- Transparency means nothing without justice – Government transparency is necessary, but not sufficient. If police violence is recorded and publicized, and nobody cares, it doesn't matter. This is in come sense emblematic of the coup in western propaganda. You don't need to control the media as the Soviets did or the Chinese do, if your population is comfortable enough not to care what's happening out there to someone else, and if their voting patterns are firmly tied to other issues (especially social issues like abortion), the idea of a democratic revolt becomes fairly abstract. I think this where a lot of the government's fear of economic recessions comes from. When people are out of work, or even hungry, suddenly they become a lot more excitable. (tagged: transparency law police politics technology internet )
- Condensing steam without water – Concentrating solar thermal power stations are ultimately designed to run a steam turbine, just like a gas-fired power plant. That means they need water (to turn into steam). Problematically, most such plants use water as a condensing coolant (70% of Caltech's water usage is as coolant for our 14MW worth of gas-fired power)… which is going to be hard to come by in the desert, where CSP will be built. Thankfully, there's a way to recondense steam without using a water coolant – but it does require a huge cooling tower. Not so great in Pasadena, but probably fine in the Mojave, next to acres and acres of mirrors. (tagged: solar energy technology sustainability green electricity water )
- Rousing a Latent Defense Mechanism to Fight HIV – It turns out there is a gene in humans that produces a protein which inhibits infection by HIV, but it has a mutation – a premature stop codon – which prevents it from being effectively synthesized. This mutation doesn't exist in most Old World monkeys (and that's apparently why they can't get HIV). Undoing the mutation allows the protein to be synthesized, and grants HIV immunity to human cells. I imagine that undoing bad mutations like this, and our inability to synthesize vitamin C, might be the first place we see human germ-line engineering outside of disease avoidance (preventing e.g. cystic fibrosis). Really, these mutations are hard to distinguish from genetic diseases – they're just diseases that we, as a species, have learned to live with. (tagged: genetic engineering hiv aids biology science research plos medicine )
- Anna in the Middle East – Anna Baltzer is a Jewish American who got a Fulbright fellowship to live in the West Bank in 2005, and document the experiences of Palestinians. She's been giving presentations about it ever since. Some parts of her presentation are available via YouTube too. From the 15 minutes I watched she seemed like a level headed critic. She's speaking in Boulder and Denver in May. (tagged: israel palestine politics fulbright peace war )
- Twitter + Stimulus = Humans are Gullible – A wonderful demonstration of the power of the confirmatory bias. Twitter is the perfect platform for the injection of random falsehoods. Too short for citations. Instantaneous distribution. Make sure your followers are predisposed to agree with what you say, and you can get them to believe just about anything – within that constraint. Too bad the author seems to think this only applies to conservatives. (tagged: politics twitter statistics propaganda )
Monthly Archive for April, 2009
Dear Assemblymember Portantino,
I would like to urge you to support AB 1186, an effort to enhance the transparency of parking costs for easing the enforcement of California’s parking cash-out legislation. This bill has been introduced by Assemblymember Bob Blumenfield (District 40), and is due for a hearing in the Assembly Transportation Committee on May 11th. The cost of parking is enormous, generally hidden, and heavily subsidized, producing significant distortions in the transportation choices made by Californians. Making the price of parking transparent, and enabling those who choose not to drive to recoup those costs, removing the hidden subsidies, is in the best interest of business, transit authorities, the citizens, and California in general. For instance, at my own institution in Pasadena, the California Institute of Technology, we are forced by city regulations to provide what would constitute a vast oversupply of parking were employees and students required to pay the true price of providing those spaces, wasting $3 million each year (approximately $1000 per person on the campus), that could be better spent on our core scientific research and education mission. While this bill unfortunately would not directly address this waste, it is a step in the right direction, and I strongly encourage you to consider other such steps.
Sincerely,
Zane Selvans
I went to this year’s second Everhart Lecture yesterday by Josh Spurgeon, who is working with Harry Atwater and Nate Lewis, trying to develop cheap, scalable solar cells. As with most of the Everhart Lectures, it was a very well presented talk. Unlike many of them, it was directly relevant to a real-world problem: how can humanity continue to utilize on the order of 10TW of power, without changing the composition of the atmosphere (see Nate Lewis’ excellent presentation for more information). The ultimate solution to that problem will almost certainly involve directly capturing incident solar energy, because the potential resource available is both vast and relatively concentrated, when compared to other sources of renewable energy. But solar has two very serious problems today: it is expensive (both in absolute terms on a per watt installed basis, and in an up-front capital expenditure sense), and it is not available when the sun isn’t shining. Whatever the solution looks like, in order to scale up to 10TW, it needs to use only earth-abundant, non-toxic materials. In semiconductor photovoltaics then, silicon probably has an unassailable lead. It’s the second most abundant element in the Earth’s crust, and it’s about as toxic as sand (though silicon semiconductor fabrication has serious toxicity associated with it and certainly needs to be made closed-loop). Exotic materials like cadmium-telluride, and copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) are unlikely to scale to tens of terawatts, simply because of the limited availability of elements like indium and tellurium. Additionally, owing to the vast silicon microprocessor industry, we are much better at micro and nano-scale manipulation of silicon than any other material on Earth (ignoring for the moment biological systems).
- Google Maps Mashup Tracks Swine Flu – When the pandemic comes, we can rest assured that we'll be able to watch its spread in real time via Google maps. I guess that's comforting. Right? (tagged: map flu health pandemic )
- Power Hungry: Visualizing The U.S. Electric Grid – Very cool interactive map showing the sources of (electrical) power in the US, and our current transmission system. (tagged: energy electricity power nuclear solar wind coal sustainability design green )
- End the University as We Know It – I can only imagine that the end of the University as we know it is well underway. We should start building its replacement now. I don't know if I could honestly encourage anybody to go to grad school. (tagged: education academia gradschool research )
- Dune: Arenaceous Anti-Desertification Architecture – Take a dune, and inject into it Bacillus pasteurii, with water, nutrients, a calcium source in solution, and oxygen, and it turns sand into sandstone. Figure out a way to do this precisely, and you can "print" buildings in 3D inside the dune, and then let the wind excavate it for you… if you've got your fluid dynamics right. Pretty incredible idea. Still very challenging at scale though. (tagged: architecture sustainability buildings science green bacteria desert dune sand )
- Three Degrees – The Law of Climate Change and Human Rights Conference – Legal aspects of climate change, treaty negotiations, and the probable human rights outcomes of a warming world. (tagged: law climate green sustainability )
- I feel so fat. #
- Should have new phone by end of week. Hopefully at least the SIM card survived its trip through the washing machine. #
- Not sure I really buy the remote sensing mineral spectra thing. #
- Ha! The CU NORML forum made it into the NYTimes: http://is.gd/tx8i All those official publicity e-mails must have worked. #
- In solidarity with Farrand Field. #
- Vanguard manages about a trillion dollars. Annual compensation for each trustee: $152,500. #
- No cavities (yay!), but man, that cleaning was carnage. Blood everywhere. #
- Best fit great circles work! Now I need food. #
- My god setting up a phone is annoying #
- running a calculation out of spite? No no no, just in order to be able to say convincingly that it’s wrong. #
- Grad school is making me feel nauseous. #
- going to Montaña de Oro state park for the weekend. Back Monday. #
- Okay, now we’re *really* leaving for MdO… #
- The highway system only just barely seems to be working. Why are people so into them? #
- Michelle forgot her sleeping pad. Bummer. #
- Today I’m going to write in English, not Python. #
- My review of Fred Pearce’s modern, globalized Cadillac Desert:,”When the rivers run dry” http://is.gd/seee #
- Does writing about what code does count as English? It sure doesn’t read like it… time to go home and eat. #
- trying to get rid of a headache… hydrate, vitamin-I, soothing ambient music… #
- To anyone who’s edited the Wikipedia: please vote for Creative Commons BY-SA licensing! http://is.gd/shHq #
- what’s the best way to generate an evenly spaced set of points covering the surface of a sphere? #
- Why can’t I fall asleep? #
- Sixteen tons and what do you get? #
- replenishing my solvent of choice. #
- coffee, snack, bicycle, and NSR fit curves. #
- Owner of Glendale Galleria declares bankruptcy. So sad. What ever will Americans do without our iconic malls. #
- mirror mirror on the wall, what’s the best Europan paleopole of them all… #
- Hmm. I guess that kind of looks like a result. #
- here we go again. #
- I like talking to Aaron about SCIENCE. #
- Arrr, the pirates be goin’ to jail. Who wants to bet P2P filesharing continues anyway? #
- is so glad that CU is doing free PR for 4:20 via the campus e-mail list. If anyone didn’t know about it before, they sure do now! #
- sore from turning the compost again. What a glorious heap. #
- First night of using fan to cool down the house after sunset, and it’s going to be 10F hotter tomorrow. Ugh. #
- Well, my cell phone is finally clean. If only it were also waterproof. #
- Compost went from 76F to 130F overnight! #
- I’m so glad I wasn’t born in Afghanistan. #
- Incredibly, in less than 24 hours the compost has gone from 76F to 150F. Hopefully it won’t set anything on fire overnight… #
- Health Reform Without a Public Plan – A short outline of how healthcare works in Germany: with pooled risks, and income-based premiums, but without a government administered healthcare system. There are more models for "socialized" healthcare out there than Americans realize, and they don't all involve a wasteful bureaucracy. (tagged: health medicne insurance policy politics socialism )
- How to Look Like a Grown-Up While Biking to Work – Can it really be true? Has New York become so bikeable that normal people riding simple, functional do-everything bikes are about to take over and make bicycle culture just plain old culture? I'd like to believe it. (tagged: bicycle transportation culture urban design cycling )
- Use of Linux constitutes probable cause? – Computer expertise and use of a command line now apparently warrant seizure and search of all your electronic devices, on the Boston College campus anyway. What a crock! (tagged: technology politics security linux police privacy law )
- Points on a sphere – There's no perfect way to specify N regularly spaced points on a sphere, but there are a few different ways to get close I'm going with the golden section spiral (tagged: python math programming science research sphere )
- He Doesn’t Let the Money Managers Off the Hook – Of all the myriad failures of our capitalism, the willful collusion of shareholder representatives in the mismanagement and looting of their own companies has not gotten much airtime. This is why I use Vanguard. (tagged: investing vanguard bogle finance capitalism )
- National Marijuana Forum at CU Boulder – I'm proud of my other alma mater for organizing and hosting this event. Hopefully there won't be any riot police involved on Farrand Field. 15,000 people would be quite a sight. Looks like the DEA and Drug Free America aren't so sure about whether they should participate in the discussion. (tagged: drugs marijuana cannabis colorado law )
- Photo Splicing – Ah, the wonders of Photoshop. (tagged: art photoshop urban )
- Water footprint and virtual water calculator – A water footprint calculator. To really do it right I'd have to actually measure my food intake for a week or a month… but off the cuff, I'm at around 900 cubic meters per year, which is a little more than a third the US average, and about 70% of the global per capita average. (tagged: sustainability water green )
- How Much Water Do You Use? – Good graphic showing the difference in water use between two possible days. By far the biggest waste: beef. 1500 gallons for one pound of steak. Cut that out, and you'll reduce your daily water consumption by more than half. (tagged: sustainability environment green water meat )
- tweenbots – Apparently all it takes to inspire human altruism is a smile and flag that says "help me". Encouraging. I think. (tagged: human robot culture experiment society urban )
When the Rivers Run Dry is a kind of modern, global Cadillac Desert, looking at present and future water issues around the world. I think in the end it was too ambitious, looking at too many individual situations superficially, without going into the details on how they came to be the way they are (which Cadillac Desert was able to do, since it focused only on the American West), and also without drawing enough insightful generalizations from the many different cases the author studied. It ended up feeling mostly like a dreary litany of mistakes painstakingly repeated in nation after nation, decade after decade, apparently without any learning going on. Often these projects were funded by the World Bank and other international “aid” organizations, or by powerful central governments. In both cases, the motivations often turned out to be short sighted and political or financial and had little to do with good engineering, productive agriculture, fisheries, or long term stability.
- Sometimes fast and broken is better than slow and functional. Right? #
- I really do not want to deal with my inbox right now. #
- SatStress has been vectorized. What used to take overnight now takes 30 seconds. #
- back to the eigencrap. #
- looking more and more like Jean-Luc Picard every day. #
- Having code that needs to run for a few hours does provide a good excuse for going home and eating. #
- Actually going to make it to the ESE & Society talk this week. 9am is just too early most of the time. #
- Pasadena Water and Power chose new natural gas fired plant over (transmission+renewables), so it can sell power to other cities at a profit. #
- Our server, and much of bay area, cut off by 2 pieces of network sabotage in San Jose. Disgruntled union workers? http://is.gd/rF2d #
- Or maybe just a a convenient distraction while a packet sniffing black box is installed on the temporarily dark fiber. #
- Whew, interwebs again connected in our neck o the woods. #
- is going home to look at the garden before it gets completely dark. #
- candied kumquats. #
- leftover kumquat syrup turned into kumquat jelly overnight… time for toast. #
- why bother making a cartoon figure when creating a real model is the same amount of work? #
- FoxNews: speaking crazy to power. #
- checked my source code in for the weekend. #
- I wish we could just hang out with the Theologians more often. #
- 2 Brandywines, 1 Momotaro, and a Sweet 100., all before breakfast. Next: Jamaican hot cross buns for Ishtar. #
- Underslept. Just want a naptime… #
- Now it’s really nap time. Not sure if marmalade is going to gel. Feel free to return for full refund if not. #
- The day is so beautiful, and I feel so lazy. Feel like I should be outside, but it’s all cars, concrete and asphalt. #
- I think the days of flood irrigated agriculture are numbered. #
- going to watch some more BBC science documentaries… #
