Posted by science
on October 27, 2007
Bisphenol A (BPA) is one of the “highest volume chemicals in commercial production” according to a Science News report published on Sept 27, 2007 entitled “Clearly Concerning” (paid subscription required unfortunately). BPA is used extensively in the formation of polycarbonate plastics, which are hard and clear, and used to form “baby bottles, flatware, watercooler bottles and [food processor bowls].” It also is found in “epoxy resins used to line food and beverage cans and even to seal cavity prone teeth.” In short BPA is found everywhere.
Including you. BPA doesn’t remain in these plastics - it “inevitably leaches into foods and people’s mouths, such that traces of the chemical now show up in everyone’s body.”
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Posted by science
on October 22, 2007
It looks like the pessimistic estimates of a thing called “climate forcing” weren’t pessimistic enough. Climate forcing from greenhouse gases describes the power of these gases to forcibly alter the climate in directions, rates and degrees it might not otherwise go. In this case, we’re talking about global climate change and the inability of the earth to soak up carbon dioxide (CO2) faster as we increase our output every year. Scientists had thought that the biggest carbon sinks such as the oceans and forests would accelerate their consumption of carbon as we produced more of it. That’s what had been happening until the year 2000. However, since then the sinks have have held steady and our output has increased, thereby accelerating the rate at which CO2 enters the atmosphere.
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Posted by science
on October 22, 2007
Some tools no matter how great are just a bummer. The work that is implied by their existence outweighs their inherent, internal elegance. Charlton Heston / NRA has kindly pointed out that the gun is such a tool (though I don’t think they’re thinking of it in this way).
I use three excellent tools that I wish I had never needed to begin with - but HTML and HTML browsers being what they are, you might as well know about these tools too.
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Posted by science
on October 15, 2007
Frequency modulation instead of network stacks turns out to be a pretty cost effective way of getting your house set up for internet radio/streaming. I recently purchased this device which is a low power FM transmitter built by a company in South Africa called EDM Design.
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Posted by science
on October 11, 2007
I’ve been using this little utility for a while and thought others might like it too. It’s a Ruby script that creates M3U files for MP3 Players - basically playlists. It’s not fancy but lets you script creation of arbitrary M3U files for any number of folders. It automatically processes subfolders as well.
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