Two punchlines come to mind.
1. Take away his credit card.
2. I don’t have to drive faster than the elephant, I only have to drive faster than you.
Monthly Archives: April 2008
Please Don't Do This to My Windshield
Making Lichtenberg figures. First video seems to be with an external discharge
This video is using an internal charge. Mind you, absolutely anyone who has a large particle accelerator at their disposal can do this.
(HA! Take THAT, Cool Chemistry!)
Let's Celebrate!
It’s World Homeopathy Awareness Week
I wonder if it becomes more effective as less attention is paid to it, even to the point where less than one blog advocates it.
News From the World of 'Alternative' Energy
At some point, I think solar and wind power will not be considered “alternative.’ But for the moment …
Cheap “Popcorn Ball” Solar Cells Set Efficiency Record
A record for this type of cell, though — not for photovoltaics in general.
This efficiency is only about half that of traditional silicon solar cells found on roof tops and calculators but with the lower price its is enough to stay competitive with the silicon cells.
The technology that will save humanity
Of course, solar thermal does have the drawback of needing a certain amount of real estate. Rooftop photovoltaic panel systems are probably going to help “save humanity” as well.
Big oil to big wind: Texas veteran sets up $10bn clean energy project
Over the next four years he intends to erect 2,700 turbines across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle. The scheme is five times bigger than the world’s current record-holding wind farm and when finished will supply 4,000 megawatts of electricity – enough to power about one million homes.
Biodiesel Mythbuster 2.0: Twenty-Two Biodiesel Myths Dispelled
MYTH #22: Biodiesel is only used by crazy hippies and Willie Nelson.
FACT: Tell that to the US military, especially the US Navy (which is the largest single user of biodiesel), the National Parks Service, Postal Service, NASA, municipalities across the country, and more than 130 school districts and universities.
OK, but you’d be surprised at the number of crazy hippies in the US military. Very surprised
Hobgoblins
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Consistency in how your program interprets rules, decidedly not.
John A. Wheeler, 1911-2008
A very nice writeup at Cosmic Variance
A Physics Rebuttal
OK, after linking to some cool chemistry, here’s a physics demonstration that involves flames.
Dave Letterman, Chemistry Prof.
OK, not really, but it’s a top-10 list:
Top 10 Amazing Chemical Reactions
The neatest stuff from chemistry without actually blowing anything up. (One reaction is labeled an explosion, but nothing goes “boom,” and technically the Meissner Effect isn’t chemistry, but I’m willing to give that a pass because it’s cool.)
A Trend in Need of Investigation
I notice a slowdown in blog posts this weekend. I wonder if anyone has investigated the posting habits of US bloggers as it correlates with the weekend before April 15, which is tax day in the US. I did most of my heavy lifting a few weeks ago, and finished up the last hour or so of details yesterday.
I promise not to depreciate non-taxable items brought forth from the previous tax year!
U.S. Tax system disrupts Casual Friday at Cognitive Daily
A BEAUTIFUL SATURDAY TO DO TAXES
It’s Too Warm to be Doing Taxes
One of the Usual Suspects – I’m sick of doing taxes.
The Weekend Daily Dog: All better now. …the way I felt earlier today while doing taxes
Doing taxes are the death of me
Twitter Updates for 2008-04-12 Doing taxes – yay!
taxes suck
That’s just a few, and not counting anybody who didn’t bother to blog about it, because they were too busy doing their taxes.
The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments
Johnson’s list is eclectic and his outlook romantic. “Science in the 21st century has become industrialized,” he states, with experiments “carried out by research teams that have grown to the size of corporations.” By contrast, Johnson (a longtime contributor to The New York Times) favors artisans of the laboratory, chronicling “those rare moments when, using the materials at hand, a curious soul figured out a way to pose a question to the universe and persisted until it replied.”
The “materials at hand” is one thing that continually amazes me. I read details of some century-old experiment and am reminded that their apparatus and supplies were hand-crafted, often in the same lab. You read about Rutherford doing alpha-scattering experiments in pure nitrogen. Did he order a tank of compressed nitrogen from the local welding-supplies shop, like I do? Of course not.
The nitrogen was obtained by the well-known method of adding ammonium chloride to sodium nitrite, and stored over water.
(My well-known method involves the internet and a credit card)