Jan 31 2010
I have posted on Barsoom, which is the word that Edgar Rice Burroughs used for Mars. This is an example of a constructed language or a “conlang.” A conlang, per the Wikipedia, is one whose phonology, grammar, and or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having developed naturally. Two [...]
Jan 29 2010
The Wikipedia says that the Polish geneticist Waclaw Szybalski first used the term “synthetic biology” in 1974. He wrote a comment in the journal Gene in 1978 about the award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in which he noted “…the new era of synthetic biology where not only existing genes are described [...]
Jan 24 2010
Anyone who reads articles related to global warming and climate science will come across this large word,”anthropogenic.” The term anthropogenic designates an effect or object resulting from human activity. The term was first introduced as “anthropocene” in the mid-1970s by the atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen. In previous blog posts I have written about “climate-gate.” Someone leaked [...]
Jan 18 2010
The Economist notes that 2010 is the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society of Great Britain, perhaps the world’s most eminent scientific organization. The Society had a modest beginning at a gentle men’s club outside St. James Palace. On a November night in 1660 a group of followers of the Seventeenth Century [...]
Jan 17 2010
The Company for which I work is developing products which will support the Sustainability movement. In the area of real property that effort revolves around LEED ( Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for energy efficient and low greenhouse gas emitting buildings promulgated by the US Green Building Council. As one might expect, President [...]
Jan 16 2010
There is a good end paper for the January 25,2010 edition of entitled “Innovations Accidental Enemies.” The authors are with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. They note that if one proposes a new idea in business, the typical response is for management to request those proposing the idea to show [...]
Jan 15 2010
Back on August 8,2009 I wrote a post on a wind farm near Reno. Mariah, the mythical wind, has appeared in a new context. The San Francisco Chronicle has a story in today’s edition about the small scale wind turbines produced by Mariah Windpower of Reno. The small turbines called Windspires are capable of generating [...]
Jan 10 2010
In an article in Science Magazine’s State of the Planet 2008-2009, “Preparing to Capture Carbon,” Daniel Schrag,one of the editors of the magazine, outlines three possible strategies for dealing with the carbon dioxide emissions that are leading to the rapid warming of the planet: Reduce the amount of energy the world uses through changes more efficient technology [...]
Jan 03 2010
The China Syndrome is a 1979 motion picture starring Jack Lemon and Jane Fonda, both of whom received Academy Award nominations for best actor and best actress respectively. The movie won the Writer’s Guild of America award for best script. The Wikipedia explains the conceit of the movie this way: The China Syndrome is a hypothesis, or [...]
Jan 01 2010
The 1982 science fiction classic, Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford, is set in the fictional Los Angeles of 2019, a year now less than a decade away. The Los Angeles of the film is environmentally degraded and large blimps float in a darkened sky on a planet that is inhospitable to both humans and other [...]