Ken Nelson

What if you could trade a wee bit of electricity and get water from the air?  We used to call this a de-humidifer, but now it is called a “WaterMill”:

Admittedly, the “WaterMill” does more than a de-humidifier. It claims an efficient process needing very little electricity, and it also zaps the water with ultraviolet light to kill bugs.   Fresh, pure, water results, purer than bottled water.

I’m not sure how well it would do here in Southern Utah. Our humidity gets pretty low. But even on the hottest days, the lawn is still wet in the morning. So there is a “dew point”.

I like this when combined into an integral solar unit. Then I can make water when society collapses.  Something like that would be useful.

I’m dubious as to the “readiness” of this. The idea is cool, but their web store isn’t active.

Big battery – the blue part is the size of a building

I’m glad we have materials scientists:

The battery is unlike any other. The electrodes are molten metals, and the electrolyte that conducts current between them is a molten salt. This results in an unusually resilient device that can quickly absorb large amounts of electricity. The electrodes can operate at electrical currents "tens of times higher than any [battery] that’s ever been measured," says Donald Sadow­ay, a materials chemistry professor at MIT and one of the battery’s inventors. What’s more, the materials are cheap, and the design allows for simple manufacturing.

Solar makes electricity which is stored in the battery and delivered at night. I suppose this could also be used to make the grid more resilient and less at risk from demand fluctuations.

So I’m glad we have them, but I wonder how long we will continue to have the smart ones. Suppose Professor Sadoway started a company to make these. Do you deserve any of the profits?  Under proposed tax regimes you (we) would get most of it.  Why should he bother?

BTW: Mr. MIT reporter Kevin Bullis… are these materials dangerous?  Are we at risk of a 65,000,000 square meter fireball generator?  And what is the efficiency factor for the battery?

Get famous SciFi authors… have them write a 6 word story .

It cost too much, staying human.
- Bruce Sterling

Or not so famous authors…

Your simulacrum updated to Windows SP6032

- Ken Nelson

Example Slide from Allison’s presentation.

John Allison, Chairman of the BB&T bank explains  the causes of the financial meltdown, why the bailouts aren’t working, and what we can do in the short and long term to fix it.

I found it useful to pull up the PDF slides and scroll along looking at them. It is obvious when to change slides.

Link to the video here.
Link to the slides here.

In the long term he thinks we are doomed if we continue our unrealistic reaching into each other’s pockets.

Obama should fire his advisors and tell this guy to “do what is needed”.

It will go better with laser designated weapons

Only two important countries seem likely to collapse according to US military planners: Pakistan and Mexico.

“How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into chaos would demand an American response based on the serious implications for homeland security alone."

I wonder what the report would say if they turned their analytical minds towards us?

Anyway, under the theory that if Tom Clancy wrote about it, it is likely to happen, this does point out that we need a fence, and we need a bigger Army.

Mexico may need sorting out in the near future.

We can’t even reliably predict “incoming solar energy”

Sophisticated computer models built to precisely guide the world’s financial systems didn’t see the crisis coming:

How could it all have gone so wrong? After all, bankers have invested a lot of time and money in mastering financial risk, and built elaborate mathematical models that should have highlighted the potential for disaster. But as conditions worsened, those models proved hopelessly inadequate.

Seeing as how we know a LOT more about finance than we do about climate, and that the number of financial variables is much smaller than the climate unknowns, it seems a dubious bet at best to make any kind of policy or economic decisions based on 100+ year climate models.

Of course climate models best uses are not to predict climate, but to spread fear in support of centralized government schemes.

Affordable once more?

Aleron Trading Corp, a brokerage, forecast that gas would average $1 dollar/gallon in 2009:

Alaron energy analyst Phil Flynn told a conference in Chicago he expected crude oil prices to range between $25 and $50 per barrel in 2009, with the short-term target being $35.

I paid a $1.39 over the weekend… so fingers crossed we can get there.

Soldier or Policeman?

Mexico has had 3,500 lives snuffed out each of the last two years due to drug cartels fighting over the lucrative drug business with rich Americans and Europeans:

Gonzalez’s violent death was just one of 7,000 in the past two years in a brutal war between Mexico’s drug gangs, fighting for control of trafficking routes to the United States and Europe, and the Mexican army and police trying to stop them.

Here in America, over 500,000 people (including a very high percentage of black Americans) are in jail on drug counts. Hundreds of American’s die each year in our own slice of the war on drugs.

And even in Alaska, grandmothers-to-be are jailed on drug counts.

Meanwhile our police militarize to (understandably) keep up with the armament the drug cartels use.  They hunt drugs to seize assets to fund their operations.

Put another way… the war on drugs is quite costly. I think it not worth the cost of consigning whole classes of people to prison and the incremental loss of our civil rights.

What do I recommend?  First off get real about the cost/benefits. Recognize that some drugs are less costly than others. Act on that knowledge.

First, legalize marijuana. Treat it like like the safer version of alcohol it probably is.   Then… on the hard stuff… quit going after supply. We have to switch strategies and go after demand.  That’s right – make using drugs a serious crime. Make it risky and difficult to shoot up. 

The model to use is the same one we’ve done for drunk driving. Stiff, sure, penalties. Make it socially unacceptable. Make it a darned bad idea.

With reduced demand, cartels will crumble, corruption will remain but with lower stakes. Prison costs will lower. Social costs of drug use will lower.

The odds of this being tried…. I don’t know. Maybe only a former cocaine user can “go to China”?

 
It has to come from somewhere 

Two “bold” energy moves by local government…

St. George, UT – my town – has invested millions in a solar generation facility. The electricity is generates costs more than natural gas facilities. In other words, dumb idea. They consider it “innovative” which I don’t understand since plenty of towns have used stupid projects like this to waste resident money – hardly “innovative”.

Roosevelt County, NM – I was pleasantly astounded when I read of a deal between BlackLight Power, a beyond the leading edge power generation company with technology physicists don’t think works, and Roosevelt County’s (New Mexico) electrical co-op.   They intend to generate 250MWs and do it cheaper than any competing means.

Why can’t my town waste money in such leading edge style, I asked?

The brilliance of Roosevelt County’s approach that while the solar thing was a calculated loser from the start, the Backlight Power deal just might work.  They are trying to succeed, not knowing they will fail but proceeding for publicity or “feel good” reasons.

I would love it if St. George would be on the front end of energy from Liquid Thorium reactors.

Via Carpe Diem

Joe Bonometti gives a Google Talk about “The Liquid Thorium Reactor: What Fusion Wanted to Be”. He maintains that what fusion promised – thorium delivers:

Hey… Liquid Thorium Reactors do this!

Also available: Powerpoint slides of his talk.  Here is a key one:

Finally, here video of the Google Talk:

People talk about and waste billions on fusion as the panacea… trouble is, they don’t know how to do it – not even theoretically.  Thorium energy has the advantages of fusion + we know how to do it!

  Also pays 0% interest

Today, for the first time ever, Treasury bills pay negative rates:

If you invested $1 million in three-month bills at today’s negative discount rate of 0.01 percent, for a price of 100.002556, at maturity you would receive the par value for a loss of $25.56.

In other words, hold our money US Treasury, and all we ask is that in 3 months you give it back to us intact minus a slight holding fee.  Negative T-Bill rates =mean when you can’t figure out where to put money where it won’t drop even more in value.

Negative T-Bill rates act as fungible and large mason jars, couches or mattresses to hide money in.

Courage!

If you’ve never heard of Bjorn Lomberg, or if you have and want a concise idea of his views on global warming and how to respond to it, watch this video:

I think he is wrong about global warming being real but even if I’m wrong his ideas about applying cost/benefit analysis to spending on the worlds problems make sense to me.

You can read more about Lomberg at his website and wiki entry.

I may have been last to get it done on the cul-de-sac, but the Christmas lights are up!

H/T: Sister-in-Law

Lonnie Johnson invented the Super Soaker, which has sold over $1 billion dollars since 1992.  He has invented tons of things but his latest could be the most useful. The Johnson Therm-Electrochemical Converter System (JTEC) sounds cool:

“It uses temperature differences to create pressure gradients,” says Paul Werbos, program director at the National Science Foundation, which has provided funding for JTEC. “Instead of using those pressure gradients to move an axle or wheel, he’s using them to force ions through a membrane. It’s a totally new way of generating electricity from heat.” 

It works like a fuel cell – but unlike a fuel cell it doesn’t need fresh hydrogen all the time.  It cycles using pressure gradients created from a heat source (for instance solar heat) moving to a heat sink (ambient air):

Once the cycle is started by an electrical jolt, the unit starts producing a current. Heat in, electricity out.

Johnson claims a energy conversion of 60% – more than twice that of a Stirling Engine.

Further reading… JTECs page at Johnson Electro-Mechanical Systems.

A ton of cool stuff is in the invention pipeline. I just hope our political class can NOT BLOW it before the scientists save their bottoms.