Giant Ocean-Trash Vortex Attracts Explorers

Brian Handwerk, National Geographic News 31 Jul 09; It may lack the allure of the North Pole or Mount Everest, but a Pacific Ocean trash dump twice the size of Texas is this summer's hot destination for explorers. The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, situated in remote waters between California and Hawaii, is created by ocean currents that pick up millions of tons of the world's discarded plastic. As much as 10 percent of the 260 million tons of plastic produced annually ends up in the oceans

Quibbles and Quandary, Science in Science Fiction Part 3

Numbers! Math! Volume! Surface Area! Density! Abandon hope all ye who enter here. This is the third post in my series derived from a much longer, un-posted piece that I never had time to finish because it was getting way too long to deal with ( Part 1 , Part 2 TBD). And this is the main culprit section. It is about basic science and math. Very basic. The concepts are not that hard and you can gloss over the actual calculating (hey! a back of the envelope is good en

Toronto Without the Tower

Posted in: Toronto. Ontario, Canada by Franny Wentzel . In respnse to this previous post I dug out some old images of that skyline you'll get onto (if you live there for a while). Most of these are pretty old so they don't have the CN Tower in them. How old? Older that bagged milk ... but not older than The Beer Store ... Older than the New Toronto City Hall ... Older than the Skydome ... or Exhibition Stadium or the Blue Jays for that matter... Older than the extra wing

Are California gray whales ‘watching’ us?

California gray whale in a warm Mexican lagoon. There are many aggressive creatures in the sea. Not so, the California gray whale, an animal that slowly migrates up and down the coast of Orange County during the winter months, rarely approaching whale watching charter boats. The plodding giants seem shy. But is that accurate? Maybe not, says Charles Siebert, who writes for the New York Times Sunday magazine. Siebert recently wrote a long (OK, long-winded) piece that ruminates on many cre

The 3Ts Of Prosperity… All Destroyed!

It is indeed disheartening to hear of the plight of our new private airline companies. They have decided to observe a one-day token strike on August 18. And they want some sort of “bailout” from our The State – and somewhere here I kinda tuned off. This is a disaster. Note that Air India has just asked for a 20,000 crore rupee bailout. Transportation is the key. This is another disaster in transportation. Our The State monopolizes roads and railways – and a flourishing private sector in

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