Eight
pages of a sort of trivia, just the thing after a hard day at the office.
“Two things make tall buildings possible: the steel frame and
the safety elevator. The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to
the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the
elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these,
none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity,
and cultural ferment. The population of the earth would ooze out over
its surface, like an oil slick, and we would spend even more time stuck
in traffic or on trains, traversing a vast carapace of concrete. And
the elevator is energy-efficient—the counterweight does a great
deal of the work, and the new systems these days regenerate electricity.
The elevator is a hybrid, by design.”
—
“[...] In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since
the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is
there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman
needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.)
Once you know this, it can be illuminating to watch people compulsively
press the door-close button. That the door eventually closes reinforces
their belief in the button’s power. It’s a little like prayer
[...]”
“The lawsuit, filed March 21 in Federal District Court, in
Honolulu, seeks a temporary restraining order prohibiting CERN from
proceeding with the accelerator until it has produced a safety report
and an environmental assessment. It names the federal Department of
Energy, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Science
Foundation and CERN as defendants.
—
“But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists
at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down
the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a
tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit
out something called a "strangelet" that would convert our
planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called "strange
matter." Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental
impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy
Act.
“Although it sounds bizarre, the case touches on a serious issue
that has bothered scholars and scientists in recent years - namely how
to estimate the risk of new groundbreaking experiments and who gets
to decide whether or not to go ahead.”
This looks like a reasonable summing up of 58 pages
of dense text, and shows Paul McCartney as surprisingly generous, modest
and tolerant.
“15. The husband’s evidence was, in my judgment, balanced.
He expressed himself moderately though at times with justifiable irritation,
if not anger. He was consistent, accurate and honest.
“16. But I regret to have to say I cannot say the same about
the wife’s evidence. Having watched and listened to her give evidence,
having studied the documents, and having given in her favour every allowance
for the enormous strain she must have been under (and in conducting
her own case) I am driven to the conclusion that much of her evidence,
both written and oral, was not just inconsistent and inaccurate but
also less than candid. Overall she was a less than impressive witness.”
And some hilarity:
“[...] She places great weight on the contributions she says she
has made to counselling the husband’s.......and to the husband’s
professional career [...]”
If only more of these transcripts were publically available in the secretive UK culture.
“ "...not statements I personally heard him preach while
I sat in the pews of Trinity..."
“This leaves so many doors open for evasion. We noticed on
the videotaped sermons that when Rev. Wright fires up the crowd, they
jump to their feet. A Harvard-trained lawyer like Obama inserting
the phrase "sat in the pews" knows exactly what he is doing.
If he was on his feet applauding and shouting approval like so many
other Trinity congregants, then this statement becomes true, if utterly
misleading.
“ "...or heard him utter in private conversation."
“So if his wife Michelle, or any other person (a staffer or
fellow congregant, for instance) was with Obama when he heard such
statements, then he didn't hear them in private conversation. Harvard-trained
lawyers know that every adjective adds a condition which must be met
in order to prove that a denial is false, not just misleading.
“ "When these statements first came to my attention..."
“ "Came to my attention" is a wonderful phrase.
That's the sort of artistry that earns Harvard-trained lawyers their
hundreds of dollars an hour rates. "Attention" requires
an active psychological engagement. If Wright routinely makes such
statements, Obama would pay no attention to them because they are
almost boilerplate. Israeli state-sponsored terrorism? Why bother
paying attention? Wright has been attacking Israel for years. God
damn America? Wright has been railing against this country for years.
Who pays attention to routine stuff?”
“The
device could be used in buildings, subways and other public areas, and
can currently detect 24 pathogens, including anthrax, plague, smallpox,
tularemia and E. coli.”
—
“[...] Current sensors take at least 20 minutes to detect harmful
bacteria or viruses in the air, but the PANTHER sensors can do detection
and identification in less than 3 minutes.”
Innovative Biosensors, Inc. (IBI), the licensee the PANTHER technology,
began selling a product, BioFlash, that uses the PANTHER technology. Note
that, previously, BioFlash
used the precursor to PANTHER - CANARY, which can detect 21 potential
pathogens.
“The new device, PANTHER, takes the CANARY technology and combines
it with an air sampler that brings pathogens into contact with the detector
cells.”
“Scientists have found a way to increase the lifespan of solar
cells by coating them with a material that converts ultraviolet photons
into ones of visible light. Essentially, this takes UV rays and stretches
them into longer wavelengths, resulting in greater efficiency for the
panel and reducing damage to the cells.”
“It is important for solar cells to exploit as efficiently as
possible the full solar spectrum in order to improve power conversion
cell efficiencies to a point that practical, widespread, and low-cost
utilization is feasible. This is even more important in organic (small
molecule and polymer) solar cells, in which the external quantum efficiency
(EQE) varies more strongly with the wavelength of the incident light
than their inorganic counterparts. In many organic photovoltaic systems,
the maximum EQE values lie within the visible range, whereas EQE values
in the UV range are smaller. Therefore, conventional organic photovoltaic
cells do not convert UV light to electrical power efficiently. Furthermore,
the natural exposure of photovoltaic cells to UV light can lead to damage
and degradation of the device over time.”
“Designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, these “Cyber
Goggles” promise to make the act of losing your keys a thing of
the past, according to head researcher professor Tatsuya Harada.
“Cyber Goggles are equipped with a compact camera that feeds
video to a computer worn on the user’s back. The computer records
the footage and relies on ultrahigh-speed image recognition processing
software to analyze, name and file the objects that appear in the video.
Later, when the user types in a keyword to search for a particular item,
the corresponding video plays on a tiny LCD screen attached to the right-side
lens, helping the user remember the location of the item in question.”
right: the goggles and computer; seeing
a pot plant;
the image from the camera with labelling (in Japanese)
A statistical study says 14 years, which is amazingly
similar to what was suggested in the orginal Copyright
Act of 1790.
“He develops a set of equations focused specifically on the length
of copyright and uses as much empirical data as possible to crunch the
numbers. The result? An optimal copyright term of 14 years, which is
designed to encourage the best balance of incentive to create new work
and social welfare that comes from having work enter the public domain
(where it often inspires new creative acts).”
“The
device could be used in buildings, subways and other public areas, and
can currently detect 24 pathogens, including anthrax, plague, smallpox,
tularemia and E. coli.”