After my recent posts on the environment, the Do The Math blog, and the Sustainable Energy book I liked, a friend and Columbia engineer, Marshall Cox, is succeeding in a business plan competition to help reduce waste with a company called Radiator Labs. They have a simple idea that could cheaply reduce a lot of waste and make people’s buildings more comfortable. A why-didn’t-someone-think-of-that-a-long-time-ago idea you can’t imagine someone not[…] Keep reading →

If the first cherries of spring don’t warrant a post of their own, I don’t know what does. Billions of years of evolution led to them tasting so good — on their side and mine. After all the amazing tropical fruits of Vietnam and China, I like being reminded of how good some local fruit here can taste. Every spring I eat cherries until they make me feel woozy. Then[…] Keep reading →

I’m going to explain a major difference between men and women that will help men understand women and women understand men. It won’t explain everything, but it will help you understand the opposite sex better than most perspectives. I’ll overstate the point for clarity. You have to figure out for yourself how much to dial it back. And keep in mind, I’m presenting a model. If it works for you,[…] Keep reading →

My physics training tells me economics views some things in a weird way. In physics, if your theory predicts something to happen a certain way and it happens differently, you say your theory is wrong, at least partly, and you work to improve it. Nature is always correct. You try to get your theory to predict what nature does. When economics predicts people to behave some way and they don’t,[…] Keep reading →

Somebody showed me yet another artistic representation about discoveries about nature and the people who made the discoveries. I think she expected that since I like science I would like those representations. I saw them as new age-y. For a long time, since I never knew a concrete definition of the term new age, though the Wikipedia page seems to describe it well, I substituted the words “feeble-minded” every time[…] Keep reading →

Following up yesterday’s post on balance sheets and charts for using and producing energy and reporting our numbers to see if we can make them balance, let’s look at carbon flows. People who don’t know about carbon emissions, flows, and balance confuse simple ideas with each other. For example, some talk about how volcanoes and cows digestive systems produce tons of carbon and wonder why we should bother changing our[…] Keep reading →

People don’t realize it, but business people have some of the best the skills to understand our effect on the environment. We should learn those skills from them. I didn’t have much (any?) business experience when I co-founded my first company. I couldn’t read a balance sheet or know accounting. My science background taught me to understand general and broad patterns, which don’t suffice for running a company. Either the[…] Keep reading →