Links for you. Science:
Why Are So Many People Nearsighted? Researchers may have found the answer that could keep glasses off one-third of the world’s population
Close Proximity Interaction and S. aureus Spread in Long-Term Care
In Republicans’ ‘War On Nature,’ California Gets A Big Win (marine biodiversity is usually neglected)
N.Y. Times Hype of “Feel-Good Gene” Makes Me Feel Bad
The cost of the rejection-resubmission cycle
Other:
Are College Campuses Really in the Thrall of Leftist Censors?
Contesting contested primaries
Journalists have to decide what to do about candidates who are climate change denialists
Why College Isn’t (and Shouldn’t Have to be) for Everyone
The World Is Squared: Episode 6 – Midsummer in Midwinter
Firefighters response to deadly L’Enfant Plaza Metro smoke delayed by 911 center protocol (again, this is a managerial problem, not a worker problem)
Ruins found in remote Argentinian jungle ‘may be secret Nazi hideout’
The Liberal Zionist’s Lament
A Loss for Words: Can a dying language be saved?
Why the left hates this man: Rahm Emanuel’s sins against the progressive movement
Me and Ted
Why free speech on campus is not as simple as everyone thinks. It’s not as easy as Judith Shulevitz posits. (in particular cases, it’s always worth getting the details when it comes to campus stuff–it can look very different from the outside)
How China used more cement in 3 years than the U.S. did in the entire 20th Century
We know where you’ve been: Ars acquires 4.6M license plate scans from the cops
Hydrogen Bomb Physicist’s Book Runs Afoul of Energy Department
LED Streetlights in Brooklyn Are Saving Energy but Exhausting Residents
mikethemadbiologist
The LED article was annoying in that it seems what people are complaining about most is the light color temp – in the picture it looks far too blue-white, which is a common but easily corrected complaint) but the writer (and maybe no one involved?) seemed to realize that LED lights are available in a range of color temps. (This article – http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/07/led-lights-are-getting-mixed-reviews-91526.html – about LED streetlights in Arlington contains a quote from a resident who understands this, but no one in the Brooklyn article seems to.
Yep. But the choices are stark: quite a bit too red or waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too blue. In the Japanese market, the blue (“daylight color”) is a completely ridiculous 7000 degrees Kelvin and the red (“incandescent bulb color”) is about 2000 dK. Sigh. Crazy enough to drive a photographer back to doing just black and white…
And the problem isn’t all that easily fixed: since the damn things last 20 years and are pricey, you can’t just say “Oops, replace them”. And since the 7000K bulbs are significantly more efficient than the 2000K bulbs, any organization that needs to claim energy savings will chose the 7000K bulbs, driving most people batty: 7000K really is ugly.
This reminds me of my old neighborhood (Beacon Hill, Boston): When I was in grade school, they decided to be more historically accurate, and replaced the (early 20th century) electric lights with (1890s vintage) gaslights. Since gaslights are obviously dimmer than electric, we got 50% more streetlights. But if you took a light meter to them, you’d see that mantle fitted gaslights turned out to be quite a bit brighter than the electric bulbs used at the time.
Here’s a new gaslight before the old electric light was taken out (Mad Mike will be amused if he clicks “previous” there):
http://www.pbase.com/davidjl/image/121543939/large
I apologize for the non sequitur, but could you take a look at this:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonentine/2014/03/10/did-the-new-yorker-botch-puff-piece-on-frog-scientist-tyrone-hayes-turning-rogue-into-beleaguered-hero/
I’ve caught some small mistakes from Entine but I don’t know enough about the subject to address the content.
Well, if they screwed up they have to take a big hit to fix it*, but it’s not like these facts about LEDs aren’t known. In household LEDs there’s a big range with lots of inbetween choices (got good ones for my RV); are there really no inbetween choices for streetlight LEDs?** No possibility of having them made for a big installation job?
* if they’d installed water drainage with pipes too small, would they be expected to just say sorry, we goofed, didn’t do our homework, can’t be fixed
** of course there is; quick Googling shows me that Santa Rosa, Ca, is using LEDs which are 4000Kelvin