First successful Turing Test: First Turing Test success marks milestone in computing history
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First successful Turing Test →
Energy and economic models →
We live in an economic world. Economic models that were developed years ago were created based on observations of how the economy seemed to work at the time. As time goes on, it is becoming clear that early economists missed important connections. The most important of these is the role of energy and its connection to the economy. It takes energy to make anything, from a piece of steel to a loaf of bread. It takes energy to transport anything. Humans need energy in the form of food to continue to live. Clearly, energy should have a place in economic models.
~ Gail Tverberg from, Energy and the Economy
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I find this stuff fascinating; It’s this giant, emergent phenomenon. Billions of individual people going about their daily lives create such a whirl of activity and action. But the ultimate result is what… an “economy”? A path to “enlightenment” for humankind? Meaningless in total, but meaningful at the individual’s level of experience? Perhaps it’s simply [on the whole] incomprehensible. If you study a little chaos theory, you learn: The butterfly’s beating wings have ZERO affect on the weather. Instead, the fully understood system, (“stochastic”) is truly unpredictable.
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Electricity usage continues to decline →
Because of more energy-efficient housing, appliances and gadgets, power usage is on track to decline in 2013 for the third year in a row, to its lowest point since 2001, even though our lives are more electrified.
~ Jonathan Fahey, from Home electricity use in US falling to 2001 levels
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Sharks on Twitter →
Government researchers have tagged 338 sharks with acoustic transmitters that monitor where the animals are. When a tagged shark is about half a mile away from a beach, it triggers a computer alert, which tweets out a message on the Surf Life Saving Western Australia Twitter feed. The tweet notes the shark’s size, breed and approximate location.
~ Alan Yu, from More Than 300 Sharks In Australia Are Now On Twitter
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Cinnamon →
Cinnamon comes from the bark of trees. It has long been considered a medicinal plant. There are several varieties, harvested from southern China to Southeast Asia. For years, there have been hints that adding cinnamon to your diet can help control blood sugar. And a recent spate of studies adds to the evidence that the effect is real.
~ Allison Aubrey, from Cinnamon Can Help Lower Blood Sugar, But One Variety May Be Best
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Gut bacteria →
Scientists are just beginning to learn about how our decisions at the dinner table — or the drive-through — tweak our microbiome, that is, the communities of bacteria living in our bodies. But one thing is becoming clear: The critters hanging out in our intestine influence many aspects of our health, including weight, immunity and perhaps even behavior.
~ Michaeleen Doucleff, from Chowing Down On Meat, Dairy Alters Gut Bacteria A Lot, And Quickly
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Have you ever seen a copy of Gray’s Anatomy? (*sigh* No. It’s a book. The TV show is the rip-off.)
…also, Time Well Spent by Douglas Adams.
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Stumbling Blocks →
The story of oil limits is one that crosses many disciplines. It is not an easy one to understand. Most of those who are writing about peak oil come from hard sciences such as geology, chemistry, and engineering. The following are several stumbling blocks to figuring out the full story that I have encountered. Needless to say, not all of those writing about peak oil have been tripped up by these issues, but it makes it difficult to understand the “real” story.
~ Gail Tverberg from, Stumbling Blocks to Figuring Out the Real Oil Limits Story
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Hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball →
detonation of a hydrogen bomb pressed against your eyeball
~ Randall Munroe from, Lethal Neutrinos
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This does not end well.
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80% more energy is all that is needed →
[T]he world’s poor people are starving and dying for lack of cheap energy today. Driving the price of energy up and denying loans for coal-fired power plants is depriving the poor of cheap energy today, on the basis that it may help their grandchildren in fifty years. That is criminal madness. The result of any policy that increases energy prices is more pain and suffering. Rich people living in industrialized nations should be ashamed of proposing such an inhumane way to fight the dangers of CO2, regardless of whether those dangers are imaginary or real.
~ Willis Eschenbach from, Double the Burn Rate, Scotty! – Watts Up With That?
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Getting to space is easy. Staying in space is hard. →
The reason it’s hard to get to orbit isn’t that space is high up. It’s hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.
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The speed you need to stay in orbit is about 8 kilometers per second. Only a fraction of a rocket’s energy is used to lift up out of the atmosphere; the vast majority of it is used to gain orbital (sideways) speed.
~ Randall Munroe from, Orbital Speed
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