Like a lot of people, I’ve been reading this week about the European super particle collider. I was reminded that the United States almost had a super particle collider too. Back in 1993 one was being built in Waxahachie, Texas. After $2 billion had been spent on the project, Congress killed funding and the program was canceled.
The 15-mile underground tunnel complex now sits in ruin. Now it’s overgrown with weeds.
Gasoline is currently hovering at around $4 a gallon. I heard a talking-head expert on CNN say that it may climb to $6 a gallon before the end of summer. Normally I’d say he was just making it up, but he was wearing a tie and a tweed blazer. He obviously looked like he knew what he was talking about.
Why does gas cost so much? The experts say that it’s because of the price of oil. The price of a barrel of crude keeps rising to astronomical levels. Oil futures climbed all they way up to $143 a barrel this past Friday.
One of the things I don’t understand about this whole process is why gasoline fluctuates, but motor oil doesn’t. Gasoline isn’t the only thing derived from crude oil. Motor oil comes from crude too. It costs around $25 bucks to have my car’s oil changed at one of the national chains. That’s what I was paying ten years ago. Why has the price of an oil change not risen at the same exponential rate that gasoline has?
With gas at $4 a gallon, why doesn’t it cost $80 for an oil change? All things being equal, you would think that it would.
Not sure when these will make their way here to the United States — if ever — but Japanese company Greenhouse is releasing these wonderfully designed ear buds that make it look like you have a pig in your head.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve been called pig-headed, I could easily pay the suggested retail price of around $12.
They also come in white and black, but I personally prefer the pink.
When Thomas Edison wasn’t running around stealing inventions that weren’t his own, he was publicly electrocuting defenseless animals. He was trying to make Nikola Tesla’s Alternating Current (AC) look some how more dangerous then his own Direct Current (DC). He would normally electrocute stray dogs and cats, but one time he got to fry an elephant.
Boing Boing has a link to a YouTube video of Edison’s elephant electrocution. I’m not into animal cruelty so I’m not posting a link to the video.
Not only was Thomas Edison a major asshole, he was wrong. AC voltage is no more dangerous then DC. It’s the current that is deadly. High voltage normally means high current. It doesn’t matter what version of voltage it is.
The worst I’ve ever been shocked was not with AC, but good old DC. I once accidentally brushed up against high-current 28 volts and it felt like I was hit with a baseball bat. I’ve done the same with AC voltage as high as 460 volts and it didn’t hurt nearly as bad. Current kills, not voltage.
I think most people associate DC voltage as being safer then AC voltage because most of the DC they are familiar with is the low voltage, low current variety. For instance, the voltage found on a computer’s USB bus. It’s normally at around 5 volts with around 500 mA in current. Wall socket AC voltage on the other hand is around 120 volts with around 10 to 20 amps on each circuit.
I recently upgraded my cellphone to a Motorola RAZR. Not only is it the best cell phone I’ve ever owned, it does all sorts of neat stuff such as playing an MP3 file as a ringtone. I’ve been using the generic ringtones because I haven’t had a way of transfering an MP3 file to my phone. That was until this past weekend. I purchased a software package that allows me to transfer picture files to use as wallpaper and MP3 files to use as ringtones. It came bundled with a USB cable along with adapters for most cellphones.The software allows you to edit down a sound file to a more manageable size. I made a 20 second MP3 of the hook from BLACK HOLE SUN by Soundgarden and it turned out great. After that turned out so swimmingly, I decided I would try something else. I decided to convert over PUNKROCKER by Teadybears. It features Iggy Pop doing the vocals. It was used recently in a car commercial. I don’t remember which. I had purchased the song on iTunes. Every time the commercial would play, I would end up playing the song in my head. It’s a cool song.
When I tried to convert the file over to an MP3, iTunes informed me that I was not allowed because it protected.
I paid for this song. I can play it on my PC. I can play it on my iPod. I just can’t play 25 seconds of it on my phone.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is a blight on civilized society. It’s an unnecessary obsticle getting between me and the music I paid for. If I want to hear, “well I’m a punkrocker, yes I am” every time my phone rings, I have to burn the song to a disc and then import the one-song disc back over as an MP3. What a waste of my time. And to think this is what I get for actually paying for the song instead of jumping on The Pirate Bay and downloading it.
I didn’t even know that direct current (DC) electricity service still available anywhere, let alone New York City. It seems that alternating current (Con Ed) still had one lone DC power station still up and running and feeding DC to customers. It was finally converted over to Nikola Tesla’s alternating current (AC) electricity on November 14.
Back in the day Thomas Edison and had a long standing fued over which current was better. Edison pushed the idea of using inefficient DC while Tesla campaigned for the much more efficient AC current. Edison would denounced AC as being too dangerous. He would even electrocute live cows with using AC to try to show just how scary dangerous AC current supposedly was. In reality, DC is much more dangerous then AC.
For getting electrical power from one place to another, AC is clearly the superior form of current. It’s not even debatable.
Nikola Tesla was truly a genius and he was one of the most important men to ever live. Of course he died penniless and severely in debt because that is just the way Life works.
I saw this earlier today on Boing Boing. I have to get one. It’s called the OpticBook 3600 and it made by Plustec. It’s a scanner that is made specifically for scanning the pages of a book. Not only does it feature an ergonomic design well suited for scanning books, it features special magical technology for eliminating shadows near the inner spine area. I think the technology was devised by Gnomes.
Not that I am advocating the illegal duplication of copyrighted material. That would be … wrong.
I honestly cannot see why somebody would purposely choose to go out and spend money on a Zune mp3 player. Microsoft’s lame attempt at producing something to compete with Apple’s popular iPod mp3 player. I understand that Microsoft felt the need to once again go out and copy something another company first came up with. Once they realize consumers like whatever another company was able to come up with on their own. It’s what Microsoft does.
They “created” MSN when they realized people liked going online with AOL. They “created” Internet Explorer when they realized people like accessing the web with Netscape. They saw how scary popular the iPod was so they “created” an mp3 player of their very own.
Microsoft doesn’t so much as create as it does mimic. In the case of copying Apple’s popular mp3 player, they seem to have done a poor job. Worse then they normally do when they copy something. They actually chose to make one of the three available colors brown. Who does that?
Just who do they expect to go out and buy a Zune? People that have lost bets and must now do something both stupid and humiliating? Are iPods banned somewhere in the country that I’m not aware of? One of the reasons iPods are such a killer piece of hardware is because it meshes easily and seamlessly with iTunes. Microsoft has Windows Media Player. Ouch.
I’m sure there are some Microsoft loyalists out there that will run right out and buy one of these things. I just cannot imagine anyone really wanting one of these Zune players more then they would an Apple iPod.
Like a lot of people, I’ve been reading this week about the European super particle collider. I was reminded that the United States almost had a super particle collider too. Back in 1993 one was being built in Waxahachie, Texas. After $2 billion had been spent on the project, Congress killed funding and the program was canceled.
Not sure when these will make their way here to the United States — if ever — but Japanese company Greenhouse is releasing these wonderfully designed ear buds that make it look like you have a pig in your head.
I honestly cannot see why somebody would purposely choose to go out and spend money on a Zune mp3 player. Microsoft’s lame attempt at producing something to compete with Apple’s popular iPod mp3 player. I understand that Microsoft felt the need to once again go out and copy something another company first came up with. Once they realize consumers like whatever another company was able to come up with on their own. It’s what Microsoft does.
