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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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In 2007, advertisements talking about how much money you could make sitting on your butt if you would just BUY THEIR SECRET were at least interesting.    

We got tales of people making obnoxious amounts of money selling stuff on the interwebs or flipping houses using a secret government auction list or whatever.

Now look what we've come to ... even the spam marketers (somehow appearing in a remnant ad on our site, I must note, so remind me to find out who they are and eliminate them) have dialed it down.


Last night we attended the "Science of Fine Wines" event in support of the Sacramento Discovery Science&Space Museum.

This was, as you can imagine, not a hard science event.   The Museum itself is devoted primarily to helping kids understand science and the attendees were primarily there to drink wine.   But when we talked to them about it a 'science of cheese' portion made sense because it lent itself to a hands-on lab.
A short while ago, the wife saw me working feverishly on yet another project, this one involving clothes, and came to investigate.   Why?   Well, she's pretty agreeable about work done outside or in the garage and mostly tolerant about things I do in my den - unlike most men, for example, she lets me watch all the sports I want, as long she is in Asia on business and I keep it on mute.

But she turns into a Wizard Of Oz-style tornado of rage if I get near our kitchen granite countertops with a drill bit and maintains an irrational skepticism about other internal projects regardless of how many times I have paid people to fix things I have messed up.
Tomorrow, we are attending a mixer called The Science of Fine Wines.  This is a seminar/fundraiser for the Discovery Museum Science&Space Center in Sacramento so we're there to help with the science.  Sure, you can tell by the title the science is not the paramount issue, the wine is, but I'm always going to take the opportunity to get a little smarter and if other people listen, that's great too.
I bought a pizza for the office today.  Don't get all excited and start thinking I am some aging hipster commie pinko, I am not.   I am just smart enough to make sure that in return for people enduring my jokes I  make sure they periodically get fed.   It's not like they can buy food with what I pay them.

So that everyone would appreciate how magnanimous I am for dropping $5 on a Little Caesar's pizza, I wrote on my Faceyspaces and Tweetypages (what, you don't follow me on Faceypages and Tweetyspaces?  Here and here) ...
Because I have played guitar some 30 years, I have always been interested in guitar construction.   I have multiple guitars because they all have different tones and are used for different things - that doesn't always make sense to people because a guitar is a guitar but I am not even in the top 50,000 guitarists obsessed with tone.    

Eric Johnson, most famous for "Cliffs of Dover"(1) says he can hear a difference in the batteries he uses in his gear - and I believe him.  There are too many instances of elite (yeah, I used that word) people doing extraordinary things to pass it off as placebo effect.