ON THINKING
BEING RETIRED and all, I’m not much into organizational research. Nor have I usually found attraction to the Harvard School of Business. Its graduates always seemed to be cutting quarter-inches … Continue reading
RATS! TECH-FOILED AGAIN
GENERALLY, WE SAVOR our world of high technology. However, there are those who rue it. Schadenfreude, literally harm-joy, is the German word for our pleasure derived from the tough times … Continue reading
AUTOMOTIVE HEADLIGHTS, PART 2
THE BOSCH AUTOMOTIVE HANDBOOK devotes 37 pages of fine print to the subject of Lighting Equipment. Wikipedia’s Headlamp entry is also extensive, with 116 references. Here I offer highlights, with … Continue reading
OIL AND DIAMONDS FROM WATER?
IT SOUNDS like a geological magic trick: creating oil and diamonds from water. Aren’t diamonds pure carbon that has been squeezed by enormous pressures in deep Earth? Isn’t oil the result … Continue reading
THE WEATHER, DAWN AND A BUTTERFLY’S FLUTTER
“EVERYBODY TALKS about the weather…” is sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, though just as nobody does anything about it, nor has this quote ever been verified as Twain’s. No matter, … Continue reading
A PERPETUAL CALENDAR
AMONG MY many ornamental objects of questionable modern utility is a perpetual calendar. After all, there’s always the Calendar icon on my smart phone. Also, complete data are displayed, to … Continue reading
LITHIUM-AIR—THE BEST OF BATTERIES, THEORETICALLY
LITHIUM-AIR TECHNOLOGY comes as close as possible to the theoretical limits of battery energy density; this, according to Science, the weekly magazine published by the American Association for the Advancement … Continue reading
TRACK TESTING, POST-TAPLEY METER, PRE-WHIZBANG
I CAME upon some photos summarizing automotive testing as practiced when I arrived at R&T in the late 1970s. One photo brought back memories of the excitement, the technical expertise, … Continue reading
ARITHMETIC CAN BE MOD
MODULAR ARITHMETIC made a brief appearance in “Edo Toggles and Models”: In particular, 2010 was a Year of the Tiger. What’s more, modular arithmetic shows up on clock faces, in … Continue reading
VIRTUAL REALITY—30 YEARS ON
CYBERSPACE HAS attracted me since I first heard of it in William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer. The concept gained academic cred in another book, Cyberspace: First Steps, a 1991 collection … Continue reading
