HFO-1234yf, a climate-friendly alternative refrigerant for car air conditioning systems touted by environmental activists, may instead be a greater problem than the products they insisted was causing pollution.
Because I have played guitar some 30 years, I have always been interested in guitar construction. I have multiple guitars because they all have different tones and are used for different things - that doesn't always make sense to people because a guitar is a guitar but I am not even in the top 50,000 guitarists obsessed with tone. Eric Johnson, most famous for "Cliffs of Dover"(1) says he can hear a difference in the batteries he uses in his gear - and I believe him. There are too many instances of elite (yeah, I used that word) people doing extraordinary things to pass it off as placebo effect.
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.1. You've all heard that blondes have more fun. There is even a recurring urban legend that they are becoming extinct, which seems like an effort to get them to have even more fun while they are still around, but what about that most rare hair color, redheads?Apparently they are in their 50,000th year of not getting enough respect.
Our offices are in a building in sunny Folsom, California, a town made most famous when Johnny Cash had a concert at the nearby prison (*). It's one of those full service places where they have the phones and the furniture and a kitchen in the middle. It's obviously more expensive than a regular office lease but the riverboat gambler in me doesn't like long-term leases and I am convinced I could work from my house if my wife didn't say things like, "You can't work from the house."On Thursday I was walking toward the kitchen to get my 11th coffee of the day when I passed two fellows talking in the hallway. "No, the cost to run it is $3 million a day," says one. "That's ..."I kept walking."That's ..."
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.1. Greek fire ain't what it used to be. If you're a student of history, you know that Greek fire (πῦρ θαλάσσιον) was popularized by the Byzantines, mostly against Arab navies. We don't know what it consisted of because the recipe was lost to antiquity but it made enough of an impression that various other cultures copied it. Naptha? Saltpeter? No one can be sure. Greek fire was not an ingredient but instead an entire system. It required special processing to make and was compressed so that the liquid shot out. Thus it required expert handling as well.
Do guys like Bernie Madoff do what they do because of greed ... or ego? A Florida State professor says it's the latter. It makes some sense because it takes a certain drive to become CEO of a large company and that takes a certain self-confidence. But is it more than just determination and grit and confidence? Narcissism is the claim Wayne Hochwarter, the Jim Moran Professor of Management in the Florida State University College of Business, is trying to make.
As you might imagine, I get a lot of press releases. As I have said here before, I like getting them because it's difficult for me to know all the good things happening out there, especially if an organization lacks the budget to hire an expensive PR firm. A little proactive work helps get your message out.
There's this little company you may have heard of called GE. Yeah, it's the one Edison started and I don't know where you come down in the whole Westinghouse/Edison fight but one of those guys screwed Tesla and one did not, so I am inclined to like Westinghouse more than Edison even though GE stock obviously did much better.Hey, I can stick with my principles and still make some money.But GE has earned my respect, not because of Jack Welch (though he earned my respect, mostly by making the stock a gold mine and despite being a part of that annoying Six Sigma crap that has been foisted off on MBAs since the 1990s) but because they made smart grids seem kind of cool.What are smart grids?
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.1. In an overhyped analysis certain to make biologists want to reach for their pistols, it has been declared that women are evolving to be more beautiful:"Evolution has led to women, but not men, getting progressively beautiful, according to scientists" it reads.
You may have heard the fairy tale of The Three Little Pigs. In the original story (1), they leave home to find their fortune but the first one builds his new place out of straw and the Big Bad Wolf blows it down and eats him.By the time he got to the third little pig, who built his house of brick, the wolf got his comeuppance, but it still wasn't a great result for the progessive, environmentally-conscious first one.Researchers at the University of Bath say straw in housing has gotten a bad rap and to prove it they are making a "BaleHaus" of prefabricated straw and hemp 'cladding' panels.Have we learned nothing?
You're all either old enough or young enough to remember "Where's Waldo?" It involved a lovable scamp with glasses who would get himself trapped in awfully complex situations and only keen eyes could rescue him.We have our own lovable scamp, sans glasses, and his name is Garth Sundem. If you haven't seen Garth be lovable, watch this clip from his show on the Science Channel. I'll wait.
A surprising impact on Jupiter is big news this past week. The eyes of the entire space world have been riveted on the discovery of amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley of Canberra, Australia. Now Hubble is in on the act and has provided the clearest picture yet.
