Simanaitis Says

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Category Archives: Sci-Tech

GONE, BUT NOT FORGOTTEN PART 1

DOES YOUR HOUSE EXHIBIT obsolescence? Mine does, sorta, as described in a book I just bought. Penner is a professor of architectural humanities at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University … Continue reading →

May 3, 2022 · 5 Comments

eVTOL UPDATE PART 2

YESTERDAY IN PART 1, we looked at “The Battery That Flies,” Ben Ryder Howe’s article in The New York Times, April 16, 2022. Today in Part 2, we do a … Continue reading →

April 21, 2022 · 1 Comment

eVTOL UPDATE PART 1

“VTOL” MEANS “VERTICAL take-off and landing” aircraft. Drones are VTOL; so are helicopters; and so are aircraft like the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey, Hawker Siddeley Harrier Jump Jet, and Dornier … Continue reading →

April 20, 2022 · 1 Comment

BIOFUELS—ASSESSED HOLISTICALLY 

BLENDING CORN-BASED ETHANOL into gasoline has been seen as a means of reducing anthropomorphic carbon dioxide emissions. However, “Environmental Outcomes of the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard,” Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., … Continue reading →

March 24, 2022 · 3 Comments

EXTRACTING RARE EARTHS FROM WASTE

RARE EARTH ELEMENTS present an environmental paradox: REEs are key to green technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. Yet their rarity involves mining that causes significant … Continue reading →

March 4, 2022 · Leave a comment

DEISM—THROUGH A COMPUTER HARD DRIVE?

I LEARNED YEARS ago that our Founding Fathers were Deists. And I knew from Roman Catholic Latin/English missals that “Deus” meant “God.” Thus, I figured, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and those … Continue reading →

February 17, 2022 · 1 Comment

MY NEW EYES

I’VE HAD MY new eyes for about a month now and I want to celebrate the talented people who made this possible. Here are tidbits on my experience with cataract … Continue reading →

January 18, 2022 · 3 Comments

TWO EINSTEIN ANECDOTES

I WAS SORTING THROUGH colloquium presentations of mine from the mid-1970s—Geez, was I ever scholarly back then—and I came upon these two Einstein anecdotes. Their source was Ira M. Freeman, … Continue reading →

January 12, 2022 · 1 Comment

EXASCALE COMPUTERS COMING IN 2022 

 DIGITAL COMPUTERS MERELY count on two fingers, 1, 0, on, off; but they do so amazingly quickly. And the faster they count, the more things they accomplish. Recent articles in … Continue reading →

January 11, 2022 · Leave a comment

MEDICAL TIDBITS

THE COVID PANDEMIC has made me aware of SIR analyses modeling Susceptibility, Infection, and Recovery; of R0, R-naught describing Covid’s average rate of transmission; and of other medical complexities. Yet … Continue reading →

December 16, 2021 · 2 Comments