Daily Archives: May 9, 2008

Life Imitates Art

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Well, Art is busy, so life imitates a cartoon instead.

The other night on the Colbert Report, he interviewed George Johnson, author of The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments (which I’ve mentioned before), and the idea for which was stolen from Chad. The interview was standard Colbert schtick, and Johnson doesn’t really explain what’s going on with the physics, but the last 30-45 seconds is great, and becomes the XKCD cartoon “The Difference,” about science and pain.

UPDATE: if you are getting frustrated with the Comedy Central player, there’s an embedded link here that seem worked better for me. (I can’t embed the video myself, alas)

What Goes Around, Comes Around

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Make Ethanol in Your Own Backyard

A Silicon Valley start-up called E-Fuel is showing exactly how ethanol can live up to its name as “the people´s fuel.” The company recently announced that it will soon start selling a home ethanol system, the E-Fuel 100 MicoFueler, which will allow anyone to make ethanol from sugar, water, yeast, and electricity in their own backyard.

Still, they didn’t claim this was a new idea.

“What, you can run a car on that, too?”

(Reminds me of the story about someone who sold bricks of dehydrated grapes during prohibition, which included step-by-step of instructions of what not to do, lest you end up making some illegal alcohol)

Is There a Draft In Here?

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YES

Zach Feinstein declares for the NBA draft. It’s free. The deadline for “early entry” declarations is 60 days prior to the draft (which is June 26), so if anyone desires to go this route, it’s too late for this year. (One has to wonder if it will remain free once this gets into the wind. OTOH, how can they charge more than a few bucks? College players don’t have jobs.)

The short story is that I, Zachary Feinstein, have declared for the 2008 NBA Draft. As a 5’8″ 130 pound Caucasian, I am the perfect candidate for professional basketball. Also, I do not play basketball.

You see, I am not currently on my college’s basketball team (Division 3 just for reference) nor did I try out to be. I was at no point on my high school’s basketball team nor did I try out to be. I was at no point on my middle school’s basketball team nor did I try out to be. The last time I was on a basketball team was before Bill Clinton got caught with his pants down.

So there you have it, I, Zach Feinstein, am in the 2008 NBA Draft.

Make sure to check out the scouting report, too.

Now, I wonder: what about the NFL?

Oh, Now They Tell Me

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A while back I bought a radio-controlled helicopter to fly around the apartment — it isn’t something designed to withstand much more than the gentlest of breezes — and broke it in almost record time. A harsh learning curve. I strayed into enemy airspace smashed into the lights above the dining-area table and snapped one of the rotor spokes. Oh, well. I suppose it’s fixable, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. Add it to the list.

Now arXiv tells me why tiny helicopters are so hard to fly

[M]oments of inertia drop in proportion to the fifth power of vehicle size. This gives small helicopters quicker response times, making them more agile. But the real killer is that the main rotor tip speed in a small helicopter is the about the same as it is for a large helicopter. So the ratio of the rotor moments to the moments of inertia can become huge and unmanageable.

So it’s all because of scaling. Curse you, scaling laws! A disproportionately large curse!

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