Page 12 - Second Law News Today

Energy and Civilization: A History, Vaclav Smil (MIT Press, 2017). There are two kinds of mathematicians: problem-solvers and theory-builders. They’re what they sound like. A problem-solver gets obsessed with particular, concrete, fiendishly tricky problems, and wants to solve them. Along the way, he may

Will it take our jobs? How can I use it to my advantage? Is it just a bullshit generator? Is it already changing the world? At what cost?

His angle was The End. A rollicking disquisition on Minimalism’s debt to science fiction, B-movies, and the second law of thermodynamics, Robert Smithson’s Artforum debut, “Entropy and the New Monuments,” linked the so-called primary structures of artists such as Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Sol Dewitt to entropy, that universal force of decay, which erodes everything into an all-engulfing sameness. “Instead of causing us to remember the past like the old monuments, the new monuments...

  This column begins a new feature for this blog.  Every week or two, for the near future, I plan to have an interview with a well respected scientist or thinker on the subject of energy.  Regular readers of this blog know that I believe that facing and solving the multiple issues concerning energy is the single most pressing problem that we face a

ROSS TWP. — Nearly 216 Ross Elementary School students ditched class for baseball May 4. The kids did not head out to the school’s field and choose teams.

It has been suggested that Africa is experiencing an “infrastructure binge” at the expense of investment in agriculture. In fact, farmers need infrastructure to get produce to market and will benefit from investment in it.

The atmosphere of the Earth is less able to absorb shortwave radiation from the Sun than thermal radiation coming from the surface. The effect of this disparity is that thermal radiation escaping to space comes mostly from the cold upper atmosphere, while the surface is maintained at a substantially warmer temperature. This is called the

On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added At a glance section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a bump for our ask. This week features The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics. More will follow in the upcoming weeks. Please follow the Further Reading link at the bottom to read the full rebu...

Although I recognize that degrowth is not a certain theory but more of a pluralistic critical frame calling for socio-ecological transformations, here is what I managed to put together regarding the economic activities related to clothing inspired by degrowth.

Creative writing by OpenAI’s GPT-3 model, demonstrating poetry, dialogue, puns, literary parodies, and storytelling. Plus advice on effective GPT-3 prompt programming & avoiding common errors.