What Was Your First Clue?

Wiki-hydrogen-pod-lease-car

Life, The Universe, And Everything, A Small Blue Planet, Right Livelihood (from Michael) Saturday June 20, 2009

The folks at Riversimple are coming at automobile design from a fresh angle. Several fresh angles actually. They’ve spent years designing and prototyping a pod style car that runs on hydrogen. Today hydrogen is typically made from natural gas - giving the car about ¼ of the carbon footprint of gasoline vehicles. But hydrogen can be made from sunlight and water (with a little help from photovoltaics) - which would make the carbon footprint of running the car, well, nil.
Wiki-car by Riversimple

They also are not going to sell the car. Riversimple feels that selling cars, accessories, etc. sets up a situation that rewards obsolescence and waste. So they will lease their cars instead - which sets up a situation that rewards durability and efficiency.

And they are publishing the engineering Wiki-style to let engineers anywhere improve the design. They acknowledge that in making their design public they are encouraging competition to their own business - but hey, that’s healthy.

BMW has a hydrogen car, and I gather that a small string of hydrogen filling stations exists in California.

To my mind the real hydrogen (or electric car) breakthrough will be when photovoltaics come of age and you can trickle-charge your battery or hydrogen cells from sunlight.

But maybe I’m just a dreamer. I’d love to have a flying car too. Like one of these (if Moller EVER gets it in production) - but the price tag is too high:
Moller Flying Car

The Terrafugia “roadable aircraft” will probably beat Moller to market - but I love the Moller VTOL ability. Just put a landing pad in the meadow and transportation will never be the same.
Moller Flying Car

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What is the matrix?

A Small Blue Planet (from Michael) Sunday June 14, 2009

Currently, data centers around the world consume more electricity than Sweden.

Our virtual life is supported by this infrastructure. Emails. Games. Social Networking sites. Financial records. Music. Photos. Chat.

People are spending more and more time plugged in to broadband virtual worlds. It has its wonderful all-connected aspects… but it has real costs in the real world. And it seems a little odd to be so jacked in.
The Matrix Has You, Neo

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Dock The Bailout For Bonus Bankers

Illuminaughty (from Michael) Friday January 30, 2009

Here’s a suggestion for Obama: Take back bailout $$$ from firms that gave bonuses to their executives.

If they are doing such a great job, they obviously don’t need my tax dollars.

International Herald Tribune: President Barack Obama branded Wall Street bankers “shameful” on Thursday for giving themselves nearly $20 billion in bonuses as the economy was deteriorating and the government was spending billions to bail out some of the nation’s most prominent financial institutions.

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Spent Nuclear Fuel? Unsafe When Placed In Asse.

A Small Blue Planet (from Michael) Wednesday January 21, 2009

While the U.S. plan to store spent nuclear fuel underground at Yucca Mountain is still a future pipe dream, Germany already tried placing nuclear waste in the former salt mine at Schacht Asse II.

Unfortunately, there have been leakage problems over the years, and now some of the mine is proving to be unstable - and the roof in one of the underground chambers threatens to collapse onto 6,000 barrels of nuclear waste. Schemes to stabilize the mine itself have the side effect of destroying the nuclear waste containers within 100 years and releasing the radioactive waste.

Back in the States, over fifty thousand tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel is scattered around the country in over a hundred “temporary” locations awaiting some form of secure long term storage. Presumably at Yucca Mountain - although even if that site is fully developed it could not hold all the waste. (Note: a metric ton is roughly equal to a U.S. ton - 2,205 pounds versus 2,000 pounds.)

You need to sequester this stuff for a hundred thousand years. There are lots of ideas for how to warn future generations not to go digging around the burial site. Good luck on that.

It amazes me that nuclear power is being touted as a responsible energy source.

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Atlanta White House For Sale

Magic Christian (from Michael) Saturday January 10, 2009

Yes, the town that Sherman burned to the ground has a scaled-down copy of the White House for sale. Complete with a replica of W’s desk - with Iranian and American flags on the Oval Office wall (the owner is an Iranian-American McMansion real estate magnate).
God wuvs woo

And after two terms of W. - the economy is so trashed that Mr. Milani is being forced to put it on the market to pay off debts… for a cool 10 mill.

And in case you feel confused by all the contradictions - the topiary helpfully spells out “God (Heart) You”. I particularly love the Last Supper tapestry over the dining table.
One of you shall betray me...

Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up!

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Nerdcreatures From The Closet

Life, The Universe, And Everything, Nobody Gets Out Alive (from Michael) Friday January 9, 2009

A Mad Scientist contest has brought to light just how unstable the fabric of life is becoming. It’s not just that MIT has provided a catalog of genetic building blocks - or that grassroots nerds are smart enough to design modified microbes from them - it’s that these creatures have been created in home-closet labs with scrounged equipment.

“… I have a thermocycler I bought on eBay for 59 bucks…”

Initial forays into biocomputers and GM bacteria to boost crop yields give a clue to the power that is being unleashed. How long before some nerd somewhere loses a loved one to war/terrorism/imperialism and starts brewing revenge on a molecular scale - or good intentions go bad - to cure cancer or grow a bigger schlong.

It all can be done here:
Closet Lab

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Chemical Emasculation By Pollution

Nobody Gets Out Alive, A Small Blue Planet (from Michael) Thursday December 11, 2008

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Two Girls For Every Boy - Thanks To PCB & Dioxin) - contaminates in the water and food chain have caused a 2-to-1 ratio in female versus male births around the Arctic Circle - with some communities having no male children at all.

Well, a newer compilation of studies shows it’s not just for Inuit anymore! In the U.S. and Britain and Italy and Australia and … males of all types of animals are being chemically neutered. Here’s the journalistic version in The Independent. And the summary and full report at CHEM Trust.

Some choice quotes:

… American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.

These include phthalates, used in food wrapping, cosmetics and baby powders among other applications; flame retardants in furniture and electrical goods; PCBs, a now banned group of substances still widespread in food and the environment; and many pesticides.

Feminising effects have now been discovered in a host of freshwater fish species as far away as Japan and Benin, in Africa, and in sea fish in the North Sea, the Mediterranean, Osaka Bay in Japan and Puget Sound on the US west coast.

… research at the University of Rochester in New York state shows that boys born to mothers with raised levels of phthalates were more likely to have smaller penises and undescended testicles. They also had a shorter distance between their anus and genitalia, a classic sign of feminisation. And a study at Rotterdam’s Erasmus University showed that boys whose mothers had been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with dolls and tea sets rather than with traditionally male toys.

All of which reminds me of a Sci-Fi novella “Consider Her Ways”. If this were confined to humans only, I’d be tempted to ponder the societal ramifactions- thinking back to my one of my favorite pieces of anthropology: Margaret Mead’s “Sex and Temperapment”.

Mead on site

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The American Dream of Consumerism

Life, The Universe, And Everything (from Michael) Sunday November 2, 2008

We went into town today for a shopping spree - clothes, food, supplies… and when we got back to our wonderful home-in-the-woods I kept musing on the town experience and made this poem:

The Dream of Consumerism

One Dream to rule the Mall
One Dream to find them
One Dream to bring them all
And with their credit lines, Bind Them

I was just musing, you know…

Hey! Where did you guys come from?

What are you doing with that syringe?

Oh… OH… oh…

I feel much better now. I’d like to increase my credit line please…

Fight Club - Finding that perfect dining set

Back to Zero

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It’s Time

Life, The Universe, And Everything (from Michael) Sunday November 2, 2008

I love John McCain. The guy is who he is, is a hero for our nation, and has cajones the size of watermelons. Three days before the election is finalized he and his wife show up on Saturday Night Live with the Palin impersonator (Fey) to play a skit where they are hawking trash on QVC because his campaign is low on cash.

Well… his second wife.

How come the Republican family values folks have a vice president with a daughter who is in a gay marriage bearing a child, and are putting up an adulterer (to his first wife) for president with a vice-president mom of a pregnant unmarried teenager? My head is spinning here.

I’m no saint. I’m just sayin’ people in glass houses… or if you prefer, let those without sin…

Anyway what I really wanted to point you to was this week’s The Economist magazine. This is a free-enterprise open markets capitalist publication… which is one of the most thoughtful, best written rags published in English. I don’t always agree with their belief structure. To put it mildly, they are not particularly pro-union or pro-Democrat (well heck, I’m not a Democrat either). Here is this week’s cover:

Click the pictures for the links. Try it. It’s fun.

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Lokota Withdraw From US Treaties - 12/19/2007

Illuminaughty, Nobody Gets Out Alive (from Michael) Wednesday December 26, 2007

Lakota Withdraw from Treaties December 19th Lakota Sioux representatives headed by such long-time activists as Phyllis Young and Russell Means, announced in Washington DC that the Lakota withdraw from all treaties with the US and reaffirmed their 1974 “declaration of continuing independence” (which came out following the occupation of Alcatraz in 1969, the occupation of the B.I.A. offices in DC in 1972, and the 1973 battle with federal agents at Wounded Knee).

It will be “interesting” to see how this plays out. Here’s the Lakota Freedom web site:
http://www.lakotafreedom.com/

I will hope and pray that the feds don’t come down as hard as they did at Wounded Knee in ‘73, or in reprisal against A.I.M. leaders like Leonard Peltier and John Trudell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peltier
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Incident_at_Oglala_The_Leonard_Peltier_Story/625470?trkid=189530&strkid=2124119707_0_0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pirLWdYeMBg
http://www.dickshovel.com/JTT.html
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Trudell_Independent_Lens/70044868?trkid=190393

FWIW, the book covering the Wounded Knee battle in ‘73 that I read most recently was by a woman who gave birth during the siege - Mary Crow Dog’s “Lakota Woman”:
http://www.amazon.com/Lakota-Woman-Mary-Crow-Dog/dp/0060973897/ref=pd_sim_b_img_2 (the book covers much more than the siege)

CNN and MSNBC have been silent about the Lakota treaty withdrawals. Fox at least carried this article:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317548,00.html

This could get messy. It certainly did 34 years ago. I am hoping that cell phone cameras and the internet will help keep the dogs of war at bay. It seems important to me that as many people as possible are aware of this to keep our government acting as honorably as possible.

Peace;

Michael

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