 records for New Zealand. It is important to note that not every religious charity is a church and not all churches are registered as a charity. One charity could also operate several churches. But for what it is worth, this approach does seem like a good approximation. The various Anglican parishes, for example, are listed individually.
Mapping these religious charities on a map would be slightly misleading since bigger cities will naturally have a higher number of charities. To create a density map of the religious charities in New Zealand I had to take the population distribution into account.
InfoShare from StatsNZ allows you to download the download the Estimated Resident Population for Urban Areas. It contains population estimates for many of New Zealand’s cities. Unfortunately, this list does not contain all the small cities, such as Akaroa.
After cross referencing the charities with the population information I created this density map of religious charities in New Zealand. Christchurch has 517 registered religious charities and a population of 404,600 in 2018 which results in 0.0012 people per charity. This puts Christchurch in the lower half.
You can have a look at the full visualization over at Tableau Public where you can also download the source data.
The Federal Trade Commission fined OMICS Group 50.1 million
It took some time, but it seems like my little sting against the OMICS group finally paid off. I had used the iOS autocomplete function to create a fake paper for one of their conferences which was accepted for publication after only three hours. I had brought my case forward to the trade commission and they now fined OMICS group. This is good news for the scientific community and I hope that this will reduce the number of predatory journals and conferences.
Here is some of the news coverage:
Draft Proposal for a Memorial Exhibit about the Christchurch Mosque Tragedy At the Christchurch Brick Show 2019
Proposal for a LEGO memorial for the Christchurch Mosque Shooting victims.
On Friday March 15th 2019 New Zealand experienced its biggest terrorist attack in Christchurch that took the lives of 50 people. The loss to their families and their community is indescribable. It is our responsibility to pay respect to the victims, their families and their communities. Moreover, we must take action to prevent that such an event will ever happen again.
For this purpose we propose to build a memorial exhibit for the Christchurch Brick Show. The exhibit will consist of two parts.
