So first up, the environment:
a series of photos showing glaciers going bye-bye, very interesting.
Why is it that oil makes trouble in this case it is olive oil. It seems that not everyone is telling the truth of where their olive oil comes from. makes you wonder a) what are you eating and b) who are you supporting by eating it?
Interesting article touching on an important issue but you must be a subscriber to get the full article. basically it discusses the issue of who to trust in science. I personally think tis issue is no different from who to trust in life/politics/business/etc...
Along the lines of scientists and trust comes an interesting interview that i must admit I have nto yet read. i looked at it but I will wait until i am not at work so i can concentrate and read more than two sentences at a time. The article is another over at newscientitst.com. Its an interview with an Israeli researcher and a Palestinian researcher who work together regardless of the fact that their respective peoples are not exactly friends.
I happen to like nice watches. I have a very nice watch given to me when I got engaged by my fiance. I have scratched it, lost it twice, found it in strange places, and generally mistreated the poor thing. In my own defense i was told to wear it every day, so destruction is bound to happen. Here is an article on expensive watches with a short history of personal chrnography included. I 'know' from elsewhere (where knowing is having heard from one unchecked source) that the first wrist watch was created for an early aviator who complained to a clock making friend that he could not read his pocket watch while flying. The clock maker made a wrist watch for him and the rest is history. The above link disputes these 'facts'. However it does have a link to this article on the worlds most expensive watch (pocket variety)
Do you have a good idea? are you an inventor looking for his big break? Allow me to give you some advice. DO NOT USE ANY 'WE PATENT FOR YOU' COMPANIES! They are a massive rip-off. Having done this (lost 500 bucks to it before I wised up) I can tell you that you are far better off either buying a book and patenting it yourself or else hiring a lawyer/prepairer. Of course that requires money and money is hard to come by right? well maybe not as hard as some would have you think, at according to this article in the NYTimes (free reg, blah blah blah) would have you believe. Also there are some good books out there, one I liked is "crackpot or genius" which covered the basics of inventing and explained that you should do it for fun, not profit. Profit will come maybe and maybe not, mostly not.
Speaking of inventing, Here is a tutorial on microcontroller programming which is something my friend jack has talked about in the past. Now if only i ahd time for all these things... I must give up some of my time wasting to get this stuff done.... maybe sleep can be gotten rid of..... or not.
This is pretty cool: Scientists have regenerated an optic nerve in mice couple that with the recent regenration of the hairs that allow hearing and one day we might be able to cure Helen Keller, course that would require resurection but whatever.... details details details.....
And back to my favorite subject, the environment. It seems that Hydro electric plants are not so nice and warm and fuzzy to the environment as some would have us believe but then again, almost nothing we humans do is actually GOOD for the environment and we must live so maybe we need to look for the least evil. I still like the idea of generate what power you need where you need it, rather than generate tons in one place and try to ship it around. the other option is to generate the power somewhere else, like the moon, and beam it around.... course migrating birds might get a wee bit toasty every now and again but .... like i said before... details details details
Last item for today i think. It seems that nano-particles break down all kinds of pollutants. Recently and by accident they found that plain old iron filings, brought down to the nano size will break down a whole range of deadly chemicals in soil on a time scale of weeks instead of decades as was expected. Now someone has figured out a way to do it for trichloroethene in ground water using bimetallic (gold and palladium) nano-particles. One question, has anyone figured out that gold and palladium are expensive (worth their weight it, ahem, gold. and then some) and that making them into nano sized particles is also expensive, and that it might just be cheaper to NOT POLLUTE IN THE FIRST PLACE. oh well.
No comments:
Post a Comment