A Backlog of Odd Discoveries

The plastic in common plastic drink containers can leach toxin – or not. Full treatement in my other blog: Are We Lost Yet?

The day you always knew was coming: robotic penguins.

Bill Moyers with David Simon, one of the creators of The Wire on HBO. Simon says, “This is what happens when you have a whole class of people that the economy has no use for…” That notion has been bothering me all week.

Earth Day came and went with the revelation that my children are more ecologically minded than I am by a full order of magnitude – and I’m relatively green by my generation.

For humans on earth, under relatively normal conditions, the size of an object that can be visually discerned in 1/500th of the distance of the observer. That’s just to identify that something’s there. So, at 500 meters, you could make out one meter objects – but you couldn’t tell if they were bumps or windows or painted squares. Identification starts at about 100/1.

That information derived from here. Yes. Really.

20/20 vision is normal – not perfect. Sharp-eyed humans can get to about 20/12. The 20/20 standard is actually fairly arbitrary – it refers to how far away the chart is. In Europe its 6/6 – six meters vs 20 feet.

Fun facts from NPR Science Friday:

Got skunked? Don’t waste yr time with tomato juice. Try this method instead. (Including the basic chemistry of skunk sprays…)

Basic info on the agave plant.

Now for the Writers:

YA Fiction gets no respect.

A 12-step program for publishers (Good luck with that…)

And WSJ on E-books and the future.

Did I mention I’m not sold on Kindle – or any other dedicated book-reader? I’m not. The price point is too high for something that isn’t much of an improvement over your PDA (which also does other useful things…).

Now You Know.