The American Form of Government

Here is our civics lesson for today.  After viewing this, reflect on the statements made by our political leaders about protecting our democracy and making the world safe for democracy.

From Bizarro

Sales of "Atlas Shrugged" Soar

"Atlas Shrugged" is a classic from the late 1950s by Ayn Rand (Alan Greenspan was of protege of Rand). Sales of this book have tripled this year due to, what is assumed to be, the similarities between the plot-line and events of our day.

I've had a copy for years and finally started my read a couple of months ago. It is a substantial book (over 1000 pages in paperback), but I hear too many positive reviews to not jump in. I hope to finish it before the US economy recovers.

Missing Nuclear Materials at Dept. of Energy Locations

A report from the Dept. of Energy Inspector General Gregory Friedman has concluded that 'the department cannot account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material.'

This is absolutely pathetic. Sloppy work, sloppy management, and bureaucratic incompetence.

Sony Preps Hybrid Fuel Cell Battery

Sony has developed a hybrid fuel cell that can switch from a methanol fuel cell mode to the traditional lithium-ion battery system.

They have also shown a bio-battery that is powered by the enzyme degradation of glucose.

"Green" Energy Needs A Big Leap

More research and development is needed to make renewable energy cheap and easy to use. Will more government funding be the answer or will it come from the private sector?

I believe that 'green' energy technology can be the next big source of jobs in this country. Let's hope there is plenty of incentive for the innovators and producers of this technology.

Seven Things You Need To Know About Time

Click here to read about the nature of time and the way humans relate to it.

Flexible Electronic Books Coming Next January

Here comes some competition for Amazon's Kindle 2. Pages will be magazine size and the devices will have wireless internet connection and a touch screen. No wonder the newspapers are worried.

Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems

You may be able to fix more of your gadget glitches that you think. Paul Boutin of the NYT gives us some great tips.

Plunging Drug Prices

How do they expect cocaine and heroin dealers to make a decent living? Europe is being flooding with plentiful and cheap drugs. This article makes it sound like something must be done to keep prices high. I would think that the heroin excess is the result of record poppy crops in Afghanistan. After all, Afghan farmers have to make a living too. Ok, just a little sarcasm.

Seriously, the drug business is becoming extremely powerful and rich. The drug kingpins can now essentially buy off just about any world leader/politician/country. Catherine Austin Fitts claims that the drug money has been laundered through Wall Street for the last 15 - 20 years. If the profit motive could be removed from drug trafficking, then there would be little motive to distribute product.

Breaking Three Bad Computing Habits

Here is some good timely advice on saving yourself some headaches in your computing work. This blog states that the most effective tool for protecting your computer from viruses and malware is your own brain.

Oil Falls Below $35 per Barrel

The global economic situation is causing additional drops in the price of oil. The implications are numerous. This will hurt the development of alternative energy and cause financial problems for some oil producing nations that use oil revenue for social and economic stability.

Hubble Mission In Danger

It appears that the satellite collision last week may have put the Hubble Telescope mission in danger. The upcoming repair mission was already bumping up against the limits of the safety margin. The event of last week may have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back.

The Maggots In Your Mushrooms

Here is a piece from the NYT about what the FDA allows in our purchased food. You are not going to like this.

Aptera 2e Coming In October

Here is an electric car that can be charged on a 110 volt outlet and will go 100 miles on a charge. At 1,700 lbs and a top speed of 90 mph, it accelerates from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds. Production will be in Vista, California.

Philip Glass and the Big Ears Music Festival

And now for a little local culture. Saturday afternoon I attended a concert given by Philip Glass at the Bijou Theater on Gay Street. I liked his music before and I appreciate it even more after this live performance.

This was part of the Big Ears Music Festival produced by Ashely Capps. He is a local guy that built himself an empire with AC Entertainment and done very very well for himself. He started out 20 years ago with Ella Guru's in the Old City and went bankrupt. He started over, learned some lessons and has excelled. The Bonnaroo Festival is one of his productions. He is quite passionate about music. I really enjoyed his show "Unhinged" that was on WUOT-FM for several years. Here is an article from last week's Metro Pulse.

You can check out some samples at the iTunes Music Store. He has done many movie sound tracts many would recognize. Many believe that he is America's greatest living composer. I would have to agree.

Cellulosic Ethanol Competative In The Long Term

Once oil reaches $90 per barrel cellulosic ethanol will be price competitive without price incentives. Plus, the U.S. can replace one-third of its annual gasoline use with ethanol by 2030.

This could be a good use for disposing of garbage and agricultural waste products. It will be cheaper if work towards this starts now.

Tesla Model S Sedan Rolls Out Next Month

Tesla Motors will introduce it's Model S four-door all-electric luxury sedan next month. Manufacturing will begin in 2011. This would probably be one of the more promising projects for some of the stimulus funds.

If Tesla Motors can get this going and get the price down relatively quickly with increased production and strong sales, this could be a boost for the American auto industry. I can certainly think of many more wasteful ways to flush money down the federal toilet.

Breakthrough for Cheaper LED Lights

A new way of manufacturing LED lights could reduce lighting costs by as much as 75% within 5 years. This new process uses gallium nitride for use in LEDs that will cost one tenth of current manufacturing costs. This could lead to a big savings of electric power.

Electricity From Straw And Other Waste Materials

Researchers in Germany have developed a pilot plant that generates electric power from non-edible agricultural wastes. Biogas generation is about 30% higher than conventional facilities. Food need not be in competition with fuel. The plan it to scale up to a plant generating 2 megawatts.

Kindle Alternative?

The OLPC's XO Children's Machine may turn out to be a good and less expensive alternative to Amazon's Kindle 2 according to Wired.com.

Robert Furman: 1915 - 2008

Here is a story about the life of Robert Furman who played a key role in the Manhattan project. No doubt he spent some time in Oak Ridge during WW-II.

Recently, Furman reflected that the 'biggest miracle' of the past 60 years was that no other atomic weapons had been used.

Imagining the Tenth Dimension

Watch Imagining the ten dimensions in How to Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Lucky Moments Video

Amazing videos. Nothing grisly, but some hideous music.

Digital Overload Is Frying Our Brains

Brandon Keim at Wired.com has a conversation with Maggie Jackson about her book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age.

This affects us all.

The Hybrid Car Conspiracy

In the early 1970s work had begun on a hybrid car by Dr. Victor Wouk. Then Eric Stork of the EPA got involved. The result was some significant disincentive.

Tesla's (Mortal) Coil

Here is an article by Scott Budman on the status of the Tesla sports car:

TESLA’S (MORTAL) COIL by Scott Budman

If you’ve ever sat inside a Tesla sportscar, you know it feels great.

It’s sexy. It’s fast. It’s super expensive. And, perhaps best of all, it’s green.

It’s the kind of car the kid in the 280-ZX commercials of my youth would look at and say, wistfully, “someday.”

But Tesla’s timing is also proving to be exquisitely bad…and it may kill off one of the Silicon Valley’s better ideas. The car itself may be the next DeLorean. Great-looking, unusual, trend-setting .. and ultimately, a kitschy collector’s item. Already, ValleyWag is calling Tesla CEO Elon Musk the next Preston Tucker.

But back to timing. When the gas station across the street from the Menlo Park dealership offered up fuel for $4.75 a gallon, it looked like the Tesla roadster’s six-figure price tag would pay for itself in a matter of a few years. And when that same six-figure price tag was made palatable by a less expensive sedan version, to come out of San Jose, no less, it looked like a car company for everyone.

Last year, San Jose’s Mayor Chuck Reed, in a ride that is beginning to resemble Mike Dukakis in his tank, proudly announced that his city would be the manufacturing site for the next-generation Tesla . . .and with lots of new jobs to boot.

Fast forward to now. About 100 people (Google’s founder included) have ponied up and are driving the (still beautiful & green) sportscars. Many others are on the waiting list – but in today’s economy, it’s a good question whether those cars will ever bought & paid for. Tesla even admits that despite the nosebleed price, it’s still losing money on each car that drives off the lot.

And speaking of money, Tesla itself is running out of it. Plans for the sedan have been put off (again), the big new San Jose assembly plant is being put on hold — and San Jose (and Mayor Reed) is looking like the groom left at the altar.

Maybe it’s just not good business for a start-up to charge $109,000 for its initial product. Maybe Tesla got in way over its head. Throw in some really, really bad luck (a crippled economy, with the auto industry doing even worse), and you have the makings not of a planet-saving car company, but of a good idea done badly, with a few satisfied customers, and a whole lot of burned investors.

I’d love to see Telsa succeed .. part of it reminds me of what the Valley does so well, part of it is that the sexy little car is exactly what our planet needs. But I wouldn’t bet on Tesla, at least not in the short term. For a variety of reasons, it’s no longer giving the people what they want at a price they can afford . . . and that’s just not good business.

Peter Schiff On The Stimulus Package

I have refrained from including a lot of political type posts on this blog site. I feel it is important to put up this link to an interview that Peter Schiff gave on tech ticker where he discusses the implications of the latest government 'stimulus package.' This is actually more about economics and common sense than politics.

If our economy got into this mess by consumers over-borrowing, then how can excessive government borrowing get us out of it?????????

Either one of the two following political conditions exist: 1) our federal leadership and politicians are stupid, or 2) they are criminal conspirators (I'm talking both parties here and not just the last two administrations).

I just had to get that off my chest.

Kindle v. 2

Here is some 'leaked' information on Amazon's newest Kindle (version 2). Looks good but still a bit pricey, IMHO.

Coraline

The movie Coraline was released to theaters today. This is a stop-motion 3-D fantasy that is as much for adults as it is for children. Read the Wired review here. I plan to see this in a couple of weeks.

About TED

I have TED (Technology, Entertainment Design) linked to this blog site. If you haven't checked it out, go here to read a Wired article about this 'thinking out of the box' conference on the west coast.

The Latest from Bob Zubrin

Bob Zubrin has some ideas on how to stimulate the economy. The solutions include tax-deductible down payments, flex-fuel laws, and trips to Mars.

What It's Like to Work at Wal-Mart

Wired writer Charles Platt has written a blog post about his stint as a Wal-Mart employee. Interesting comparison with other companies like Target.

300-Year Disposal Solution for Spent Nuclear Fuel

William D. Peterson has filed a patent for an alternative methodology for dealing with long-term spent nuclear fuel.

I first became aware of this specific technology in an opinion piece by Richard Stallings in the Las Vegas Sun concerning the situation at the Yucca Mountain Depository.

This approach sounds reasonable and promising. The Yucca Mountain disposal project appears to have lost momentum due to the political climate and it is hard to see may reasonable alternatives.

Here is the abstract for the patent:

A method including a combination of intermediate storage and reprocessing is utilized to process spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and thereby effect a disposition of that SNF within a period of 300 years. The method includes five or more years of pool water storage wherein ninety-nine percent (%) of the fission wastes energy decays. The waste material is then stored in an air convention storage facility, before processing to separate Cesium and Strontium from the waste is effected. This air convection cooling may be done in convection air-cooled concrete casks.

During 50 years of convection air-cooled storage the energy contained in the waste material declines another one half %. Thereafter, at any point the SNF is processed to sufficiently separate 99.999% of the 97% of actinides (approximately 95% U238 uranium, 1% U235 uranium, and 1% Pu239 plutonium) from the 3% fission wastes. Again, it is only necessary to provide approximately 99.999% separation of the TRU's (transuranic waste) from the fps (fission products)--more specifically, sufficient separation so that the residual fps are contaminated with less than 100 nCi/g TRU's, as defined in the Class C regulations--10CFR61.

The separated actinides and transuranics are thereafter utilized in the manufacture of MOX (mixed oxide) or fast burner reactor fuel pellets for future reactor fuel. The remaining fission wastes, containing Cesium and Strontium, are then placed into containers and subsequently put into dry storage for the remainder of around 300 years, where most of the remaining half % of its radiation energy material, i.e., Cesium and Strontium decays. Thereafter this fission waste is put into a low level Class-C nuclear waste repository, which may include leaving them in the intermediate storage facility that is also designed to accommodate and dispose Class C waste.

Spinach and Peanuts, With a Dash of Radiation

Food irradiation is a technology that has been around for many years, but it's use has been limited due to misconceptions from the public.

It appears that items with high fat content are not good candidates for irradiation due to changes in taste. This seems reasonable since the radiation (typically gamma-ray photons) will cause chemical bonds to be broken. Similar things happen when cooking with heat, but the flavor can be different.

More research and education is needed. The more we depend on corporate farming and long-distance distribution, the more concerns we should have over contaminated food.

Wind Power Production Imporving in the USA

U.S. wind power generation has increased 50% surpassing Germany within the last year. Too bad Denmark is beating our pants off with the production of wind power generating equipment.

More On 3-D TV

The state of the art 3-D TV is not being shown during today's Superbowl broadcast. This demonstration may leave viewers unimpressed. Apparently, there are 1.4 million 3-D capable TVs in US homes, but the content is not yet available. This is something that surprise me. Another problem is there is no 3-D standard yet.