A Nobel Prize is probably in the works for a group of researchers who have developed a technique to grow living nerve cells on silicon and exchange information between the organic and the inorganic. So far they've used snails and rats for their experiments, but it is hoped that some day humans will have some use for the processing power of custom chips to run prosthetic limbs or eyes. The potential uses are endless. Apparently memory would even be available for perusal. We've known about stuff like this for a long time though, haven't we? I just want to know if an implant is going to help me remember my wife's birthday and our anniversary. If the technology can't do that why bother?
Mind Control Forum - Archives
The brain on a microchip: Calgary researcher finds cells can grow on silicon
Why doesn't somebody develop a shrub that you can plant and grow inside your head that turns out some nice green leaves while it photosynthesizes and stores energy for you, it's host? Now that's symbiosis! None of this can be too far off with gene manipulation.
Of course photovoltaics are the inanimate corollary to roots and twigs. In future we might be able to plug the old laptop in to ourselves to get a jolt out of the internet, along with the satisfying feeling of being energized by mocha lathe heaped with sugar as the power trickles in from the sun. Might give sunburn a whole new meaning.
For now we will have to settle on doing things the 'old' way with an electricity infrastructure to pipe the electrons all over the place.
Powering A Generation: Transmitting Electricity
Yeah, technology is here to stay. Any of our upcoming problems are going to be solved by replacement technologies as the path of technology would dictate. And, hey, we've got an entire world just dying to become first-time adopters too. It will remain to be seen whether the word progress will come to mean that you'll get a lot of cool features you'll never use and don't need, but that you pay for and can never get rid of.
AutoSpies.com
And -- ACTION...
Friday, February 20, 2004
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Poseidon Rules
Ancient Greece invigorates the mind with images of heroism, triumph and tragedy. What other people have influenced the modern Western world (minus the slavery, of course) in such a profound way? Euclid proscribed a geometry none could compromise or add to for a millennium-and-a-half, and secret sects guarded the Greek fruits of mathematics as proof of their worth, perhaps even the worth of their proofs...
But what strange wonders did cease when the industrial middle ages caused these abstract acrobatics to be malformed into mechanisms of human movement? What did the adoption of the '0' do to us all, as it made the possible of immeasurable calculations? Unknown and unknowable vistas that redefined a Christian God and made a small word of life. Specialization worked at cross purposes to the whole man, and perhaps it can be argued the same became true of the environment man found himself creating by his removed self.
What criticisms Poseidon would make of the many rafts cast into his sea as he watched a launch from calm into a maelstrom of complexity. His tempest fracturing even the worthiest vessels behind the peaks and troughs of his sea borne riddles. Now we're riding high. Now we're riding low. Now I see you. Now I don't. And all the stomach of a tossing pot.
Now that we've gotten rid of DDT and the Bald Eagle is coming off the Endangered Species List we have annual growth greater than 9 per cent in China accompanied by a growing cloud of carbon dioxide/monoxide and particulate obscuring a lens more worried about military mass than consumption and rampant Western ideals.
Who is accounting for a 180 year schedule to allow these clouds to dissipate even if combustion for power stopped in less than 20 years? Poseidon keeps stirring with his trident and your stomach is churning. If everyone else is on the same ride who is left holding the bucket?
But what strange wonders did cease when the industrial middle ages caused these abstract acrobatics to be malformed into mechanisms of human movement? What did the adoption of the '0' do to us all, as it made the possible of immeasurable calculations? Unknown and unknowable vistas that redefined a Christian God and made a small word of life. Specialization worked at cross purposes to the whole man, and perhaps it can be argued the same became true of the environment man found himself creating by his removed self.
What criticisms Poseidon would make of the many rafts cast into his sea as he watched a launch from calm into a maelstrom of complexity. His tempest fracturing even the worthiest vessels behind the peaks and troughs of his sea borne riddles. Now we're riding high. Now we're riding low. Now I see you. Now I don't. And all the stomach of a tossing pot.
Now that we've gotten rid of DDT and the Bald Eagle is coming off the Endangered Species List we have annual growth greater than 9 per cent in China accompanied by a growing cloud of carbon dioxide/monoxide and particulate obscuring a lens more worried about military mass than consumption and rampant Western ideals.
Who is accounting for a 180 year schedule to allow these clouds to dissipate even if combustion for power stopped in less than 20 years? Poseidon keeps stirring with his trident and your stomach is churning. If everyone else is on the same ride who is left holding the bucket?
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Song Of The Blog
Well, I've decided that blogging really is fun! But there is one huge problem with it. There is so much to read. Some people are so funny it makes my sides split. Some people are so funny they've gotten book deals. Now I can forgive them for not harping on about hydrogen in each one of their entries. I mean being a magnanimous sort of person I might even give them mention in this blog from time to time. Recently I discovered mimi smartypants who had me howling long past my self-imposed and quite flexible i-don't-have-to-do-it-if-I-don't-want-to deadline. That's what I like about editors like myself. Caring less hardly matters because you're not going to get paid anyway. A thought which paves the way to a seque about the nature of work and our observation about change.
It really comes down to who your boss is, doesn't it? Up the chain that is. Rapid adoption of anything really doesn't turn the crank of the boss who, after all, is upholding the status-quo, and who might even claim to be doing so for your own good. Having read mimi smartypants I know she still has to go to work every day to make ends meet (and to feed her steady diet of sushi and other culture-vulture consumables). She, at least, takes the train. Heck, I'm in the same boat. And I hardly want to rock it for fear that my status is going to quo all on it's own. So it must be true that we all observe change in a way that, if it has any whiff of potential to sink the boat, we ain't gonna support it.
Ummmm, does that remind you of anything? Personally, I suggest you go read mimi smartypants, then thank whatever deity you have hiding around in the bathroom that you aren't living in a world where your lungs are underdeveloped and your prognosis for a long life from the time of your birth is profoundly impacted.
Have a happy day.
It really comes down to who your boss is, doesn't it? Up the chain that is. Rapid adoption of anything really doesn't turn the crank of the boss who, after all, is upholding the status-quo, and who might even claim to be doing so for your own good. Having read mimi smartypants I know she still has to go to work every day to make ends meet (and to feed her steady diet of sushi and other culture-vulture consumables). She, at least, takes the train. Heck, I'm in the same boat. And I hardly want to rock it for fear that my status is going to quo all on it's own. So it must be true that we all observe change in a way that, if it has any whiff of potential to sink the boat, we ain't gonna support it.
Ummmm, does that remind you of anything? Personally, I suggest you go read mimi smartypants, then thank whatever deity you have hiding around in the bathroom that you aren't living in a world where your lungs are underdeveloped and your prognosis for a long life from the time of your birth is profoundly impacted.
Have a happy day.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Lessons In Hydrogen
The past week has been extremely busy in the world of The Hydrogen Economy.
The journal Science published a report by researchers in Minnesota that have developed a utility-sized reformer capable of converting ethanol into H2 usable in a fuel cell application. The article was published on Friday, February 13, 2004 just two days after the US Senate announced it's new Energy bill to double the use of corn-based ethanol by 2012.
Senate ethanol bill doubles US ethanol use by 2012 -- Yahoo
But wait... There's more. A Toronto-based company called Stuart Energy went IPO on the 12th of February. The company focuses on water-electrolysis, a method of using electricity to split available water into oxygen and hydrogen. The technology offered by this company could pave the way to a hydrogen economy using just an electrical connection and water service. Something you've discovered every gas station now has if you've ever had to use the bathroom on those long trips. Oh, and yes... Stuart offers a gas-pump type delivery system, stationary fuel cells for power generation and on site compression and storage equipment. What more could Governor Shwarzenegger ask for as he considers the bids to build his 200 H2 pumping station infrastructure.
Hydrogen Energy Station
Hydrogen Hackers
Hardware hacking is any kid's pastime. Remember taking apart your first radio or figuring our how the toaster works? Well, even if you didn't do any of those things you probably know a kid who does or really wants to (keep the tools up high is my advice).
Sharpen your flint tip with these primitive designs using cutting edge technology. Keep a close eye on the regenerative cell.
Regenerative Fuel Cell Car -- Editor's Pick
Fuel Cell Kit
Build Your Own Fuel Cells by Phillip Hurley
FuelCellStore.com -- Products to make H2
If you have any comments or information to share please send to the email listed above.
The journal Science published a report by researchers in Minnesota that have developed a utility-sized reformer capable of converting ethanol into H2 usable in a fuel cell application. The article was published on Friday, February 13, 2004 just two days after the US Senate announced it's new Energy bill to double the use of corn-based ethanol by 2012.
Senate ethanol bill doubles US ethanol use by 2012 -- Yahoo
But wait... There's more. A Toronto-based company called Stuart Energy went IPO on the 12th of February. The company focuses on water-electrolysis, a method of using electricity to split available water into oxygen and hydrogen. The technology offered by this company could pave the way to a hydrogen economy using just an electrical connection and water service. Something you've discovered every gas station now has if you've ever had to use the bathroom on those long trips. Oh, and yes... Stuart offers a gas-pump type delivery system, stationary fuel cells for power generation and on site compression and storage equipment. What more could Governor Shwarzenegger ask for as he considers the bids to build his 200 H2 pumping station infrastructure.
Hydrogen Energy Station
Hydrogen Hackers
Hardware hacking is any kid's pastime. Remember taking apart your first radio or figuring our how the toaster works? Well, even if you didn't do any of those things you probably know a kid who does or really wants to (keep the tools up high is my advice).
Sharpen your flint tip with these primitive designs using cutting edge technology. Keep a close eye on the regenerative cell.
Regenerative Fuel Cell Car -- Editor's Pick
Fuel Cell Kit
Build Your Own Fuel Cells by Phillip Hurley
FuelCellStore.com -- Products to make H2
If you have any comments or information to share please send to the email listed above.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Where Hydrogen and Linux Meet
Messages abound in this space. Being heard or thought of as important comes with the price of crack observations from an elevated position or spam-like audacity. I have neither. My message is simple. As anyone does, I grapple with demons and the motives behind them. I look for the paths of change and wonder why it appears to be happening so fast without anything being accomplished. But not everything is an oxymoron or some tripped-up juxtaposition... The soft path is like that.
In North America Timothy Leary's advice to Turn ON, Tune IN, Drop OUT was followed around the same time as the Energy Crisis bred a new consciousness about what it cost to get around. People wanted to farm the wind and sail the sun. And then we had a few decades of silence. Perhaps green and gold stood in the way of happiness (or paved the road your car was driving on). Renewable energy was a thing of individual people not of the masses. The masses under the protectorate of "other" issues forgot the soft path in centralized energy at moderately affordable prices. Turkey dinners still warmed under the element as the work day lengthened. And we called it progress. Products that cost less in the short-term piled up. The volkswagon (wagon of the people) walked a person to work along a two-lane hiway. And the traffic never bothered anybody.
The Hydrogen Economy. Yep.
Panel Says Hydrogen Fueled Cars Won't Hit Hiway Soon
New Report Finds Fuel Cell Forecasts Cloudier Than Expected
No one wants to believe we aren't there yet. Do they? Is 25% of the world's vehicles (owned and operated by 13% of the world's population) powered by hydrogen in 25 years a positive message?
Some pundits argue that unless sales in hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles pick up the transition could take even longer.
In the next few years you are going to see distributed electricity production by stationary fuel cells powered by hydrogen or natural gas. Realistically this means The Hydrogen Economy is still 75 years off. Not in my lifetime.
This move to small scale local production satisfies the security and service conscious electrical power generating industry, alleviating fears over large-scale outages recently experienced in North America and Europe. Local production means that if part of a grid gets knocked out then you don't have to worry about your neighbourhood. But is the soft path served by this? Not likely.
Here's why. The soft path really means appropriate energy for the need derived from distributed sources. This doesn't mean the network infrastructure must be distributed. It means generation from alternatives such as solar, wind, wave, geothermal, microelectric, fuel cell, etc. What legislators fail to see is that even distributed energy production is served by the infrastructure we have already built. Perhaps the focus on preventing outages similar to those already in the public mind will blind the issue to even strident environmentalists. Time will tell. What does seem clear is that something must be done to ensure the soft path is not threatened.
In the US and elsewhere around the world it is the proponent of the centralized model of distribution who leads the future as in this address to the US-based National Academy of Engineering.
The Future of the U.S. Energy Industry as outlined by CEO of American Electric Power (AEP), a utility with 4.9 million customers in the US alone.
Two measures are immediately important:
Legislate large-scale producers to buy power from individuals.
Legislate in all building codes that new housing starts be fitted with power-sharing circuitry.
Such a change has far-reaching implications, especially as it relates to hydrogen-powered vehicles implementing Regenerative Fuel Cells (RFC). One of the pervading arguments against this closed system cell is that photovoltaic input hasn't been sufficiently developed and that to run these cells need to be 'charged'. This is where the electrical grid comes into play.
In a future scenario let's say your car is manufactured and 'charged' with hydrogen. Solar panels adorn the outside of your vehicle. In fact, all vehicles on the road use some sort of photovoltaic arrangement. Yet, the adverts on the side of the bus seem intact. You drive home on hydrogen and plug your vehicle in again when you get home to 'recharge' it by using electrical power to create hydrogen from the waste of its use as the 'fuel' of the 'battery' driving your car.
Different Types of Fuel Cells -- see the bottom for Regenerative Fuel Cells.
There is so much to say and there is so much to do.
Plans to use ethanol or diesel fuels as transitional combustibles which pass less particulate into the air don't seem to take into account that diesel is a cancer causing fuel. People who live within a block of a diesel engine run for just 10 hours a month are at 50% greater risk of contracting cancer than someone who does not live within the same radius (If someone has a link to this article please post it).
Eventually I wan't to break this blog down into useful bits where new information can be posted and properly sorted. I envision an RSS feed from this blog with multiple contributors in each of the sections. My hope is that some of the brainier hacktivists out there will be able to help with creating an OpenSource repository of fuel cell information for the purposes of hastening the pace of the world's transition to the Hyrdrogen Economy by the grassroots. After all, it would be nice to be able to afford some of this technology. A lot of it is absolutely ready to go.
So, I post this challenge.
Give Hydrogen to the world.
In North America Timothy Leary's advice to Turn ON, Tune IN, Drop OUT was followed around the same time as the Energy Crisis bred a new consciousness about what it cost to get around. People wanted to farm the wind and sail the sun. And then we had a few decades of silence. Perhaps green and gold stood in the way of happiness (or paved the road your car was driving on). Renewable energy was a thing of individual people not of the masses. The masses under the protectorate of "other" issues forgot the soft path in centralized energy at moderately affordable prices. Turkey dinners still warmed under the element as the work day lengthened. And we called it progress. Products that cost less in the short-term piled up. The volkswagon (wagon of the people) walked a person to work along a two-lane hiway. And the traffic never bothered anybody.
The Hydrogen Economy. Yep.
Panel Says Hydrogen Fueled Cars Won't Hit Hiway Soon
New Report Finds Fuel Cell Forecasts Cloudier Than Expected
No one wants to believe we aren't there yet. Do they? Is 25% of the world's vehicles (owned and operated by 13% of the world's population) powered by hydrogen in 25 years a positive message?
Some pundits argue that unless sales in hybrid gasoline/electric vehicles pick up the transition could take even longer.
In the next few years you are going to see distributed electricity production by stationary fuel cells powered by hydrogen or natural gas. Realistically this means The Hydrogen Economy is still 75 years off. Not in my lifetime.
This move to small scale local production satisfies the security and service conscious electrical power generating industry, alleviating fears over large-scale outages recently experienced in North America and Europe. Local production means that if part of a grid gets knocked out then you don't have to worry about your neighbourhood. But is the soft path served by this? Not likely.
Here's why. The soft path really means appropriate energy for the need derived from distributed sources. This doesn't mean the network infrastructure must be distributed. It means generation from alternatives such as solar, wind, wave, geothermal, microelectric, fuel cell, etc. What legislators fail to see is that even distributed energy production is served by the infrastructure we have already built. Perhaps the focus on preventing outages similar to those already in the public mind will blind the issue to even strident environmentalists. Time will tell. What does seem clear is that something must be done to ensure the soft path is not threatened.
In the US and elsewhere around the world it is the proponent of the centralized model of distribution who leads the future as in this address to the US-based National Academy of Engineering.
The Future of the U.S. Energy Industry as outlined by CEO of American Electric Power (AEP), a utility with 4.9 million customers in the US alone.
Two measures are immediately important:
Legislate large-scale producers to buy power from individuals.
Legislate in all building codes that new housing starts be fitted with power-sharing circuitry.
Such a change has far-reaching implications, especially as it relates to hydrogen-powered vehicles implementing Regenerative Fuel Cells (RFC). One of the pervading arguments against this closed system cell is that photovoltaic input hasn't been sufficiently developed and that to run these cells need to be 'charged'. This is where the electrical grid comes into play.
In a future scenario let's say your car is manufactured and 'charged' with hydrogen. Solar panels adorn the outside of your vehicle. In fact, all vehicles on the road use some sort of photovoltaic arrangement. Yet, the adverts on the side of the bus seem intact. You drive home on hydrogen and plug your vehicle in again when you get home to 'recharge' it by using electrical power to create hydrogen from the waste of its use as the 'fuel' of the 'battery' driving your car.
Different Types of Fuel Cells -- see the bottom for Regenerative Fuel Cells.
There is so much to say and there is so much to do.
Plans to use ethanol or diesel fuels as transitional combustibles which pass less particulate into the air don't seem to take into account that diesel is a cancer causing fuel. People who live within a block of a diesel engine run for just 10 hours a month are at 50% greater risk of contracting cancer than someone who does not live within the same radius (If someone has a link to this article please post it).
Eventually I wan't to break this blog down into useful bits where new information can be posted and properly sorted. I envision an RSS feed from this blog with multiple contributors in each of the sections. My hope is that some of the brainier hacktivists out there will be able to help with creating an OpenSource repository of fuel cell information for the purposes of hastening the pace of the world's transition to the Hyrdrogen Economy by the grassroots. After all, it would be nice to be able to afford some of this technology. A lot of it is absolutely ready to go.
So, I post this challenge.
Give Hydrogen to the world.
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