Tag: transportation

No need for gas-price conspiracy theories

By Edward Willett in automobiles, cars, Columns, Science Columns
July 5, 2012
5 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Gas-Price-Conspiracies.mp3[/podcast] There’s a public perception that somebody must be pulling the strings on gas prices, that somewhere in some shadowy secret lair mustache-twirling oilmen are gleefully conspiring to raise prices across the board just in time for summer holidays. It’s such a popular perception that it has sparked any number of public inquiries around the …

Vehicle-to-vehicle communication

By Edward Willett in automobiles, cars, Columns, Ford, Science Columns
January 27, 2012
4 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/01/Communicating-Cars.mp3[/podcast] Do you talk to your car? I know I do (perhaps not as much as I, um, “talk” to other drivers, but some). I think I inherited the trait from my mother: all of the cars of my childhood, I knew from her, were named “Suzy.” These days, your car may even listen to …

D-Dalus: Dawn of the flying car?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 22, 2011
4 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/06/Dawn-of-the-Flying-Cars.mp3[/podcast] “Hey, dude, where’s my flying car?” is a cry every science fiction writer has heard—and every science fiction reader has uttered—since the future supposedly arrived on January 1, 2001, and we found ourselves still stuck to the ground, rolling along on rubber tires. The problem has been that we really only have a few …

Red means stop, green means go, yellow means…?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
June 15, 2010
4 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/06/The-Yellow-Light-Dilemma.mp3[/podcast] I went through a yellow light today. I’d glanced away at the wrong moment, looked up to see the light had gone yellow, and realized I couldn’t stop without slamming on the brakes and probably skidding into the intersection. Later, I was crossing a street downtown when a van went through the yellow in …

Fuel from germs

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
January 29, 2010
4 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/01/Fuel-from-Germs.mp3[/podcast] For years, we’ve been turning crops such as corn, wheat and sugar beets into fuel, using yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. But there’s an obvious problem with this. That stuff we’re turning into fuel is also food for humans and feed for animals. (And as an aside, how come we always call it …

Liquid fuel from solar power

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 28, 2009
4 mins to read
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[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/07/Liquid-Fuels-from-Solar-Power.mp3[/podcast] In recent years, scientists and engineers have turned to biofuels—fuels generated from living things, and hence renewable—as a means of weaning us off of fossil fuels in favor of something cleaner, less likely to run out, and less wrapped up in international geopolitics. Fermenting the sugars found in corn or other grains into ethanol …

The washboard effect

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Columns
July 15, 2009
4 mins to read
1 comments

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2009/07/The-Washboard-Effect.mp3[/podcast] Saskatchewan, as has oft been noted, has a lot of roads: more than 190,000 kilometres in all, in fact, giving it one of the most extensive road systems in Canada. Not all of those roads are paved, however. In fact, most aren’t. And as anyone who has had occasion to drive extensively on the …

Airships, airships, airships!

By Edward Willett in Blog
January 4, 2008
1 mins to read
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I’ve blogged before about my fondness for airships. Popular Mechanics has a roundup of some of the latest developments, should you share my odd obsession. (Via Instapundit.)

Airships, airships, airships!

By Edward Willett in Blog
January 3, 2008
1 mins to read
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I’ve blogged before about my fondness for airships. Popular Mechanics has a roundup of some of the latest developments, should you share my odd obsession. (Via Instapundit.)

A 737 hitchhiker?

By Edward Willett in Blog
October 1, 2007
1 mins to read
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This is literally unbelievable: MOSCOW, September 24 (RIA Novosti) – A 15-year-old boy from the Urals suffered acute frostbite after riding the wing of a Boeing-737 plane on a two-hour flight from Perm to Moscow, Russian radio station Mayak reported on Monday. After clinging on for the entire 1300-kilometer (808-mile) flight to Vnukovo Airport, the …

Candle on the water

By Edward Willett in Blog, Science Columns
August 20, 2007
4 mins to read
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Download the audio version.Get my column as a podcast. *** Lighthouse keeping has always sounded like a romantic occupation to me. As a kid, I even won honorable mention in a creative writing contest with a story featuring a lighthouse keeper. Of course, being a prairie boy, I had never actually even been in a …

Your flying saucer is ready:

By Edward Willett in Blog
July 20, 2007
1 mins to read
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Moller International has started production of a hovercar, a small two-passenger saucer-shaped vehicle designed to take off and land vertically. It’s going to be priced at $90,000 to $125,000 U.S.