Alt Energy
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Quick Wednesday link splash
- Backyard wind-power – not cheap, but not horribly pricey either. I imagine this would work much better in the country.
- The Aral Sea – on Wikipedia
- An interview with Michael Crichton
- Hand Cranked Cell phone charger – sadly available only in Japan. One would think it would be more popular here. Oh well.
- More hydrogen economy
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Quick Thursday round up
- An interesting profile of Robert Levy, who spearheaded the successful DC gun ban lawsuit. I met him several years ago when I was interning at Cato. A very smart and nice guy.
- More future of the automobile, this time from CNN. The big three American automakers and their Japanese counterparts seem to be hopelessly stuck in the past and burdened with vast wastelands of legacy costs and outdated equipment. I still have hope for American cottage industry to fill some of the gap, but I expect most of the “new” ideas to come from China. My reasoning is: The single largest unrealized opportunity for efficient cars is not the propulsion, it’s in the weight of the car itself. With new advances in carbon fiber and plastics (to replace the body, windshield, axels, and so on) you can lighten the vehicle considerably while keeping safety and performance constant. Lighter vehicle=greater fuel efficiency (by whatever measure). I think the existing players have too much invested in the current scheme and will get whupped by Chinese auto manufacturers when China reaches the necessary level of industrial sophistication (my prediction, 2015).
- Microsoft is giving away a new accounting program. I’ll have a field review in a few days.
- A pretty cool homemade fuel cell system. Not commercially viable (yet), but a good start at the grass roots.
- I just got John Boyd’s biography.
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Quick Thursday round up
- Interesting solar thermal plant in Nevada.
- George Eastman – founder of Kodak, and the originator of two of my favorite quotes. He named his company Kodak because he thought the letter K was “a strong, incisive sort of letter”. His suicide note was “My work is done. Why wait?”.
- Tech Recipes – Vista Tips
- A good bio of Albert Jay Nock.
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A good read on hydrogen
Check out this article on New Atlantis, they do the numbers on what it would take for hydrogen to work. It doesn’t seem likely.
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Monday rapid fire
- An interesting John Robb post – check out the map
- Solar powered home fueling station
- “I’m proud to pay taxes in America, but I could be just as proud for about half the money.” by Arthur Godfrey
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Thursday rapid fire
- Hitchens reviews Stein – personally I don’t think the demographic argument carries much weight – look at the performance of Japan vs China and Germany vs Russia in WWII. A productive culture beats a backward one in a life or death struggle. It’s an interesting read though. To clarify – the reason that Japan and Germany lost was American material and military support. While they could die bravely, that doesn’t lead to many wins.
- Toddler’s Temper Ousts Family From Plane –
She was removed because “she was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn’t get in her seat” during boarding, Graham-Weaver said.
- Police in Tijuana Issued Sling Shots –
The police department has issued about 60 slingshots to officers in the violent border city of Tijuana, where soldiers confiscated police weapons two weeks ago on allegations of collusion with drug traffickers.
Yet the war on drugs continues. This time for sure!
- Battery Breakthrough – Well worth reading. If true, this changes American society for the better in ten years or less. Sadly, most scientific breakthroughs tend to be either false or meaningless
- Diane Feinstein and conflicts of interest
- Winning the battle for freedom – RTWT – from the founder of Whole Foods no less.
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Monday round up
- GM has built a plug-in hybrid
- I like this guy
Indian Hill lawyer and former congressional candidate Paul Hackett — armed with a loaded assault rifle — chased down three men in a car after it crashed into a fence at his home in the early morning hours of Nov. 19.
- I’m going to order this and this
- Tamara de Lempicka made some beautiful art deco paintings
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Quick Wednsday rapid fire
- Free Fusion Razors
- Folk Alley seems cool
- Photoshop Tutorials
- Microsoft launches an html editor called Expressions. I’m quite curious.
- Republican uses animals, mariachi band to critique border security
- Google goes solar
- Crunching the Numbers on Hydrogen
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The Church of Global Warming
I’ve had these pages open in FireFox forever
- Average temperature of water near top of Earth’s oceans has significantly cooled – Global warming ‘speed bump’? see also
Dramatic climate changes during dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era – Relevant to current climate change discussion - Money and Environmental problems
- Nature Does Not Exist by Mathew Parris
The Parris essay is superb, and summarizes my feelings on everything perfectly. I’ve held off doing anything with the links until I can come up a more detailed ranting of my thoughts, but Parris says it much better than I could. Plus it doubles as my general thoughts on community based views of religion.
- Average temperature of water near top of Earth’s oceans has significantly cooled – Global warming ‘speed bump’? see also
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Quick Monday rapid fire
- HomeSite meets C#
- Warlords of Afghanistan – not quite a fansite, but I think it’s safe to say the internet is complete.
- Windmills on Amazon
- Google invests in Plug-in Hybrids – Cal Cars curiously unmentioned.
- Martial arts and motion capture
- The quest for 100 mpg cars – doable but not pretty
- A really cool bike steady-cam I’ll probably be building soon.
- I wound up building (so to speak) this camera mount this weekend.