Moving electricity through salt water
Bob Morris @ Jul 21st 2008 21:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
EcoGeek explains the technology of underseas cables that can move electricity from offshore generation to land. Fascinating stuff.
Archive for July 21st, 2008
Biofuel from seaweed and algae
Bob Morris @ Jul 21st 2008 16:18 - Category: Unfiled ;
Seaweed doesn’t need cropland to grow or need fertilizer and it has a higher oil content most land-grown biofuel sources.
Algae also has a high oil content. A “commercial-scale algae facility” is planned for Maui that will grow algae for biodiesel using co2 emissions from a power plant. Wow.
Given the inevitability of such biofuel sources and the ingenuity of capitalism in, well, capitalizing on new ideas, can algae and seaweed speculation and trading be long in coming? Move over pork belly futures, you’re being supplanted by trading in pond scum.
Possible economic scenario
Bob Morris @ Jul 21st 2008 11:24 - Category: Credit crisis, Renewable energy ;
It looks like Europe will get hit by the ongoing recession and deflation worse than the US. China could get whacked by a double blow of 1) a global recession clobbering their overheated economy and 2) the impact of their governmental entities holding huge amounts of US mortgage debt that is decreasing in value. If so, then the US economy could end up being the last one standing and the least damaged.
I hope President Obama follows through on his pledge to pump tens of billions a year into R&D for renewable energy and cleantech. This will spinoff countless new technologies which in turn will create new jobs and industries. Going green may well be what saves us from the worst of the recession.
High-end housing starting to fall
Bob Morris @ Jul 21st 2008 06:43 - Category: Credit crisis ;
Foreclosure: It’s not just for subprime low and middle income folks anymore. High end prices are falling in Manhattan, the SF Bay area, and many other places as well.
Two weeks ago Barron’s had a full page ad for a Greenwich estate. It was a sealed bid auction, going to the highest bid over $19 million. But the ad implied it had sold for $31 million. So why the big write-down?
Google solves incredibly weird computer problem
Bob Morris @ Jul 21st 2008 01:39 - Category: Unfiled ;
So, all of a sudden, my laptop starting typing bizarrely. The letter “o” would type as the numeral “6″, that kind of thing. Multiple keys would do this, always typing the same incorrect letter. Rebooting didn’t help nor did anything in Control Panel. Most weird.
Needed to logon onto an important site but that password has a question mark in it and it wouldn’t type in. Couldn’t quickly find a question mark to cut and paste in so I googled “question mark” which typed out as “q4est56n 0ar2″.
Amazingly (and quite helpfully) Google found that precise string in a forum where someone asked about the exact problem I was having. The solution was simple: Numlock was stuck. A few hits on the Numlock key and it got unstuck and now I can blog again.
(My brother-in-law here on the north end of the Big Island where we’re staying thinks I’m addicted to the Internet. He’s probably right.)
