Fartlekking: The Official Sport of TAE

What with the summer in full swing, and the Tour de France about to start, TAE is feeling sporty. The last several weeks I've been back in the swing of riding my bike, and doing some evening yoga with my lovely bride.But it seems like most of the sports I like, or even kinda like, are saturated with people. Last night at the spot where I was riding I passed or was passed by no less than a dozen riders.So I decided last night that what I need is a...

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The Dangerous Notion of Bountiful Oceans

Friedersdorf:The idea of the ocean as a place of limitless bounty persists even now. That is folly, as evidenced by a long list of over-fished species -- cod, herring, and now tuna are but three examples -- whose populations have collapsed in locales all over the world. It ought to be the defining environmental issue of our time.It is not. Read the fantastic post here. And pray for your childre...

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More Bad Mouthing of Neil Armstrong

Woah woah woah...Neil Armstrong told us that if we discontinue the shuttles we'd have no way to service the space station except to bum rides from the Russians.And yet, here's news that the ESA (which stands for "Not Russian Space Agency) has successfully launched its 37th consecutive rocket into space.TAE goes on and on about the retirement of the shuttles being a good thing. I also go on and on about how ludicrous and biased old retired astronauts sound when they pine for a return to the days of yore when NASA was sending them into space (and...

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Tropical Storm Alex

Every kid hopes that "this year" will be the year that they get a hurricane or tropical storm named after them.THIS IS MY YEAR!!Of course, it would be the year that we really can't afford to have atmospheric disturbances in an already oily Gulf....

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Human Extinction During My Lifetime?

Sorry for the absence, I had a busy week, and regular readers know that blogging is about fifth on my to-do list.Earlier this week a fun interview (and by 'fun' I mean 'depressing') of Frank Fenner was conducted by The Australian. In it, Fenner outlines how humans are doomed, and exactly how soon he thinks our species (along with most others) will disappear completely."We're going to become extinct," the eminent scientist says. "Whatever we do now is too late." And then this gem:Homo sapiens will become extinct, perhaps within 100 years," he...

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The Human Supercomputer

Another supercomputer built to beat the human brain at a game.Another supercomputer consistently loses game to human brain.Both the above are accurate titles to this article.The human brain truly is a remarkable machin...

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Leaking Oil

TAE posits the question: How much oil must leak into the ocean before the entire world's ocean ecosystems collapse? As in, just how much oil can the world soak up? As in, if the ocean were a huge bowl of water, and the oil were food coloring...how many drops of food coloring would we need to add before the ocean was an incurably, irrevocably stained mire?My guess is quite a bit. Much of the oil will wash up on shores and stay there, or sink to the bottom and be slowly reclaimed by bacteria.But what if...just what if...this is the beginning of the...

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Imminent Nuclear Fusion Plants??

Ed Moses makes the case, based on breakthroughs at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:The question, Moses said, is "Can we build a miniature Sun on Earth?" The recipe involves a peppercorn-size target of hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium heated to 200 million degrees Fahrenheit for a couple billionths of a second. To get that micro-blast of heat, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) uses lasers---coherent light---at a massive scale. Laser engineer Moses notes that photons are perfect for the job: "no mass, no charge, just energy."...

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Cliche Sports Writing

This style of writing makes me so irritable. I actually haven't finished the article, I can't get through i...

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Why Are We Even Alive?

First off, I'd like to give a shout out to my boy, Jupiter. Over the course of our solar system's history, millions upon millions of asteroids, comets, and meteors have swung by Earth. On occasion, a few struck us. When that happened, entire ecosystems were wiped out, and millions of years were needed in order to recover.But with the millions of large, high-speed rocks floating around our sun, we should expect that the number of them that impact Earth to be relatively high. Not so. It turns out that Jupiter, with it's massive gravity and its orbit...

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She Ain't No Madonna.

I agree completely with this.This fulfills my obligation to ever write anything about Lady Gag...

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"LiLo"

Ms. Lohan,When you become uber-popular again, and everyone wants you to be a part of their scene, and they talk about how you've remade yourself like Robert Downey Jr., and they all say you are so hot again...remember that here at TAE we were undyingly loyal to you, and practically worshipped you, even through the worst of time...

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Bionic Breakthroughs

Here, it is reported that scientists have successfully impregnated a nanowire into the lipid bilayer of a cell. You probably didn't hear about it on the local news, but this is big. Remember TAE's Law of Bionics: All you need is drivers.TAE believes the great revolution in human-machine interfaces will come down not to some sort of innovative and breakthrough technology, but rather the smart people who come up with a way to code 1's and 0's into...

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Who saw this coming:

Scientists forced to question the existence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy after reanalyzing old dat...

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An Open Letter to Country Music

Dear Country Music,I'll admit, you had me. Back in 2000, when I went off to college, I was deeply engrossed in the pop-punk scene. I had every Green Day, Blink 182, and Good Charlotte song memorized, and could play virtually any "powerchord punk" song by ear on my electric guitar. I even went to see Good Charlotte and Simple Plan live, I was so pop-punk. I saw Blink 182 at Sandstone Amphitheater, saw Green Day in St. Louis, and was so all over the first Fall Out Boy album, back when they were just poppy filth.But by 2002, my summers had become...

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