Monthly Archives: January 2006

More Light, Part 2

A few days ago Phil asked for suggestions on how to get more daylight. Forget daylight-savings-time trickery, how do we get an actual increase in hours of daylight?

Light up Jupiter?

Jupiter is probably too small to ignite like a star – it doesn’t have the mass. In his book 2010, Clarke had his mysterious aliens increase the mass of Jupiter in some fashion to allow it to ignite. Perhaps by seeding the planet with neutron matter. This is just a little out of the realm of possibility for now. Which is a good thing. Converting our solar system into a binary system strikes me as just a bit dangerous for our planet.

Back to the drawing board!

What if you placed a giant mirror in an orbit that was stationary relative to the day-night terminator? Instead of geosynchronous orbit, it would be a terminatorsynchronous orbit. You could reflect light from the dayside to whatever points on the nightside that you want.

You could choose different cities to keep lit at night by continually adjusting the angle of the mirror. And wouldn’t this be great in an emergency? If a community is hit by disaster you could keep the daylight on during the rescue.

Because the mirror would have to be so large, this project wouldn’t really be feasible until we get a space elevator.

Making Ethanol Worth the Effort

Engineer Poet has pointed out on several occasions that ethanol is not really a useful fuel. It’s produced at a net energy loss – more energy goes into making the stuff than we get out of it.

One MIT scientist has an idea that might make the fuel worthwhile anyway.

About three years ago, while working on an experiment for growing algae on the International Space Station, [Dr. Berzin] came up with the idea for using it to clean up power-plant exhaust.

If he could find the right strain of algae, he figured he could turn the nation’s greenhouse-gas-belching power plants into clean-green generators with an attached algae farm next door.

After considerable trial and error, Berzin has demonstrated that the idea works.

Fed a generous helping of CO2-laden emissions, courtesy of the power plant’s exhaust stack, the algae grow quickly even in the wan rays of a New England sun. The cleansed exhaust bubbles skyward, but with 40% less CO2 (a larger cut than the Kyoto treaty mandates) and another bonus: 86% less nitrous oxide.

The algae is harvested daily for biodiesel. The pulpy substance that remains can be refined further into ethanol. Ethanol harvested in this fashion might be just as inefficient as that from corn, but since it’s part of a process that makes the air cleaner, reduces greenhouse gases, and produces biodiesel, maybe it’s worth a second look.

Carnival of Tomorrow #17

juan.jpg

A great big enthusiastic “Hola!” from Juan Valdez, welcoming you all to the 17th edition of the Carnival of Tomorrow. Each little glimpse into the future in this edition is like one of those ripe, red, perfect coffee beans that Juan picks at exactly the right time. So pour yourselves a steaming hot cup of whatever suits you, sit back, and join us as we drink in all the wonders in store.

We want to start the first Carnival of the year 2006 with a bold (and somewhat self-fulfilling) predicition. So here it is:

In the future, words of wisdom and hot beverages will not be at odds with one another. What a wonderful world that will be!

UPDATE (01/06/06 at 9:02 PM): The future has arrived. I just got a tall Americano from my neighborhood Starbuck’s, and on the cup were the following words, not blocked by any kind of sleeve or other impediment:

The most successful innovations are the ones we stop noticing almost immediately. We often don’t appreciate the things we’d least like to give up.

– Virginia Postrel

Author of The Substance of Style and a columnist for The New York Times.

The future is wonderful indeed.

Reason at Fight Aging! provides some inspirational words for starting a new year:

The future is what we make of it, and there’s nothing special or reserved in the act of making a difference….[N]othing stops any one of us from taking a single step towards a better future. Those steps will add up. If you don’t like the present state of affairs insofar as the future of your health and lifespan is concerned, there’s a simple solution: stand up and join those who are doing something about it!

Hear, hear! And taking his own advice to heart, Reason then proceeds to outline a by-the-bootstraps approach to funding aging research.

What color is the future? James Waterton of the Daily Constitutational says that it may well be saffron, and that India is perhaps the player to watch in the East. This is an older post recently linked by James Bennett at Albion’s Seedlings.

Waterton also has a more recent post at Samizdata explaining his skepticism of the Chinese economy – at least in its “current nominally Communist incarnation.”

If you enjoy Waterton’s analysis as much as we did, keep an eye on Samizdata, where word has it he will be doing all his blogging from now on.

While we’re picking up interesting materials from the archives, check out this Classical Values entry from last June in which Justin introduces us to the Ray Kurzweil of 1627 (and of 1733.)

Mark at Curmugeons Corner pointed us to this article about how the U.S. Marines are developing a low-cost space vehicle.

[T]he Small Unit Space Transport and Insertion (SUSTAIN) concept that, if successful, will give the US a “…heretofore unimaginable assault support speed, range, altitude and strategic surprise” capability. SUSTAIN is an RLV that will carry a squad (13 men) into space and land it anywhere on Earth within two hours with, among other requirements, “flexible launch on demand… to any orbital inclination.”

The fuzzy dice of the future, available today. GeekPress has details.

Mike Treder at Responsible Nanotechnology has a neat piece on the house of the future. Yes, it pretty much is a nanohouse. How did you guess?

Jack William Bell says that golf may be on the decline as the in-game for business executives and would-be executive ladder-climbers. So what’s the back nine of the future? You may be surprised.

Sure, wind power is great, but what about all those defenseless birds? Genetically engineering birds to be smarter and not fly into windmills is one possible solution. Al Fin presents another.

Speaking of alternate energy sources, (one of our favorite subjects at the Carnival of Tomorrow, right up there with brains) Jay Manifold at A Voyage to Arcturus” directs us to speculation about a truly alternative energy source.

Last month, Jay directed us to an explanation for the baffling lack of flying cars here in the 21st century.

Anemaat said cars had not flown yet because “in the past there has always been a compromise made, and they built a bad plane and a bad car. But now, with new materials, technology and electronics, we think we can build a better vehicle that is a good car and a good plane.”

Don’t miss the computer animation of their proposed model.

Getting back to beverages (Remember? We started this thing talking about beverages), Øyvind Arnesen details what must be the most useful Geek Project to date. (Hat-tip: Triticale.)

It’s kind of like tying a string to your finger, only more…emphatic. Randall Parker reports on the (extreme?) new solution for those who are sometimes forgetful with their personal belongings.

Rand Simberg explains that regulation of space tourism is not necessarily something to get all worked up about.

Tony Arcieri at Singularity Now has issued a challenge for Singularitarians: let’s start planning how we want to make this thing happen right. Coincidentally, The Speculist has started a series on God and the Singularity which commences with some thoughts on how we convey an idea of goodness to the coming new intelligences. Dean Esmay has also had some interesting recent thoughts on the subject.

Finally, is it the end of the world, or not? Chris Hall has thoughts. But Josh Cohen at Multiple Mentality is pretty sure that he’s on to an answer to the question.

If you would like to contribute to or host an upcoming Carnival, please write:

mrstg87 {@ symbol} yahoo {dot} com

or

bowermaster {@ symbol} gmail {dot} com

We are the Children…

In my last post, “Robots: The Next Generation” I presented three options to help with the depopulation problem Europe and Japan are facing. Option 1: encourage your population to have more kids (nothing draconian – use tax credits). Option 2: open up the gates to immigration hoping for a melting pot effect (this is not going smoothly in France right now). And option 3: do what Japan seems set to do – build robots.

There’s a fourth option that appeals to many of us alive today – avoid death. If Aubrey de Grey and those he inspires successfully deliver life extension, we’d have longer productive lives. People who would have been satisfied to bide their last work days in do-nothing jobs would, if their youth were restored, retrain for more productive jobs. People who are presently discriminated against because of their age would come to be valued for their experience.

Even if people had to retrain every few years, such a society would be vastly more productive because they wouldn’t have to start from scratch as with children. The basic skills would already be mastered.

Those who are concerned that this could mean fewer children (it would) should take a closer look at much of the developed world. Children are already rare in much of Europe and Japan. Since that is the case, don’t these countries have a great incentive to keep their older population healthy longer?

It wouldn’t have to be an anti-child world. With scarcity comes added value. More resources could be devoted to each child to insure them the best education possible.

Also, the demographics in Europe and Japan answer those life extension critics who fear over-population. It’s not logical to worry about overpopulation when your country is losing a third of its population every generation.

So perhaps we have four options for dealing with depopulation. And none of them are mutually exclusive.

More Light

It makes sense that the new year begins in January — a little ray of hope in the dead of winter. One thing I’m sure most of us in the Northern Hemisphere are looking forward to is the days getting longer over the next few months. Then in springtime for those of us in the US (and many other countries) comes the annual setting of the clocks ahead to squeeze even more daylight into our waking hours.

Well Diana Mertz Hsieh at Noodlefood is seconding a motion raised by Eugene Volokh late last year that we stop tinkering with the clock and figure out a way to get more actual daylight.

I would note that this has been done already (sort of) in one locale on a limited scale. Now how do we all get our fair share of extra daylight?

Suggestions are welcome.

Wouldn't it be Funny…

…if they found something, and it was Morse Code to the effect of “The Lutherans got it right, but only the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Everyone else, thanks for playing.”

Carl Sagan had a similar idea in his novel Contact, where the signature was left (I believe) in…

SPOILERS AHEAD

Wouldn’t it be Funny…

…if they found something, and it was Morse Code to the effect of “The Lutherans got it right, but only the Missouri Synod Lutherans. Everyone else, thanks for playing.”

Carl Sagan had a similar idea in his novel Contact, where the signature was left (I believe) in…

SPOILERS AHEAD

Robots: The Next Generation

Mark Steyn paints a very pessimistic picture of the developed world’s future in his recent article, “It’s the Demography, Stupid.” Steyn points out that the replacement fertility rate is an average of 2.1 live births per woman. The United States’ birth rate is practically equal to this replacement value at about 2.08 live births per woman.

I’m doing my part.

The population of most of the rest of the developed world is not holding up as well. Japan’s birth rate is 1.39. The European average is very close at about 1.40. This means that both Japan and Europe are losing about a third of their population every generation.

Steyn points out that this is a problem because the typical modern democracy tends to be a welfare state. The only demographic that’s growing – old people – depend on the diminishing young population to pay for their pensions, medicine, and health care.

So Europe has found that it must open its gates to immigration. The problem, for anyone who’s watched what’s going on in France, is that some of these immigrants don’t share a belief in “liberal pluralist democracy.”

I would guess that Japan, with it’s comparably low birthrate, will fare much better in the coming years than Europe. Japan has a stronger tradition of accepting personal sacrifice for the sake of the greater good than socialized Europe. If the population is told that certain welfare programs will have to be cut back, they are likely to accept this quicker and respond faster than Europe.

asimo_500dpi.jpgAlso, there’s the issue of robots. The Economist had an interesting article late last month about how the Japanese are very accepting of robots.

[T]he consensus among Japanese is that visions of a future in which immigrant workers live harmoniously and unobtrusively in Japan are pure fancy. Making humanoid robots is clearly the simple and practical way to go…

In western popular culture, robots are often a threat, either because they are manipulated by sinister forces or because something goes horribly wrong with them. By contrast, most Japanese view robots as friendly and benign.

terminator.jpgAs robots and other AI’s become smarter and more capable every year, this cultural acceptance of robots will become more and more important to Japan. Perhaps Europe will see Japan’s success and adopt robots as well.

How will this affect the United States? We don’t have the same depopulation problem that Europe and Japan have, but we do have the Western distrust for robots. So we don’t need them like Europe or want them like Japan. This probably means we’ll be late adopters, and that could become a major problem for our country. We might learn to upgrade humans to compete with super-efficient robots, but robots will be easier to upgrade or replace as new technology becomes available.

Time will tell.

It's a New Phil, Week 1

I’ve just had my first official weigh-in after beginning a weight loss program recommended (and supervised by) my primary care physician. I had my annual physical a couple of weeks ago and the scales showed an alarming 297 lbs.

Now please note that this was not alarming because of any specific health risks (the general risks associated with lugging that kind of baggage around being more than sufficient), but more because it put me three pounds shy of the big three-oh-oh, which is just not a respectable weight for somebody who isn’t starting for the NFL or who isn’t a Sumo wrestler and I must come clean — neither of those apply to me.

The plan the doc has me on is one of those moderate and super-sensible deals. I count calories, fat, and fiber (the latter being something of a mitigator.) I don’t currently count carbs, although the tools I have could do the math that way. I personally don’t want to go down that road again. As far as I’m concerned, low carb is a mirage in a desert of getting nowhere with diets. (Of course, your mileage may vary.)

One of the interesting features of the program is that I will be cutting my caloric intake further as I lose, so this could potentially begin a foray into the world of CR life extension, although right now — at 1500 calories a day — I think I’m still well north of any CR plan.

Still, you have to crawl before you can walk. And my first week of crawling has resulted in a 7 pound loss. At two-nine-oh, the big three-oh-oh seems a lot less menacing and I plan to see it quickly receding in the old rearview mirror.

More next week.