Friday, March 24, 2006

Bring It On --- If They Build it, People Will Buy It!

Engineers are getting closer and closer to the day when, “normal” (non George Clooney $108,000 Tango) people will be able to buy reliable, efficient, competitively priced electric cars. This has been a passion of mine for over 30 years, and I have always believed that electric vehicles (cars, trains etc.) are the future of transportation in this Country.

The Lithium-Ion
Car

Altair Nanotechnologies plans to road test an advanced electric vehicle prototype.

The burning question on everyone’s mind when ever I write about this stuff is;

Where the hell are we supposed to get all this electricity to run these vehicles?

Well, how about;

Renewable Energy and “0-Consumption” Energy:

  1. Photovoltaic Solar – Currently inefficient and costly, but advances in nano-materials are about to exponentially change all that.
  2. Wind – Somewhat inefficient, but with enough of them, they could have a substantial impact on power generation. Take a look at what’s happening in Germany & Spain right now.
  3. Tidal/Wave – Completely underutilized, this could have as much impact on the grid, as Hydropower did 80 years ago. It uses basically the same proven technology as Hydropower, and generating facilities could be built almost anywhere there are adequate tidal fluctuations.
  4. Geothermal – Limited access, but still a good, clean way to generate electricity.
  5. “Thermal Solar” – Again, completely underutilized, focus sunlight to make steam, use the steam to make electricity. This technology has been around forever (kinda). A friend and I built one of these in the '70s with 1' mirror tiles on a frame (kind of like an old satellite dish), an old pickup heater core and an old water heater. It made tons of instant steam (blew up once), but we never knew what to do with it.


Solar Thermal Solar Generators -- Solar Furnace in France generates 33,000 deg. cel.


Rendering of the Nevada Solar One facility.


Other Energy sources:

  1. Nuclear – Never been a big fan, because of waste storage and the cost, but in climates that don’t have good access to the sun, I’m not opposed.
  2. Fusion - Science Fiction – for now.
  3. Hydrogen – As a direct transportation fuel, I think it’s stupid. Think about it; You set up a plant to make Hydrogen, so you can truck or pipe this highly volatile fuel to gas stations (that don’t exist, yet) to put in your fuel cell car to make electricity to drive down the road. Hmmmm. What if you set up a plant to make Hydrogen, and produce electricity right at the plant. This can be done right now without the added infrastructure.
  4. Bio-Fuels If they can make these fuels cost effective, they will make an excellent transition fuel, for people who can’t buy a new car. But, after that, just like Hydrogen, make it and use it to make electricity.

I know….There are a lot of other energy sources out there (like Methanol), but these are the ones I could think of, off the top of my pointed head, and we will always need some gasoline around (I refuse to convert my wife’s ’65 Mustang to electric).

As I have said before, there is no reason why we have to continue to burn gas & diesel to drive down the road in our “everyday” cars. We simply have to get off our butts now, and start building the generating capacity that will be needed in the near future.

Companies are getting close to producing the electric car people like me have been dreaming about for years……just have to wait a little longer.

When they build them…. We will buy them.

Monday, March 20, 2006

An Iraqi's Hope for Iraq

I have been reading

The third anniversary...sacrifice, fear and hope.

A. Weasel

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Haloscan Commenting

I have never been a big fan of having to "sign in" in order to participate in something so;
I added Haloscan Commenting to this blog, I hope it works and stuff.
A. Weasel
commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

“Furious George” Up Date (kinda)

I have only been doing this blog thing for about a week now, but even I am aware that one should not put up a post written by someone else, when that someone else didn’t actually write it.

I know… I know…. This is old.

I get kinda slow with the political stuff sometimes (all that hand wringing, screaming & chest pounding gives me a headache).

But….

Apparently the blog post (by George Clooney at Huffingtonpost.com), that I referenced last Monday, was (wait…here it comes) NOT written by George.
It was simply a collection of “Clooney quotes” from other interviews.

Now George is hopping mad at Arianna Huffington for “abusing” him.

"She said some things that I won't share, but she did tell me that this could be bad for me - bad for my career. Well, screw you!" the movie star told me yesterday about a conversation he had with the doyenne of Huffingtonpost.com. "I'm not going to be threatened by Arianna Huffington!"

Clooney, in his only interview on the subject, took off the gloves in his fight with Huffington over a blog purportedly written by the "Syriana" Oscar-winner and posted on her Web site Monday.

"I feel abused," he said.

Yesterday, Clooney released an angry statement calling Huffington's methods "purposefully misleading," and she acknowledged that his so-called blog - slamming Dems who voted for the war in Iraq for fear of being labeled "liberal" - was actually compiled from Clooney's recent interviews with the UK's Guardian and CNN's Larry King.

Anyway, you can read the whole thing here;

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/400029p-338931c.html

Good Times….Good Times

A. Weasel

Have A Nice Day

In 1968 Philip K. Dick wrote the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”. Set in the year 2021, it showed us a world where corporations created new life forms at will, and sometimes, people had to hunt them down and kill them.

In 1982 Director Ridley Scott turned this novel into the film “Blade Runner”, (arguably) one of the best Sci-Fi movies ever made. In Scott’s interpretation of the novel he takes the concept of commonplace genetic and nano-scale engineering a little further, by suggesting that these technologies will become so cheap and easy that virtually anyone will be able to create their own eyes, pets, servants or living oddities in little back alley stores.

Intense science turned into “fun art form”.

Imagine a world where the high school dropout ass-crack plumber down the street can create new life forms and nano-bots in his basement with nothing more than a 9th grade chemistry book and a $129.00 science kit from Radio Shack.

I have never been the kind of person to fear new technologies, or always think of the “worst case scenario” when some new break through or innovation comes along. I have always believed (for the most part) that the scientific community does a pretty good job of questioning and policing itself.

But, could these amazing technologies eventually become available to the masses?
If so, can we control what they might used for?

Have A Nice Day!
Actual Images of Nano Structures created with long strands of DNA and a new "cheap & easy" process.





Today I ran across this article on MIT’s Technology Review website;
Do-It-Yourself Nanotech by Kevin Bullis.

Paul Rothemund, a computer scientist at Caltech, with a background in biology, has developed a relatively inexpensive way to quickly design and build arbitrary shapes and patterns using DNA -- and, he says, it's simple enough for high-school students to use.
.....

"It's really spectacular work. I'm extremely excited about it," says William Shih, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, who is now working to extend Rothemund's technique to building three-dimensional structures. Rothemund's work, he says, has taken the small field of DNA nanotechnology and "opened it up to becoming a mainstream tool by making it one or two orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to do."

Now, I understand the incredible opportunities here for education and innovation. But, I really have mixed feelings about this stuff, could we be (in some way) casually jogging into the worlds depicted in Dick’s novel or Scott’s (somewhat darker) film?

Hmmmmm.
Just wonderin
A. Weasel

Up Date;

Oh, and I forgot to mention,
"Designing each structure took about a week, according to Rothemund. After that, trillions of copies self-assemble in just a few hours -- this speed of production is one of the qualities that makes self-assembly so attractive."


Cool, they're self-replicating........ just like us.
I know...I know…They don’t actually reproduce, they assemble themselves.


A. Weasel

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Engineering the Wet Pants

Having worked in the Engineering field for 20+ years, I have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to design stuff like this, and I have the highest respect for those Engineers that really push the limits of functional design.

Now, having said that;


I love a good Roller Coaster, and I’ll get on one every chance I get.
But….I’m not sure I’d get on this “Devil Ride”.

With a record-breaking height of 420-feet and record-breaking speed of 120 mph, Top Thrill Dragster (I would have called it something like “Satan’s Last Laugh”) thrills riders this summer at Cedar Point in Ohio.

































I'm sure this last picture is probably pretty common.








And I know I wouldn't care about the wet pants,
cause I'd be DEAD.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Ya gotta love the "Space Elevator"

Why?
Because it would lower the cost of getting stuff into space by 98%,
and it's just plain cool.






And..... it's gonna happen - here.

And here.

I have loved this idea since I was kid (the concept is a 111 years old)
but it was always a Sci-Fi fantasy because no material was strong enough to build the 62,000mi. space tether the elevator would run on. Then, in 1991, Sumio Iijima of the NEC Corporation discovered carbon nanotubes, and look out, science was off to the races.

I’m not sure about LiftPort Group and their “quest to build a space elevator by April 2018” (could be a tad bit ambitious), but who knows.

I just hope I live long enough to see it. Soooo Cooool.

A. Weasel

Monday, March 13, 2006

NERD ALERT!!!!

If rou are thinking about buying a new PC you might want to wait a little & watch the prices closely.

A Wall Street analyst downgraded Advanced Micro Devices to "sell" from "buy" Monday, citing reports from Intel supply chain representatives that the chip giant was preparing to launch a price war.

"We heard from the (Intel) supply chain that Intel is beginning to slash pricing to regain market share, or at least stave off share losses,"

Price War... Price War....Goodie... Goodie!
A. Weasel

“Furious George” on the Rampage

Once again, The King Kong of self-importance lashes out at his own Party

From the Daily Dish

One more time, with feeling

The further these self-obsessed (and otherwise irrelevant) movie star types push the Democratic Party into the socialist abyss, the harder it becomes for them to win any election.

Still, I do like the “furious George” title.

A. Weasel

Billions and Billions of Reasons to Care

We hear politicians talk about huge sums of money all the time, and their words generaly go in one ear and out the other. However, every once in a while all of us need to stop and really think about what these numbers mean.

Fun facts from an e-mail I recieved this morning.

Here's something thought provoking - be sure to read to the end, even if you've seen these 'billion' comparisons before .......

The next time you hear a politician use the word "billion" in a casual manner, think about whether you want the "politicians" spending your tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A.. A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B.. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C.. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

D.. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E.. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain, let's take a look at New Orleans - It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division;
Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), is presently asking the Congress for $250 BILLION to rebuild
New Orleans.

Interesting number, what does it mean?

Well, if you are one of 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516, 528.

Or, if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1, 329,787 or, if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D.C.!!!...........................Are all your calculators broken????!!!! Maybe everyone should just flood their houses, then we can all be on the "big easy" street for the rest of our lives, and forget about working, and paying taxes and all that useless stuff!

Now I know that this money is not going to the "people" of New Orleans, but to Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and N.O. Mayor Ray Nagin, and we all know that they will spend it wisely. I expect to see some nice improvements to the State House and a new shiny Casino or 2 (or 6).

A. Weasel

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Speaking Truth to Insanity - Follow up on a Must See Video

On Feb. 21, one of the bravest women to come along in a very long time gave an interview on Al Jazeera television. This is a “must see video” for anyone who is trying to wrap their brain around the profound insanity that is Radical Islam.

The Woman’s name is Dr. Wafa Sultan, she is a Syrian-American psychiatrist living in Southern California.

The video comes via Ace & Ogre Gunner over at the Ace of Spades HQ Archives;

Now that you’ve watched the video, here’s the update;

From the NYT
For Muslim Who Says Violence Destroys Islam, Violent Threats

It seems that she (and presumably her family) have received death threats from all over the world in the last 2 weeks. It’s no great surprise that the Muslims who have allowed their Religious leaders to shape and twist them into suicidal psychopathic murderers and rapists would react to the truth this way, but it’s refreshing (and shocking) to hear public support for Dr. Sultan coming from sane Muslims around the world (watching the news, you wouldn’t think there were a lot of them around anymore).

From the NYT interview;

Dr. Wafa Sultan, "Knowledge has released me from this backward thinking. Somebody
has to help free the Muslim people from these wrong beliefs."

Perhaps her most provocative words on Al Jazeera were those comparing how the Jews and Muslims have reacted to adversity. Speaking of the Holocaust, she said, "The Jews have come from the tragedy and forced the world to respect them, with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling."

She went on, "We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant. We have not seen a single Jew destroy a church. We have not seen a single Jew protest by killing people."

She concluded, "Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. This path will not yield any results. The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind, before they demand that humankind respect them."

Some one had to stand up and speak the truth.
I wish this brave woman all the luck in the world.

A. Weasel


Friday, March 10, 2006

Another Week, Another Breakthrough in Energy Tech

As we should all know by now, using Hydrogen as a fuel for transportation has more than a few hoops to jump through before it can be considered viable, but every day some one gets another little piece of puzzle figured out.
GE says its new machine could make the hydrogen economy affordable, by slashing the cost of water-splitting technology.

Couple stuff like this with recent advances in battery technology and we may be able to start shedding this 3.4 kabilloin ton energy monkey that's hanging off our backs.

There is still a lot of work ahead for any of this to become practical, but we seem to be getting better at it every week. All we need to do now, is make a commitment as a nation to energy independence . This is the country that put human beings on the moon (in less then 10 years) 35 years ago with (relative) stone spears and bailing twine .

If we attack our present energy situation with the same sense of national pride, innovation and urgency as our parents generation did with respect to the moon, we could do this in short order, not 15 or 20 years, but 5 or 10.

All it takes is a National Will to make it so.

A. Weasel

OK..OK.. I'm trying out this blog thing

I have been told many times on the blogs I lurk/comment (mostly lurk)
on that I should try having my own.

Sometimes the suggestion is polite and encouraging...
that's an good argument or link, do you have a blog?

Sometimes it's not...
HEY.... Get your own damn blog!

So, for better or worse I now have a blog of my own and I welcome myself to the blogosphere.

A. Weasel