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August 31, 2021 Archives
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
CONTEXT: Boeing 737 vs. Brick Wall
Posted at
14:30
THE HAPPENING WORLD: Wireless Charging for Electric Vehicles on Highways
ORNL has licensed its wireless charging technology for #electricvehicles to @HEVOPower. The system provides the world’s highest power levels in the smallest package and could one day enable #EVs to be charged as they are driven at highway speeds. ⚡ https://t.co/0zzPtvizMo
— Oak Ridge Lab (@ORNL) August 30, 2021
Posted at
13:53
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: World's Shortest Scheduled Airline Flight
Ninety-one seconds from takeoff to touchdown. It's faster on days there's a tailwind.
Posted at
13:11
TRACKING WITH CLOSEUPS: L. Neil Smith, 1946–2021, R.I.P.
L. Neil Smith, libertarian, prolific author of science fiction and political and cultural commentary, founder of the Libertarian Enterprise, presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party of Arizona in 2000, died on August 27th, 2021.
L. Neil's work introduced generations of readers, including myself, to the promise of liberty, not as dry theory, but by following the science fiction maxim of “show, don't tell”, brilliantly illustrating genuinely free people and societies, and demonstrating how, by exercising their freedom and its inherent advantages in creativity, initiative, wealth generation, and adaptability, they can defeat the creeping grey poison of collectivism and have a tremendous amount of fun in the process.
Here is science fiction and fantasy author (and frequent contributor to the Libertarian Enterprise) Sarah Hoyt saying “Goodbye, My Friend”. Mike Glyer has posted a brief biography on File 770. The family has set up a memorial Web site where you can leave memories of Neil and his work and contribute to causes he supported.
I'm going to remember L. Neil by re-reading the two books that introduced me to his work and forever cured me of being what he dubbed a “nerf libertarian”, The Probability Broach (also available as a graphic novel) and The Venus Belt. If you've yet to discover his work, they're a fine place to start.
Here are reviews of works of L. Neil Smith that I've posted over the years.
- Blade of p'Na
- Down with Power
- Roswell, Texas
- Sweeter than Wine
- The Lando Calrissian Adventures (the story behind these books)
Farewell, L. Neil, and thank you for the enjoyment, encouragement, intellectual stimulation and challenge, and all the laughs over these many years.
Posted at
11:03
CONTEXT: A Slower Speed of Light
This video game, created by the MIT Game Lab, allows visualising a world in which the speed of light is comparable to walking speed and thereby gaining an intuitive grasp on the effects of special relativity. In the game, the player walks around an arena of modest size and picks up orbs, of each of which slows the speed of light. As the speed of light falls, all of the effects of special relativity become manifest: aberration, the Doppler effect, distortions due to the finite speed of light, and Lorentz contraction and time dilation. A clever scheme is used to re-map the electromagnetic spectrum into the visible range to keep the Doppler effect from rendering most objects invisible to the eye.
This game achieves the dream of George Gamow's Mr Tompkins stories dating from 1939, which were the inspiration for Fourmilab's C-Ship static renderings and animations of relativistic effects developed in the 1990s.
The game is free, and available for Linux, Macintosh, and legacy Microsoft platforms. You can download it from its page at MIT. Its hardware requirements appear to be modest.
Here is the official trailer for the game.
Posted at
10:54