Adam Fields (weblog)

I don’t know if the letters make it onto the Wired site, but my print copy arrived this morning, and this rebuttal to Intelligent Design made me laugh:

"I’m designed intelligently? As far as I can see, I was designed by an idiot. My parts are neither interchangeable nor replaceable. I could use a new ankle right now, and almost everything I do injures my
back. Some of my internal organs are useless, and can even kill me. My risk-calculation engine is useless. I am afraid to eat beef, but have no problem catapulting myself down tree-lined roads on my motorcycle. My judgment is so bad I can be convinced to send my life savings to a complete stranger with just one phone call.

The final stake in the heart of ID is that there are people we might
otherwise consider intelligent who, in the face of all this, maintain
we are functioning as intended."

http://1010wins.com/topstories/local_story_327153337.html

Via Boingboing:

http://www.bmezine.com/tattoo/A41118/high/tattoo4.jpg

" It works using the solar chimney to cover a large greenhouse which covers several square miles. As the hot air rises, it would escape up a 990m tower in the centre of the structure. Wind turbo-generators mounted in the chimney would convert this 50km-an-hour rush of hot air into electricity."

California’s getting one.

http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2004/11/solar-chimney-for-california.html

A good collection of the kinds of things that can go wrong with imaging optics.

http://www.vanwalree.com/optics.html

But these are LEDs. 22 watts to get twice the light output of a 100 watt incandescent bulb. They’re more expensive, but they last 50,000 hours. Also, they’re available in warm, neutral, and cool, which is a godsend if you actually care about whether your light is well-balanced or not.

I firmly believe that Edison’s lightbulb is pretty much done for as a technology. It had a good run, but it’s over. I was in the LL Bean outlet store over the summer, and every flashlight there had a regular bulb – they’ve been completely displaced by LEDs in the regular store.

http://www.enluxled.com/