Reality-Based Engineering

Two Articles On New Wave Of Prosthetics

These are articles that I like to blog about - huge advances in prosthetics technology, some of them essentially coming from DARPA - you know, the people that brought us the B-1 bomber and the internets...

60 Minutes: Bionic Arm

WaPo: Power Knee

Labels: engineering, medicine

Green Future: Thermodepolymerization

A Gumbinator blast-from-the-past!

Labels: energy policy, engineering, global warming, green

Monday Musings...

...things that I meant to TRY to post about over the weekend:

The SNL Skit with Tina Fey as Sarah Palin...too funny...

Anne Kilkenney's email about Sarah Palin (this is THE email that everybody was talking about)...
Everybody's talking about the McCain's camp's outright lies, and using the word now...
I've seen people say that McCain's "sound economy" quote is old...'cept it's not...
Just some Obamamania stuff...

Labels: 2008 Elections, americablog.com, Barack Obama, dailykos.com, energy policy, engineering, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Sarah Palin, SNL

More On Green Cleaners...

Yahoo! is getting in on the act...maybe they need to clean up before Steve Ballmer and Rupert Murdoch come walking through with white gloves to see how much dust there is??

As an aside, here's our previous green posts and to a local paper's article on green cleaners...

And here's another yahoo article about smarter, "I shoulda thought of that" engineering...

Labels: chemicals, effluvia, engineering, green

A few things [bumped]

I dig Obama. Loved his speech on Wright and racial wrongs.

I feel like Hillary would make a thoroughly capable president, in a political and organizational kind of way, but I feel that we need today the kind of inspirational president that we would have in Obama to stimulate the public's engagement in the coming years of transformational projects.

I've been interested to see how much the people working on Green Jobs initiatives entwine their Green with so much of what they call social justice and pathways out of poverty. They lobby not only to create programs to put the skills needed to solve regional energy challenges into the hands of local workers, but to make sure that those would-be workers have the support they're going to need, given their often troubled circumstances.

[RBE note - I added tags on Apr 1]

Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, economy, energy policy, engineering, ethanol, green, Hillary Clinton, peace, Spending

ASCE Accused of Coverups

Some people believe that they may have glossed over several important civil engineering failures in recent years, including the WTC collapse on 9/11 and the gross failures in NOLA from Hurricaine Katrina.

Labels: 9/11, ASCE, Boston Herald, engineering, Homeland Security, Katrina, science, Spending

Cyborg Spy Bugs

I blogged about this at some point from a front-page WaPo article...I'll dig it out later...

Labels: Cheney, CIA, computer, dubya, engineering, military, Patriot Act, WaPo

Bob Zubrin Presents His Plan For Energy Independence

Labels: automobile, chemicals, energy policy, engineering, ethanol, space, Spending

Friday Quick Hits

Olbermann's happy that his Special Comment blast was no permanent damage done
What is this about Obama and some sort of issue that Jewish Americans have with him? Dont get it...
Obama releases all his earmarks for his entire Senate career...he had previously given out his FY2008 earmarks on his senate site...in 2007!
Happy PI day!
Dubya strips a Ford-era oversight committee of much of its independence and power. Dink.
I had thought for sure that I posted something about ethanol, specifically how it's only got about 2/3 of the available energy per gallon as compared to gasoline, but I cannot find it (I did, however, find these posts on being green in general). Anyways, two posts about using methanol as a fuel alternative, and a respectable person who knows chemistry who debunks that possibility
If you really like baseball minutae, check this out!

Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, effluvia, energy policy, engineering, ethanol, global warming, green, Hillary Clinton, Jewish, science

Thursday Quick Hits

One post v. many today...just because...

* Great post by Kos on Clinton's strategy of turning Obama into just another black man and discredit the caucus system. Could not agree more.

* A great great post on the Burnt Orange Report about stopping with the stupid in what is supposed to be a humerous editorial, but really eviscerates the stupid Hillary talking points strategy in yet another way...one key point is that McCain won CA and NY, so does that mean Hillary and McCain will BOTH win them in a general election fight? Come on, end the stupid, Hills.

* AMERICABlog post on Ferraro leaving the Hillary campaign now that she's done the dirty work - and we know that she's been race-baiting for several seeks now (see the Olbermann Special Comment). Speaking of comment, a comment on the Comment here...and how Howard Ickes tells a group of supporters that she can only win thorugh SuperDelegates...

* Some Mark Penn YouTube moment of him doing something Ferraro-ish...

* Two TPM posts about the ugly way that Clinton is slogging her way through to losing the primaries by throwing all these harsh bombs, including mailers about Obama's supposed support of Farrakhan because Farrrakhan came out in support of him...?

* A great Robert Reich post about the coming recession and how it could spiral in to Depression and the coincident nature of our current situation to that of America in 1929-1932...

* the Space Shuttle docks with the space station...

* Spitzer's , er, ladyfriend, and Red Sox pitcher Clay Bucholz's new special ladyfriend...

Labels: 2008 Elections, Barack Obama, baseball, Bill Clinton, computer, Democrats, effluvia, engineering, Hillary Clinton, Keith Olbermann, science, space

Coolest Pitching Machine Ever

some non politics

Labels: baseball, computer, effluvia, engineering

Minneapolis' New Bridge

Let's actually do some engineering here on this blog...this is a Popular Mechanics article about the reconstruction of the I-35 bridge that collapsed last year, and really showed off the crumbling nature of our infrastructure...but, this new bridge is state-of-the-art. The mode of failure in the bridge was a design where the gussets used to transfer load within the truss structure were designed, or ended up, being only 1/2 the thickness they should have been. I hedge it in this way only as the NTSB was not able to find the original calcs, so while in the end its the engineer's fault, we dont know where in the design process this happened - the calcs, the procurement, or where...speaking of new beauties, check this out...oh, and here's the latest ASCE report card...

Labels: ASCE, bridge, engineering, USA

Science News

Two sci/tech items:

* This lead piece about the last, final upcoming repair of the Hubble to extend its capabilities to the year 2020.

* This article about the difficulty of disposing of the (finally!) new rage of UV bulbs that are direct replacements of incandescent bulbs, and gives a bit of future on the eventual banning of the incandescent bulb. Notes the owner of www.bulbs.com, which is situated in Worcester, Mass.

Labels: engineering, environment, global warming, space, USA