“FORE!!!,” the classic warning that a golf ball is speeding in the direction of your noggin, is not heard on baseball diamonds, but in 2008 it should have been. That was the year Major League Baseball recognized that with more and more bats breaking—2,232 in the last three months of the season—balls weren’t the only thing flying into territory fair and foul. Ask fan Susan Rhodes, who was knocked into the operating room by a bit of broken bat at a Dodgers game that year. MLB’s four-year effort to solve the problem has resulted in reducing the number of splintered cudgels by ... Read More
What Major League Baseball Is Doing To Keep Bats Inside the Diamond
October 24, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Peak Wood Forges an Industrial Revolution
April 19, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
As England entered the 18th century, manufacturers could not get enough wrought iron. The problem had nothing to do with a deficiency of ore. “In that respect,” an anonymous pamphleteer of the period observed, “nature has been very liberal.” “But,” he added, “for lack of wood and charcoal they are not being worked.” The country’s rich supply of coal was of no help. “No art or method is known and practiced,” one familiar with the iron trade of the time attested, “of making iron from ore but with charcoal.” Accessible wood supplies, those that could be delivered ... Read More
Peak Wood and the Bronze Age
April 12, 2010 • By • 2 Comments
E ver since humans began relying on fire, fuel became paramount to their survival. When using metals, fire and the fuel required to feed the flame took on great significance since most metals come from ores, and it takes heat — and lots of it — to remove the metal from its parent stone. The discovery of copper smelting and bronze production — mixing copper with tin to make a harder metal — had a powerful effect on human society for thousands of years. The alloy made weapons and tools much stronger and more durable than its wood, bone or stone antecedents. The Mediterranean world, ... Read More
Wood and Civilization
April 5, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
The author of A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, writes a series for Miller-McCune on the world’s first energy crisis: peak wood. Part I: The Tree That Changed the World Part II: Wood and Civilization Part III: Peak Wood and the Bronze Age Part IV: Peak Wood Brings on the Industrial Revolution and the Age of Fossil Fuels From the first cave society to the end of the 18th century, the world lived in the Biomass Age with wood as its primary building material and fuel. England was first to leave the Era of Wood, embracing the fossil fuel coal at the dawn of the ... Read More
