Paths out of The Great Stagnation

Thankfully, Thingiverse user Tom Lombardi invented a solution for this age old problem. Enter the Lucky Charms Sifter.

According to Lombardi, the humble-looking 3D printed cup removes over 90 percent of all the cereal, leaving only the marshmallowy goodness. All the user has to do is pour Lucky Charms into the cup and give it a good shake. The precision-printed holes are just large enough for the whole-grain hamster food to fall through, while still retaining the slightly larger marshmallows.

Here is more, hat tip goes to ModeledBehavior.  And via Rob Nelson, here is 3-D printing for pet hermit crab shells.

That all said, 3-D printing is unlikely to end up being a transformative technology; transportation costs for what it can produce are already fairly low.  The printers may in some longer run be cheaper than UPS, truck, and commercial rail, but that’s a moderate savings only, albeit a nice one.

The most likely paths out of TGS — by far — are artificial intelligence and natural gas supply (with some chance of E-Cat).  Smart machines will be most successful in their least romantic, furthest from hard AI, most mundane forms, starting with Siri and Watson.  Natural gas and other energy source developments will likely make North America the cheap energy power for much of the next fifty years; this may improve the quality of our foreign policy as a collateral benefit.