Smalley Gets It

This is kinda of a big big story. Nantech God Richard Smalley has been writing about how we should invest in alt fuels, in particular nan based solar cells. That's always been the crushing point about solar. It's not that we can't use it, it's that we can't use it so inexpensively that it can compete with oil or gas. There's a vast difference between recognizing this and adopting the unreal Den Bestian argument that this can never be done.

Read the whole thing as they say. I'm debating whether I should debunk this latest Den Beste missive.

Today using lead-acid storage batteries, such a unit for a house to store 100-kilowatt hours of electrical energy would take up a small room and cost more than $10,000.

Through advances in nanotechnology, it may be possible to shrink an equivalent unit to the size of a washer and drop the cost to $1,000. Among the approaches being developed today are nanotubes, nanowires and nanocomposites for batteries.

On another front, nanostructured membranes, nanohorn electrodes and nanocatalysts are helping to make fuel cells smaller, lighter and more affordable.

With research and entrepreneurial efforts, many schemes are likely to emerge to supply this local energy storage market that may expand to several billion units worldwide

I Got A Literate Letter!

 
 
 
I got a really great letter from Mark Plus, who I think used to roam the message boards at Nanodot with me from days back. I haven't posted there in awhile. I probably should. Anyway, here's his letter responding to my latest Better Humans column.
 
 
Hello, Philip Shropshire.
 

I happen to agree with the critique that wage slavery is oppressive (refer to Bob Black's essays, readily available on the Web, "The Abolition of Work" and "The Libertarian as Conservative"). A social movement serious about increasing freedom would have to find ways to reduce the amount of nonsensical activities called "work" in our so-called "services" economy, because more and more of such "work" has been disconnected from tangible production and mainly acts to keep people under subjection. I honestly don't see what it accomplishes to multiply the numbers of "jobs" in retail, fast food, telemarketing and other forms of useless humiliation and paper shuffling. Whether such tasks are performed or not has no effect on the amount of real goods that gets produced. (I've experienced more than enough of this degradation working in the hospitality industry for the past 13 years, a "career" I had absolutely no expectation of entering when I was in my teens and wanted to become a scientist [long story]. I can also see that a successful mass liberation from work will require people to stop making services demands on others, e.g., by not traveling nearly as much.)

Even much of the tangible stuff that winds up on the market wastes resources that could be put to much better uses by rationally defensible criteria (unless you've been hypnotized by "economics" that is). Despite all the propaganda about how "market forces" determine what gets produced, I'm not aware of any movie goer who ordered very expensive but unwatchable movies like Van Helsing, the budget for which could have revolutionized the field of engineered negligible senescence if spent properly. And, frankly, I could live without the mountains of junk food, Britney Spears CD's and novels about bible prophecy that the American economy piles up the marketplace and then harasses me to notice and buy.

Regards,
Mark Plus
 

Spiderman vs. Den Beste, Evil Hates American Innovation Guy

I tried to find a really great Spiderman pic but it just wasn't there. So I went with an old comics Heavy Metal standard: Moebius. I really enjoyed the Spiderman movie. It was emotionally powerful in an odd kind of way. I thought the best scene was at the end when Kirsten Dunst tells him to chase after the sirens and she looks sad and solemn. Of course, the idea that an intelligent woman would leave a publisher's son and space hero and future villain seems a bit unrealistic. Sure, I can buy the fusion suns and the Octupus arms, but that's where the story left me with a fairy tale feel....

Meanwhile, in the cybercity, I've always been puzzled by Stephen Den Beste's hostility to alt fuels and I mentioned as much over at Future Pundit (Randall Parker) in the most sarcastic way possible:

Yeah, that whole slew of stories and startups was excellent. By the way, congrats for taking Den Beste on in terms of his completely anti-american view on alt energy. He has a can't do attitude. Is he French? What's his problem? Why oh why does he hate American innovation? And why isn't willing to spend at least 100 billion, or what we've spent on our splendid little war in Iraq, on research so that we can wean ourselves away from our oil fix...

What's also mentioned in those articles is the viewpoint of Smalley, who, unlike Frenchified Hate American innovation firsters like Steven Den Beste, thinks the United States should invest in alt energy. You can find his full take over there at Small Times...

I'm sure Den Beste has gone on record against 100 gig hard drives, private space flights and peer to peer networks as well because, you know, they just can't happen. It's a good debate over there as well. I thought about defending Randall, but he's really doing a great job all by himself... 

Been Busy Saving the World

(Crossposted to Warblogger Watch)
 
I haven't posted here in a while because, like other commentators I suspect, I have more important things to do than critique the obvious failings of the worst intellectuals of our time. And I don't miss the clueless often nameless Aussie commentators ("'ealth care is free in Amurica by crikey...you scum!") who defend them. In fact, after the Dean debacle, I decided to get away from the keyboard and do something hard and difficult for political change in America.
 
I've joined the Vast Left Conspiracy, which consists of the NAACP/ACORN/ACT/MOVE On and a dozen other groups and I register voters door to door and on busy streets when I get a spare moment. I do it six days a week. I left my job selling Dell computers to do this. And if you're wondering about what's wrong with the American economy, I make more money working for the non profit.
 
 I actually wrote about this in my newest column for Better Humans. Excerpted here:
 

I've always taken politics pretty seriously ever since college. It's sort of like what Ralph Nader (please don't vote for him; go here for why) says: If you don't act on politics, then eventually politics will act on you.

For me, in the early 80s, I was always watching to see if the late President Reagan would be successful in "acting" to gut my student loans. He always proposed it, but Congress, controlled by Democrats, always kept my loan burden intact.

It was in those summers—when I started realizing that who was in office could affect my life for the better or worse—that I first started canvassing in support of political issues. Canvassing for money, if you're not familiar with it, isn't the easiest way to make a living or cash for college. Back in the early 80s, the quota was US$80 dollars a night. Now, the quota is about US$130 a night. I've estimated that I've spent about five years of my life canvassing on everything from lower cable bills to abolishing the North American Free Trade Agreement. I even ran a field canvass for three years in Evansville, Indiana. Call me committed.

Today, I'm back at it in Pittsburgh, knocking on doors and asking people if they're registered to vote. You might ask yourself what this has to do with the transhumanist dream, where we live out our lives in fusion-driven Betterhumans space habitats, whiling away our several century lifespan seeking to understand every allusion and reference in the works of Joyce or Alan Moore, or actively partaking in the terraforming of Venus or Titan, or even studying up on that hot new personal genomic cosmetic item, the black rhino horn, grown wherever you like, with accessories.

The answer is that unless transhumanists think seriously about politics and self-promotion, this vision will always remain an interesting dream and not a reality. In fact, not only will you have to work for such a future—a future with real self-determination, no wage slavery and more than a vote every two or four years when all the real issues have already been settled—you will have to fight for it. And most likely, your opposition will be violently stupid people who refuse to give up what Carl Sagan described as the "demon-haunted world" and the obligatory yet soothing bliss stations—an eternity with Jesus and departed loved ones or Allah's 40 virgins—that go along with it.

 

 

RU Sirius Interviewed by Changesurfer Radio

First, a bit of thanks to Doc Menlo for mentioning my interview with RU Sirius over at Better Humans.  Luckily, I'm a pervert, and I'm always looking at Sensual Liberation Army for my latest masturba-, uh, "intelligent" reading. (Nice touch with you adding the politics to the sex. Note to self: Immediately steal this idea, porn + politics = Gold...)
 
James Hughes, the guy behind the great Changesurfer Radio show, also interviews RU Sirius right here. It's in two parts so scroll and download appropriately. Actually, if you haven't heard Changesurfer, you might want to check out all of the recent shows.

And last but not least, there's a new issue or RU's Neofiles that just came out. It features interviews with main extroprian guy Max Moore, and other goodies.
  


 

Have comments been enabled...

I sure hope so...

From Warblogger Watch

There's an interesting piece by Naomi Klein today. And by interesting, I mean people who were intelligent enough to see the folly of the war before the pictures, general mayhem, and puppet governry that are all too apparent right now. Besides, the usual suspect warbloggers are just, well, totally incoherent at this point.

Naomi Klein, who made what I thought was a suicidal mission to Iraq to see what was happening for herself, has this interesting take on the working class stiffs behind the prison scandals. She makes the case for something called the "NAFTA draft". Here's an excerpt:

There's something else connecting the sorry state of the U.S. job market and the images coming out of Abu Ghraib. The young soldiers taking the fall for the prison-abuse scandal are the McWorkers, prison guards and laid-off factory workers of Mr. Bush's so-called economic recovery. The résumés of the soldiers facing abuse charges come straight out of the April U.S. Labor Department Report.

There's Specialist Sabrina Harman, of Lorton, Va., assistant manager of her local Papa John's Pizza. There's Specialist Charles Graner, a prison guard back home in Pennsylvania. There's Sergeant Ivan Frederick, another prison guard, this time from the Buckingham Correctional Center in rural Virginia.

Before he joined what prisoner-rights advocate Van Jones calls "America's gulag economy," Sgt. Frederick had a decent job at the Bausch & Lomb factory in Mountain Lake, Md. But according to The New York Times, that factory shut down and moved to Mexico, one of the nearly 900,000 jobs that the Economic Policy Institute estimates have been lost since NAFTA, the vast majority in manufacturing.

...And that's where the U.S. military comes in: The army has positioned itself as the bridge across the United States's growing class chasm: money for tuition in exchange for military service. Call it the NAFTA draft.

I think that's the one thing the warbloggers fail to understand is that the election is more than just about the war, it's sort of about whether the American economy is turned into a hallowed-out, Third World reality...It will be great for the Wal Marts and Dells of this world, lousy for the rest of us who actually have to live here. I'm not wildly enthusiastic about Kerry (I'm a former Dean supporter.). But I do think that he's a competent man. At the very least, he'll run a bad war with some small measure of efficiency and panache....

If you would like to know what a female Iraqi programmer thinks of our "liberation", then you might want to check out this blog called Bagdad Burning. Check out her decimation of the Iraqi governing council, which they couldn't vote for or choose themselves (some democracy) and her realization that she couldn't work anymore. We also get to peek at one of those 8000 dead Iraqis that the pro-warblogracy never seems to take into account. Heartbreaking stuff.

Here's an Excerpt:

I stood staring at the mess for a few moments longer, trying to sort out the mess in my head, my heart being torn to pieces. My cousin and E. were downstairs waiting for me- there was nothing more to do, except ask how I could maybe help? A. and I left the room and started making our way downstairs. We paused on the second floor and stopped to talk to one of the former department directors. I asked him when they thought things would be functioning, he wouldn’t look at me. His eyes stayed glued to A.’s face as he told him that females weren’t welcome right now- especially females who ‘couldn’t be protected’. He finally turned to me and told me, in so many words, to go home because ‘they’ refused to be responsible for what might happen to me.

Ok. Fine. Your loss. I turned my back, walked down the stairs and went to find E. and my cousin. Suddenly, the faces didn’t look strange- they were the same faces of before, mostly, but there was a hostility I couldn’t believe. What was I doing here? E. and the cousin were looking grim, I must have been looking broken, because they rushed me out of the first place I had ever worked and to the car. I cried bitterly all the way home- cried for my job, cried for my future and cried for the torn streets, damaged buildings and crumbling people.

I’m one of the lucky ones… I’m not important. I’m not vital. Over a month ago, a prominent electrical engineer (one of the smartest females in the country) named Henna Aziz was assassinated in front of her family- two daughters and her husband. She was threatened by some fundamentalists from Badir’s Army and told to stay at home because she was a woman, she shouldn’t be in charge. She refused- the country needed her expertise to get things functioning- she was brilliant. She would not and could not stay at home. They came to her house one evening: men with machine-guns, broke in and opened fire. She lost her life- she wasn’t the first, she won’t be the last.

Before, the war, over at Warblogger Watch, I argued that women in Iraq had it better than in any other Mid Eastern state. Now, after the war, I'm arguing that we have to build a real democracy to ensure that women like this get their lives back. Bush is unable to do this, but Dean just might. The UN could certainly do a better job if they get rid of the cronyism and the no bid contracts. Also, check out the corruption in the Iraqi bidding process for repairs. Apparently, Tony Soprano is running the Iraqi Esplanade reconstruction projects...

Meanwhile, Perle, of all people, says that mistakes were made. Juan Cole, arguably one of the best analysts of Iraq out there, tells him where he's wrong. (scroll down) One of his primo military sources got shot and killed by the way. He lists the entire email exchange on his site.

This is just a test post. I think I would like to use blogger as a mirror option for my main sites.