Coal, what is it good for?
Bob Morris @ Aug 16th 2007 17:38 - Category: Unfiled ;
Archive for August 16th, 2007
130 mph biodiesel motorcycle
Bob Morris @ Aug 16th 2007 08:41 - Category: Unfiled ;
They plan to tweak this experimental biodiesel motorcycle, powered by a BMW car engine, even more, so it’ll do 160 mph. “The bike emits 78 percent less net CO2 compared with a standard diesel engine.” And smells like french fries when you’re doing 160.
The coming urban terror
Bob Morris @ Aug 16th 2007 00:40 - Category: Brave New War ;
John Robb on how small terrorist attacks can disrupt an entire system.
The networks of our global superinfrastructure are tightly “coupled”—so tightly interconnected, that is, that any change in one has a nearly instantaneous effect on the others. Attacking one network is like knocking over the first domino in a series: it leads to cascades of failure through a variety of connected networks, faster than human managers can respond.
(Sounds like the current credit crisis, doesn’t it? An seemingly minor number of subprime mortgages defaulted and that triggered the cascades of failure.)
But it’s not just terroist attacks like 9/11 that concern Robb, it’s the power of street gangs in cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where they are powerful enough to challenge the authorities for dominance. He doesn’t see nukes being used as weapons because they are too difficult to build and conceal.
The result of a nuclear explosion in Moscow or New York would very probably be the annihilation of the country that manufactured the bomb, once its identity was determined—as it surely would be, since no plot of that size can remain secret for long.
We live in an increasingly dangerous world, Robb says, and the best way to defend ourselves is to decentralize all our systems. This builds in redundancy, makes cascading failures less likely to happen, and has the happy consequence of increasing participation by everyone as well as building genuine democracy and freedom.
Subprime and escrowed accounts
Bob Morris @ Aug 16th 2007 00:07 - Category: Credit crisis ;
For many mortgages, property tax and insurance is escrowed and is part of the monthly payment. This protects the lender and insures everything gets paid on time. It also helps the homeowner judge what the monthly payments will be.
Guess what. These escrowed payments were generally NOT done with subprime mortgages, because “lenders who insisted on escrows would lose business to those who didn’t.”
The upshot is that borrowers who have shown themselves to be the least capable of managing their credit affairs and who are most in need of the discipline provided by the escrow system don’t have it offered to them.
It will be interesting to see how many municipalities will soon have income shortfalls because property taxes aren’t being paid. This also shows how exploitative the system was, as escrowing payments was deliberately not done on risky subprime mortgages because then it would have been even more obvious the mortgagee couldn’t afford the loan.
