Yet more innumeracy in the popular press

What’s wrong with this sentence in this January 14, 2022 news story

The $180 million solar farm will produce enough energy to supply the equivalent of more than 36,000 average households in the state annually, and it will provide around $54 million to local landowners.

Just like sentences that I blogged about on December 4, 2021, this sentence has a mistake that jumps off the page. Actually, two mistakes that jump off the page. Continue reading “Yet more innumeracy in the popular press”

What the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30th were all about

It turns out that the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30, which were a consequence of the devastating Marshall wildfire in Boulder Country, Colorado, were about the gas company avoiding having to relight pilot lights!  

If there is anything that the gas company hates doing, it is having to send out workers to go from door to door to relight everybody’s pilot lights.   Continue reading “What the rolling electrical blackouts in the mountains of Colorado on December 30th were all about”

L2 is crowded

click to enlarge

I imagine that most readers have been closely following the launch of the Webb telescope and the successful deployment of its solar panels.  As we all know, it is headed toward a particular place in space called the Earth-Sun Second Lagrange Point, shorthanded as L2.  I was intrigued to learn that L2 is actually a crowded place.  Continue reading “L2 is crowded”

Who invented Liquid Paper?

Life is filled with reasons to be gobsmacked.  We all read recently of the death of Michael Nesmith, one of the members of The Monkees, at the age of 78.  He left many marks on Western culture.  I personally think that of the many strong marks he left on Western culture, the strongest were:

  • He was one of the producers of Repo Man, a film that became a cult classic and influenced many directors and actors thereafter.
  • He wrote the song Different Drum which launched and then enabled the career of Linda Ronstadt.

But what gobsmacked me was to learn that Michael Nesmith’s mother was the inventor of Liquid Paper.  By now in the year 2021 we are sort of accustomed, or maybe even resigned, to learning over and over again that somebody who was female accomplished something back in the days when many members of society seemed to assume that only males could accomplish things.  But it was his mother, Bette Nesmith Graham, who invented Liquid Paper, which inspired all of the later typewriter correction fluid products.  Of course nowadays because of word processors and computer printers, we have a whole generation of today’s youth who maybe have no reason to know that there was even a problem for which a typewriter correction fluid product might be the solution.   

Typewriter correction fluid played an important part of my professional life for decades.  In the early days of my law firm, we went though many bottles of typewriter correction fluid.

You can read about Bette Nesmith Graham in this Wikipedia article.

 

Inexpensive yet clever smart watches

A smart watch is a watch that connects by bluetooth to your smart phone, and does lots of smart things.  It was not so long ago that your usual smart watch cost many hundreds of dollars.  Recently I saw that there are lots and lots of relatively inexpensive smart watches on the market.  I decided to give one of them a try.  I was astonished to find how many features a person can get, and how clever the watch can be, for a quite modest purchase price.  Continue reading “Inexpensive yet clever smart watches”

Only 900 slots still open for tomorrow’s webinar

There are only about 900 slots still open for tomorrow’s ethics CLE program Securing electronic communications.

If you wait too long to register, maybe you would be the 901st and you would find the webinar to be full.  Yeah, right.

Anyway, maybe somebody is scrambling around to pick up a couple of CLE units before the end of the year.  Maybe even a couple of ethics CLE units before the end of the year.  If so, this might be just the ticket.  For more information, or to register, click here.

Innumeracy in the popular press

What’s wrong with the third sentence quoted below?

Duke Energy Renewables and Colorado Springs Utilities are developing a new solar energy generating facility in Colorado Springs.

With more than 220,000 solar panels on about 700 acres, the new Palmer Solar project will generate 60 megawatts of electricity for Colorado Springs Utilities’ customers. It generates enough electricity to power approximately 22,000 homes per year.

Continue reading “Innumeracy in the popular press”