August 2007

There were 80 posts published in August 2007 (this is page 3 of 8).

One in Four Read No Books Last Year

Like my buddy Chris, I find this deeply troubling. I always have a book to read, though I don’t have as much time to read it as I’d like. I don’t think I’d ever have enough time to spend reading. I’d happily spend hours a day reading given the chance.

I picked this up from my mother, who unfailingly has a stack of thick books next to the couch at any point. Our kids have picked up the habit, too. They get an hour of storytime each day.

I know people today live active lives, but please! If you don’t have time for even one book, something’s majorly wrong.

Mainstream Media Sticks Foot in Mouth Again

In the same vein as my recent smackdown of the Independent comes news that another mainstream media pundit has no clue about the blogs and the Internet. Elon journalism professor and Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Skube apparently wrote an op-ed piece in the LA Times blasting blogs, yet freely admits he’s never read any. Josh Marshall and Greensboro’s Ed Cone called him out on it, with Ed having even done it once before.
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Too Far Away

I had a good day at work. I got done early and got a chance to tour neighboring Independence Hall. It even stopped raining here in Philadelphia. Then Kelly let me that Travis’s fever hasn’t broken all day and he is being taken by ambulance to the UVa emergency room.

I can think of nothing else right now. Dammit, I wish I wasn’t hundreds of miles away.

Cheap Thoughts: Acoustic Cooling?

If exciting molecules generates heat, would it not be possible to create cooling by somehow resonating those molecules, perhaps through the use of sound waves? If you could get air molecules lined up, for instance, using acoustical harmonics, would they not immediately drop in temperature as a result of their lessened interactions with each other? Even if only some molecules are harmonizing?

Its my understanding microwave ovens work similarly, only they add heat by exciting molecules. If a microwave was tuned to instead resonate those molecules, I would think it could be made to actually cool things, rather than heat them.

Ah, the things I don’t know and wish I did.

Rain?

It’s been drizzly ever since I arrived in Philadelphia. Around the time we were done at the client site it began to really rain. I packed for drought and blazing heat, not for heavy rain and 65 degrees!

Luckily a street vendor sells umbrellas not far from the hotel. I’ll wait for a break in the weather and hope to catch him before he vanishes.