Sunday Silliness - Tranquility :o)

Philosophical Phun- Humanity :o)

"We are mortal animals with an inevitable expiration date and we have the unenviable capacity to know it."  Paul Pardi, Philosophy News.


How do animals live?  Survive the best you can (eat, sleep, defecate, frolic...), raise the next generation, and when its time to go, leave this fleeting place with perhaps a precious few having a lingering memory or our existence. This is our essence and we must deal with it.

To be human is to be dissatisfied with this essence. To be human is to transcend the mere functions of the body and mind and to become something more.  We are beings with the ability to make choices that shape what we can become.  We believe we have choice, that our future is not predetermined, and that with enough will-power and effort we can bend our corner of the universe according to our hopes and dreams.  To be human, is to fully embrace our chaotic reality and acknowledge that it is solitary, brutish and short. Ultimately, the universe wins but we strive to become and not merely be anyway.

We want life to mean something, however small, to the wider world.  We want to be more than just having been.  It’s to endeavor to expand beyond ourselves, if such a thing is possible, and become something more than common.  The paradox is that the more we try, the harder and more demanding it becomes.

Self Realization!

The Haunted Meeting

In the spirit of Halloween, with this the last working day prior to, here is one of my BobandTom classic favorites.



Here is a ">link to their website :o)

Science Scene - Dog Shake Geekiness :o)

A Georgia Institute of Technology team built a mathematical model of the processes involved, reasoning that surface tension between the water and the dog's hair is what keeps the dog wet. Overcoming that tension requires a centripetal force that exceeds it.

As centripetal force varies with distance from the centre of the creature, its radius is therefore crucial to work out the speed of the oscillations. The team arrived at an equation that calculates the frequency of that oscillation as R^0.5.

To test that hypothesis, the team filmed a wide range of dogs shaking, and used the images to calculate the period of oscillation. For a labrador retriever, that turned out to be 4.3 Hz. He then expanded the search, filming animals as small as mice (27 Hz) and as large as bears (4 Hz).

So the bigger the animal, the slower it can shake to achieve comparable drying, but the relationship isn’t linear. Instead, it approaches a limit of 4 Hz as an animal grows in size.

Please, Do Not Try This At Home :o)

Source

Conflict Resolution :o)

Conflicts on teams are a fact of life! Only on rare occasions do conflicts not arise - even on the smallest projects conflicts rear their ugly heads! It's human nature to have conflicts and it arises for any number of reasons, including:

• Misunderstandings
• Personality clashes
• Disagreements about the right way to approach a problem
• Egos

As a team leader/member (after all, we are all leaders at times, regardless of title, it is a behavior - not a title), part of your responsibilities includes managing conflicts. The best way to manage a conflict is to ensure that the parties involved in the conflict are the ones developing the solution. You can't resolve it for them; they have to come to agreement on how to resolve the conflict themselves.

Here are some suggestions to get you moving in the right direction:

Schedule a first meeting with the individuals who are having the conflict to discuss:

• What is (are) the issue(s)? Get it all out on the table - let them vent.
• What are their perspectives?
• Work with the parties to develop criteria for solutions to their conflict.
• Ask them to think about what they can do to get past the issue, or put it aside, based on the criteria for resolution they agreed to, in order to move forward with working together. What alternatives exist? This should happen overnight - let them sleep on it.

Schedule a meeting for the following day to discuss how the conflict between the individuals might be resolved.

• Ask them their ideas on how to move forward with resolving the issue - what did they think about the evening before, based on the criteria agreed to, that may help to resolve the conflict.
•  What alternatives can they come up with to work together effectively?
• Can they come to consensus on any of the alternatives?

Your role here will be to get them talking to each other about their ideas to resolve the conflict and, ideally, coming to a consensus on how to resolve it.

Once a consensus has been reached - or there is agreement on how to work together in spite of the conflict between them - review what was agreed and get their commitment that they will continue to work on the resolution of the conflict (as we know it won't go away immediately!) and abide by the plan they developed to resolve it.

Bear in mind that sometimes a conflict cannot be resolved. For example, you may have two individuals on the project team that just are not going to get along no matter what - too much has happened between them. If you can't help them resolve their conflict, they must, at the very least, work together professionally for the good of the team and the project. Your job in this case, then is to help them figure out how they are going to get through this project being cordial and professional with each other.

Source

Science Scene - PortaPower

In many areas of the world, and also during times of natural disasters, clean drinking water and access to power are scarce.  Company "The Essential Element" has designed the Hydra water purifier and fuel cell to take care of both of those problems at once.

A Hopewell, N.J., company called The Essential Element aims to provide all three with a mobile device that it says purifies more than 87,000 liters of water a day. The device will simultaneously create hydrogen for running an onboard fuel cell or for burning in a separate camp-style cooking stove. The unit also has wall sockets that can be used to charge cell  phones and run other electronics.


Best of all, the system, called the Hydra, gets all its power from the sun. The Hydra’s 3.65- by 2.74-meter solar panel, which is 8 percent efficient, generates 2.88 kilowatts. That is enough to do the following: power a 900-watt pump that draws water to and through the unit’s self-cleaning filtration device, top off a bank of lead-acid gel batteries capable of storing 900 ampere-hours, and run an electrolyzer that splits enough water to fill a 0.37-cubic-meter propane tank with hydrogen pressurized to 140,000 kilograms per square meter.


The hydrogen stored during the day is consumed by a fuel cell to power the pump and water purifier at night, as well as power communication devices or a camp stove. The electricity from the fuel cell and the photovoltaic panels, which sit atop a 4.9-meter-long wheeled trailer, can also power other gadgets and communications gear through 110 volts or 230 V AC and 12 V DC sockets in the trailer.

Source

Science Scene - Disaster Lab

The insurance industry is doing its best to create a tempest in a teapot.

On Tuesday, the industry-funded Institute for Business & Home Safety will open a facility that breaks new ground in the world of disaster labs: replicating hurricane conditions on a large scale.

A test conducted at the Institute for Business and Home Safety's newly opened disaster lab subjects houses to 96 mph winds -- simulating a Category 3 hurricane.

The $40 million research center, set on 90 acres in Richburg, S.C., features a massive test chamber as tall as a six-story building that can hold nine 2,300-square-foot homes on a turntable. Those homes can be subjected to tornado-strength winds generated by 105 giant fans. Mix in water from the 750,000-gallon tanks, and researchers can simulate Category 3 hurricanes.

Performing Practice Disasters

View Slideshow

Andy McMillan for The Wall Street Journal

See inside the Institute for Business & Home Safety's new research facility.

• More photos and interactive graphics

IBHS's new facility will give insurers the ability to carefully videotape what happens as powerful winds blow over structures. In the past, researchers largely relied on wind data from universities or computer simulations and rummaged through damage zones or photographed them from helicopters.

Property and casualty insurers are looking to reduce their risk on the $9 trillion in U.S. property exposed to hurricanes from Texas to Maine. Insured catastrophic losses were $7.9 billion in the first half of 2010, up $200 million from 2009, according to the Insurance Information Institute in New York.

The new IBHS lab will be the first to replicate hurricanes with winds channeling water through homes and ripping off roofs, doors and windows. The center can also replicate wild fires. "We can throw embers into the channel and introduce them into the wind field much like a wild fire," said Joseph King, a spokesman for the IBHS.

If you watch the video, they state that the difference between getting blown away and standing firm is $5,000 in improvements.  Amazing.

Source

Sunday Silliness - Tradition :o)

Mish Mash - What kind of forecast is that?

The National Weather Service, its task simplified by a strengthening la Nina cool patch in the Pacific Ocean, has issued its winter weather forecast for the United States. The Pacific Northwest is expected to be substantially colder and wetter than usual, the Southwest hotter and drier and conditions elsewhere mostly an unpredictable mishmash. 


For the full and detailed predictions, go here.

Mirror, Mirror ...

Macy's shoppers can now check their look in a "magic mirror" in a fitting room, thanks to touchscreen computing.  A large mirror, linked up to a touchscreen tablet computer, lets visitors to the iconic department store chain's flagship New York location scroll through their options, then digitally "try on" clothes in the mirror.  Then they can get quick feedback from friends by posting their image to Facebook or sending it in an e-mail or text.

Equipped with a large, 72-inch digital mirror boasting 1,024 touch points and connected to an iPad, the Magic Fitting Room encourages fashionistas to scroll through the store's latest looks and "flick" the pieces they'd like to try on. Voila! The virtual clothes are transposed over the shopper's reflection in the mirror. Need a different size? Don't grow old waiting for a sales associate, 'flick" again and the image will be resized to suit your shape. Sort of an E-ticket ride for the style set.

Pretty cool I say.