linkalicious
During the course of the day, if I think of something to blog about, a make a little note. Now I could probably just as easily post the darn idea, but as you can see, that hasn't happened in a while. So pardon me while I clean house.
In the same week I came across a wikipedia article about Mitochondrial Eve and a yahoo news story about using mitochondrial DNA to discover the ancestry of the dingo. I found that interesting because a) I always think about Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door whenever I hear mitochondria and b) my college roomate Steve did research using mitochondrial DNA. (Actually Steve used chloroplast DNA since plants don't have mitochondria but the principal of female inhenritance is the same. Honestly I never did that well in biology so someone please comment and correct this if it's wrong.)
While browsing home pages and blogs of former Auburn professors of mine I came across a page that had an interesting summary of libertarian ideas: other people are not your property. This lead to about three days of reading libertarian ideas. One of the more interesting resources I found was a question and answer page that gives an idea of the libertarian view of a number of topics. It's a nice reference.
So when driving to use less gas, do you turn on the A/C or roll down the windows? A/C puts extra strain on the engine which in turn uses more gas but rolling down the windows makes the car less aerodynamic whic in turn uses more gas. So where's the line? I always though it was above 25. Some people think its more like 60. Everyone agrees it depends on the car. It'd be nice if that was a stat they put in the owner's manual.
Car ac vs windows
A few weeks ago sitting outside Pok-E-Jo's in the Arboretum I watched a storm roll in from off the hills. Every time any of us in the lunch group say a flash of lightning we counted the seconds to figure out how far away the bolt was. Trouble was, we all wanted to divide the number of seconds by a different number. So what number are you supposed to divide by and why? The number is 5 and it's based entirely on the speed of sound since for this purpose the speed of light is practically instantaneous.
Want to retire early? Don't have children.
Here's an interesting article from John Dvorak about important software from a historical perspective. I will always remember Dvorak as the writer who dupped Jerry into thinking vacuum tubes were the next big thing on modems in an April Fool's Day article.
Quote of the post:
"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do." -- Bob Dylan
Information on opening a franchise. "While franchise investments vary, you will need a minimum of $20,000 liquid capital (cash, securities, home-equity) AND a net worth of at least $100,000 to meet the investment parameters of most franchise companies." And this is for GolfTEC specifically, "Net worth requirement: $1M Cash liquidity requirement: $250K." Guess that's off the table.
Check my ImageStation page for updates. There should be pictures from the Auburn trip and Houston trip up soon.
8 Comments:
A few weeks ago, we were driving on a really low tank and I turned off the AC, which Stephen thought was preposterous (sp?)...I was correct
Anecdotal evidence for every car I have ever driven suggests that the decrease in aerodynamics has very little effect on gas consumption, whereas the AC guzzles it. I'm definitely using far less gas (a brief look at debit card receipts shows that I'm filling up far, far less frequently) driving with the windows down and the AC off.
Addition: But I don't drive on highways with windows down. Too much disruption to be comfortable. And I can buy that when you're going 60 or so that the aerodynamics would become a factor.
Ok, so I'm a geek. I admit it. But plants have chloroplasts AND mitochondria. I feel better now. -Steve
I was so hoping you would do that Steve. Thank you. Since it's been a while since you've had your science fun fact of the day, if you would like to to fill in the details of what you used chloroplasts for in your research, I wouldn't stop you.
I was genetically engineering plants to be resistant to Round-Up. This way you could spray a field of crops, kill all the weeds, and leave the crops unharmed. He were putting the gene into the chloroplasts so that they would not transmit to other plants via pollen. Chloroplasts and mitochondria are maternally inherited, so pollen doesn't have chloroplasts or mitochondria. The same holds true for humans... sperm don't have mitochondria so you can track ancestry along female lines by looking at mitochondrial DNA instead of nuclear DNA. There are also a few other reasons, like mutation rates and so on, but I think that's enough science facts for a whole week. -Steve
You had to throw that in there, huh Dickey?! In my defense, you really need to read the article from Dvorak and look at it from the perspective of a regular reader - the mans a nut, but he's usually on the cutting edge!... ok ok, so I forgot what day it was too :) And as for the AC thing, I prefer AC since its more comfortable, being a rather warm blooded person, but if its a nice day, roll down the windows. I've tried both and I keep, some would say, rediculous records each time I fill up gas, and the difference was less that 1mpg better with the windows down. (normally get 16-17mpg). So based on my own little experiment, I decide to do whatever makes me the most comfortable.
mitochondria makes me think of L'Engle too!
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