Cool Science

Let's make this a true diary for the moment. Ignorance is not bliss. I hate it when something is out there that I just can't wrap my brain around. Like now. I've got data that yields lines when you take the logarithm of it. But I can't explain why. It's just one of those 'done things' - you log your data and plot it and look at the pretty lines. A lot of people do it, but I don't think they understand it. See it means your data looks something like a^bx where a and b are some constants. Except the data doesn't look anything like that at all. Conveniently the papers never explain it. Go figure. Or I'm too stupid to recognize it. One or the other.

Oh wait. OK - I've got an idea. If you look at the two limiting cases and the series expansion of the exponential, then part of it falls into place. OK, so maybe I'm halfway there. Sometimes you just have to get mad enough to see past all your misconceptions. Still don't have it sorted all the way, so I'm still annoyed. Have to get madder.

A priceless quote from CNN:"The international space station's lone toilet is broken, leaving the crew with almost nowhere to go." It would appear, I hate to admit, that the astronauts will have to find some other place to go where no one has ever gone before.

Posted by Dave at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

It's been a long time, but still trying to to find my voice here. We'll see.

NASA made another mars landing look easy, which blows my mind. This is living history.

Spent a week at the beach recently and picked up a mild tan and somehow managed a real coup: first time at the beach without a burn. Might have something to do with being bed-ridden with a nasty cold for 3-4 days. But I still had enough time to try out our spiffy new delta kite from Kitty Hawk Kites.

The wind was low for most of the trip so getting the thing in the air was really tough. Spent many afternoons chasing the thing around the beach, hauling it in from the surf, and so on. One evening the wind picked up nicely, and I got the kite up in the air. With glow-in-the-dark pirate patterns, the kite looked really good. The wind was good because some dark clouds were blowing in and I didn't really make the connection at first. But then I felt my first good jolt, as I stood barefoot in the saltwater surf. Not wanting to accept the truth and haul it in when the wind was just right, I chalked it up to a freak vibration of the line (which was pretty moist from said surf), and I left it a few hundred feet in the air. Then I felt the second jolt, maybe a little stronger, and changed my mind. Who wants to go down in history (or outer banks headlines) as the dumb tourist who got electrocuted with a kite in a storm. So I reeled it in and lived to tell and I have to give Franklin some credit.

Then, to justify my hubris (hubris = fancy word for stupidity), I speculated about whether these discharges could be used to solve this nasty little energy crisis we're having. So just to get it on the record: I propose starting huge kite farms that collect atmospheric discharges and provide power to the grid. This could have a much better aesthetic than windmill farms. I'm on to something. IPO!

That's what I've got for now - maybe I'll go back to thinking about what a Hilbert space is since that's been bothering me for a while.

Posted by Dave at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)