People Speaking – Give

“… so we did what people do when they don’t understand something—we gave it a name.”

(David Gross at a colloquium in the Technion. Thanks to Hadar for the quote.)

Cats on the Wing 1

“Nini doesn’t go into the bedroom when we’re not home”.

Hadar, who has a Master’s degree in physics, has solved Schrödinger’s cat paradox.

I Gotta Move

Oh no.

He came from my home town
He was a prophet
Some kids they put him in the ground
Got coffee
Got donuts
Got wasted
Erased head
And what do they say?
He’s not afraid of the present tense
And talking back is a bad defense
I gotta move
I gotta break
I gotta get me cross the lake
I gotta move

Bother.

Mobile

An Irish company called Steorn gained notoriety a few months ago when they announced that they invented a way to produce “free energy”. They promised that some kind of a device will produce energy that will power various appliances, such as mobile phones and some others that i can’t remember, but basically it sounded like it can power anything that needs electricity. Quite obviously everyone laughed at them and called their product “perpetuum mobile” – a perpetual motion device that is physically impossible. But they just called it – whatever it is – “Orbo”. The Wikipedia article about Steorn is pretty good.

Now they are announcing that they will hold a public demonstration of Orbo in July (Flash).

Notice that when the Flash movie is being loaded there’s an animation that looks like one of the famous designs for a perpetual motion device – a wheel equipped with vessels full of liquid that keeps moving and turning the wheel. It is impossible, of course – the wheel will simply stop without outside energy.

It’s nice to see that they acknowledge their weirdness in such a stylish way.

My bet is that it will be some kind of new cellphone or gadget with long-life battery or maybe a solar-powered device (although they keep saying that it is magnetic).