Cooling ideas (2) Jul 13, 2010
It was hot last week.  We can all agree on that.  But since I'm cheap and have a high tolerance for discomfort, my home air conditioner was used sparingly.  What can I say?  I didn't have air conditioning growing up.  You're too hot?  Stop moving.  These and many other ineffective temperature control solutions were the things I learned as a child. 

It seems to me that now that we've invented the iPhone and are colliding particles in the Large Hadron Collider, maybe we could come up with a way to make my house slightly cooler than the surface of the sun.  Here are a few ideas that would be cheap and easy, if I only knew something about electricity and air movement: 
  1. Solar-powered fan.  The sun produces heat.  The sun also produces solar energy, which can be converted into electricity.  Why can't we put these two things together?  I don't need a battery or a charger or a backup supply of energy.  I just want a fan that blows air through my house whenever the sun is shining.  How hard is that?
  2. Circulated basement air.  The basement smells weird.  But it's like 50°F in the summer, even when it's 90°F outside.  I don't know how this works or understand why our bedroom isn't located here (besides the smell ... and the bugs, the large, meat-eating bugs), but it seems like it would be pretty trivial to run a pipe from the basement to the upstairs, and just have a little fan blow some cold air up to the warm area.  You could even put a little air freshener in front of the fan to cut down on the musty basement scent.
  3. Cold air storage.  This is the easily the stupidest idea of the three.  But I seem to remember writing just a few months ago that it was right around 100 degrees colder than right now.  Why can't we store some cold air for later, and then blast our houses with a tank of stored frozen air?  And why couldn't we do just the opposite in the winter and use a bunch of hot air stored in the attic to heat the house a little?  It's stupid, yes, but honestly, somebody has to come up with these stupid ideas so that someday someone can come up with better ones.
Steve Jobs, help!  Give us the iFan. #science
Electricity whine May 10, 2010
It was windy on Saturday night, and the power went out while we were watching something on our already-full DVR.  With a certain tone in my voice, I said, "How are we supposed to catch up on our shows if the power is out?"  A White Whine indeed. #science
Manure lagoon bubbles Mar 31, 2010
I learned a lot from this Wall Street Journal article (via Neatorama).  So apparently dairy farmers store cow manure in giant pools, or lagoons, where it stays for a while before being trucked away and used as fertilizer.  But as it sits there, it decomposes and releases some methane.  As an environmental precaution, farmers are usually required to limit ground seepage by lining the lagoons with a sort of plastic, like a pool liner.  But this Indiana farmer's liner didn't work quite right, so manure was able to seep into the ground and release methane from underneath the lagoon, causing giant methane bubbles to form.  The problem with this is that as the bubbles grow, they could cause the lagoon to overflow, essentially creating a flood of liquid manure.  The farmer's solution is to cut the bubbles open with a knife from a boat used to paddle out into the lagoon, but the neighbors are afraid of either an "explosive decompression" (i.e. giant fart) or a fiery explosion.  Either way, this is one of the greatest news articles I've ever read. 

Related:  Antarctic Methane #science
Antarctic methane Mar 17, 2010
Scientists are warning that microbes living under ice sheets in Antarctica could be producing copious amounts of methane which could be released into the atmosphere as the ice melts, causing more global warming via the greenhouse effect.  Or, as Boing Boing put it, "Beware, the Antarctic Methane Fart of Doom!" #science
Peanut butter insulation Jan 27, 2010
About six months ago, Wendy was walking out the front door of our house on her way to work, and in accordance with the law of nature that states that buttered toast always lands butter-side down, her breakfast of peanut butter on an English muffin landed peanut-butter-side down.  She was in a rush, so she picked up the muffin but didn't clean up the peanut butter, leaving me one hour later trying to decipher a mysterious peanut butter stain on our front step as my first task of the day.  Funny stuff. 

The thing that's noteworthy about this event is that two days ago when it was raining, there was a magical dry spot on our front step.  This dry spot, of course, was caused by the peanut butter that had been dropped there six months ago.  Yes, I cleaned up the peanut butter on my way out of the house that morning, but I suppose I wasn't able to get all the microscopic parts that seeped into the cement. 

Which brings me to my point:  Why aren't houses insulated with peanut butter?  Why do my sinks, toilets, and windows leak?  Why is there no such thing as legitimately waterproof clothing?  Peanut butter can solve all our problems. #science
Too many options (2) Jan 13, 2010
From Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness: 
Our side-by-side comparisons can be influenced by extreme possibilities such as extravagant wines and dilapidated houses, but they can also be influenced by the addition of extra possibilities that are identical to those we are already considering.  For example, in one study, physicians read about Medication X and were then asked whether they would prescribe the medication for a patient with osteoarthritis.  The physicians clearly considered the medication worthwhile, because only 28 percent chose not to prescribe it.  But when another group of physicians was asked whether they would prescribe Medication X or an equally effective Medication Y for a patient with the same disease, 48 percent chose to prescribe nothing.  Apparently, adding another equally effective medication to the list of possibilities made it difficult for the physicians to decide between the two medications, thus leading many of them to recommend neither. (p. 142)
The idea of the tyranny of choice is an interesting facet of behavioral economics, but more so it's a scary reminder that human doctors have no right to be in charge of the health of other humans.  They're simply too predictably irrational, which is the title of another book on behavioral economics by Dan Ariely. #science
Phlogiston Dec 18, 2009
The phlogiston theory was a scientific belief from the 1600s that stated that flammable materials contain a substance called phlogiston that gets released when the material is burned.  It was later discovered that flammable materials actually require an outside substance (an oxidizer, e.g. oxygen in the form of atmospheric air) in order to burn.  This is one of those examples where a scientific "fact" was later proven to be completely wrong.  (via Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air) #science
Renewable trees Dec 10, 2009
Trees are a renewable resource*, i.e. if you cut one down, you can simply plant a new one.  Sure, it has to grow to the right size before it can be cut down and used again, but the principle is there.  That's why I don't feel incredibly bad about wasting paper.  It's not that I'm out to waste as much as possible, but I'm not overly concerned about the prospect of running out of trees.  Plus, paper is biodegradable.  So while it may sit in a landfill for a little while (if it's not recycled), it'll eventually break down into some pretty simple components and disappear into nothingness. 

That being said, forests aren't a renewable resource, and that's where the problem lies.  If I cut down a tree, I can plant a new one.  If I cut down a forest, I kill all the inhabitants and destroy the ecosystem, and that's not good for anybody.  So while I'm not concerned about using trees for paper and wood, I am concerned about where those trees come from and how many are left in place.  However, this is all outside my sphere of influence, so I guess I can't really do much by being concerned. 

*I generally don't like linking to user-contributed answer sites, but this one was written intelligently and concisely. #science
Smooth earth Dec 4, 2009
From Ripley's and verified:  "If shrunk down to the size of a billiard ball, the earth would be about as smooth as one!  Surface variations, such as mountains and the ocean floor, are less than 1/1000th of its diameter."  Mount Everest at 8.85 km and the Marianas Trench at -11 km are inconsequential to a 12,735 km earth. #science
Touch lamp Nov 30, 2009
Wendy's mom has a lamp in her house that lacks a standard on/off switch.  Instead, it magically turns on when you touch any part of its metal base.  This baffled me for many years, even when I recently proved that a sock doesn't work, though a metal object does.  It turns out it's kind of like the lamp's metal structure is a circuit with very low current going through it at all times.  When something (i.e. a human or a metal object) does something to interrupt this circuit, it responds appropriately.  I didn't get a chance to test this, but apparently these lamps are tuned in such a way that a cat's touch won't set it off; it only recognizes the electrical capacitance of a human, which is based on mass and volume and alcohol content (kidding).  Next time I visit:  Does Prairie the Cat make the lamp turn on? #science