There's this little company you may have heard of called GE.   Yeah, it's the one Edison started and I don't know where you come down in the whole Westinghouse/Edison fight but one of those guys screwed Tesla and one did not, so I am inclined to like Westinghouse more than Edison even though GE stock obviously did much better.

Hey, I can stick with my principles and still make some money.

But GE has earned my respect, not because of Jack Welch (though he earned my respect, mostly by making the stock a gold mine and despite being a part of that annoying Six Sigma crap that has been foisted off on MBAs since the 1990s) but because they made smart grids seem kind of cool.

What are smart grids?

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1. In an overhyped analysis certain to make biologists want to reach for their pistols, it has been declared that women are evolving to be more beautiful:

"Evolution has led to women, but not men, getting progressively beautiful, according to scientists" it reads.

You may have heard the fairy tale of The Three Little Pigs.  In the original story (1), they leave home to find their fortune but the first one builds his new place out of straw and the Big Bad Wolf blows it down and eats him.

By the time he got to the third little pig, who built his house of brick, the wolf got his comeuppance, but it still wasn't a great result for the progessive, environmentally-conscious first one.

Researchers at the University of Bath say straw in housing has gotten a bad rap and to prove it they are making a "BaleHaus" of prefabricated straw and hemp 'cladding' panels.

Have we learned nothing?  

You're all either old enough or young enough to remember "Where's Waldo?"   It involved a lovable scamp with glasses who would get himself trapped in awfully complex situations and only keen eyes could rescue him.

We have our own lovable scamp, sans glasses, and his name is Garth Sundem.   If you haven't seen Garth be lovable, watch this clip from his show on the Science Channel.  I'll wait.