Hasta La Gadget!

“I think some Southern Baptists lost their minds when a Black man was elected president,” said minister Kevin Smith.

Officers responding to the shooter in Uvalde reportedly had rifles earlier than known, deepening questions about why police didn’t act faster.

Plastic food wraps might not be a bane to the environment for much longer. Rutgers University and Harvard University researchers have developed a plant-based coating that would be greener and safer than plastic packaging. The approach “sprays” fibers based on biopolymer and polysaccharide (the most common carbohydrate in food) that wrap around your food. The resulting protection is strong enough to protect against bruising, and includes natural antimicrobial agents (citric acid, nisin and thyme oil) that can fight harmful bacteria and viruses in addition to preventing spoilage.

In tests, the coating extended the shelf life of avocados about 50 percent. It takes just three days to biodegrade, and you can rinse the coating off with water. Scientists even envision turning the fibers into sensors that could activate to kill bacteria.

There’s no mention of near-term plans to put this spray-on wrap replacement into production. It could be a long while before you’re picking up bread or fruit with eco-friendly protection. Still, it may be just a matter of time before this technology reaches your grocery store. The coating could reduce the load on landfills, limit the spread of microplastics and minimize food waste.

We’re alerted by news organizations now and then about an impending “massive solar flare” that might fry the Internet or even the electric grid. In theory, it’s possible, but there’s also a click-bait factor to this gloom and doom coverage.

But first, what’s a solar flare? Solar flares are immense bursts, or eruptions, of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun. How immense? NASA says it’s “as much energy as a Billion one-megaton nuclear weapons.”

Fortunately, the Sun is far, and space is vast. All that energy is not concentrated in a finite space human can relate to. Instead, the flare will dissipate, and a solar storm might head toward earth in minutes.

Can it do some severe damage? Yes, absolutely. In 1859 telegraph lines caught a fraction of this energy, leading to telegraph paper igniting in some places in the U.S and Europe. In 1972, AT&T experienced some communications shutdowns and redesigned its infrastructure to cope with solar storms.

In 1989, six million Canadians were left without power for nine hours after a solar flare melted transformers in the grid. These events are severe but nowhere near the apocalyptic tone of some reports.

Fortunately, the earth’s surface is protected by its electromagnetic field and atmosphere. Only a tiny portion of the initial energy reaches through to cause the damage mentioned above. The most significant solar flare ever recorded happened on April 2, 2001; no one remembers that event.

Now, damages tend to happen in orbit, where satellites are above the atmosphere and more exposed. There were some instances of satellites being damaged by this type of event, but overall, solar flares concern space agencies rather than the ordinary person on earth.

In San Francisco, where Ubergizmo is located, we’ve had more electricity shutdowns due to wildfire or speculation than solar flares. Our Internet went down for more than 9 hours because a car ran into the street pole carrying the cables.

Next time you read about the big upcoming solar flare catastrophe, it will most likely be all right.

Are Massive Solar Flares Dangerous?

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In a nationally televised news conference, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said it wasn’t easy to disband the government, but he called it “the right decision for Israel.”