First the sad technology... In the office I work it is an old historic bank built around 1907 in a small town. The town is a nice town in that it has somehow escaped (to some degree) the idea of progress. The houses are old style Victorian, the speed limit on main street is 25 mph, there is an ice cream shop that is very busy in the summer evenings, and a corner deli to get a good hoagie. Well, progress is starting to catch up. We recently had a "light rail" railroad track upgrade where they put in parking, and train stations. Well, this means more people traveling into the small town which means more upgrades. They have just torn down an entire shopping center (coffeeshop, pizza shop, small grocery store, etc) to make way for a whole new shopping center (and a CVS pharmacy, which in this area, you can't throw a stone and NOT hit a CVS pharmacy). Well, there is an area right around the corner from me that has been a dirt parking lot and overgrown with trees. No More. Starting Friday, they brought in 3 gigantic machines, and in less than 8 hours managed to clear the majority of all the large trees and shrubs. A friend and I walked over Friday evening to see the destruction and it was sad. These trees which have been there for what, 100 years? Were wiped out in the blink of an eye, and cut right down to the stump and shredded. Today, they expanded the tree removal to a wooded lot behind our building, again taking out large trees in less than a minute. All this so that we can have another shopping center and some condos. So sad. Yes, I understand the urban sprawl, but to see it creeping into this small 200 year old town is like a cancer. Well, I can't dwell on this too much or I'll get depressed.
Onto the happy technology...
Perpetual motion. It's something I've been fascinated with over the years. According to modern day physics the idea of perpetual motion can not be achieved. This doesn't stop people though from thinking about it and experimenting. Good for them I say! Perhaps our modern day physics have overlooked something... Perhaps there is an anomaly that can be exploited. Me personally I'm convinced that a perpetual motion machine can be made using magnets. (Maybe not a true perpetual motion machine because a magnet will need to be replaced over a length of time because it's magnetism will decrease over time, we're talking a 100 years or more). Well, I've been hearing rumblings on the internet about a new discovery that again claims to be a machine that can output more energy than it takes to consume (using magnets). There have been several frauds over the past years, but this one sounds promising to me, because they are not looking to make a quick buck$ out of the deal (yet). I'll try to keep an eye and ear out on this to see if anything comes of it. Read more about it here on a wired article.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
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1 comment:
My heart too, always cries at the sound of a single tree being felled--especially for the senseless purpose of yet more stores. All those years, all that it has been exposed to, reduced to sawdust and wood chips--extremely sad and selfish.
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