Posted on by lhl
  • [rl] simpsons .torrents – every single Simpsons episode in DivX/XviD (I wateched the season finale – man, things have gone downhill)
  • Born to Plog

    Hello! It looks like I am receiving a host of new visitors, thanks to a link on Amazon’s new Plog page. A Plog, as near as I can tell, is a “personalized log,” and is like a “blog” except you can’t personalize it. Also, instead of you writing it and other people reading it, robots write it and you read it. Also, instead of being open to the world, only you can see it. But aside from that, it’s pretty much nothing like a blog.

Posted on by lhl

According to the EIA, America consumed 20.0MMBD last year, with 45% of it, 8.9 MMBD in gasoline alone. According to the latest EPA reports, average car and trck fuel efficiency is at 20.8mpg (check out the trends, it’s gone down since peaking in the late 80’s thanks to SUVs).

A VW Lupo gets between 78-99mpg running on diesel or bio-diesel (its Polo TDI cousin avg’s about 70mpg. (hybrid technology might add a couple more percentage points, but I’d have to do more research). Today manufacturers could easily meet increasing CAFE standards simply by doing simple things tweaking rolling resistance and aerodynamics.

Now think about it. Today, gas in Los Angeles is about $2.40/gallon. If you were driving a car today that avg’d 20mpg, and switched to one that got 60mpg, you’re effective cost/gallon would drop to $0.80/gallon – I don’t think I can even remember when gas was that cheap. Now, lets say that all the people switching to more efficient vehicles (or just driving less) had a 25% impact on gasoline consumption, or a 11.5% impact on overall oil demand. Would that lower actual prices (bringing effective prices down even more?)

(If you’re driving w/ a new direct injection diesel, prices are already a bit cheaper at the pump [albeit for crap diesel], or you can make your own bio-diesel for about $0.50/gallon. (before factoring in the cost/mi argument used above).)

Of course, if you actually run the totals through the spreadsheet, as an individual, if you’re driving 10-15K/yr, you’re only going to save a couple thousand bucks… I’ll need to do some more calculations/thinking on this later.

Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl

The more I look at Confluence, the more I like it. It has just about everything I want in a knowledge management tool (except the source code is $4,000).

It has ‘spaces‘ to subdivide data, profiles and groups, blogs (although only against spaces right now), comments, macros (uses Radeox) and, this is interesting, the ability to create ad-hoc heirarchies and to (this is great) create input templates (!!! yes, this is great!).

Things that would be nice: data type filtering, better delineation/customization of dashboard, taking the next step and allowing arbitrary relationship creation for pages, also subdividing nodes

In a slightly related note, I noticed that Brandeis’ IT site is running entirely on Twiki.

Posted on by lhl

From the recent reading I’ve been doing, several things seem clear: we’re undeniably running low on fossil fuels, prices are only going to go up (increasing demand, finite decreasing supply), environmental impact suggests we need to switch to as soon as possible to a less dangerous power supply.

Bruce Sterling’s latest Viridian Note makes (sorry, Bruce, really peurile) jabs at James Lovelock’s suggestion that “Nuclear power is the only green solution.” The comments suffer from: conflating nuclear power w/ nuclear weapons, general ‘nukes are bad just because’ barbs, and complete lack of any alternative solution, constructive criticism, or well, any redeeming value at all.

As I understand it, the arguments against nuclear power:

  • Total cost of ownership (waste disposal, decommissioning)
  • Accident potential (leakage, meltdown)
  • Generating dangerous nuclear materials that could be used by malefactors
  • The larger issue of waste management (where/how to dump it)

It seems from the studies I’ve found is that even in light of cost of high capital costs (building, decommissioning) and waste disposal, nuclear power is price competitive with fossil fuels – and that’s before you factor in fossil fuels’ huge environmental/health costs.

As far as safety concerns, it seems that the reactors themselves are very safe. Modern (passive-safe) designs would seem to suggest that a Chernobyl-like, or even 3MI meltdown would be extremely unlikely assuming proper regulation/oversight. That being said, how secure would these be from terrorist threats (note, that reactors cannot under any circumstances explode like a nuclear bomb) and waste transport are probably two concerns that need to be given due consideration (and weighed to the alternatives).

As far as I can tell, the separation of weapons grade Plutonium (239) from nuclear reactors is a strawman argument. And, as far as acquiring, radioactive materials that could be used in “dirty bombs” (although I’d imagine it’d be much easier to get those materials from hospitals, research facilities, industrial sites?).

And lastly, the issue of radioactive waste. Permanent disposal is apparently still an open issue. The EPA has a site on how it is dealt w/ currently. The NEI also has a number of resources, specifically on the Yucca Mountain Project.

While low-level waste isn’t as big of a concern, high-level waste is a problem considering that the isotopes are highly radioactive and have extremely long half-lives (some upwards of 100,000yrs). It’s too bad that the IFR was cancelled, although fast-breeder and hybrid reactor designs offer the promise of dramatically reducing high-level radioactive waste to insignificant amounts. (commercial reprocessing is occurring)

Currently, via 103 operating reactors (89% utilization), nuclear power provides 21% of the nation’s electrical power. Renawable (including hydroelectric) provides 7%, which is pretty respectable. I’m still very much enamored with a national push for wind farms, although cost/kWH, predictability, and power transmissions are problems that might not be reliably overcome. (note: Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States.)

So, nuclear power isn’t perfect, and it’s a hard decision to make whether to go nuclear. That being said, w/ coal as the alternative (US is #1 in worldwide reserves of coal) and continued dependence on a rapidly dwindling oil supply, I think I’d be more likely to side w/ Lovelock.

(not trying to give short thrift to the ginormous benefits of increased efficiency/conservation, but I’m primarily doing an analysis of nuclear energy as production option here; even a significant [say, 30%, even 50%] savings wouldn’t bring us anywhere close to fossil-fuel independence)

Hmm, it’d be nice if the government would be more able/willing to provide central information (the ability to do arbitrary data comparisons, read pros and cons/ link to policy/discussions) would be really nice.

Links/resources:

Posted on by lhl

Oh, since I wrote this reply for /., here’s my defense of wind power:

An interesting analysis, and while I agree w/ that nuclear power would be far preferable to coal, (and without discussing further viability issues), I would just like to point out that wind power in the US should not be ruled out offhand. From the abstract of the 1993 Wind Energy Potential in the United States study by D.L. Elliott and M.N. Schwartz (which supercedes the 1991 study cited):

Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States. Technology under development today will be capable of producing electricity economically from good wind sites in many regions of the country.

So yes, in theory, wind power could meet our power needs (but not w/o being coupled with advanced battery technologies.

Even cost per kWh, Wind does ok. From a March 2004 briefing published by the World Nuclear Association on The Economics of Nuclear Power, shows a present day cost of about 3.7c/kWh. A recent AWEA analysis of the The Economics of Wind Energy [PDF] places the cost/kWh for a 51MW wind farm at between 2.6-4.8c/kWh depending on wind speed. Even if we account for backup power and double the cost, we’re not doing too badly either way.

Coal is at about 3.3c/kWh, but when calculating in the external costs “to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU” as done in the decade long EC ExternE studies. Total cost [after adding the additional external costs] of both nuclear (+0.4 euro cents/kWh) and wind (+0.1-0.2 ec/kWh) end up beating the snot over coal (+4.1-7.3 ec/kWh).

Regardless, I agree with Lovelock. We really need to dump fossil fuels now.

BTW, as far as batteries go, Argonne Labs has been developing some advanced energy storage techniques includeing using high temperature superconductors for both magnetic as well as magnetic bearing flywheel storage (20kWh containment w/ 99% conversion efficiency and 0.1%/day idle loss); fuel cells / other electro-chemical storage would be options as well.

Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl

Over the coming weeks we’ll be doing an analysis of lightweight personal content management systems at work as well.

One of the difficulties is trying to bridge the blogging and the larger collaboration space. (I think in the end, the compromise might be to use MT or EE for blogs/some CM, Drupal for community sites, and try to integrate a wiki in. TikiWiki unfortunately is just too unstable for use — hmm, TikiPro looks promising)

Posted on by lhl

Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004 -keenly insightful commentary on Iraq and other issues:

Let me give you an example the War on Terrorism. I think we do a masterful job at the tactical level. We attack al Qaeda on the ground. We break down the finances. We break down the cells. We get law enforcement cooperation around the world doing wonderful damage to the organization. Yet, as an ideology and a movement, it has grown.

If I were to analyze, from a strategic point of view, al Qaeda – and, Im not saying this is the right analogy, but its just an example – the strategic center of gravity for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is a pool of angry, young men willing to die. What causes angry young men willing to die?

They’re willing to die because theres a political, economic or social reason. Some sense of disenfranchisement. Some sense of oppression that makes them angry, fires them up, and makes them tempted to come to al Qaeda. Now, that isn’t enough to get them to blow themselves up and to do horrific acts. You need a rationale. You need something that justifies what they do.

At the operational level, the center of gravity is the aberrant form of Islam that they’re able to use on them to provide the sense of reward, and rationale and justification for what the do. And then the set of tactics that work so well against us, because it is asymmetric.

If you think about it on those three levels, I have to go after this War on Terrorism, which is even a bad name. I have to go after this movement of extremism at three levels. How do I cut that flow of angry young men? How do I make sure that aberrant form of Islam is rejected? Or encourage others to, and I’ve got some thoughts on all this, but I wont go into it here. And do the things that we do well at the tactical level. But, you don’t have that kind of strategic thinking.