big ideas

Innovative small wind turbines.

“Our approach to sustainable energy is creating sleek, innovative, efficient, and aesthetic turbines, with the goal of making them a centerpiece of a worldwide renewable energy movement.” ~ learn more

big ideas

White paint to help cool a hot planet.

A professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University has created the whitest paint on record. “The paint’s properties are almost superheroic. It can make surfaces as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit cooler than ambient air temperatures at midday, and up […]

under the microscope

Computer chip with built-in human brain tissue.

“Last year, Monash University scientists created the “DishBrain” – a semi-biological computer chip with some 800,000 human and mouse brain cells lab-grown into its electrodes. Demonstrating something like sentience, it learned to play Pong within five minutes.” ~ learn more

better doing

You suck at Excel, with Joel Spolsky.

This private presentation to an audience of engineers is now available on Youtube and its great. Joel was a program manager on the Excel team in the early ‘90s. “The way you are using Excel causes errors, creates incomprehensible spaghetti […]

better doing

Excellence is a habit, but so is failure.

“We often hear that making small incremental improvements every day can lead to great things. … But there’s another side to this story that we don’t discuss as often: how incremental neglect and small missteps can accumulate and lead to […]