I don't doubt that some people feel that knowing the physics of baseball removes some of the romance from the game. Me? I think it makes the game all the more fascinating. CNET's Daniel Terdiman writes about a presentation on the physics of baseball by Paul Doherty at San Francisco's Exploratorium. Doherty talks about how curveball's curve, why knuckleballs are so damn hard to hit, and where the sweet spot is on a baseball bat.

It was bad enough when the corn biofuel debacle drove up gas and food prices, but now the biofuel debacle is messing with my beer, as chronicled in this article on Reason.

Actually, I already knew this -- the my local brewery, Weyerbacher, had already explained how ethanol was driving up their costs by increasing demand for corn, leading to a shortage of less profitable hops.

When I hear people lamenting the eventual end of the Age of Oil, and gnashing their teeth about where our power is going to come from, the science fiction geek in me has to laugh. The sun radiates enough power to keep us in electricity for billions of years; we just need to figure out the most efficient way to capture it. Which is why this story is such a good read; it discusses using fast-growing algae to produce oil, which then can be used as biofuel. While still experimental, it's already proving itself to be far more efficient then producing ethanol from corn, and even better, it could be use to sequester CO2 from factories, since the algae needs CO2 for photosythnesis.

This is the sort of innovation we need, not dead ends like corn-based ethanol that end up using more fuel then they produce, while simultaneously driving up food prices as more and more land is planted for corn rather than other staple crops.

Earthquakes cause vibrations. Certain Mac and PC notebook computers come with vibration detectors used to shutdown their hard drives should the computers fall. So why not, asks a seismologist, use the accelerometers on the computers as a distributed network for detecting earthquakes?.

You can help out by visiting the Quake Catcher Network's home page. Right now it only works on Macs, but a version for HP laptops is coming soon.

Imagine a castle. Now imagine it as as your Dungeon Master's Screen. This is probably about as close as you can get to putting and actual wall between you and your players.

Certain game designers and players I know would probably say this speaks volumes about the adversarial nature of the GM/Player relationship in Dungeons & Dragons. Me? I'm waiting for the DM siege weapons so I can fling dice across the table at anyone who isn't paying attention. Or maybe a pencil-firing ballista... ok, yeah, that would poke and eye out, but damn it YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN FOCUSING ON THE GAME!

Babies Vs. Chimps: Who's Smarter?

Good news everyone -- your kid really is smarter than a chimp!

Reports: Disney to test toys

And this is how capitalism works. Companies have been doing testing prior to this, but it appears not to have been standardized. In addition to Disney, Hasbro and Mattel

American life expectancy longer than ever

Quick -- grab a cigar and celebrate! And remember this the next time you hear people stressing out over the "obesity epidemic" (you know, the one that isn't killing all those people).

Will Super Smart Artificial Intelligences Keep Humans Around As Pets?

I sure hope so. 'Cause my dog's got it pretty good...

The Atomic Age Resurgent

Reach for the sky: Could flying wind farms help beat global warming?

Let's just file this under "freaking awesome." The idea is to loft flying wind farms that sit in the high-altitude jet streams (which are far stronger and constant then winds generated at surface level) and then send the power back to folks on earth. Power would be sent back to the ground through a tethering cable. Sounds crazy, but now's the time for crazy ideas. A test wind farm will be lofted sometime in the next few years.

Joystiq: Gaming while driving laws coming soon

ok, I may be old fashioned in this, but why the hell can't we have just one law that applies to all forms of reckless driving, and leave it at that? Do we really need to outlaw each and every new device that comes down the pike? If you're doing something stupid, and cause and accident ... you get busted. Simple as that.

LEGO: Indiana Jones

I've got a file on my desktop that includes all the stuff I want to write about on Nuketown, but never seem to get to. With a nod toward Uncle Bear's Random News Tables, I've decided to resurrect Nuketown's Netheads as an irregular column about irregular things. Expect parenting tips, science fiction goodness, and general geekery.

Washington Post: In Praise of Skinned Knees and Grubby Faces

Conn Iggulden, co-author of The Dangerous Book for Boys praises the diverse upbringing that he and his brother got, including everything from learning to use pocket knives to stories of Artic explorers to sports you could actually win. Inggulden rails against a society that threatens to make our kids too safe, denying them the pleasure of launching a model rocket or carving their initials in trees because of the eternal, intangible menace of the worst case scenario.

WSJ: The Baby-Name Business

Having a hard time picking a baby name? Hire someone to do it for you.

Google is launching a virtual stargazing program called Sky. It will allow users to explore millions of stars, and will support layers for things such as views from the Hubble Space Telescope. One has to wonder how long it will take the Trekkers to start mapping out Gene Roddenbury's universe in this thing...

I'm glad to see that some of the more mainstream publications are coming to the realization that ethanol is a boondoggle that's going to end up costing us billions, both at the gas pump and at the dinner table, without making a significant impact on global warming emissions. The latest of these articles is by Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stone , and here's the point that I think everyone needs to understand: