Monthly Archives: December 2009
The world needs abundant, cheap, clean energy
In an extract from their new book, Energise!, James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky argue that climate change is real, but the answer is to invest boldly in forms of power supply not moralise about personal consumption.
Read the full article...What’s so special about Dutch design?
In design one doesn’t necessarily accept ‘the problem as given’.
Read the full article...
@jameswoudhuysen Utterly ignorant piss takes of the working class that might have been typical of Punch in the 1920s still being published in London in the 1990s.
@jameswoudhuysen He always looks terribly pleased with himself!
@jameswoudhuysen Never heard him say a single funny thing on the one or two occasions i’ve watched the appallingly unfunny program he’s on!
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls