San Diego Zoo Creates Biomimicry Incubator

waderoush writes "The San Diego Zoo has built a world famous reputation as a tourist destination, for helping to rescue the California Condor, and maybe (if you're old enough) for Joan Embery's appearances with Johnny Carson. Now the zoo is using its expertise to drive innovation by establishing a new 'Centre for Bioinspiration.' While the Anglicized spelling of 'center' might seem pretentious, the zoo has a down-to-earth goal of innovating through the emerging field of biomimicry, which is exemplified by Qualcomm's Mirasol display technology (the displays generate colors using the same type of interference between light waves that causes iridescence in butterfly wings). The center includes an incubator for developing new bio-inspired products and technologies, where ideas would be advanced to a proof of concept or working model, and then licensed. The incubator also intends to help develop bio-inspired ideas from outside the zoo."

Comments

wtf...

[Anonymous Coward]

While the Anglicized spelling of 'center' might seem pretentious

You must be American to believe words can have social standing, I mean damn I guess that is why you had a war on "terror".
I am glad I am not a word in the dictionary, sounds like a very oppressive place to be. :-/

Re:wtf...

[norpy]

The interesting thing is that "center" is actually the anglicised version of "Centre" which is a french word used in it's original form by the UK/Australia/NZ and others.

Re:wtf...

[freetard]

And those 'others' include all the Commonwealth countries, and former French colonies. Really, only the Americans spell it 'Center'- so they're the pretentious ones, going around making up their own 'special' version of English. Pretentious gits.

Correct English is pretentious?

[captainpanic]

while Anglicized spelling of 'center' might seem pretentious

How is it pretentious to use correct spelling? Should they have called it the "Can I has Bioinspiration Centr, LOL"?

Re:Correct English is pretentious?

[Markizs]

Boinspraton centr, pls

Re:Correct English is pretentious?

[Kreigaffe]

It would be correct if this was in the UK, or Australia. Maybe Canada, I'm actually not sure how they spell it.. but here in the States nobody spells it that way. Here, it's tire, not tyre. It's jail, not gaol. Center, not centre. Color, not colour.

The other spellings are recognized, and not incorrect.. but not correct, either.

But hey, I'm sure the English don't mind one bit when the English-English spelling of a word is discarded for the American English spelling of a word, right?

Re:Correct English is pretentious?

[zakkie]

American English is a fallacy. There's English, and there's wrong.

only pretentious thing is the article summary

[Hazel Bergeron]

1. Too, many, commas;

2. "(if you're old enough)" is redundant - we can work out our own ages and guess why we may not have heard of something;

3. Never use the phrase "drive innovation" unless you're writing a management speak generator;

4. British English is still spoken by far more people than American;

5. What is the purpose of biomimicry? Don't give me an example - give me some idea of why it's useful so I want to read more;

6. The display "generate colors" - submitter was clearly so proud of being able to insert a non-pretentious Americanised spelling that he forgot his gramma;

7. (don't explain things in brackets like this);

8. For "products and technologies, where ideas would be advanced to a proof of concept or working model...", see 3. Too much babble. How about "An incubator will develop proofs of concept or working models for licensing";

9. What is "bioinspiration"?

Why, yes, I did get out on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but that doesn't excuse this summary.

Re:only pretentious thing is the article summary

[Hazel Bergeron]

Be who you are, without apology.

The polar opposite of "When in Rome...", this is exactly why everyone abroad merely tolerates the American guest.

OBL was being who he was without apology on 9/11.

Anyway, Britain's heritage forms part of America's heritage.

Re:only pretentious thing is the article summary

[Hazel Bergeron]

Yes, a real response, bravo.

What if it's the drive you're innovating?

It's "innovation" that really gets my goat - "drive" is just yellow icing on the turd. But your suggestion would produce the most degenerate adjectival phrase. A phrase is more than a sequence of words, except in the dictionaries which try to claim otherwise.

Obviously to Mimic Life, you ignorant twit.

That's the meaning. I might as well have asked you, "What's the purpose of a cat?" and received the response, "To have four legs and a tail," you armpit-smelling bureaucrat.

Fortunously us US citizens utilize our amazing organic information processing units and thus can forgive a few errors

It's true - Americans forgive the minor errors and give their full support to all the major ones.

Inspired by life. Are you Daft?

I refer the sewer-dwelling evangelist to my previous answer.

You might want to ask your doctor about a subscription to porn and blood pressure meds.

Long live the NHS!

Re:only pretentious thing is the article summary

[19thNervousBreakdown]

You pick up the speech patterns of people you hang out with. I can't say I've picked up much, if any, but I hang out with and talk to a lot of British folks every day, and if something came out, I wouldn't try to suppress it. That's being who you are. Hanging on to the same way you talked yesterday and ridiculing anyone who doesn't do the same is just part of being a bitter old ... douche.

By the way, where do you suppose "for fuck's sake" started?

pretentious vs pedantic slop

[Penurious Penguin]

I'll take the trace-elements of pretentiousness and excessive punctuation allegedly within the article-summary gladly before I'll tolerate another narcissistic frothing comment from another hissing pedant of trivialities. Lighten up folks. Why not be satisfied that other slashers are trying. As if the NSA couldn't find some old POS you wrote somewhere along the path of life. And the same for anyone else too. Also, don't take this personally -- it was an opportunity to address multiple grouches at once. At least you provided what could possibly be argued as constructive criticism.

I didn't get up on the wrong side of the bed; I just aint gotten into it yet.

Re:pretentious vs pedantic slop

[Hazel Bergeron]

The art of communication is the art of being understood.

The art of rhetoric is the art of convincing others.

Primary source authors can often get away with doing neither well - their readers know the field and can fill in the gaps. But the only purpose of a site like Slashdot, pointless comment threads excepted, is to effectively communicate on what is reported elsewhere.

The same problem is apparent in Wikipedia. There are clearly many Wikipedia authors who either know the established parts of their field well or who know where to find relevant information. But it is so rare to find people who are good at presenting information. There is, alas, a modern notion that it is sufficient to merely know something but unnecessary to be able to understand and articulate your factoid. I have have never seen people more angry at me than when I ask them to explain themselves.

Re:pretentious vs pedantic slop

[Penurious Penguin]

Beautifully said and even informative; but I still think the 'community' could use a little less venom and bit more positive input. The comment directly below says a lot. Not only do superfluous vilifications of the author distract from the article, many are oft no more eloquent than what they strive to belittle.
Now on to Biomimicry?

Re:What was the subject again?

[ciderbrew]

Nothing to discuss. Centre = correct. Center = correct. English English, English being more correct :)

Re:Pretentious?

[Kreigaffe]

It's a bit idiotic to spell it as "centre", yes. That's not how it's spelled in the States. Do we consider it pretentious...? ... absolutely, yes. While you can get away with theatre for theater when your subject is legit theater, you'd get mocked as pretentious if your "theatre" was in reference to a street puppet show.

But.. Centre? That's nothing but elitists trying to distance themselves from the low-brow American and aping the erudite and superior European -- neither stereotype, of course, is accurate. It is what it is, though, and pretentious Americans tend to latch on to European spellings, habits, etc etc etc, in an effort to appear more fancy and sophisticated.

It's shallow, trite, and pointless -- and those who made the choice did so intentionally to affect an air of elegance and nobility. That's pretentious, yes.

Re:What was the subject again?

[Penurious Penguin]

There have been some pretty impressive biomimicry innovations in adhesives through beetles. By skipping to minute 45:50 of this pretty neat BBC documentary, Plastic - How it Works, you can see a cool example.

Now about that spelling....

Re:Pretentious?

[1u3hr]

"Centre" is pretentious"??

At least it's actually a real word, if not the spelling you may prefer, unlike "Bioinspiration".

Innovation?

[Covalent]

According to the next article, this apparently means that this new center won't really do anything. After reading how "buzz-wordy" the summary was, I can see why the authors feel that way. All this summary said to me was "zoo buzzword buzzword buzzword' which translates to "zoo overpriced dull ill-advised".