Tuesday, October 6, 2020
The secret history of dirt
This is a bit environmentalist but interesting nevertheless.
It would be reasonable to assume that farmers have some training in how to take care of their soil as well as some incentive to do so. Otherwise, they would be getting lower yields every year. It is possible that they rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, which is mostly just nitrogen, instead of natural ones. Chemical fertilizers are derived from fossil fuels, which are a finite resource.
Thursday, October 1, 2020
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
The Infinite Pattern That Never Repeats
https://youtu.be/48sCx-wBs34
I love mathematics, physics and history. This is probably far more detail than most people would care about, because it might seem like useless trivia, but it lead to the discovery of physical properties that we didn't know about. No telling what we might discover next.
I love mathematics, physics and history. This is probably far more detail than most people would care about, because it might seem like useless trivia, but it lead to the discovery of physical properties that we didn't know about. No telling what we might discover next.
Tuesday, September 29, 2020
Pittsburg Antibody
A Pittsburgh-created medicine to prevent and treat COVID-19 could begin testing in humans in 2021, University of Pittsburgh doctors said Tuesday.
Safety trials of the medicine, dubbed Ab8, will start next year with the hope of getting Food and Drug Administration approval to begin clinical trials, said Dr. John Mellors, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at UPMC and Pitt, the hospital giant's academic partner.
The medicine — which is not a vaccine — is meant to help protect people who are already infected with COVID-19 from having it spread further in their bodies. It should last "weeks to months," Dr. Mellors said during a briefing, but added that it was too early to speculate about the cost of the treatment.
In an article published Monday in the medical journal Cell, Dr. Mellors and other researchers reported that the antibody they'd identified was effective in neutralizing COVID-19 in mice and hamsters.
Friday, September 25, 2020
Fwd: Watch Ring's indoor drone prototype patrol a house - CNN Business
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Albert Nelms
Have you seen the indoor flying security drone? Looks cool. Effective? Maybe.
Watch Ring's indoor drone prototype patrol a house - CNN Business
https://apple.news/AycDSafc8RDeUfgvHtpm1PA
https://apple.news/AycDSafc8RDeUfgvHtpm1PA
Thursday, September 24, 2020
Re: new thorium fuel
People have been talking about Thorium as alternate nuclear energy for a long time, while others claimed that there are problems with it, which is why it probably hasn't been very popular. Maybe this Thorium mixed with low enriched Uranium is something new.
On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 8:08 PM Larry wrote:
The U.S. Government Made a Powerful New Kind of Nuclear Fuel
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Daredevil Goslings Make a Terrifying Jump for Life
I have seen this a few times on Facebook and I am always impressed. I don't remember if I have posted it before.
Friday, September 18, 2020
How Kodak Detected the Atomic Bomb
The public health consequences of this are interesting ...
Dark Matter Is Even Stranger Than We Thought | SciShow News - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKrjGWpU4hk
We don't even know if Dark Matter is matter. We just know that extra gravity exists that we can't explain. According to Einstein, gravity isn't so much of a force as it is a side effect of curved space-time. Even while we are still we are moving through space-time, and the curvature of space-time exerts a force on us. (Which to me sounds more like a cute mathematical model than reality.)
I wonder if the extra gravity could be related to the Higgs field or some as of yet undiscovered field?
Do Black Holes have Dark Matter in them? Do Neutron Stars have Dark Matter in them?
We don't even know if Dark Matter is matter. We just know that extra gravity exists that we can't explain. According to Einstein, gravity isn't so much of a force as it is a side effect of curved space-time. Even while we are still we are moving through space-time, and the curvature of space-time exerts a force on us. (Which to me sounds more like a cute mathematical model than reality.)
I wonder if the extra gravity could be related to the Higgs field or some as of yet undiscovered field?
Do Black Holes have Dark Matter in them? Do Neutron Stars have Dark Matter in them?
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Monday, September 7, 2020
Fixing Daylight Saving Time Is THIS Easy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMrb56dDpic
I hate this clock switching with a passion. I've been an advocate of what I call "comprise time". Since we can't figure out what time we want to be on, let's split the difference and go permanently halfway between.
Sunday, September 6, 2020
How long does it take the Earth to do one rotation? Not what you may think.
It is hard to wrap my head around this, but the Earth actually rotates once every 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds. If you compare the position of the stars in the sky, they will be in the same place 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds later. However, the Earth is moving around the Sun in what is called prograde motion (same direction as the rotation of the Sun), so consequently, the Sun appears in the same place in the sky roughly every 24 hours. It is a difference of 4 minutes. It is the difference between a Stellar day and a solar day.
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Friday, September 4, 2020
How Hard Can You Hit a Golf Ball? (at 100,000 FPS) - Smarter Every Day 216
Not everyone would be interested, but what happens when you hit a golf ball at 500 MPH?
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Egypt
People began to settle Egypt about 10,000 B.C. These people learned to grind grains while mostly abandoning their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. This is technically the beginning of the Neolithic ("New Stone Age") period, where humans first learned how to use grains. Coming out of the previous period of glaciation, 15,000 years ago, the climate in the Fertile Crescent, which included the Nile River, became ideal for farming,
There is a small amount of evidence of cattle usage going back to 8,000 BC, but this didn't really get going until about 4,500 BC. During this period there were locally ruled cities along the entire length of the Nile. Eventually, there would be northern and southern kingdoms, which were untied by force in 3,100 BC, and this began the dynastic period of the Pharaohs.
Egypt was conquered by the Persians in 525 BC and conquered again by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. This continued till 30 BC when they were conquered by the Romans. Egypt began shifting to Christianity. During the late Roman period from the 4th to 6th centuries, they would be ruled by the Byzantine Empire, which had split from the Roman Empire. In 640 AD Egypt was conquered by the Muslims. It would be conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and conquered by the Napolean Bonaparte (the French) in 1798. Egypt was conquered by the British in 1882 and remained under their control until 1954 when the Egyptian Republic was established.
Egypt is one of the oldest examples of farming and human civilization.
--
Best wishes,
John Coffey
http://www.entertainmentjourney.com
There is a small amount of evidence of cattle usage going back to 8,000 BC, but this didn't really get going until about 4,500 BC. During this period there were locally ruled cities along the entire length of the Nile. Eventually, there would be northern and southern kingdoms, which were untied by force in 3,100 BC, and this began the dynastic period of the Pharaohs.
Egypt was conquered by the Persians in 525 BC and conquered again by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. This continued till 30 BC when they were conquered by the Romans. Egypt began shifting to Christianity. During the late Roman period from the 4th to 6th centuries, they would be ruled by the Byzantine Empire, which had split from the Roman Empire. In 640 AD Egypt was conquered by the Muslims. It would be conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1517 and conquered by the Napolean Bonaparte (the French) in 1798. Egypt was conquered by the British in 1882 and remained under their control until 1954 when the Egyptian Republic was established.
Egypt is one of the oldest examples of farming and human civilization.
--
Best wishes,
John Coffey
http://www.entertainmentjourney.com
Saturday, August 22, 2020
Tuesday, August 18, 2020
Phosphates and dishwasher detergents
For about 50 years the United States has been phasing out phosphates used in detergents, and they were completely banned about 10 years ago. The phosphates cause algae blooms that are supposedly harmful to fish.
The problem is that the phosphates were very effective in automatic dishwashing detergents. They not only helped clean the dishes, but they acted as a kind of water softener to prevent hard water stains, calcium build-up, on glassware on other dishes. About a dozen years ago there were a ton of complaints by consumers that dishwashers weren't getting dishes clean as they used to, and because of the hard water stains, the glassware looked dirtier after they were washed in the dishwasher than before.
I have been having this problem. There were noticeable hard water stains on my glassware and other dishes. So I tried washing once with dishwashing detergent, and a second time with no detergent, but I poured vinegar into a 16 once container and set it in the top rack of the dishwasher. After the second wash, everything was spotless. Since the vinegar is acidic, it dissolved any calcium stains.
It is believed by many people that "Tang" can be used to clean out your dishwasher. Since "Tang" is an acid, it might actually work. I had a dishwasher salesman tell me to put "Tang" powder in a cup on the top rack. (I would not do this with the detergent, because one is basic and the other is acidic. At the very least they would cancel each other out, if not react with each other in unpredictable ways.)
However, if you have stains in your dishwasher, bleach is much more effective. In my old house, I had a cheap GE dishwasher that was not stainless steel inside, but it had a cheap plastic interior. That interior got so badly stained that I thought that I was going to have to replace the dishwasher. After I played around with the dishwasher, I realized that each wash would go through three cycles: an initial rinse and drain cycle, a long wash cycle, followed by another drain and rinse and drain cycle. All dishwashers work this way. To solve my stain problem, I waited for the long wash cycle to start, and then I poured a bottle of bleach into the dishwasher. However, when it got to the final drain and rinse cycle, which could have drained out all the bleach, I turned the knob back to the wash cycle so that the bleach would not drain out. I did this a few times so that there was plenty of time for the bleach to circulate in the dishwasher. The end result was amazing because the dishwasher was spotless inside.
Saturday, August 15, 2020
Friday, August 14, 2020
Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Sweden: Lockdown Facts Fauci Won’t Tell You
I don't have an opinion on this one way or the other. I just present it for information purposes.
The population density of Sweeden is about 1/3 less than the United States, but both are tiny compared to the population density of New York City.
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