There's a new movie out: Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

Go see it. Enough said.

Free energy for all!

I've always been fascinated by this. These guys claim to have found a way to get a machine to output more energy than is put in, thereby creating limitless energy. Of course this is absolutely impossible, but I've never understood how everyone gets duped into it EVERY time.

For those not versed in physics, here's your summary:

Conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy (often expressed as the sum of kinetic energy and potential energy) in an isolated system remains constant. In other words, energy can be converted from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed.

So, IN THEORY, you can put energy in and the most you can ever get out the other side is the exact same amount of energy, never more. Of course, we live in the real world with friction and resistance and other unsavory characters which means even getting out 100% of the energy you put in is impossible.

But what always stuns me is how everyone always reacts like this time is the one time we can do it. These Irish guys are "scientists" yet they violate the fundamental laws because this time they've figured out a way. The press looks at it with skepticism, but they still give these guys coverage. And people read these stories and say "fine, all those other times, people were wrong... but THIS time, this is it!". Well I haven't looked at these folks invention, but I can tell you this much. They're wrong.

Great item in the New Yorker in the piece about kids and eating new food. I quote:

By the age of four or five, almost all children become "neophobic": they develop an aversion to new foods, and to vegetables in particular.

How fascinating! Looks like the key to beating kids aversion to interesting foods is to cram their faces full while they are still very young. Myself, I really don't hate many foods, but water chestnuts are among them. But I know how to beat it! Shortly after the above quote, in the same paragraph:

... there's no real substitute for patience; the average five-year-old has to taste a new food between five and ten times ... before he'll accept it.

Nice! So all I have to do is gorge on water chestnuts for an entire week straight and they'll be my favorite food ever! Simple enough.

Wow, long time gone. Sorry it's been so long, but we were traveling. You can read about all of our travels on our blog, the Wacky Adventures of the Aronchicks. The trip offered plenty of reading and thinking time and I've got a LOT to blog about, so here's hoping I actually stick to a schedule. For those who are curious, here's ROUGHLY the path we took... I say roughly because, unfortunately, Ask.com doesn't cover Croatian maps, which we also visited. Here's what that path looks like:

I suppose now is as good a time as any to throw in the obligitory geek comment. Why did I use Ask.com? Because they were the only one that had a clear way how to use waypoints... why Live & Google? Why? I would have loved to use your services (especially since Live.com can map Croatia), but no waypoints = can't use it.