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).
Category: journal
Dijkstra, the Buxton Index, and the Prisoner’s Dilemma
EW Dijkstra, the computer scientist, was fond of using a metric called the “Buxton Index“, which conveys the timescale on which an individual or institution makes its plans. He thought that a lot of failures to cooperate, and other kinds of conflicts, were ultimately due to different actors having different time horizons. Here are three of his short essays mentioning it:
- On the fact that the Atlantic Ocean has two sides
- On the phenomenon of scientific disciplines
- The strength of the academic enterprise
It’s interesting in the context of, e.g. the Prisoner’s Dilemma, in which only an indefinite (or infinite) timescale can reliably result in cooperation (as detailed in Robert Axelrod’s book, The Evolution of Cooperation). It certainly seems like we should have some metric of this kind in mind when considering the behaviors of various institutions.
Dijkstra notes that interestingly (at least in the west) virtually all of the institutions which are more than 500 years old are universities (two churches and two governments also qualify, out of 66 total).
I think its funny that Dijkstra was essentially blogging, by fountain pen, for decades. He wrote out hundreds of these short numbered essays longhand, and sent copies of them to friends, who then copied them, and sent them on, etc. He kept doing it this way even after everyone had e-mail! I had no idea he was such an interesting guy.
The Time Value of Information and Material Wealth
Conventional economics says money today is worth more than money in the future. This is why people are willing to agree to pay interest on a loan (and why a creditor requires it). How much more money is worth today than in the future is determined by the discount or interest rate (depending on what kind of calculation you’re doing). This would hold true, say the economists, even if we lived in a hard money world (e.g. silver and gold), and even after accounting for the risk of default by the debtor, because of opportunity costs. Creditors and investors presumably have a choice as to what they do with their money. Sitting on your pile of treasure in a vault ensures that it doesn’t get smaller, but it also doesn’t get bigger. When they choose to make a loan or invest in an enterprise, they are, it is assumed, seeking the best possible (risk adjusted) return, and so the value of a given present pile of money at some time in the future is the principal invested plus the return earned between now and then. If you can make 10% per year on some investment, and you have $100, and someone offers to give you $105 a year from now in exchange for your $100 now, all else being equal, you refuse, invest at 10%, and end up with $110 next year instead.
This conception of money is somewhat problematic, as it tends to render everything in the time and world of your grandchildren essentially worthless in the present. Even at a modest 5% discount rate, $100 a century from now is only worth $0.59 today. I think the problem comes largely from the convolution of informational and material wealth, and our habit of representing both of them with the same currency.
Continue reading The Time Value of Information and Material Wealth
Have you seen the light?
As animals, and especially visual animals at that, we have a particular experience of the light. For us it is illumination, information about our surroundings. For that purpose moonlight or even starlight will do. And for tens of millions of years, that’s all we ever saw. Somehow a few of us made it through the Permian extinction, and into the Triassic, but the ascendancy of the dinosaurs eventually forced us into the darkness of the night. Our world became dim, and our eyes went colorblind. Most mammals today see only two colors, but a few of us have re-evolved a third photoreceptor. Three colors is still inferior to the four or five or six seen by many near-surface fish, birds, reptiles, insects, and other arthropods. The stomatopods are almost biological spectroscopic imaging systems, with 12 color channels in each of their independently movable trinocular eyes. We are lesser than the eyes that never left the light. They stole the colors from us and made us hide within the night. They kept the sun for themselves, not knowing that our small and furtive ways, our burning endothermy and our fur would see us through the aftermath of the KT impact.
The holes in my woolens
I discovered a couple of small holes in one of my my merino sweaters this morning. Moth larvae. My fault for not using camphor or some other kind of deterrant. At first, I was bummed because I thought this represented a flaw – I love wool, and especially merino, because it’s warm even when it’s wet, it wicks, it doesn’t smell, it doesn’t burn and melt like plastic, it’s durable and comfortable and not based on petrochemicals. But moths can eat it, and it can mold. It requires more care than fleece. Thinking just a little more, it occurred to me that actually, these holes are in some sense a feature, not a bug.
Lesser Political Evils
I’m registered to vote as “decline to state” (a.k.a. Independent… not to be confused with the purposefully confusing American Independent Party). Under duress (or… on Facebook) I’d describe myself as a “Bright Green Libertarian“. Alas, in our divisive and quantized system of government, that means I have to choose between the lesser of two evils, for all practical purposes. The two evils being, so far as I can tell:
- The Republicans who stand for big government in the name of large, politically well connected corporations and the military-industrial complex, with a healthy dose of social conservatism and uncritical patriotism, in order to garner the necessary votes, while still managing to screw over a lot of the poor and uneducated people who vote for them (as with the intellectuals, if only the rich will vote for you, you’re not going to get very far).
- The Democrats who stand for big government in the name of large, politically well connected corporations and the military-industrial complex, with a healthy dose of social handouts and nominally “progressive” policies, in order to garner the necessary votes from the economically underperforming masses, but fairly libertarian social views (do whatever you want in the bedroom, and take a puff off the hookah, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else).
Given these two options, I tend to find the latter more palatable. The “socialism” that is most troublesome in our society, I think, is corporate socialism. Corporations have the concentrated lobbying and funding organizations to make sure they get what they want, and plenty of it, so long as the people are willing to go along. They are the primary economic entities shuffling the chips around.
Which is more fair? To go with only helping out the corporations and the rich, which I guess you could see as closer to the ideal of limited government (since hey, at least we’re not helping those poor people!), or to say, so long as we’re going to be intervening on a massive, multi-trillion dollar scale, it might as well be spread around evenly. Both options are bad, but I think the former is really much worse, because it further concentrates power. The Republican promise of small government is a total sham. They have no intention (Ron Paul aside) of shrinking the government, of reigning in spending, or of avoiding “entangling alliances”. That they are still able to get away with peddling that line is a travesty of journalism and public attention span.
So given the unpleasant choice, I’ll take equal opportunity budget deficits, with the consolation prize of getting the government out of the personal relationship and substance sanctioning business, over war debt and corporate cronyism with an unwanted side of illegal wiretapping and extraordinary rendition.
The part of Obama’s administration that (by far) gives me the most hope, is their apparently aggressive moves toward more, and digital, government transparency. We’ll see what comes of it.
Dittoheads and Socialists
I have to say, it’s been a long time since I felt like the Democrats did anything politically savvy, but I think running with the recent re-branding of Rush Limbaugh as the head of the GOP qualifies. Incredibly both Fox and the Huffington Post seem almost to agree on the substance of the story: the GOP is currently in disarray, and searching for leadership. The dittohead masses that follow Limbaugh are a big enough voting bloc that the party’s current nominal spokesmen cannot be seen to oppose him too much outright, lest he savage them from his bully pulpit.
Not All Capital is Fungible
There are only two real pools of capital: alternatively natural or human, external or internal, material or informational.
Natural (external, material) capital is the pre-existing wealth of the world, which was not dependent on our organization or existence: the metals we mine, the trees, the fresh water, the fisheries, solar energy, the fossil fuels, the potential for agricultural produce (as a co-location of soil, water, and climate). Human (internal, informational) capital is the value inherent in technology, skill, organization, understanding, and knowledge.
Notes on Biking in Pasadena
Here’s what I sent to Ryan Snyder, regarding my routes and destinations. Send him your routes too! (update 2009-02-26: my emails to this address have been bouncing, others have not had problems, but another address for Ryan Snyder is: ryansnyder [at] ca (dot) rr (dot) com.)
As several other people also pointed out, a big problem with Pasadena’s bikeways currently is that they pay very little heed to which roads are actually pleasant and safe to ride on. Here are some notes on the routes I use, and avoid. I’m an experienced cyclist, and have always used a bike as my exclusive mode of transportation (didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 25…). I live at 200 S. Parkwood Ave. (near the intersection of Del Mar and Allen).
Pasadena Bicycle Master Plan Workshop Notes
Update August 4th, 2009: The BMP revision is taking longer than initially planned. See this post and the comments from Rich Dilluvio for more information.
Pasadena is starting the process of revising its Bicycle Master Plan, so that it can continue to be eligible for funding from the Caltrans Bicycle Transportation Account. I went to the first public workshop last night to find out what the revision process was going to be like, and what kinds of things the City is considering. Overall, it was a very positive experience. About 75 people showed up, many more than I (or, I think, the organizers) expected, including a bunch of folks from Caltech and JPL. The consultant who’s actually writing the plan, Ryan Snyder, has worked on a lot of other bike and pedestrian plans, and was familiar with the kinds of infrastructure you see in northern Europe, and the bike boulevard projects in Berkeley, Portland, and Vancouver. To his credit Rich Dilluvio, the Pasadena Dept. of Transportation guy in charge of bike and pedestrian projects, chose to put together an advisory committee composed of people who actually bike, to represent the interested citizenry, see below for names.
This initial meeting was mostly just to introduce the people who are going to be involved, and outline the schedule and process. There will be at least four other workshops, and most of the participants can be contacted electronically if you prefer. A signup for the Bicycle Master Plan e-mail list was passed around. If you want to be notified of developments and future workshops, e-mail Rich (see below) and he can add you. If you can’t make it to the workshops, or would just prefer to do something else with your evenings, please still feel free to contact Ryan Snyder, Rich, or the members of the Advisory Committee with your concerns, needs, questions, or any other kind of input. In particular, Ryan specifically requested that people who ride in Pasadena, give him a list of the roads that are actually good for biking on – regardless of whether they are currently designated bike routes.
Continue reading Pasadena Bicycle Master Plan Workshop Notes