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.

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.

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:

CNN reports that the first commercial jet with an onboard anti-missile laser system is now in operation. It's part of a pilot program to see how Northrop Grumman's Guardian anti-missile system behaves on a working commercial jetliner, and what impact it has on its maintenance and operational schedule.

The system works by firing an invisible laser beam at the guidance system of an on-rushing missile, disrupting it and causing the projectile to miss the plane. The goal is to prevent attacks by shoulder-launched missiles, but since officials say it could take 20 years to equip the commercial fleet with such system, you have to wonder if it's worth it. Won't some other, more modern threat to planes have emerged by then? Or will the missile technology be so cheap and widespread that we'll have terrorists regularly taking potshots at jetliners as they fly overhead?