Dinomite.net

If I had this kind of cash, I would be of the same opinion:

Myhrvold’s friends, like Myhrvold, seemed to be of the opinion that there is no downside to having a CAT scanner, especially if you can get it for twenty-nine hundred dollars.

The New Yorker has a very interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point about Intellectual Ventures, a company that does nothing but think up inventions. They occasionally call sessions to which smart people are invited to talk and come up with patentable ideas, hand them to lawyers and then sell the patents.

Amongst all of the recent news about climate change, I started hearing about large corporations, even oil and car companies, who were backing legislation such as carbon caps. The most notable of these groups is the US Climate Action Partnership which includes companies like BP America and PG&E that are throughly tied to fossil fuels. Why are these companies supportive of legislation that will create wholesale changes in the manner in which their industries operate?

First and foremost, these companies aren’t stupid and realize that, given the current political climate where human-induced global warming has become accepted as truth, their best move is to mitigate the effects of legislation that changes the way their businesses operate. The best way to run any business is to simply keep on trucking; if you can sell the same product or service without having to change what you deliver or the manner in which you create it, your operating costs will be very low. A cap-and-trade system would certainly change the way any carbon-producing industry must operate, but it probably wouldn’t require as much change in facilities and production methods as more specifically defined legislation. Cap-and-trade simply states, “Either release less carbon or buy the right to pollute more from someone else.” This gives companies a lot of options.

The more sinister reason that carbon producers support cap-and-trade legislation is that they know the world is changing. Alternative fuels are gaining momentum as gas prices soar and hatred of pollution and high prices adds to the animosity towards carbon-based fuels. Tempering this hatred with pseudo-green initiatives like supporting carbon-control legislation may help fossil-fuel dependent companies stand up to other energy sources. This also has the side effect of possibly convincing some rainy-day environmentalists that oil companies aren’t so bad after all.

I just finish reading Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, which is a very good book. At one point he notes that the bible stipulates Pi is exactly 3. I wondered how such a book would lay out mathematical constants, but it’s pretty straightforward:

The sea was then cast; it was made with a circular rim, and measured ten cubits across, five in height, and thirty in circumference. Under the brim, gourds encircled it, ten to the cubit all the way around; the gourds were in two rows and were cast in one mold with the sea.

Kings 7:23-24

He also made the molten sea. It was perfectly round, ten cubits in diameter, five in depth, and thirty in circumference

II Chronicles 4:2

I must say that it’s a weak argument, because they could be simply approximations by an observer, but it’s funny nonetheless.

This week and last, news outlets have mentioned the rising price of tortillas in Mexico. It seems humorous on the surface but tortillas are the staple food of Mexico’s poor and the 14% increase in prices for the commodity in the past year, as compared to the country’s 4% inflation, is significant for many. Tortillas have increased in price because the white corn from which they are made has similarly increased in value due in part to the increased demand for yellow corn that is used to make ethanol.

One of the authors of Freaknomics, Stephen Dubner, recently mentioned in his blog that these increase in corn prices stem from the high price of oil, which bolsters demand for ethanol. Anyone who has read The Omnivore’s Dillema knows that corn is the basis for nearly all industrially produced food in the United States. Could Dubner be right that this oil prices could lead to less obese Americans through a convoluted chain of corn?

I’ve been reading Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh, an excellent history of all cosmology. The book starts with the very beginning of astronomical exploration, such as Eratosthenes who was the first to estimate the Earth’s diameter. I’m nearing the end of the book (the mid 1900’s, shortly after the Big Bang theory was created) and ran across this, George Gamow’s version of the bible’s Genesis:

<

blockquote> In the beginning God created Radiation and Ylem. And the Ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly upon the face of the deep.

And God said: “Let there be mass two.” And there was mass two. And God saw deuterium, and it was good.

And God said: “Let there be mass three.” And there was mass three. And God saw tritium, and it was good.

And God continued to call numbers until He came to the transuranium elements. But when He looked back on his work, He saw that it was not good. In the excitement of counting, He had missed calling for mass five, and so, naturally, no heavier elements could have been formed.

God was very disappointed by that slip and wanted to contract the universe again and start everything from the beginning. But that would be much too simple. Instead, being Almighty, God decided to make heavy elements in the most impossible way.

And so God said: “Let there be Hoyle.” And there was Hoyle. And God saw Hoyle and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased.

And so Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by means of supernova explosions. But in doing so, Hoyle had to follow the blueprint of abundances which God prepared earlier when He had planned to make the elements from Ylem.

Thus, with the help of God, Hoyle made all heavy elements in stars, but it was so complicated that neither Hoyle, nor God, nor anybody else can now figure out exactly how it was done. </blockquote

So, I knew it was going to be cold on Thursday when the NPR 5 minute news brief, which sticks to big stories like terrorists taking control of Israel or massive protests by fundamentalists, had a guy from the National Weather Service on saying, “This is going to be the first arctic air burst we’ve had all year; it’s going to be quite cold.”

I was reading a Wikipedia article on GPS which made a very good point: given their immense speed, the clocks GPS satellites are affected by relativity. GPS satellites reside in an intermediate earth orbit such that the difference in the speed versus that of the surface of the Earth is quite significant. Due to this great speed difference, the clocks on-board GPS satellites are affected by special (as well as general) relativity and as such differ from a clock on Earth’s surface by about 38 microseconds per day. For anyone who has ever been interested in relativity or quantum theory, this is an amazing example of relativity in a real-life and thoroughly used system.