Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Brazil is once again taking the lead as a source for oil: Brazil's state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA in November said the offshore Tupi field may hold 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude. Among discoveries in the past 30 years, only the 15-billion-barrel Kashagan field in Kazakhstan is larger. Haroldo Lima, director of the country's oil …
Continue reading "Brazil Leads the Way in New Sources of Oil"
Muhammad Cohen's article No Friends of the Earth highlights the backward priorities that so often plague the environmental movement: Within days of the Bali breakthrough, activists from environmental group Greenpeace were speeding toward Antarctica, ground zero for global warming, with an embedded BBC reporter aboard. The polar ice caps are melting at accelerating rates, and …
Continue reading "With Environmentalists, It’s Always the Wrong Cause"
The earthquake near New Salem, Illinois--on an extension of the New Madrid fault--is a reminder that, for all of the publicity that earthquakes in California get, the fault system that caused this quake is the most dangerous in the continental United States. The reason is twofold. First, California has an extensive system of faults. While …
Continue reading "Why the New Madrid Fault is the Most Dangerous"
I usually post stuff like this on my companion site vulcanhammer.net or vulcanhammer.info, but I cannot resist this here. The abstract (summary) of this paper is below; click here to download the whole thing. Running a red light can cause severe traffic crashes especially when one vehicle runs into the side of another. Red light …
The idea of TSA "designing" laptop bags isn't the swiftest, but getting one that would eliminate the ordeal of separate inspections would be a major improvement: Relief may be on the way for the one-quarter of the flying public who routinely carry laptop computers through airport security checkpoints and currently are required to remove their …
I hope someone is listening to this: Using more than seven million monthly meter readings from Duke Energy Corp., covering nearly all the households in southern Indiana for three years, they were able to compare energy consumption before and after counties began observing daylight-saving time. Readings from counties that had already adopted daylight-saving time provided …
Continue reading "Daylight Savings Time Results in Higher Energy Consumption"
Note: since I originally posted this, the technology has changed. Now we have rigs to directly convert vinyl to mp3 (although vinyl purists cringe at the thought.) But I'm not sure these are the best way to go; the turntables and cartridges aren't always the best. I still prefer a Mac for this and use …
The Ninth Circuit--of all judicial bodies--has ruled that the State (dare I say "People's Republic?") of California cannot regulate on their own emissions from ships entering California ports: A federal appeals court Wednesday rejected a state regulation that reduced emissions from ships, dealing a blow to California's attempt to combat one of the major sources …
Mike Elgan wonders if the next ban on things taken on a commercial flight are batteries in laptops: Laptops are the best thing that ever happened to airline travel. They enable you to catch up on your work, play games or watch a movie while you are traveling. Better still, many airlines are now installing …
Continue reading "The Explosive Subject of Laptop Batteries on Airplanes"
I was a little surprised to discover that our government has opted to fund LORAN for a little longer. LORAN, or LOng RAnge Navigation, is a system whereby ships, airplanes or other travelling vehicles or people determine their position by comparing the time difference in receipt of radio signals from multiple sources. It has been …
Positive Infinity 