Saturday, September 30, 2023
Sports on TV
Tuesday, September 26, 2023
Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - September 26
Dave’s Musings
NASA had an ambitious mission to land a craft on an asteroid, take a sample of the asteroid, and then return the sample to Earth for further study. This past weekend, the sample landed in the desert in Utah and will be studied in the coming months. Its exciting and interesting. But there is more to this story... Queen (the band) guitarist Brian May was involved in the program - he's an astrophysicist after all - and was an integral part of the plan to bring home the rock. Photo from ABC News | There's a group of academics who suggests that we have been mis-interpreting Newton's first law. Of course, Newton wrote in Latin, and we have translated it into many different languages. In short, their belief is that QUATENUS should be translated as "insofar" instead of "unless" which would mean that Newton understood that everything would affect the motion. Lex I: Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus a viribus impressis cogitur statum illum mutare Which has been translated commonly as: Every body perseveres in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed thereon. As a quick aside: bear this in mind when reading something that has been translated. Some words may not be "correct" or might have a slightly different meaning than what was intended. |
Brightline (a privately held company) debuted high speed rail between Miami and Orlando this week. You may recall that this was originally intended to get passengers easily between South Florida and Disney World, but was modified to go to Orlando International Airport...and from there you are on your own. The cost is around $160 round trip per person, and will take close to three and a half hours (nearly the same as driving). I'm not quite seeing the value proposition - but I'm willing to let it play out for a while, and I may even want to try it out sometime myself. | There's an odd story about a fictitious company that somehow managed to get into the airplane parts market. They sold parts that had forged paperwork (that looked "correct"), but which weren't OEM and didn't pass the standard checks. And after taking in large sums of money, the company has disappeared. But these parts were sold to most airlines around the world, and were installed in many aircraft. They're being removed, but it did pose a public risk. You can read the whole story here: |
The principal of Monarch Learning Academy in Orlando, Marguerite McNeill, said “I don’t know what the fear of knowledge, I don’t understand fear of knowledge. I have more of a fear of lack of knowledge, right?”
Monarch - and others - teach the AP African American History that is now not allowed in Florida public schools. And they take field trips to places like Alabama, so students can see first hand what has happened in our past.
Rather than thinking it makes some people uncomfortable, and literally whitewashing history.
We need a lot more of this kind of leadership in the world.
Dave’s latest video | I've got a short video where I'm talking about EV charging, and how adoption is going. https://youtu.be/Qpu_sLO6pqI?si=0KvBgL7XVEqNA_qz |
Thursday, September 21, 2023
Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - September 19
Dave’s Musings
One of the great things about science overall is the notion that we create theories to explain the world (and universe) around us, but are willing to accept that new evidence may challenge these theories. We had a theory about the universe and how it expands. Along came the Hubble Space Telescope, and it suggested a different answer. Scientists called the difference the "Hubble tension" ... the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope would hopefully show something that matched with the original theory. Except that it confirmed what Hubble showed, and now there's a cosmological problem of sorts. And while its a relatively minor argument, and scientists disagree, they all are aware that we may have a new accepted theory of how this all works. https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/jwst-confirms-worsens-hubble-tension/ | The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently announced that they are working on Wireless Energy Transmission, using high energy lasers. Of course the intended purpose is for ensuring the military can be powered anywhere in the world. But even so, the concept is intriguing and may be an enormous breakthrough. A lesser-known nugget: Nikola Tesla proposed the idea of wireless energy transmission nearly 100 years ago. He even tested the theory and started to build a tower to provide energy to an area in New Jersey. (but that's a story for another day) Intriguingly - and not to sound like a conspiracy theorist - all of his notes and records for everything he was working on (a "death ray" among them) were confiscated by the FBI upon his death. Interesting Engineering - DARPA |
There's a bear in Disney World! Although guests are used to seeing Henry, Big Al, Liver Lips, Wendell and the rest of the Country Bears in Frontierland, this was different. A real life black bear was spotted near the Magic Kingdom, although it was incorrectly reported that it was in the park. I mean why would they let him in without a ticket? He was in a backstage area near (what was) Splash Mountain. So as a precaution, some areas of the park were closed until he could be safely removed and relocated to the Forest in Ocala. As far as I know, its the first time this has ever happened in Disney World. Which may suggest that habitats are changing for bears as they wander further away. Just a little something to consider. | I was reading that Starbucks - with its global coffee chain accounting for more locations than any other store - wants to do away with single use cups and lids. An admirable goal, to be sure. But the question is how? They've been testing out compostable lids in some places. And they have plenty of ideas for the cups: making them compostable, forming a cup sharing program, washing cups, and offering an opportunity for customers to bring their own cup. To me, the one thing that would really work with customers is to engage them with an incentive. Bring a cup, return a cup. or otherwise contribute, and get a discount. Financial incentives and making people feel a part of something seems obvious. Its worth keeping an eye on because of their reach - and the amount of waste that is produced because of them. What they do will be replicated by others. |
Dave’s latest video | Jimmy Carter turns 99 on October 1st. I'd like to point you to a video I did about a visit to Disney World on his 54th birthday. |
Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Feeling melancholy
The great Cornholio!
Saturday, September 16, 2023
Jimmy Carter is turning 99
Jimmy Carters birthday is on October 1st
You can send a virtual greeting as part of a birthday mosaic by visiting this site: https://www.cartercenter.org/news/upcoming_events/promo/jimmy-carter-99th-birthday.html
I did mine, which you can see here: https://livemosaics.com/share.php?key=TTMzMTIwMTF8cDB8TTc5NTQyOTEtMXxlbg==
Why a Disney picture. He visited Disney world on his birthday while he was serving as president! You can view that story here:
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Florida's Brightline Train Is Officially Launching In September
One would have to also pay to park at Ft Lauderdale (or take a ride share), and then still get from the Orlando airport to whatever destination via public transit, or a ride share.
Back of the envelope here:
$80 for the ticket + $30 to get to the Brightline + $30 to get to destination.
And then the reverse. That's $140 x 2.
$280 for an individual to go to Orlando and home.
What of time?
They say it's about 2.5 hours to get between the airports. Plus transit to the airport. Plus transit from. So probably 3.5 hours door to door.
Which is the same as driving.
I fail to see the value proposition.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/brightline-orlando-florida-train-7500551
Short. Sweet. To the point. That's the beauty Dave's iPhone.
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Bitchin Dave's Newsletter - September 12
Dave’s Musings
What is believed to be an asteroid collided with Jupiter a couple of weeks ago. And an amateur astronomer happened to capture an image of it in real time. It is worth a look! | MIT has developed a cooling system that uses no electricity, and provides 300% better cooling than a similar evaporative cooling system. Its still in a development stage, but the solution could provide a low cost solution to large portions of the world that are experience extreme heat. |
Disney made some big announcements related to Disney World at the D23 event last week. In short, Disney is planning to invest $10s of billions into the Florida theme parks, in spite of the nonsense with Florida's governor. The plan is update some rides and attractions, to further incorporate Intellectual Property, and to enhance guest experiences. While so far the details are about relatively small changes, I look forward to seeing how this evolve. | Science continues to find solutions to problems. Here's an article about a "Win-Win for Climate" In short, scientists ground up silicate rock and applied it to a field, and saw a reduction in CO2 production from the plants, which otherwise would have wound up in the atmosphere. As I've noted before, simple solutions are sometimes the best ones, and are easy to overlook at times. https://phys.org/news/2023-08-climate-win-win-quantifies-benefits-weathering.amp |
Dave’s latest video | Data privacy, as it relates to cars is a topic that doesn't get much attention. I've made a short video on the topic. |