Purple greenhouses and happy lab rats this week

Comics: First – Previous – Next – Last

Next Generation of Greenhouses May Be Fully Solar Powered | NC State News

Plants crave the red and blue light (and reflect the green). So you can use the green light for electricity to blow air through your greenhouse. The panels absorb the green light, so the greenhouse looks purple. That’s so cool. There’s a real mathematical puzzle, though. How much light can you take to run the fans, heaters, desalinators, pumps, etc., before you start harming the plants’ growth?

Are happy lab animals better for science? | Science | AAAS

Enriched environments may make for better lab animal results (and happier lab animals). That’s good. I remember seeing that lab animals are much more prone to use substances self-destructively if they don’t have enriched/social environments. There’s even a TED talk, though it oversimplifies things.

https://boingboing.net/2020/02/07/man-buys-used-tesla-with-autop.html

My cars are very basic. They have the most limited electronics I can manage. I don’t want my car to need updates. The closer cars get to computers with wheels, the more they are rented instead of owned. I can see a future where you hail an autocab with your app, and that’s more cost-effective than owning a car. I can see that being true even for commutes. But as long as I still own my car, I want to actually OWN it, not rent it from the manufacturer. I’ll put up with that bullshit from my phone manufacturer since I’m essentially renting a connection more than the physical device. But I want my computer and my car to be MINE.

Drones will solve all our problems. 

Major Depression Is Associated with Significant Diurnal Elevations in Plasma Interleukin-6 

It’s also circadian and time-shifted relative to controls. How weird.

Basically, comedians are modern-day philosophers.

Why Don’t People Care That Men Don’t Care About Caring? – Scientific American Blog Network

“There’s great value in entering a healthcare, early education, and domestic role (HEED) profession, and the more we can create social change to support anyone who wants to enter a field in which their gender is underrepresented, the better off we will all be.”

FANGS :: Odditorium | Tapas

This comic about a werewolf dating a vampire is surprisingly cute.

This vampire is not cute at all

Fiscal Policy Will Matter on JSTOR

Stephanie Kelton recommended this. It seems prophetic from 1998. Also, balancing the federal budget is stupid. From Vox (emphasis mine): “Mitchell, Wray, and Watts suggest that the 2001 recession was the result of the US fiscal surplus at that time forcing the private sector into deficit: ‘In most advanced economies, sharp, severe economic downturns typically follow a period when fiscal surpluses are accompanied by large private sector deficits.'” Simple math: one person’s debt is another person’s asset. In short, a smaller government deficit IS MATHEMATICALLY THE SAME THING as a smaller non-government surplus.