rishel.org

12/17/2004

  • New Scientist Interview: Return of a "beautiful mind" - Interview: New Scientist has a neat interview with John Nash the inspiration for A Beautiful Mind. It is a good read.

    (via BoingBoing)
    (0)

10/8/2004

Batteries that last for months?

Tired of that laptop only running 3-4 hours on a single charge? how about a new power source being investigated. Nuclear batteries. They use alpha particle emissions to generate power, so they are as safe as your smoke detector at home. 1 cubic millimeter of polonium-210 could generate 50 milliwatts of power for 4 months.

yeah, it's not a lot of power… but it is being generated constantly. You could have a conventional battery/capacitor trickle charging off of this constant power supply for when more power is needed.

of course, this probably will never make it market because is has the word "nuclear" in it's name.

sigh.

Filed under: General, Gadgets, Science — Jay @ 9:52 am

10/7/2004

Birthday Weather

I found on the Old Farmer's Almanac site that you can get weather history for a specific date and location, such as my birthday. It was around a clear day, 50 degrees, with 12 to 30 mph winds. Seems just about my ideal weather.

So I got to thinking… What if your favorite type of day, weather-wise, is determined by your first day outta tha womb? Clearly I'd need more data points. The dataset of people who's birthdates I know, and who's favorite type of weather I know is very small. I decided to sample them all.

Meg's favorite type of weather is sunny, warm (I would say hot.) and having a light breeze. What does the Almanac say? 70-80 degrees, sunny day, light 5 mph breeze. Meg probably would like it a few degrees warmer, but I'd say this is pretty close.

Having exhausted my research subject pool, I am turning to you, gentle reader. What is your favorite weather? was it like that on your birthday?

Filed under: General, Science — Jay @ 12:11 pm

9/15/2004

Traffic Waves, Physics For Bored Commuters

I actually saw what this guy was talking about this morning. A tractor trailer had flipped over on the side of the road. didn't look like anyone was injured and the accident wasn't obstructing traffic. Of course rubbernecking caused a huge backlog of traffic.

Fluid Dynamics to the rescue!

Filed under: General, Science — Jay @ 1:35 pm

4/27/2004

Sniff… Sniff… OK, You’re Cool.

DAP, or Dog Appeasing Pheremone has been shown to reduce barking and make dogs more friendly to strangers. I can't wait until we combine HAP (Human Appeasing Pheremone) with Smellovision. If only I could give a dose of this to irrate help desk callers.

Filed under: Science — Jay @ 1:52 pm

4/26/2004

Sliders == NOPE.

A recent experiment appears to have invalidated the Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Damn. This one was my favorite, too.

Kills a lot of good science fiction with cold hard science reality though.

Filed under: Science — Jay @ 12:34 pm
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