Ned Gulley’s Blog. Resident buzzwords: synthetic biology, ambient displays, swarm robotics, wise crowds.
Posted in Uncategorized on Jan 4th, 2010
Cooling your car in the summer burns a lot of extra gas, but heating your car in the winter is essentially free. Why? Because the tiny explosions that push the car are also hot. Just scoop up some of the waste heat and pour it on the driver. Problem solved. The car is a natural [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 16th, 2009
There’s an old email meme that you still see from time to time about how ancient Roman roads determined the width of modern railroads. Snopes tells us that it’s not terribly accurate, but the moral is clear enough: precedents are hard to shake. Some patterns, like which side of the road you drive on, are [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Sep 11th, 2009
The Economist gives a surprisingly upbeat assessment of the future of electric cars in this week’s article The electrification of motoring. I hope they’re right. It seems clear enough that if the battery cost comes down, then a lot can be simplified out of a car. This is looking pretty far down the road, but [...]
Posted in Uncategorized on Dec 29th, 2008
My family was up visiting my wife’s uncle in Maine this weekend. He told us some harrowing stories: for the better part of a week, his house in York was without power after the recent ice storm (the lights were on in time for our visit, mercifully). A few hours without power can be a [...]
