100% Renewable Jet Fuel

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has made a major breakthrough in developing a feedstock-flexible process that generates 100% renewable aviation fuel that meets military specs (JP-8).

Solar Power In Knoxville

Here is an article in today's Knoxville News Sentinel about the use of solar panels in our fair city. It would be nice if that payback interval was a bit shorter.  Also, I have questions about the lifetime of a solar panel.  Does it last long enough to get the payback and then some?

It's getting there but more breakthroughs are needed.  Increased production of the Nanosolar product might help also.

At Home, Women Rule

Men might strut their stuff at work, but women wield the power at home.  We've know that for some time right?

Water Bears Survive Exposure in Space

Here is an amazing article on how some tiny organisms called Water Bears survived exposure to the vacuum and UV radiation of space and lived on a European Space Agency research platform in 2007.

I highly recommend a great book titled "A Short History Of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson. One thing I got from this book was just how tenacious life can be.  One instance is that some microbes inside a camera lens from one of the Surveyer lunar landing crafts (1967) survived after being retrieved and returned to Earth by the Apollo 12 Astronauts.  Life is tough.  IMHO, about the only way to totally wipe out all life from our planet is for the Sun to reach the red giant stage and engulf Earth.  This is not likely to happen for about 5 billion years.

Money Mess - Background Information

Again, I don't want to dabble too much into politics in this blog, but I find it amazing that some crucial information is not being widely discussed by the various talking heads on TV news.

The payoff for delinquent mortgages in the US is between $60 and $100 trillion. Pay this off and a lot of the crisis goes away.

One big problem is that the derivatives total up to about $80 trillion. The US GNP is about $14 trillion. A lot of those bad loans are wrapped up in that $80 trillion derivative packages.

The reason we got into this mess is that back in the late 70s, the federal government initiated the Community Reinvestment Act (check it out on Wikipedia) which penalized lending banks for not giving loans to low income borrowers. Many of the mortgages applications were filled out with false information (i.e., income, job status, etc.) The mortgage people made the commissions and then sold the mortgages which got repackaged and sold as securities. A lot of those securities are owned by investors (and banks) in other countries (i.e., China)

This was all legal and stupid. What a mess. Giving out money for votes. Our Congress is the main culprit. The voters need to make some adjustments.

Just my two cents worth.

Tennessee Shines

Last night I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the second Tennessee Shines show last night at Knoxville's Bijou Theater. Our local Americana radio station, WDVX-FM (which started out in a camper trailer in 1999) is the organizer and broacaster of the show.

This was show #2. This is a live radio broadcast on the last Wednesday night of each month. It is videotaped in HD for a later broadcast on WBIR-TV. I also attended the initial performance last month.

I recommend that you check it out. You can listen via the internet.

Bailout Fix Recommendation

Seems like Dave Ramsey has the best recommendations for fixing the so called financial bailout crisis.

We are not being told the whole story by the mainstream news media, but of course you already know that.

Write your CONgressmen/women and Senators and let them know what you think.