September 16, 2016 at 02:00AM

Today I Learned: 1) A couple of DARPA projects currently listed on their wiki page: bullets designed to penetrate armor by melting and being formed into a spike by a powerful electromagnetic field; wearable jetpacks to increase infantry speed; a mind-controlled robotic arm; a headset that reads and transmits your thoughts in order to communicate covertly; SyNPSE (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics -- any idea what that is?); and multiple independent powered exoskeleton projects. 2) There is a small but awesome subculture of DIY drivers who make and drive mono-wheel bikes. I'm not talking about motorcycles with one wheel (though those exist too, apparently!), I'm talking about one giant wheel that you sit inside, like the thing General Greivous rides. It's actually two concentric wheels. The inner wheel spins relative to the outer one, and the weight of the motor pushes the assembly forward. There are some serious desgin problems with the mono-wheel bike. The most egregious is probably the braking system. Traditional braking systems don't really work, so you have to brake with your feet. On the road. You'll want to wear some tough boots if you try that. They also require some work to balance, especially since you usually have to bend out sideways to see around the wheel. The owner* of one particularly beautiful mono-wheel bike described the experience of riding it as "more like flying than anything else" -- the seat kind of floats around the inside of the outer wheel, so you don't feel particularly grounded. * extremely charming man, at least on video. He seemed the happiest man in the world on that thing. "It never fails to put a smile on people's faces", he said repeatedly. 3) Spices are *even cheaper than I thought* from the Mexican section of a typical supermarket. I've always known they were cheap, but... well, today I bought some coriander seeds from the Mexican section. A little baggie was about 1/8 the cost of a shaker full of coriander seeds, although the baggie was smaller. ...or so I thought! Turns out the baggies just *look* smaller -- the contents of one baggie fit almost exactly into a (used) coriander seed shaker, so really they're just 1/8 the price.