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Researchers Simulate Building Block of Rat's Brain
slick_shoes passes on an article in the Guardian about the Blue Brain project in Switzerland that has developed a computer simulation of the neocortical column — the basic building block of the neocortex, the higher functioning part of our brains — of a two-week-old rat. (Here is the project site.) The model, running on an IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, simulates 10,000 neurons and all their interconnections. It behaves exactly like its biological counterpart. Thousands of such NCCs make up a rat's neocortex, and millions a human's. "Project director Henry Markram believes that with the state of technology today, it is possible to build an entire rat's neocortex. From there, it's cats, then monkeys and finally, a human brain."
They guy that invented QWERTY did just fine. You are probably just missing his goal. The goal was to slow down typists. With a manual hammer type typewriter, typing too fast jams the machine. You need a way to make sure that 1) the most commonly used letters are farther away from each other, thus reducing the likelihood of jamming, and 2) slow the typist down enough that each hammer has time to retract before the next one comes up and jams it.
That necktie guy... Yeah, lets run him on Windows ME.