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Here’s a pop quiz: You’re on your way to an important meeting with a close business associate and you’re running very late. Your associate reminds you that the client you’re meeting hates to be stood up and suggests that you speed up. You tell your passenger that you’re going at the speed limit but they start getting agitated and say you’ll probably lose the client if you continue at this speed. Besides, they say, there are no cops in sight. Fearful of losing the client and angering your associate further, you put the pedal to the metal and start to make up for lost time. Everything seems to be going fine until you see the blue and red lights flashing in your rear view mirror. Question: Who’s guilty here, and who gets the ticket? It might take a philosophy major to figure out precisely how the guilt is spread around here, but you know damned well who is going to be getting that speeding ticket. That’s why it boggles my mind that our Senate is actually consid...

When you buy any piece of technology you have to expect that you will be using something that suddenly becomes obsolete. Not because the electronics don’t work any more; simply that the next stage of development has taken place as we progress – although that’s arguable, I suppose. At my daughter’s age (13), the peer pressure to upgrade is quite incredible and I occasionally have stopped to think how grateful I am that we are not in an iPhone service area…I am less likely to take such things so seriously, and when we bought the MacBook Pro I am using right now, in November 2007, I was aware that there were rumors of a replacement in the works. But, probably like the early iPhone adopters, I would be a little irked if Jobs had done a memory-doubling, price-halving thing on me. Maybe a little more than irked, actually.Well, MacWorld 2008 has come and gone and there was no new MacBook Pro.What there was is the new MacBook Air... which looks to be on average about as thin as my littl...

As world economies tank, the turbulent panic-stricken tenor of the White House becomes more strident. It's apparent with each passing pronouncement. Anyone who listens to the Bush administration's litany of rubbish about stimulating the economy senses we’re in deep doo-doo, with things about to get a lot worse before they get better.Like many engineers, I learned about guns versus butter in Economics 101, and it’s as plain as the bump on my nose that George Bush's massive tax cuts and war spending has created a huge deficit. Yes, the White House warned everyone to gird our loins for massive cuts in spending, even indicating which weapons systems would be cut. In truth, the defense budget continues to rise, with a lot more spending for war in the days to come. %IMG_left_full_359%This past December, Bush signed the Consolidated Appropriations Bill, providing an additional $70 billion for his wars. It gets worse. The Defense Appropriations bill, passed by Congress and signed by Bush prior to December...

Although I will always remember Lonnie Johnson as the guy who helped me shoehorn a high-resolution mapping camera onto the Mars Observer spacecraft, he’s better known to most of the world as the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun. Now, if all goes well, he may be even better-remembered for his new solid-state heat engine that may outperform even the best solar cells at converting sunlight to electricity.Since neither the company web site nor the recent Popular Mechanics article about his Thermoelectric Energy Conversion System (JTEC) provides photos of a working device or test data, I cannot help but wonder about how far along the technology actually is and whether there are any technical problems that could keep it from reaching commercial viability. But, despite the fact that the 60%+ conversion efficiency claimed for JTEC seem too good to be true, Lonnie’s long track record of successful products and technologies keeps me from consigning his story to the crackpots bin I reserve for the zero...

As the days grow longer and the spring garden catalogs arrive in our mailbox, I’m looking forward to seeing the tulip bulbs I planted last fall poking their heads up and to attending this year’s crop of technical conferences. Between keeping up with the latest developments in the industry and catching up with far-flung friends, the annual trade show season that runs from January through early April is a busy but happy time for me. I only wish that the folks who organize these events would get together and try to coordinate their efforts so that they were not so crunched together, often with two or more really important conferences being held on the same week. One of the best examples of sadistic scheduling is IEC’s DesignCon and the IEEE’s International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), held the in the San Francisco Bay Area same week (February 4th this year) abut 45 miles apart. It’s enough to drive you mad.Both events are top-notch affairs with much excellent technical p...

Raising a pre-teen girl in an overly-affluent New Jersey suburb, without the tranquilizing effect of cable or satellite TV, is not an activity for the faint of heart. These days, it seems like most of our evenings are split between helping our daughter Anwyn cope with the oppressive homework load her 6th grade teachers routinely dish out and dodging the worst effects of her hormone-amplified mood swings. Despite it all, Anwyn’s basic good nature manages to poke up above the emotional maelstrom often enough to remind us that she’s still the daughter we love and to give us a precious hour or two of (relatively) peaceful, tantrum-free family fun time.Strangely, one of the things she loves to do with me is sit at the kitchen table helping fix whatever household gadgets have found themselves on the injured list that week. She’s always been good with tools, having, at the age of four, learned the difference between a Phillips and a flathead screwdriver as she helped me assemble her backyard swing ...

On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I went to the store for some items, accompanied by my daughter. Up here in BC there are so many food products with absolutely no preservatives that you have to shop rather more often than in the US. That’s hardly a negative problem – reminds me of my childhood, actually – but with the stores closed on both Christmas Day and Boxing Day (December 26) there are always some last-minute things that come up. On the way home my spouse called (about the only time I leave my cell phone on – when the family is separated) with the need for one last item: paper towels.We diverted to another store – not as popular and with nothing like the same quality of wares, but much easier parking! – and I sent my daughter in with the smallest bill I had in my pocket: $50. I don’t think she has had a banknote bigger than a 20 in her hands before so I urged her not to flash it around and to ensure “you get the right change.” On her return to the ca...