Jul 21, 2017
Ensuring Water Security
Water security is a complex issue with a lot of independently moving parts. While the earth's surface is three-quarters water, almost all of that is ocean, unusable due to its salinity. There…
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Archive page 28 of 73
Jul 19, 2017
Risks from Fracking
Fracking, properly, hydraulic fracturing, has a number of tradeoffs. From a purely economic standpoint, fracking is a very expensive way of extracting natural gas out of the ground. So natural gas prices…
Jul 12, 2017
Comments on RPN
I've started falling in love with reverse Polish notation (RPN) again. This mostly comes from using PCalc on my iPhone for a lot of calculations, lately. Like so many other kids, I…
Jul 10, 2017
Eutrophication Reduction Through Local Limits
Both the Baltic Sea and the Chesapeake Bay are great examples of complex and diverse watersheds. The Baltic Sea is quite large and has a catchment area of 1,641,650 square kilometers over…
Jul 7, 2017
Discounting Future Risk
I was recently reminded of the movie Lord of War , when, two prostitutes, Faith and Gloria, were sent to Nicolas Cage's character by some warlord or another. Anyway, Cage is gently…
Jul 5, 2017
The Structure of a Space Corps
There's been a lot of breathless coverage of the surprise United States Space Corps being all of the sudden. Here's a brief listing of links: Ars Technica Russia Today Space News The…
Jul 3, 2017
Notes on Wastewater Treatment
Chase, I think in an attempt to avoid bedtime, asked me on Friday what happens to the water after it leaves the bathtub. Well, lucky for him, I spent a lot of…
Jun 30, 2017
Summer Math Teaching
Trying to post more of my mathematics syllabi online, I have two sections of MATH 107 this term at UMUC. They are offset by like three weeks, which makes life more complicated…
Jun 28, 2017
Population Dynamics for a Better Future
Understanding human population growth is important to policymakers for a variety of reasons. As a society, we need to be clear about both our long-term plans and our long-term needs. For instance,…
Jun 26, 2017
The Fish Bowl
Purveyors of various Malthusian models like to compare the Earth and its population of humans to a pond and a population of fish. As we all know, a pond of a given…
Jun 21, 2017
Power Generation and Decentralization
Renewable energy gets more interesting if we can push those solar, wind, and other renewable generation to the point of consumption. For instance, I could have a small windmill and solar panels…