The last word

Death of the Newshound? The News-puss cometh

For too many years journalism has been dogged by the idea of a newshound relentlessly following up leads, sniffing out stories and collaring the baddies.

But it’s just too canine for newsgatherers at Energy Storage Journal who have just launched their own News-puss.

This week’s News-puss is our proprietor’s Ragdoll cat. “They’re gentle, calm and sociable but also active, intelligent, and vocal — far better than all my staff put together,” he says.

“Watch out for our next bulletin’s News-Puss where we’ll be featuring the British Shorthair … ‘pairing sweetness with strength’.”

Fine dining à la BCI

BCI delegates always reckon the opening reception will give them a fair taste of local cuisine — think gumbo (New Orleans), tuna sliders (San Diego), 10,000 things you can do with beans and steak (all points Texas) but it’ll be interesting to see what’s served up this April in Louisville.

Reminds one of the joke. What’s the difference between a Kentucky zoo and a New York one? A Kentucky zoo has a description of the animal on the cage … along with a recipe.

The magic formula?

It’s a question that’s always perplexed. What was the secret behind our industry’s 2019 Nobel prize winners’ success for the invention of the lithium battery.

Although this magazine has interviewed all three Laureates — John Goodenough, Stanley Whittingham and Akiro Yoshino — none would reveal their enigmatic potion. But now a partial explanation has appeared courtesy of a paper published by Franz Messerli, MD, 10 years ago …

Nobel Awards per country plotted against chocolate consumption

“The slope of the regression line allows us to estimate that it would take about 0.4 kg of chocolate per capita per year to increase the number of Nobel laureates in a given country by 1. For the US, that would amount to 125 million kg per year” — Franz Messerli

Saving the environment, the US way

“Powered by coal: the great EV transition finally reaches the US!”