More Solar Power Ingenuity

Solar Powered Curtains

The revolution in energy will come in many tiny dispersed pieces. There will be solar powered cars, solar powered cell phones, there will be solar powered backpacks that charge all kinds of things, and I believe there will be a little thing that someone makes for purpose of art that will make energy which I call the solar powered tree. The tree will simply have hundreds of little tiny solar panels hanging from it, spinning in the wind, and slowly we will populate large areas with these tiny and cheap little devices and suck the energy from vast landscapes.

CNN has an article about a scientist who is trying to get Solar Power Generating Curtains big time into the public consciousness. Solar power is all over. We'll get at it.

WikiLeaks

WikiLeaks has become big news recently. I have heard of it here and there in the news, it became part of my constant thought process when a judge in California tried to take it offline because of a banking scandal. It has suddenly become something of significance in that it is influencing and affects the various very powerful groups - the US Government, The Church of Scientology and eventually, maybe, it will affect how businesses decide to act.

The basic premise of WikiLeaks is that it is a website where whistleblowers can publish information without retribution as their identities will be hidden. The hope is that WikiLeaks can stay independent and defend its sources while creating enough of a presence that individuals will know where to go with information that should be shared with the public. There is a big quote on the front page from Time Magazine talking about how it upholds journalistic ideas.

I like it. I like the concept. I believe in these times of strengthening state governments and the technology they harness we individuals need a buffer to keep those powers that be acting in an appropriate manner.

Take a minute and read the Wired article that got me thinking again about WikiLeaks. Good writing.

Just a thought as we approach July 4th

from an article in "Capitalism Magazine"

"Put the "Independence" Back in Independence Day"

by Michael Berliner (June 26, 2008)

"Political independence is not a primary. It rests on a more fundamental type of independence: the independence of the human mind. It is the ability of a human being to think for himself and guide his own life that makes political independence possible and necessary. The government as envisaged by the Founding Fathers existed to protect the freedom to think and to act on one's thinking. If human beings were unable to reason, to think for themselves, there would be no autonomy or independence for a government to protect. It is this independence that defines the American Revolution and the American spirit."

Good & Expensive Gas

I am a student of economics. I believe that many of our issues in life can be attributed to economics. Obesity - cheap food. Pollution - unrecognized consequences (and thus no financial consequences). Waste - cheap whatever we are wasting. Lack of Education - cheap jobs. War - underpaid leadership. If things were to appropriately represent their cost and value then our habits would change as the cost of those things changed.

I know I may piss of people when I say this, but like mom or dad said, "You won't understand this until your older, but this is in your best interest." I am HAPPY to see the price of gas go up. We have gotten fat and lazy and because of this we are losing our edge. This "we" that I speak of is mostly aimed at the United States citizenry because that is where I see the consequences of cheap gas. Our electricity is cheap so we leave everything running all day long. Our gas is cheap so we drive down the street to the corner store and eat in our cars (with the AC on). So many things we do, just because we can.

Time.com wrote an article talking about 10 Things You Can Like About $4 Gas and the best part is that none of the things on the list even talk about the international politics or the development of technology.

Lets get on the ball people - accountability pays for itself in the long term - just like mom and dad said.

The Individual Revolution

The Individual Revolution is upon us.

This isn't new under the sky, it seems more like it is the past reemerging (bell bottoms anyone?). But I see the future holding a lot more power for the individual to do things on their own. It isn't that we won't need big corporations to do certain things, but it is that we will be capable to do certain things on our own more efficiently (read: cheaper) than the big centralized systems. The means of production and distribution are moving.

1. Energy Production. This is a big one in my book. The ability to produce energy from your own home and, possibly, sell excess energy off into the grid to power business, local infrastructure and who knows what else. This is happening already.

2. Home Farming & Hunting. And I am not only talking about the ability to use the backyard to grow tomatoes, but something a little more revolutionary - growing your own meat in the refrigerator. The act of growing your own tomatoes in the back yard is awesome, there are companies who will create an organic farm in your backyard for you, or you can go it the traditional route and do it yourself in a square garden, you can do it "naturally," or in the big cities maybe you will buy an indoor farm plot to go along with your apartment.

What is really interesting though is when we begin to learn to grow meat. Already, scientists have grown meat in the lab. We aren't eating it yet, but give it time. Recently there has been a big push to get some of this lab grown food to be palatable (you'd like to enjoy it wouldn't you?). As soon as we get good at this in the lab, it will then move to industrial production and, like all good things, will slowly move to the level of the individual so that you an I can have a Home Meat Producer.

3. Working from Home. This one is has been happening for a while now, and is slowly getting stronger as our technologies and understanding of the processes gets better. Small businesses made up greater than 50% of the workforce in the United States, with greater than 1/3rd of those companies having fewer than 100 employees, according the the US Census Bureau in 2005. As well, in those business that are bigger more and more of these companies are allowing telecommuting because it saves office space, electricity, increases productivity and as a bonus does wonderful things for the environment.

4. Desktop/Home Manufacturing. Imagine printing your iPod? Apple will no longer handle manufacturing and distribution (sorta how they are now a days) but instead will manage design and marketing (we are there already?). We have been using printers for 20 years already in heavy industrial settings but more recently these printers have gotten into the news again because of the dropping price. Most HomeFab units today are envisioned for much more mundane tasks - creating a new knob for a broken stereo or maybe making add-ons for a cell phone.

Who knows what is next in our evolution. One thing we do know is that it will be different from yesterday.

If ______, then ______

If I have demand and I have the technical capability, then is it safe to assume that something will follow?

I am optimistic. So are the people who are doing these things.

Meanderings...

I recently resigned from a position and during that process came to the jarring conclusion that I have no idea what I want to do in this world from a professional standpoint. It would be nice to have a single focus that drives me. I know someone who I went to high school with who became an anesthesiologist. Now, I don't think this person was thinking about that specific job when they left for the world of university, but I do think they now have a wondrous focus.

In my search (yearning) for purpose beyond simply generating money I have looked at a lot of different career courses. In the last couple of days I applied to join the Peace Corps. What would it be like?

I have a degree in political science and have given considerable thought to getting a Masters Degree in Economics (there is a program with the University of Illinois which might let me combine both). Unfortunately I would have to spend a year on a campus in Illinois before I left for the world, but I could deal if I saw a greater purpose.

Something that does interest me though and I wonder where it could lead to -

Research and build a cheap receiving and distribution tower that could be dropped in the middle of nowhere and powered with renewable resources? Then connect as many technologies to get the signal out as possible (WiFi, Cellular, WiMax and all the other smart things). While doing this work with the local groups to find ways to benefit from this signal. Already cell phones are used to help farmers get the best price for their goods. With training a few individuals could quickly become nurse assistants communicating information out in a professional manner. A few individuals could be trained to write code and possibly be paid by far away companies for their services. A few people could be trained in the customer service industry and utilize VOIP resources. Maybe an eBay expert could be trained to sell the hand carved wares of villagers.

If a certain educated population could be created over the course of several years with the support of local government, NGOs and self interested corporate parties an economic structure could be build around a single tower that could change a village, then a region and, eventually, a world.

Of course, I am unemployed and rambling at 4 AM...

Interrogator Redux

To get secrets from a hard-core terrorist, One interrogator spoke softly

I looked closely at the word "interrogate" this evening as I browsed which news articles to comment on and began to wonder where the word comes from. The reason I wondered is that smack dab in the middle of this word is "terror." "In" "terror" "gate."

From the perspective of the word's roots - in Latin interro means, roughly, to question closely, to question while in the presence of, to question while accusing of doing something. In essence, you are questioning with a very particular purpose, not just the random type of small talk that goes on in the world. -gate simply means to set something in motion - so adding gate to the end of a word means it is being done, in the present tense.

The reason this word looked caught my attention was because of the content of the article. The United States has chosen to move away from the Geneva Convention over the past seven years because we believed that we knew answers that no one else knew. We knew that in order to protect ourselves we had to torture people into giving us the answers that we wanted.

The United States has been attacking and being attacked in the Middle East and Mediterranean region since our country was founded. Our CIA has funded and trained various groups that we believe benefited us for many purposes (we put Hussein and bin Ladin in positions of power) since at least the 1950s. Unfortunately, 9/11 was the sowing of what we had reaped.

All of this is a confusing, continual issue that, if we could solve we might not because of the individuals in power who are after financial gain. The United States did approve a plan in the 1960s to create an incident which might incite a public reaction to allow for military actions to occur against a specific target.

And now, after all of these actions in our past we come back to speaking clearly, and slowly to someone who attacked us to learn about them. I can never agree with the fundamentalist ideologies of the world because they are out of touch and reaching for a time that is no longer here. As well, I cannot fully accept and believe in the patterns of economic development that the world has taken because of the costs that we aren't calculating. We really are stealing from future generations in exchange for current ease of living. If we really are capitalists then we would be considering these future generations in our equations because that is in our long term best interests.

Confusing and scary subjects that, today, are real life and need to be paid attention to and dealt with.

The Untold Life of a Lizard

Herpetologists discover that a Malagasy chameleon spends most of its short life in an egg

How would you like to reformat your existence on Earth? Instead of spending nine months on the womb and 80 years walking and talking and doing what we do, why not spend 60 years inside of the womb and then spend 20 years fighting, living, having sex and doing what we do?

You know...now that I write it out, I am interested. Where do I sign up?

This is an interesting little chameleon. Every year 100% of the population dies. They are born in November during the rainy season. They triple and quadruple in size during their lifetime (four months). They live in a blaze of glory and then the females, sensing the oncoming dry season, lay eggs buried under the sand. Nine months later the little guys come out and start the process over.

So, again, lets go back to the imagination part of this post.
1. Be born.
2. Grow to be full size in a month or two.
3. Sex, war, feeding, living, death.
4. Start over.

Well...I guess this really isn't imagination, it seems kinda like how we are these days (cept for the growing to full size in a month or two part).

Another Conspiracy Deflated

I know some of us want ot believe that the US government created AIDS, and I know some of us who want to associate it with the G~d's will, but all of you are wrong.

AIDs has been with human beings longer than we realize and maybe hasn't been with animals as long as we thought. Either way...history is unraveling in front of us (again).

Did you know there are people who don't believe in the moon landing or believe in an all powerful...never mind that one.

Global Gain

A very well written article...

"But the very idea that we need to fear the global rise of living standards is flawed, because it assumes that everything else stays the same. It insists we are playing some sort of zero-sum game, and that for the developing world to rise, those in the West must fall."

A rising tide lifts all boats in a truly long term Capitalist world. People have been attacking Capitalism recently, but in reality, they should be attacking individuals.

Don't let simple minded people push you away from truth.

Examples of society at work on a problem

Just because there is a lot of talk, it doesn't mean there is much sense to it (wtf?), but here I think we have something going on.

• Cheaper Solar Power

• US Halts Applications For Solar Energy Projects

• Solar Sell: Companies that Mass Marketed PCs Turn to Photovoltaics [News]

• The Economics of Solar Power

• Energy bills could triple to meet climate goal

• Africa: Solar Energy the Way to Go - Report

• Utility-Scale Solar Thermal Growing Fast

• METI plans subsidies for home solar power

• Lack of new power lines threatens renewable growth

• Cheaper Solar Power

Economics in the 21st Century

Two separate articles caught my attention on a similar topic - our gaining intelligence in the world of finance and economics.

The first involves a new breed of websites like Prosper.com (by the way I happen to be a lender on this website) which is a peer to peer lending website. Peer to Peer Lending is a form of lending that brings the lenders and the borrowers directly in contact with each other, removing the banks from the equation. The purpose of banks are to use their expertise to do exactly what these sites are doing - find people with capital to invest and find those with a need for loans and then, using their ability to value risk, make loans that bring profit to everyone involved. The study, titled "The Democratization of Personal Consumer Loans?", showed that lenders might be benefiting more from these sites because of higher rates of return than their traditional manner of savings and that borrowers might be benefiting more because of lower rates of interest that are available.

For those of us who believe in The Long Tail this is simply a logical procession. Banks came into being because they were needed - how do we pool resources and find people needing loans on a widespread area? For those of us who have learned to save (and there aren't many) the benefits of long-term compounding interest are significant.

The second article that I found speaks of altruism and how it applies to Economics.

"Sam Bowlers...points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage of intrinsic moral behavior and often undermine it."

Our default view on human beings is that we are all self-interested, short minded beasts looking out only for number one, and to a certain level there is some truth to this with a lot of people. But wonderfully things like morals have been ingrained in our culture and society and these things greatly affect how we choose to act. Of course you can argue that that those of us who are following morals are acting in our own interests as we are attempting to help ourselves in the long term by impressing our friends, making ourselves happy, doing it for our religious reasons or a million other excuses - but I see it being closer to human beings looking to benefit their society, which over the long term, benefits them. So long term self beneficial altruism?

A certain phrase comes to mind - "A rising tide lifts all boats."

A Whole New Set of Problems

Mauritius: Call-Centre And BPO Sector Needs Lower International Bandwidth Prices to Stay Competitive

The "great" thing about this article is that the reason for stress here is that competing in the international business world is the greatest concern. Mauritius is a island nation located off of the coast of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean which itself is a much larger island nation located off of the coast of southeast Africa.

"Bandwidth is the petrol of the new global economy and as the price of actual petrol continues to go through the roof, it is an essential component of being able to sell "smart exports" based on "think-work" rather than simply minerals, produce or tourism."

Getting into these "smart exports" for a nation that is lacking in resources, land space or the traditional development path seems to be a very intelligent way to go - Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore focused on education, services, exports to wealthy nations and high tech manufacturing to make their moves.

With internet cables being run all over the world there are going to be quite a few groups who will have the potential to create whole new paths to development. Skip the manufacturing and head straight to the knowledge economies. Might we skip the ravaging of the environment that occurs as so many countries develop? And since one key of the knowledge economy is that the populace must be decently educated and one potential trait is a generally higher standard of living- might there also be lesser political strife with that combination of education and wealth?

This is the firt time human beings on Earth have ever developed this world. This is the first time we have built out this planet. This is the first time we have done any of this. You and I are both part of the experiment.

Ice on Mars (officially)

NASA has officially found ice on Mars.

"It is with great pride and a lot of joy that I announce today that we have found proof that this hard bright material is really water ice and not some other substance," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona.

We still haven't found official life anywhere else in the universe, but we do know that on Earth everywhere that we have found water-ice we have found life. Whether it be at the bottom of the ocean feeding off of sulfur, pulled from 100,000 to 8 million year old ice cores from Antarctica or bacteria living in the sky and potentially having significant affect on rain cycles.

The goal of the Phoenix Lander was to find a spot where they might find organic molecules and to do that they aimed for what seemed to be large amounts of water ice just below the surface of the dirt. Well, before they even began to dig for ice they found it and quite possibly are standing on top of a sea of frozen water.

Energy Independent

How would you like to make 100% of your energy (car and home)? This man did and he is starting a business. I know the first round of things cost him $500,000 to complete his ideas and he had significant help from industry, but I also know that the first of many things costs a significant amount of money to make before we figure out how to do them economically (I know the first calculator developed by Hewlett-Packard was almost $5000).

The ideas here are the most significant things -

What do we do when there is no sun?

"The remaining 80 kilowatt-hours recharge the batteries—which provide electricity for the house at night—and power the electrolyzer, which splits the molecules of purified tap water into hydrogen and oxygen. The oxygen is vented and the hydrogen goes into the tanks where it is stored for use in the cold, dark winter months."

What about my TV and microwave and washer/dryer?

"On a typical summer day, the solar panels drink in and convert sunlight to about 90 kilowatt-hours of electricity, according to Strizki. He consumes about 10 kilowatt-hours daily to run the family's appliances, including a 50-inch plasma television, along with his three computers and stereo equipment, among other modern conveniences."

Where do I get the fuel to make all this happen?

"I can make fuel out of sunlight and water—and I don't even use the water," he notes. "If it's raining, it's fuel. If it's sunny, it's fuel. It's all fuel."

Don't fear! For those of you who happen to be rich - lets get on this and set an example so we poor folk can get into this energy creation business.

The Web Time Forgot

The internet in 1934?

"In 1934, Otlet sketched out plans for a global network of computers (or “electric telescopes,” as he called them) that would allow people to search and browse through millions of interlinked documents, images, audio and video files. He described how people would use the devices to send messages to one another, share files and even congregate in online social networks. He called the whole thing a “réseau,” which might be translated as “network” — or arguably, “web.”

What I find interesting about this article is that we forgot about this person. His revolutionary ideas fell to the wayside in a volatile society that was at war and not yet ready for his concepts. It makes me think about other great ideas that may have been lost and never found again. There are a few ideas and objects that were seemingly lost forever - the Earth being round and how large it is, the Rosetta Stone, Japanese sword making techniques, and who knows what that was dreamed up by Leonardo da Vinci.

One of the thing that sets human beings apart from our competitors on this planet was that our ancestors collected and passed down significant knowledge to us. This collection of knowledge over time builds up and we no longer have to rediscover our reality every few generations.

What else is out there?

The United States of Advertising

Pharmaceutical Advertising on TV

How many drugs do we allow to be advertised on television? Well, there is alcohol. That is a big driver of revenue for the networks (especially sporting events). In 1971 the last cigarette ad was run on television. And since all of the other drugs were outlawed long before television was invented we never experienced cocaine or opium or marijuana. Remember, "the whole point of them is that it is not considered safe to let us simply buy them over the counter."

Do you wake up in the morning tired? Are you tired before you go to bed? Do you have hunger? Do you sometimes get stressed out by life's real issues? Do I get drugs now doctor?

It'll Never Work

Oftentimes, I am mocked for my "overly optimistic" view of the world. I believe that solar energy will power our world (even though technically it already does), I believe that life can be extended to make us near-immortal, I believe in alien beings floating around out there wondering about us and I believe that the common person will create their own products and throw off the shackles of "the man." And this is only since the beginning of June...

But I don't think that I am optimistic, I think I am a realist. I think this because I am logical. The universe is a place with rules. And, for the most part, I have seen most of these rules stay constant. Within these rules various things are happening - atoms spinning, planets building, stars exploding and life coming into being on this planet. I also happen to be living at the most recent point in human history (so are all of the living folks on this planet) and am able to see into the past to view our history of failure and success. Human beings have done some amazing things - fire, society, culture, writing, agriculture, mechanization, electricity, suffrage, going to the moon and so on and so forth. I take these various points of knowledge and combine that with the aforementioned universe with rules and comes to a conclusion:

Anything that could be possible is possible.

Now, that is a funny phrase. What could be possible? Well...quite a lot. First off - the rules of physics and quantum mechanics and thermodynamics and all these things that we are still learning - are unfinished. We haven't found all of the rules yet. Secondly - the universe that we live in is causal. If (x) happens then (y) results. Of course we don't know all of what happens (y) when (x) occurs - we are still learning and I don't mind not having all of the knowledge of the universe just yet. But with knowing that I do live in a universe where there is no magic and no truly unconnected occurrences happening I also suddenly know that every rule can be analyzed and manipulated.

For instance, me learning that the world is not made of water, fire, phlegm and dirt but of the periodic table allows me to begin to build a much sharper picture of the world. I begin to use individual materials on their own and learn how each one of those items acts in the world. Copper is a conductor of electricity, oxygen is what we breath, mercury is liquid at room temperate and uranium is highly unstable. Once I learn that atoms can be broken apart into smaller pieces I then began to think about those tiny pieces - what are they? what do they do? And then an individual comes along and shakes up everything we know about the universe because of what he has been reading. He predicts light (space) bending around heavy objects and he says something very scary about breaking atoms apart and the equation e=mc^2.

This knowledge means something. This knowledge has continued on today toward things like a fusion reactor being built in the south of France, a giant particle accelerator that might make black holes and nanotechnology that is going to rewrite all of the rules.

I found a website in the last couple of days that told me all of the quotes by famous and smart people about how something wouldn't and couldn't work. And so many of them were proven wrong. With the knowledge we have acquired, with the things we have done and with the patterns that are out there - there is no reason to believe that anything can't be done. Gravity can be manipulated. Human beings can be tweaked to be smarter and faster and stronger, and, possibly even live forever. And we will overcome our limitations on this planet to make it a better planet and then we will apply that knowledge to other planets.

We just have to be patient and wait and learn.

Globalization: The Ever Evolving Beast Begins Moving Manufacturing Home

The Cost of Shipping Goods is Rising

"The cost of shipping a standard, 40-foot container from Asia to the East Coast has already tripled since 2000 and will double again as oil prices head toward $200 a barrel, says Jeff Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets in Toronto."

A company moved its manufacturing center to Kentucky from China after seeing the cost of shipping increase and keep increasing. This bodes well for globalization, and in the long term for you and I. Why?

To truly have fair & equal trade between countries you need to have fair & equal rules. The key point in this are taxes and government regulations in the various regions of the world. Most countries don't have the same environmental regulation (make note that for all of the past we have ravaged our country and only now are we pushing hard environmentally) or the same legal framework that increases costs of American firms.

When the costs associated with damaging the environment (more expensive food due to lost land and damaged water supplies, destruction of pristine lands that lessen revenue from tourism, unsustainable mining practices that increase the long term costs of retrieval of goods) are added back into the equation, when the costs of the ailing population (lower individual productivity due to more missed work days because of sickness, lower general production because of mental well being associated with the stresses of lack of nature and open spaces) are added back into the equation the costs begin to rise for these producers. It took America a long time to recognize, or stop ignoring these things and we are now paying our own price for our unsustainable long term development.

Now a days some of the more common economic issues are showing up - the American currency has fallen about 15% against the Chinese Yuan since 2006. That means that Chinese goods have increased in cost by 22% since 2006. Chinese inflation is roaring ahead well into the double digits due to wage increases, competition from firms eating valuable resources and - very importantly - the Chinese government is removing some of the subsidies it places on fuel.

With the cost of fuel increasing 40% alone in 2008 the containers that ship goods across the country are turning out to be much dearer in price to producers of goods. The above article mentions per container prices increasing 15% already in 2008 and another 5% hike is expected shortly. This will wear away at the financial benefit of shipping goods long distance.

This is the beauty of global trade. The imbalances that exist in the world - lower labor costs, incorrectly valued currency, undervalued fuel and unaccounted for costs - are slowly evened out. It will take a long time because it took 75 years for the United States to become dominant and over valued, but as long as we are patient we will all benefit.

Solar Power Updates

A couple of news updates from the solar power world...

Nanosolar Achieves 1GW CIGS Deposition Throughput
What this actually means is that Nanosolar is able to print out 1GW worth of solar power sheets in a single year for about $1.65 million of hardware investment plus cost of materials, energy, labor and who knows what else - so lets quintuple the cost of these machines to get to 1GW of printing ability. Now, 1GW of power generates about enough electricity to power about 700,000 homes. According to the 2001 census there were about 120,000,000 homes in the United States. Lets say that number is now...140,000,000 (I have no idea really, and I am pretty sure the number of homes in the US hasn't grown 14% in seven years, but this is just fun remember?). That means to power the homes in the United States we need to produce about 200 GW worth of solar power.

So we could produce enough thin film solar cells to power all of the homes in the USA for about $1.65 billion. We spend more than that each day (yes, that is right - each day) on oil. Every building in the United States need to have mandatory solar films placed on their roof. Every window needs to have mandatory solar films covering them. Every car on its roof and every potential surface you can conceive of need have solar films covering them. Barack, you listening?

By Adding Impefections We Increase Efficiency
While talking about flaws and how they make the world better we could get into long philosophical discussions (the human frailty is what makes us so wonderful and if we were "perfect" to where would be evolve and what would we change?), in physics we have a very nice experiment that shows we can increase the efficiency of a solar panel by adding imperfections to it. By making a surface rougher you increase the surface area increasing the number of places for the chemical reactions to occur.

Just another discovery...

Psychology based upon Environment

In an insane society the sane populate the prisons.

ADHD in Kenyan nomads is shown to be beneficial to those who are still living in the bush whereas those with ADHD who have settled down into modern life are hurt by the "disorder."

Something interesting I heard from a PhD psychology student friend of mine recently - something is only a disorder when it affects your life in a negative manner. An individual who happens to be a modern day paranoid living in the time of the 1950's Communist witch hunt might actually be considered quite a normal member of society back in the day - because the logic says that paranoia isn't an issue until it negatively affects your life. And back then paranoia might have actually benefited you because there is the chance of greater social esteem for talking to the cops or FBI about every person who showed a tinge of socialist leaning (cus dammit - those reds needed to be taken down!). Yet today, that paranoid gets medication and therapy sessions.

What this really says to me is that psychology supports conformity because it benefits the individual. Is this true though? Isn't it true that those who fight against the tide, those who have looked at the naysayers and said down with your close minded logic, those who have stood up against the masses - haven't those people brought the most benefit to society? And in the end, doesn't an advancing society benefit the individual the most? The changing perceptions of mental disorders based upon societal norms troubles me. It is a system designed to to push the status quo and it seems to fly in the face of evolution.

When the Powerless Rise Up

The Legitimacy of your Power Affects how you use it.

"The research shows that when given legitimate power, participants were more likely to take action than those legitimately assigned to a position of powerlessness. When power was conceived illegitimately, the powerful no longer took more action and risks than the powerless."

Those who should be in positions of power were smarter with that power and actually acted with that power. Those who were not in power when they were supposed to be in power tended to act as if they had power when illegitimates were in power. And, very importantly, those who were in power but weren't supposed to be tended to not use that power well or not even use the power at all; in essence they were afraid of the tool they had and didn't yield it.

Another study I read showed that people who had power were more able cognitively because of being assigned that power, whereas those who were assigned to low power positions lost some of their cognitive abilities.

What the first studies say is that human beings innately know when we should or shouldn't be in a position of power. The second study shows that simply being put in a powerless positions tends to make us less able. This lends credence to the theory that success breeds success and also explains a little the continuance of power.

But another interesting thing was shown, and this interests me even more. Those who were supposed to be in power but weren't tended to act as if they were in power more so. This gives me a sense of joy about the human species, which in essence is like any other animal on the planet. You take away my evolutionarily given rights and I will find you and take them back.

Obama: I Support You, but I Fear You

Barack, you said something that scared me recently. First, let me say that I think Obama is the best candidate that is running for office, so this is more of a constructive criticism than anything. But this verbal gaffe resonated around the world, so it is a harsh criticism.

The first thing that I heard was regarding Middle Eastern policy. On Wednesday, June 4th, Obama attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference. There had been negative feedback in the media that Obama wasn't pro-Israel "enough" and that is a tough thing to take while running for President with a state like Florida having considerable affect on who gets into office. At this conference Obama gave a speech that touched on many topics - the evil of the Holocaust, the increased threat of violence against Israel by Iran & Syria, Hamas & Hizbullah, and the very important the need for a Palestinian state. But one key statement caught the attention of the world:

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided."

Now, as we are all arm chair analysts to what is actually going on in Mr. Obama's mind, we are making a bit of a leap as to what he meant. Does Obama believe that the city of Jerusalem ought to be completely controlled by Israel for Israel and populated only by Israelites? Does Obama believe that Jerusalem should be a city peacefully populated by people of two countries without "barbed wire and checkpoints" but absolutely one city and an invisible legal line?

The JPost.com article quoted responses from an Obama advisor that attempted to clarify the meaning of the phrase. The damage was done. As quoted in the article:

"In the current context, everyone understands that saying 'Jerusalem... must remain undivided' means that the holy city must remain unified under Israeli rule, as it has been since 1967," Nathan Diament, director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, explained.

The reaction by others was just as strong:

"Of one thing I am certain: Obama's declarations at the AIPAC conference are very, very bad for peace. And what is bad for peace is bad for Israel, bad for the world and bad for the Palestinian people," Uri Avenry.

The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, said, "This statement is totally rejected. The whole world knows that holy Jerusalem was occupied in 1967, and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state."

Do we all dream that a city as important to human history should be peaceful and taken care of and represent all that is good in us? Of course, we all do. As the President of the United States of America you have a responsibility to know the consequences of your words. You have a responsibility to know who you are saying them to. Barack, please, continue to pay attention to the words you speak and let us know, without delay, exactly what they mean because you now have that responsibility to us. Us being the world.

Three "Super-Earths" found circling a Sun-like star

Planets all over the universe! The most interesting comment I found in this article was: "In addition, HARPS astronomers have tallied about 45 new candidate planets with a mass below 30 Earth masses and an orbital period shorter than 50 days. The researchers say the deluge implies one out of every three sun-like stars harbors such planets."

One in every three Sun like stars that were analyzed by these researchers had a planet around them. Lets have some fun with math and astound ourselves...

Estimated number of galaxies in the universe: 125,000,000,000 (source: NASA)
Average number of stars in a galaxy: 100,000,000,000 - (source: Cornell University)
Guestimation of the total number of stars in the universe: 12,500,000,000,000,000,000,000

How many Sun likes stars are in the universe with planets? Lets say that 1/1000 of 1 percent of all stars are like our Sun and 1% of stars like ours have rocky super-Earth like planets - that leaves 1,250,000,000,000,000.

Thats a big number.

Do you believe?




-- Because it benefits me to make all of you smarter! That's WHY!

www.OYJB.com (I don't even know)

Honda rolls out new zero-emission car

Who is going to sell the first solar powered home hydrogen production kit?

Because I will be in line. A good PhD friend of mine once told me, "John, hydrogen will never be the panacea that we seek until it is produced directly by solar power." At first I wanted to argue, mainly because that idea seemed so foreign and painful to me. Why do we have to wait so long for hydrogen energy like that? Well, it all makes sense if I pick apart what he says.

There are a lot of reasons bandied about for the logic behind our move toward "energy independence." The first that the politicians throw around is "energy independence" and how that affects our national security. The second is global climate change - are we causing the changes or is the Earth always oscillating and any changes we are seeing now are simply part of that process?

A third reason, and the one that I find to be much more important in our human evolution is the independence that we all are gaining from the production machines that we have depended on in order to move society to where we are as of yet. And what I mean by that long sentence...

The recent history of modern human beings has shifted our general dependence from our local social net and ourselves - we used to make our own shoes, knit our own clothes, raise our own food - to a global network of production facilities that transfer goods thousands of miles to you and I. In the VERY recent times there have been shifts away from this absolute dependence from the far away world in a few areas - telecommunications has allowed for us to work from home instead of traveling to the office or even traveling across the country, services like eBay have helped many small businesses arise at homes allowing people to hawk their wares to a large international market, open source software has given enterprise quality tools to individuals who can run major projects as a side business and we are even moving toward home production of ever more complicated goods.

Home product printers and producing your own energy are game changers. Why should you go to a filler station when you can produce your own hydrogen at home? Why should you pay a centralized electricity producing company when you can collect it from the environment? Why travel to the store and pay for warehouse space, shipping, security and all the other costs that go along with that type of infrastructure when you can buy the plans online yourself?

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Because it benefits me to make all of you smarter! That's WHY!

www.oyjb.com

Stem cell researchers give old muscle new pep

We have found another avenue of affecting the practical age of life.

Not to take anything away from us...being of this planet in the geological sense and the product of switches, on and off, is amazing; the levels of complexity we are and have turned into. We have arisen in a world always tending toward entropy on the greater scale. We are the aberration in the statistical sample.

If we believe that there is no magic and if we believe that we human beings are wonderful evolutions arisen from our planet, then we must also believe that we humans are amazingly subtle, nuanced and complicated engineering samples.

If we believe all of that then every single occurrence within us is simply a reaction to another action. And if we believe that, then every little thing we learn about the body will add up to a giant database of ideas and concepts and processes and how they go bump inside of us. We will build a grand picture of ourselves that outlines EVERY single process.

Now, for me, i would be happy with a few hundred years of life because I think i will choose to remain an imperfect emotional human being who can travel the universe always learning and feeling and appreciating.

You do realize within some of our lifetimes there is a relatively strong chance of immortality, right?

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Because it benefits me to make all of you smarter! That's WHY!

What is the next big market bubble?

How Speculators Are Causing the Cost of Living to Skyrocket

"In late 2003, (speculators) invested only $13 billion (€8.4 billion) in the food commodities business. By March 2008, that number had jumped to $260 billion (€168 billion), an increase of 1,900 percent.

Nick Leeson, a young British stock trader who gambled away more than £800 million in the mid-1990s. When he could no longer hide his losses, he left behind a short note at his desk ("I'm sorry") and fled. His actions led to the collapse of his employer, Barings, England's oldest investment bank."

Another year and another bubble -

- The dot com fun of the late 20th century
- The real estate fun of this decade that we are still reeling from
- And now a commodity bubble that is driving up the price of foods, fuel and minerals.
Of course we all want to make our money work for ourselves because we would like to magnify our hard work, our time investment and do something greater with our lives than simply work. And I ABSOLUTELY believe that speculation in the market is necessary to tame future market imbalances because sometimes we humans just get lazy and used to our simple lives and don't pay attention to the broader picture - so we need these disciplinarians to put us in our place.

However, those who discipline have lost their own discipline because they are in the chase for short term profit. In order to stay in the game you believe that you have to play the game like everyone else and if everyone else is pushing up the price of dot com stocks, or investing in sub prime real estate, or buying tulips or, now a days, moving obscene amounts of money into commodities then you believe you have to. Because bubbles cannot continue on forever you will be lost inside of one of them because someone will be the last person holding the bag.

The best example of a person who I think of that has avoided the bubbles yet prospered far beyond anything I can conceive of is Warren Buffet. It was educational to watch him in the late 90's mock the dot com investments. It was obvious as he spoke down on the real estate bubble. It is great to hear him admonish our current (Bernake) and past (Greenspan) administrations pro-inflation policies. When I invest I try to listen to the smart people because even my big cranial volume can't keep up with everything.

It will take time for this bubble to pop because there is a LOT of money that needs to be invested in the world and it hasn't happened just yet that the best investment flavor has popped up next. Science and technology research, infrastructure, education, green energy, water and the amazing developing world few other areas look prime to be taken advantage of. But the nice thing about these areas is that if there is fall out in these after the investment bubble begins we at least will be left with a lot of wonderful societal benefits that will continually pay back dividends to all of us, which will, oh my, allow us to multiply the value of our time and hard work.

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Because it benefits me to make all of you smarter! That's WHY!

Vertical Farming

Vertical Farming

Pasted from the article:

Advantages of Vertical Farming

	Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres)
	No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests
	All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers
	VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water
	VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services
	VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface
	VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration
	VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals
	VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.)
	VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers
	VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers
	VF creates new employment opportunities
	We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth
	VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps
	VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.
	VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water and land for agriculture

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Because it benefits me to make all of you smarter! That's WHY!

Civilized Are We?

Modern Slavery

And from the New York TImes

Sometimes it depresses me to learn things - Pandora taught me to never open some boxes...

"3. Slavery still exists in the US.

Estimates by the US State Department suggest up to 17,500 slaves are brought into the US every year, with 50,000 of those working as prostitutes, farm workers or domestic servants.

According to the CIA, more than 1,000,000 people are enslaved in the US today. Thousands of cases go undetected each year and many are difficult to take to court as it can be difficult to prove force or legal coercion."

The Great Seduction

Being in the debt industry I saw first hand the machines that are necessary to move around huge volumes of money spent on credit cards. It always amazed me to see people who were making well into the six figures writing off bad debt because they couldn't keep up with it. While there are very good ways to game the system, most people were at a loss to explain where all the money they spent went.

"Benjamin Franklin spread a practical gospel that emphasized hard work, temperance and frugality. Millions of parents, preachers, newspaper editors and teachers expounded the message. The result was quite remarkable.

The agents of destruction are many. State governments have played a role. They aggressively hawk their lottery products, which some people call a tax on stupidity. Twenty percent of Americans are frequent players, spending about $60 billion a year. The spending is starkly regressive. A household with income under $13,000 spends, on average, $645 a year on lottery tickets, about 9 percent of all income.

Congress and the White House have played a role. The nation's leaders have always had an incentive to shove costs for current promises onto the backs of future generations. It's only now become respectable to do so."

The most important role though, was played by you and I. Remember what you are exchanging when you buy a Starbucks or get that new car with the bells and whistles - you are exchanging your TIME for stuff. You are giving away your saved up existence - the only true thing that you own - in exchange for things that, most of the time, we truly don't need - we just want.

Maybe we should re-examine ourselves. Or maybe our consumer culture is correct...I don't know.

Read the opinion from those who are paid for writing opinions.


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Anyone can be struck by lightning,
But not everyone can conduct electricity!

Who wants to go camping on June 28th? C'mon Now!

Great American Backyard Campout June 28

"Last year over 42,000 people from around the country participated in the Great American Backyard Campout. You don't need to go to Yosemite National Park to experience the great outdoors and the wonders it has to offer. Just open up your backdoor! June has been officially designated Great Outdoors Month by the White House and more than half of America's governors and what better way to celebrate."


Now, instead of just getting all goofy because of going outside and camping, lets think about a personal benefit of joining in with nature -

Scenes of nature trump technology in reducing low-level stress

"The researchers found that participants with the plasma screen actually looked at it just as often as did those who had the window. However, the window held the students' attention significantly longer than the plasma screen did. When participants spent more time looking at the window, their heart rates decreased faster than on tasks when they spent less time looking at the window. This was not true with the plasma screen."


So, again, and seriously - anyone wanna go camping?
--
Anyone can be struck by lightning,
But not everyone can conduct electricity!