The folly of attacking Iran
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 19:47 - Category: Anti-war Tags: Iran;
Archive for February 8th, 2008
Tesla EV sports car
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 16:58 - Category: Unfiled ;
From reader Daniel Rivera,
Reviewers do complain about a couple of things about the [Tesla EV sports car] but every is amazed at its quick acceleration. This car has so much torque when coming from a standstill that this has broken two transmission designs and they’re not on their third design! They say it is pretty much like being shot out of a rail gun.
Unlike internal combustion engines, EV’s deliver full power instantly from a standing stop. There are stories about people with the General Motors EV1 leaving startled Ferraris in the dust when the light turned green.
Subprime investigations: Like Enron all over again
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 13:33 - Category: Credit crisis ;
New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office has issued subpoenas to S&P, Moody’s and Fitch — specifically asking “how much each knew about flaws in the mortgage products that they rated triple-A.”
In other words, the NYSAG wants someone to either go to jail, or write a big check.
Give the multiple ongoing investigations into mortgage and securities fraud a few more months and criminal indictments will probably be forthcoming. As the economy slows and more people lose their homes, the public (and presidential candidates) will be wanting to see the Evildoers punished. And there is no shortage of them to choose from either.
How Indymedia UK lost its way and became a safe haven for anti-Semitism
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 13:25 - Category: Unfiled ;
Socialist Unity documents the sad tale.
High altitude wind turbines
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 10:40 - Category: Wind turbines Tags: high altitude wind turbines;
[The Magenn Power Air Rotor System] is a lighter-than-air tethered wind turbine that rotates about a horizontal axis in response to wind, generating electrical energy. This electrical energy is transferred down the 1000-foot tether for immediate use, or to a set of batteries for later use, or to the power grid. Helium sustains MARS and allows it to ascend to a higher altitude than traditional wind turbines. MARS captures the energy available in the 600 to 1000-foot low level and nocturnal jet streams that exist almost everywhere.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 07:05 - Category: Unfiled ;
It contains 100 million tons of garbage and swirls between 500 nautical miles off the California coast to near Japan, almost twice the size of the continental US.
“It moves around like a big animal without a leash.” When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. “The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic.”
Most of the garbage is disposable plastic trash, killing birds and marine animals. Even worse for humans, countless small plastic pellets absorb toxics from the ocean, get eaten by animals, which then end up as food for us.
So how do we clean it up? That would be “we” as a planet as it’s a planetary problem.
NYT: Trading like drug high
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 03:49 - Category: Unfiled Tags: stock trading;
Brain images of drug addicts who are about to take another hit are indistinguishable from those of traders who are making money and about to place another trade. “That tells us pretty confidently that if you make money and make money again,” Mr. Zweig said, “it is very similar to a chemical addiction and it becomes very hard to let go.”
However, unlike the next hit on a crack pipe, the next trade is not always a reward. And if you’re making money trading, why wouldn’t you want to keep doing it? How is that kind of buzz different from say, driving a sports car car fast or being active in a tumultuous political campaign?
I was a precinct captain for Clinton in ‘92 and the final weeks of that campaign with the resultant deposing of an incumbent president was like being on cocaine. It took me a week to come down. I’ve also felt the same buzz after working for months on large antiwar protests when tens of thousands showed up.
Currently I’ve been trading stock options and, of late, been making consistent money doing so. Back in the 60’s I had a nasty meth habit for a while. Sure, it feels good to make a winning trade, but I have to disagree with the researchers, it’s quite different from taking that next hit.
Successful traders generally have a methodology that works for them and operate under risk parameters they’ve set for themselves. This is a whole lot different from uninformed speculation by the reckless, which may well be quite a lot like playing the slots in Vegas or looking for the next drug high.
Nuclear fusion is coming, says noted VC
Bob Morris @ Feb 8th 2008 00:21 - Category: Climate change, Renewable energy Tags: nuclear fusion;
Nuclear fusion will move from the lab to reality in a few years, a noted venture capitalist says.
A Canadian company believes they can build small fusion reactors that will produce power at 4 cents a kilowatt, about the same as coal. Fusion reactors do not have the dangers that current fission reactors have.
Lithium, a fairly inexpensive and plentiful metal, gets converted to helium in a reaction that generates lots of power and leaves only a harmless gas as a byproduct.
This is yet another example of how R&D into cleantech may reap huge rewards. I have little doubt that clean energy, maybe produced in numerous ways, will be cost-competitive with coal in the near future. And that will change everything.
