A GLOSSARY OF COOL
CHANGES ARE coming in the refrigerant used in automotive air conditioning, so it seems a good time to bring things up to date with a Glossary of Cool. Also, it’s … Continue reading
COOLSPRING POWER MUSEUM
INTERNAL COMBUSTION engines built before 1900 are celebrated as “centennial engines.” And, among enthusiasts of things mechanical, the Coolspring Power Museum is a real treasure trove of these wonderful devices. … Continue reading
ENDEAVOUR 2012, MAIA/MERCURY 1938
CALIFORNIA IS home to a lot of the space industry, and many of us here were wacko about seeing the welcome-home flybys of the Space Shuttle Endeavour atop its Boeing … Continue reading
SOFTWARE PIRATING, BIG TIME
ACCORDING TO a Microsoft law suit, brand new computers in China are being delivered with forged software that’s already virus-infected. It all began in 2011 as a study of counterfeit … Continue reading
TURING NUGGETS
I’M ONLY halfway through Turing’s Cathedral, by George Dyson, Pantheon Books, 2012. Even so, I keep coming upon things I want to share. It’s a marvelous history of the digital … Continue reading
ENERGY ECONOMICS: ALUMINUM AND ICELAND
WHY EVER should Iceland, perched at the confluence of the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, have a viable business of producing aluminum, even importing the ore all the way from … Continue reading
A BIT OF ALUMINUM
LIKE HYDROGEN, aluminum is lightweight. Like hydrogen, it is one of the most common of elements. Alas, also like hydrogen, it’s among the most promiscuous. That is, aluminum loves to … Continue reading
THAR’S GOLD IN THEM THAR PHONES
WIFE DOTTIE came upon a fascinating bit of recycling knowledge at the Urban Mining website (urbanmining.org): There’s more gold in a ton of recycled cellphone circuitry than there is in … Continue reading
NEW ASSEMBLY LINE MOVES PEOPLE, NOT PRODUCTS
VALEO SA, a worldwide auto supplier, has a radical way of building its subassemblies, things like the front-end modules for the new Infiniti JX. Rather than the product moving down … Continue reading
SHRIMP WALLOP INSPIRES COMPOSITE DESIGN
THE PEACOCK mantis shrimp Odontodactylus scyllarus is native to the Indo-Pacific from Guam to East Africa. A large shrimp growing to 7 in. long, it has feelers that are so … Continue reading
