Bell Labs Kills Fundamental Research

Here is an article from Wired.com on how the parent company of Bell Labs is giving up the performance of basic research and replacing it with work on marketable areas such as networking, high-speed electronics, wireless, nanotechnology and software.

In light of my previous post, this would seem to be very short-sighted.

Radioactive Decay Affected By The Sun????

This could be a big discovery that turns physics on it's head. This paper makes a case for the alteration of radioactive decay rates by varying distances from the sun. The mind boggles at the possible implications.

Solar Notes

A reader of UrbanSurvival.com made the following comments yesterday:

George, a quick note on sourcing alt. power. Sun Electronics (www.sunelec.com) in Miami is THE place to buy solar panels and inverters. Learned about them from my brother-in-law, a long-term cruising sailor. Great prices, and they have stuff in stock. They have tremendous volume, lots of business to S. America, apparently.

Don't expect them to help with installs or educate you on basics, they are too busy. I exchanged some emails with John Kimball, the Pres of Sun Electronics and he said he was working 7 days a week from 7am to about 2- 3 am (!!!!!) they are that busy.

Seems a lot of folks wonder if "The Grid" will be stable much longer, myself included. My system is NOT grid-tied, don't want anyone messing with my stuff, I even plan on wiring separate household circuits to be completely isolated.

Your point of not telling your power company (or local gvmt) about your PV system is well-founded, I hope to keep my panels hidden from street view also. I have a 48 volt system I am in process of installing, with 6 Evergreen/SUN 190w panels and a 3600 watt Outback Inverter. Battery bank consists of 8 L16 6 volts in series, purchased locally from Batteries Plus+.

The BEST place to buy cable that I have found is (really, this is not a joke) a place called Genuinedealz.com in Brunswick, GA. Great prices, FAST shipping never an order screw-up, although I seem to remember they used to be in KY. I am also a (currently land-bound) liveaboard sailor so tend to go marine grade with everything I do.

My background is in electronics so it is a lot more fun doing this for myself than for an employer or client. Keep up the great writing about "the great de-leveraging" - sounds like a PT Barnum call to get folks to head to the exits. Hmmmmmm, how appropriate..."

Just to make sure we're clear on a couple of points here: 1) If you don't know with absolute certainty what you're doing with electricity hire a professional licensed electrician to do the work. and 2) As long as you are not using the grid-tie function,. an inverter-charge can be used without notifying your power company - it's just a great big scaled-up uninterruptible power supply. However, when you turn on the grid tie function, then you've got regs and rules to comply with.

Grid Problems Loom For Wind Power

It appears that our antiquated electric power infrastructure could be a problem in the distribution of electricity from proposed "wind farms." My question is, does this work better if the power is generated at the point of consumption, like having solar or wind generated power produced by the homeowner or business owner?" Of course there are capital costs for installation which would limit this capability at least initially, but maybe it is something that should be a goal.

One thing is certain, we needed to start something sensible yesterday.

Why Offshore Drilling Can Bridge The Gap

Here is an interesting article by Popular Mechanics' James Meigs on how offshore drilling can bridge the gap to the U.S. energy future. There are many incentives already on the table, but a few more could speed things up.

Physics For Future Presidents

Here is an interview with Richard Muller, author of "Physics For Future Presidents."

The Global Confidence Game

The following is an excerpt from George Ure's Urban Survival:

Thus, properly braced with a double-shot of context, we're now ready to explore the rather peculiar behavior of the U.S. dollar was actually up a bit this morning.

Remembering how the Global Economic Confidence Game is a zero-sum affair as long as it hangs together, we recall that when the "dollar extends gains vs. Euro, pound falters" that something else on the other side of the equation should go down. Enter oil and the precious metals.

Because there's a chance that Hurricane Gustav, which is headed toward Hait, then Cuba, and perhaps into the Gulf of Mexico Oil Patch, could cause some production issues, the price of oil is not falling as far or fast as otherwise could be expected int he face of a Dollar rally.

So that leaves Gold and Silver to be a whipping this morning as there's got to be this quid pro quo of the markets.

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It's about here that you could raise a hand and ask a sensible question: "So if the US is continuing to print up promised-backed debt paper, why is the dollar going up?"

To put it simply, there's a global confidence game underway.

Pretend we have all just pulled up chairs to a poker game, and the table stakes are pieces of paper which have strange symbols and incantations on them. While we think these will have some meaning in the future (symbols and incantations appear through human history, after all) we have not absolute assurance that this will always be so.

Nevertheless, we all start to play our card game, and as long as no one brings up the issue of convertibility to anything absolute (as in x ounces of gold or silver, or better, so many BTU's of energy) the game continues. Thanks to the miracle of inflation, every so often, we get to dump another basket of paper into the game so it appears the stakes get bigger over time.

Mind you, not one player at the table has any incentive to call out the paper for what it is. The reason? If at any point the foolishness of the game were revealed, then all table stakes would drop in value and thus all the players would lose.

This is precisely the position China finds itself in today: Here's a country with huge human capital which has bootstrapped its economy up by trading paper for its goods and services. Logically, for China to announce to the world that "Paper is worthless!" would endanger their stakes in the game just like anyone else.

But with recent events in Georgia, Russia may be getting a little edgy about all this paper floating about. In fact, Russian lawmakers are asking for recognition of two breakaway areas in the Georgia region. Of particular concern is that next week, BP Dick Cheney is going to the area, the analog to pulling up a chair at the table. Then there's the matter of missile "defense" systems being put into Poland, which the West has turned into a marvelous 'create your own enemy' situation; one we're getting unfortunately skilled at.

Thankfully, US voters are pretty forgetful, perhaps because we're the most highly medicated society on earth. That's how the ruling corpgov paradigm can get away with 'stacking' the pseudo-elections in November such that they offer no anti-war candidates, no plan to concentrate on the transformation of America's economic model, infrastructure, or revitalize farming along the organic meme. Instead, both parties are tacitly pro-war, anti-change, and desperately pumping up the old paradigms.

This pumping old paradigms is useful, however, because it keeps the liar's poker game with all that paper with the symbols and incantations on them going. If you think the recent headline that "Antidepressants impair driving ability of the depressed" is worrisome, you'll notice how there's corresponding headline in the MainStreamMedia that logically extends the research to the area of political choice.

Thus, police stop people for drinking and driving, but who gets pulled over for being on an antidepressant? Reason: There's a lot of lobby money on the table from the pharmaceutical industry.