63: Biomimicry & The Evolution of Chess

Episode notes

What can we learn by mimicking animals in nature, and more importantly, what can we learn about the nuance behind the buzzword of biomimicry?  And just how many wild facts are hidden in a simple chess set?

Images we Talk About:
One of the Oldest Shatranj Sets

Timestamps:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:03:26) Biomimicry
(00:50:25) Chess Chess Evolution
(01:33:41) Outro

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We also learn about: So nice to have a topic taken, biomemetics, the spider grabber is more like bio-stealing, “nature is a giant pool of ideas”, “nature is the OG and does it best, organism level, lily leaf umbrella, who remembers davinci? none of his flying machines even worked, a quick lesson on flying, biomimcry was only coines in the 1950s and only become trendy in the 90s, gecko feet, spinning the biomimicry slot machine, sheep wool antidepressants, a biomimicry quiz, oh right we want fewer train sonic booms, whale flipper tubercles, whale power turbines, Ella biomimics Caroline, termite AC, destroying nature to recreate nature, biomimicry 3.8, the ickyness of corporate biomimicry, we’re an organic sustainable biomemetic podcast, a person after our hearts critizing a ted talk, you can biomimic like davinci or the wright brothers, nature is not infallible, pitching our own biomimetic ideas, bumble bees saying oops, ripple, chess chess evolution you know like that game, can’t stop thinking about those anal beads, everything Caroline’s learned about chess is against their will, Tom learns about himself by talking about chess camp, scachs d’amor was so nerdy, the hornets nest of chess historians, chess comes from the indo-persian area, borders are weird why do I need so many modifiers to describe this area, calling it a horsey is more historically accurate, a chariot makes so much more sense than a castle moving across the board, oh wait does no one else call this piece a religious figure? the knight has been unchanged for 1300 years, the chad knight vs the virgin bishop, we codified white goes first after discovering quantum physics, do you want to play a game of king? Your king is in king, shah mat – the king is dead, people say check because “I won’t let you do the silly thing, we’re gonna keep playing for a little bit”, checkered comes from chess not the other way around, cheque -> exchequer -> checkered -> chess -> shah, why aren’t we talking about this more! Ella’s very good biomimicry review corner

Sources:

Biomimicry as a Sustainable Design Methodology
How Biomimicry is Inspiring Human Innovation
Types of Biomimicry
History of Biomimicry
Velcro
Biomimicry in Flight and Wing Design
NASA Wing Morphing
NASA Successfully Tests Shape-Changing Wing
Japanese Bullet Train
Whale Turbines
WhalePower
Soft Tobotics
Tentacle Robot
The Planned City of Lavasa
Eastgate Centre
Biomimicry 3.8
The Limitations of Biomimentic Architecture
The Ripple Device
Mosquito Inspired Needles
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Davidson’s Incredible “A Short History of Chess”
Scachs Damor
The Beginnings of Chess
Oldest Shatranj Set
The MET “Chessmen and Chess”
Wired: The Game of Chess had Patch Notes Too
White and Black in Chess
The MET “Shah Mat!”
gov.uk on The Exchequer
Encyclopedia Britannica Chess History