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Monthly Archives: August 2008

Bizarrely produced but beautiful fluid dynamics video

They take the computational fluid dynamics models and then test them against the real world. With good results. But what’s with the production?

WALL-E

Hm. 97% ripe on Rotten Tomatoes and with good reason. To get this and Batman in the same year really rather validates Hollywood as an institution that still has it. What Toy Story showed about friendship, and Finding Nemo said about fathers and sons, or the Incredibles said about families, WALL-E says about one form [...]

A pox on both their houses

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/the-worst-vice-presidenti_b_122491.html Brutal beat down on Lara Croft Sarah Connor Sarah Palin. If you make it through the article, here’s my thinking: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” I think people will vote for her as a mom-with-a-gun, as the VPILF (cough, hack) and as a symbol of America’s past and [...]

Obama’s acceptance speech… I wish I believed it. I don’t.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who’s willing to work. That’s the promise of America – the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we [...]

two words you don’t find together every day: quantized redshift

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Tifft http://www.cs.unc.edu/~plaisted/ce/redshift.html

Radioactive decay varies depending on the distance from the earth to the sun???

http://www.celsias.com/article/energy-crossroads/http://arxivblog.com/?p=596 Implications: I think this might turn out to be the ultraviolet catastrophe of our era. It’s something which is entirely convenient to study in the lab so it should be highly replicable, and it’s weirder than all hell. Here’s hoping that it’s not some dopey measurement error due to something else which varies annually.

Really good piece on energy

http://www.celsias.com/article/energy-crossroads/ Particularly on carbon sequestration, and the different approaches taken by Honda and Detroit to low emission vehicles. An excellent read.

Astrobiology rap

Oh, it’s gooooood.

Nanosolar raises $300m for expansion

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Nanosolar’s strategic investors include power company AES Corp., equity firm the Carlyle Group, and electric utility company EDF–the three of which formed AES Solar as part of the deal, Roscheisen said. Those alliances will presumably help Nanosolar develop utility-scale solar power that would be cost efficient. Other investors were hedge fund Lone [...]

Wind energy input is too much for the US national grid

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/business/27grid.html Also discusses the nature, function and structure of the grid in interesting and relevant ways. Recommended reading for an overview of grid issues.