It’s a well-established scientific fact : it’s my 39th birthday tomorrow! It will be the official start of the last year in which I vaguely deserve to be alive, so I better make the most of it.

And you know what that means, don’t you?

That’s right kids… MORE SCIENCE!

We have a butteload (much bigger that a buttload) of great science news to share with you today, so let’s do like the bunnies do and hop to it.

And as always, we start with the magic words that open the distinctly rational vaults of science to our eager, tingling minds : SCIENCE IS FUCKING AWESOME!

Ya gotta work blue just to get the kids’ attention these days, I tells ya.

We have a number of nifty user interface stories today, so let;s count them off.

First up, we have this way cool interface dreamed up by the dream masters at MIT, a 3D mouse that works by levitating a metal sphere.

It’s called the ZeroN, and you just have to see this.

That is so stylish it makes me wanna cry. And it works both ways, too. You can control a computer with it, or it can be controlled via the computer.

And admittedly, making a metal sphere move around like the Invisible Man is messing with you would be pretty damn cool, although I am not seeing any practical applications for that side of it.

But I am very impressed by its various uses as a 3D mouse, especially one where the pointing device stays where you put it in 3D space. I can see this becoming a very hot accessory for the 3D modeler who only thought he had everything. Imagine, working on 3D objects in 3D!

And that astronomy bit was pretty darn impressive too. Custom solar systems!

But we all know that the hottest user interfaces these days are the ones for the brain. Cybernetics is a real honest to goodness science these days, and we are increasingly using our brains as input devices.

Like this idea called Brainput which monitors your brain to see if you are becoming stressed out via overwork and if you are, it takes over some of the work for you.

I am intrigued by what the subjective experience of such an interface might be like. Ideally it could keep a worker in “the zone” where they are at maximum stress free output all the time, and that could be extremely rewarding, even euphoric.

But I have to address the obvious question : if the computer can do some of the work, why is a human being doing said work in the first place? Why not let the computer do all it can, all the time, and free up the human for higher level tasks?

More salient, I think, would be a system that learns what tasks stress the user out the most, and what aspects of said tasks, and readjusts workflow and interface approach accordingly in order to make the work as low stress for the worker as possible.

Doesn’t that sound nice?

But the real progress in cybernetics was made this week when several severely paralyzed people were able to control robotic arms purely with their thoughts.

So not only is it the dream of cybernetics made real, it is also a heartwarming tale of how some old people who had be crippled terribly by strokes were able, for a little while at least, to do something themselves for a change.

These are people who cannot even speak or move from the neck down, much like Stephen Hawking. Although we might want to think twice before giving him access to one of these robotic arms. With his genius, he could probably use it to take over the world.

Now these robot arms are not exactly portable unless you are Optimus Prime. (And in that case, all your arms are robot arms, so what do you need some clunky human device for?)

No, these are big robot arms like the ones used in car factories. So nobody will be taking one home to help with the washing up just yet.

But this is a very big step in that direction. With advances in brain imaging and lightweight, user-friendly sensing devices, we finally have the necessary hardware to make brain interfacing technology a reality.

And normally, that would be exciting enough for one week. But that would not be this week, because I have a story I am even more excited about this week.

Turns out that in the USA, their FDA has just approved an over the counter, 20 minute, no lab AIDS test.

Yes, in the future, finding out your HIV status could be almost as painless and simple as finding out whether or not you are pregnant.

This could have huge social implications. The article seems to assume that these tests will primarily be used by people who want to test their own HIV status alone at home, in private, discreetly, and that is probably mostly true.

But the future I see for a technology like this is one where it allows for greater sexual freedom, because instead of everyone having to strap latest armor over their genitals because they can’t afford to trust their bedmates, people could simply test themselves in front of their prospective partners and then have at it with a will and without a condom.

In fact, you could even have sex clubs where being tested is required before entry, thus ensuring that everyone inside the club is HIV free, and can do whatever they please.

And all it would require is a poke with a needle and a 20 minute wait. Sounds reasonable.

And I am sure that in the future, the technology will be refined to make it faster, and have it cover every STD in the book.

Of course, being STD free does not mean you do not have to worry about pregnancy. So I suppose this would be less of a big deal for straight people.

But for us fags, the Seventies are back again, baby!