Birds, Horses, and Faux News November 16, 2009March 16, 2017 WIND POWER Dan Nachbar: “The concern that ‘wind turbines kill birds’ is something of a red herring. (Sorry to mix species.) Sadly, some birds are indeed killed by wind turbines. But we should keep those loses in perspective. According the the National Academy of Sciences, only 3 of every 100,000 of human-caused bird deaths come from wind turbines. Wind now provides about 2% of U. S. electricity. Wind energy’s most avid boosters are pushing for an increase to 20%. If that comes to pass, then wind energy related bird deaths would likely be only 3 of every 10,000 of the human-caused total. Cars, tall buildings, power lines, and house cats kill about a billion (that’s billion with a ‘b’) birds per year and nobody is suggesting that we do away with them to save the birds. It’s always the ‘new kid on the block’ that gets the scrutiny.” Emerson Schwartzkopf: “I’d give a big thumbs-up to wind power as a partner technology to augment U.S. energy needs. As someone who lives near one of the largest wind-generation fields in the country (San Gorgonio Pass), it’s great to see those turbines giving us power. The problem is that wind-power generation is erratic and cyclical. While the data in this report is a bit stale (a 2003 report on 2001 figures), you’ll see that pattern. In reviewing San Gorgonio (Palm Springs), Altamont (East SF Bay) and Tehachapi (Bakersfield) – three distinct geographic sites – normal weather patterns dictate that power generation decreases in the first and fourth quarters of the year (basically, winter) at all three sites by some 50 percent. (There’s also a map in the document that shows wind-speed averages in the state, and it’s revealing to see how few accessible area are available for effective generation.) . . . Wind turbines, I might add, are not exactly friendly neighbors. Wind-farm expansion here is somewhat hampered by residents near the turbines, who fear more of the structures. Just like a house fan, these things generate noise, and a blade that’s a couple-hundred-feet-long makes a pretty big swoosh that’s not exactly endearing background white noise. . . . Again, there’s great potential for putting wind power in the mix to meet future energy needs by utilizing its generation at optimum times to decrease output from other methods. But, it’s never going to be the sole answer. . . .” ☞ True. HORSE POWER Stewart Dean: “Dana writes: ‘The guys who invented automobiles thought cars were pretty safe. If somebody had been able to say, “This newfangled invention is going to kill 40,000 people every year,” that would have been the end of the car.’ Um Dana, do you have any idea how many people were killed in transportation related accidents with horse and carriage that the car was to replace? The only safety features of the horse are that they really don’t want to run into things and they will get you home when you’re falling down drunk. OTOH, the (horse) brain that achieves that is also small and given to panic and disastrous response to such dire threats as horse-eating squirrels and fluttering pieces of paper. My wife loves horses and has poured endless amounts of money into her horsey buddies, been injured many times. And boy oh boy, is the use of them a chancy proposition: they are always going lame or sick or either too tired or too fresh. For a hobby, they can be wonderful; I can’t imagine how a society ever ran based on them.” IS FOX “NEWS,” ON THE RIGHT, MERELY WHAT MSNBC IS ON THE LEFT? It’s an easy shorthand to fall into – that the two are mirror images – and deeply false, as documented here. This is important, because the media shape the electorate’s sense of reality (how else did 70% of Bush voters in 2004 “know” Iraq had a hand in attacking us on 9/11 even though it didn’t?) and thus shape our future.
Hope for Energy, Hope for Education Even Hope for ENDA November 13, 2009March 16, 2017 FRESH DIRECT You live in New York and you don’t use Fresh Direct? Seriously? IF IT’S NOW OK WITH THE MORMONS . . . ‘The Mormon church for the first time has announced its support of gay rights legislation, an endorsement that helped gain unanimous approval for Salt Lake city laws banning discrimination against gays in housing and employment,’ reports the Associated Press. Can passage of ENDA (the Employment Non-Discrimination Act) be far behind? EDUCATION Along with health care and energy, it heads the list of what we need to get right. So yesterday’s statement from DFER (pronounced DEE-fer) was encouraging . . . Democrats for Education Reform commends the Obama Administration and Education Secretary Arne Duncan for their steadfast support of the bold and innovative Race to the Top fund, and supports the new guidelines announced today. DFER hailed those states that have made substantial policy changes in anticipation of Race to the Top, and called out states that have dragged their feet in producing true, ambitious and fundamental reforms. “Today marks the official start of President Obama’s historic Race to the Top school reform initiative,” said Joe Williams, executive director of DFER. “In the final guidance, Secretary Duncan has shown that he is dead serious about real school reform and about kicking off a Race to the Top that truly lives up to its title.” … . . . as was this New York Times overview. WIND Patrick Gallot: ‘As David MacKay points out in Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air, measuring electricity-generating capacity in terms of of homes powered [as you did yesterday] is very imprecise and misleading. But using the numbers from the article you linked to, and looking at this graph of US energy usage and throwing in a wind power capacity power factor of 35% (again, from your link), my best guess is that we’d need between half a million to 2.5 million of those 2.5MW turbines to power the entire country, including transportation. That would require between 1 to 5 Montanas. And it would cost between 1 and 6 trillion dollars, assuming it does scale up with no limiting factors, diminishing returns or other problems.’ ☞ If we could indeed do this for just $1 trillion (which we can’t), it would be the bargain of the age. Even $6 trillion over 10 years would be a steal – 4% of our GDP for a decade to become energy independent and cut pollution to near zero? Clearly, it’s not going to happen this way – wind to the exclusion of all else. For one thing, I can’t wait for solar panels to drop further in price, even as battery storage takes the hoped-for quantum leap, so many homes can become largely energy-independent all by themselves. Still, from these back-of-envelope gross simplifications (and the example of Spain), one gets a sense of what is possible. It’s exciting and hopeful. Dana Dlott: ‘Over the years I have noticed an important rule about electricity generating sources: the thing you do not have is always infinitely better than the thing you do have. . . except. . . you don’t have that thing. So for instance nuclear fusion is infinitely better than nuclear fission because we don’t have fusion. A state full of windmills is infinitely better than the about 100 nuclear power plants we do have because…. we don’t have a state full of windmills. This is of course because one is comparing hopes to realities. “We do know for certain that it is perfectly possible to run a country on nuclear power, just ask France or Japan. There can be absolutely no doubt about this. But nobody knows for sure how bad/good it would be to try to run a country on wind power. It might be great. Or not. If we have a few wind farms that are successful, that does not tell us how life would be with an entire country full of them. The guys who invented automobiles around 1900, Henry Ford and so on, thought cars were pretty safe. They had no way of knowing there would be a future where 40,000 Americans were killed each year in cars. If somebody had been able to say, ‘this newfangled invention is going to kill 40,000 people every year,’ that would have been the end of the car. “Just to explain why wind power might not be great, maybe we can make a guess how many people would be killed each year making a country run on wind power. You do not manufacture and install those giant towers with giant blades without accidents, some of them fatal. This is why more people die repairing roof tiles than repairing nuclear power plants. Lovins says wind turbines work 98% of the time, so if you had a million of them, there would be 20,000 of them needing repairs at any given moment. The 40,000 guys climbing on them and fixing them are going to have accidents and get hurt or killed. Windmills kill birds. We have some idea of how many birds an individual windmill kills, but a farm as big as an entire state? Once in a while, on average after 100 million cycles (this is the case when there aren’t any screwups, more frequently when there is a bad batch), one of the giant blades breaks and huge flying pieces of debris are thrown around onto whoever is near or onto neighboring windmills. All this is not to say wind power is bad, just that everything has its plusses and minuses and we ought to keep them in mind, which we are not doing when we compare the power source we do not have to the ones we already have.” ☞ Well said! But can windmill repair be more dangerous than skyscraper window-washing? Maybe the Spaniards can tell us. As for the birds, maybe we could generate scary hawk sounds to keep them away – though I guess that could attract hawks. Have a great weekend.
Your Electric Razor Is Soviet Missile Powered And, No, 'Citizen Kane' Just Didn't Make My List. But, Oh! I Forgot 'The Wizard of Oz!' November 12, 2009March 16, 2017 SPANISH WIND POWER TOPS 50% OF DEMAND Is it tilting at windmills to think we might do likewise? And with big, job-generating contracts to our underutilized manufacturing sector? (See the end of last Friday’s column, where the President highlights some encouraging wind-tech news.) As you’ve surely heard by now, we’re buying wind turbines from China (which is lending us the money to buy them) – a 36,000-acre wind farm in Texas generating current sufficient to power 180,000 homes. (Or 360,000 homes once those homes are twice as energy efficient. So . . . ten homes per acre of windmills. Not bad.*) Time to start producing these things in the U.S.? *I have it on good authority that Montana alone has 93 million acres of land mass, much of it windy. There are transmission and storage issues, of course. And you’d need to carve out 20,000 acres for Bozeman. I’m not being entirely literal here; just trying to give a sense of the scale: at 10 homes per acre, that would be 930 million homes. Once you plug in your car in at night, figure five homes an acre – or even two? At just two homes served by each acre of wind farm, Montana would would more than cover the whole country for residential and automotive use. And far below those mighty blades, wheat and flaxseed would grow just as it does now. WHY NOT NUCLEAR If you think nuclear is part of the answer, as some at the Department of Energy do – and has thus far worked nicely for France – Amory Lovins, suggests your thinking is . . . unclear. (Get it? UN-clear? NU-clear? I’ve been playing too much Word Warp.) The recipient of ten honorary doctorates, Amory writes mainly for scientists and engineers. His paper is a little dense for us layfolk – but navigable. This effort (by a blogger who goes by “nirsnet,” as in Nuclear Information And Resource Service) is a breezy list of 10 reasons nuclear is not a good idea. And speaking of nuclear . . . IS THAT A BRIGHT NOTE, OR JUST GLOWING RADIOACTIVITY? Richard Reiss: “At a point when we seem beset by intractable problems, it’s reassuring to see how the worst problem turned out (so far, anyway). Also fascinating: how quickly good news essentially becomes…boring? For full appreciation of this story, rent ‘Dr. Strangelove’ and watch on flat-screen TV 10% powered by recycled nuclear weapons (‘…about 10 percent of electricity in the United States [is generated from] fuel from dismantled nuclear bombs, including Russian ones.’)” ☞ If Iran gets the bomb, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates will soon start packing, too, so we’re hardly out of the woods. But I love Richard’s perspective – and grab any chance to plug ‘Dr. Strangelove,’ one of the 10 best motion pictures of all time. (‘Dr. Zhivago’ is another of them. And then ‘Casablanca,’ of course, ‘Gone With the Wind,’ ‘The Ten Commandments,’ ‘Moonstruck,’ ‘Princess Bride,’ ‘Z,’ ‘King Kong,’ and ‘The Maltese Falcon.’ Now you know.) (Well, and ‘Fight Club’ – but the first rule of ‘Fight Club’ is, you don’t talk about Fight Club.) (And the 1938 ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘Miracle on 34th Street’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’) (And ‘2001’ and ‘Star Wars.’) (And ‘The Godfather,’ obviously.)
Discourge Hate, Encourage Love? You won't get any GOP votes for THAT! November 11, 2009March 16, 2017 SAVINGS Gray Chang: “I think that the $1,500 you saved Not Charles is as real as the $5 saved by heating less water. It means that perhaps an AT&T executive will take one fewer vacation to Hawaii, saving a tremendous amount of fuel. To the extent that the $1,500 is saved rather than spent, fewer resources are being used. Would Not Charles consider heating a mug of water in the microwave rather than boiling a pot?” ☞ Not Charles. (And on your first point, who’s to say Not Charles won’t use that $1,500 to go to Hawaii himself? So I respectfully submit that one kind of saving really is different from the other – though I like both.) THIRD WORLD FORESTS AND SOLAR COOKERS More savings: “Requiring less than two hours of sunshine to cook a complete meal, they can greatly reduce firewood use at little cost. They can also be used to pasteurize water, thus saving lives. . . .” HATE CRIMES If you are not persuaded it was a good idea to extend federal hate crimes protections to include LGBT people (signed into law a couple of weeks ago against all but universal Republican opposition), this Austin Statesman op-ed might change your mind. (Or not – but I much appreciate your considering its point of view.) MARRIAGE To those who believe gay men should marry women instead of men, here is interesting counterpoint from those women. (“Brooks was 28 when she met Robert Webb on a blind date. He was perfect: tall, handsome and a lawyer. As a husband, she said, he treated her ‘wonderfully,’ celebrating with champagne the day she got her master’s degree. They talked about having children. Webb said he never meant to hurt her. . . .”) IMMIGRATION And, from The Nation: This month, Judy Rickard will permanently leave the United States in order to reunite with her partner, Karin Bogliolo, a UK national. To do so, she’s taking an early retirement and a reduced pension after twenty-seven years teaching at San Jose State University. Why? Because unlike nineteen other countries–including Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, South Africa and the United Kingdom–the United States doesn’t recognize permanent same-sex partners for legal immigration. Since immigration is a federal matter, even married same-sex couples in states that recognize their marriages have no legal basis for an immigration claim. “The result is a loss for my district and a loss for the university,” California Democratic Representative Mike Honda writes of Rickard’s departure in a Roll Call op-ed. “There are tens of thousands of lesbian and gay families for whom immigration reform cannot come soon enough,” says Steve Ralls, director of communications for Immigration Equality. “Every day, Immigration Equality hears from partners who are separated, or facing separation, because of our discriminatory immigration laws. Nearly half of those impacted are raising children . . . .“
Two Kinds of Saving November 10, 2009March 16, 2017 KRUGMAN ‘Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption ‘National Socialist Healthcare.’ It was grotesque – and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied. The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership – in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. . . . The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here – and it’s very bad for America.‘ Worth reading it all. TWO KINDS OF SAVING Both good, one more real than the other. A friend I’ll call, simply, Not Charles, so nobody knows who it is, was paying $177 for his monthly allotment of 2000 AT&T cell phone minutes. I happened to see this friend’s bill and noticed 17,114 ‘rollover minutes,’ good for a year . . . but with 1,600 of them rolling off into oblivion just the month before. On this friend’s behalf, I called AT&T and asked to have his plan scaled down to the minimum $39.95-plus tax 450-minute plan, figuring to save him about $125 a month for more than a year until his rollover minutes were running dry and it was time to step up to some intermediate plan. Tasha from AT&T said she’d be happy to do that for Not Charles, but was I aware that reducing one’s plans wiped out the accumulated roll-over minutes? How’s that for rotten? I could have folded or I could have exploded, but I took a middle ground and professed dismay. ‘No. Really! They sure don’t tout that feature when you sign up. Gee whiz’ – I thought ‘gee whiz’ was a nice touch – ‘I know you don’t make the rules, but that’s rotten.’ Tasha was sympathetic but agreed she didn’t make the rules – would Not Charles like me to go ahead and reduce his monthly minutes? ‘Gee whiz,’ I repeated, wholesomely. ‘Is there any leeway in this, or should he just switch to another carrier? That’s really rotten. Do you have a supervisor who might be able to help?’ My guess was not, or that there would be only a token accommodation. But Tasha came back after a sonata or two and told me her supervisor had been able to ‘uncap’ Not Charles’s plan, meaning that he could go down to the $39.95 plan and keep his 17,114 minutes. I was effusive in my gratitude – and Not Charles will now save about $1,500 over the next year or so – which is after-tax money, and thus the equivalent of earning perhaps $2,500, depending on his combined federal-local-and-FICA tax bracket. That’s one kind of savings (and I go on at such length in case you hadn’t checked your calling plan lately; to warn of the rollover catch if you downsize; and to suggest that some well-calibrated ‘gee whizzing’ interspersed with mentions of ‘switching to another carrier’ just might rescue them). Here is another kind of savings. Every morning, when you boil water for your tea (I recognize that you don’t drink tea; I am making a point), boil just enough water, and not a potful as you might otherwise do. I mentioned this to someone – for convenience, I’ll call him, too, Not Charles – and he looked at me as though I were crazy. But look: you save perhaps half the water; half the cost of heating the water; half the time it takes to heat the water; and half the environmental impact of the fuel required to produce that heat. It’s nothing like the first savings of $2,500 – maybe it’s $5 a year. But where the $2,500 is just a more favorable series of accounting entries, this $5 is ‘real’ savings: less water, less fuel, less pollution, and all in less time, with zero sacrifice. That’s also how I feel about the four 6-watt LED dimmable kitchen bulbs. I realize you must be getting very tired of my telling you about them; but I’m like an infant for whom the game of peek-a-boo never gets old. Every time I turn on those lights, knowing that I have replaced 400 watts of kitchen lighting with a nice, sunny 24 watts – a 94% reduction in energy use – I gurgle with delight.
Of Health Care, Pomegranates, and Gold November 9, 2009March 16, 2017 Sorry Friday’s column posted so late. If you missed it – especially the uplifting part at the end (who doesn’t need a little uplift on a Monday morning?) – click here. HEALTH CARE If you think Democrats should not filibuster health care reform, consider taking a few seconds to sign this petition. We have to mitigate the anti-choice piece (perhaps grandfather all the existing insurance providers?) or somehow get rid of it altogether. But Saturday night’s House passage was a great step forward. James Musters: ‘Government health care rescues protesters at anti-government health care rally. You just know the irony is lost on those protestors. (‘EMS workers who are employed by the federal government responded to his emergency, treated him, saved his life and transported him to a public hospital.’)’ POMEGRANATES Michael Joblin: ‘The house in Palm Springs that Gil and I just closed on has a 10-foot pomegranate tree in the backyard! I can see 8 or 10 pomegranates at various stages of growth, so it’s a tad more than $3 each [let’s see: if the house was $375,000 and there are 8 pomegranates . . .], but I’m looking forward to enjoying them for the first time in my life. Consider yourself honored! I have picked two to try. Following your suggestion, I will first chill them for a day. I’ll report back tomorrow. Meantime, beware! Pomegranate trees have thorns!’ ☞ They grow on trees? I thought they grew on fruit stands. (And this just in: ‘They taste great!’ Michael reports.) Kathryn Lance: ‘They are lovely trees and the flowers and fruit are beautiful. I have one but have never been moved to try the fruit. The birds love them so much that this year’s crop is out of the question. Maybe next year.’ Mark: ‘I am not a super religious person but a neat fact about pomegranates is biblical. The ten big commandments are further expanded to the total of 613, which happens to be the number of seeds in all pomegranates. But, you probably already knew this.’ ☞ No way! All pomegranates have 613 seeds? Really? Cool! (Well, actually not, but it’s still fun.) GOLD Chris Hanacek: ‘You should link to Less Antman’s SAP portfolio page. He maintains that commodity futures should always be part of the mix (including, but not limited to gold). That they are prudent since they generally move against equities.’
Einhorn and Energy Don't Miss the President's Remarks at the End November 6, 2009March 16, 2017 Last Friday, I ran this much-talked-about – if sobering – investment assessment by David Einhorn, cautioning that it might lead you to buy some GLD. (Somebody did – it’s up 5% in a week; 17% since first suggested here nine months ago. Surely you and I move the global gold market.) My plan had been to follow it immediately this Monday with your own good comments, and then with something upbeat. Well, here I am finally doing that. (This coming Monday we’ll get back to pomegranates.) But first . . . CIVIL MARRIAGE LICENSES Tuesday, a law allowing citizens of Maine to marry was overturned – by other citizens of Maine. The same thing was done not so long ago in California. If you think it’s wrong for the rights of a minority to be rescinded at the urging of religious leaders*, here is a small but very easy way to help. *Why are our rights even any of their business? Can’t they just condemn us to eternal damnation and be satisfied with that? As they condemned those who would allow women to vote or those who would free the slaves or those who would allow people like Clarence Thomas to marry women of a different race? And now . . . EINHORN II Steve Vance: “I agree with Einhorn’s call for smarter regulation, but while he may have studied government in college, he didn’t take enough economics. According to Paul Krugman’s recent calculations, the appropriate Fed funds rate to address our situation is -5.6% – yes, a negative number. Given the impossibility of achieving that, fiscal policy is required. This isn’t the time to be spreading Einhorn’s hand-wringing about deficits. And Brad DeLong nicely explains why more deficit spending (preferably in the form of smart stimulus, as you suggest) is not only a good idea, but a good deal. Our government balance sheet isn’t great, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it would be if we tried Einhorn’s ‘fiscal discipline’ approach. (See: Hoover, Herbert.)” ☞ I agree! This is absolutely the time for a decade of smart and massive infrastructure investment/stimulus. Lynn Gongaware: “Why gold and not TIPS as a hedge against inflation?” ☞ I like TIPS, too. (Be careful to buy recently issued ones, without too much inflation accretion already built into the settlement price – lest deflation deflate that accretion.) But note that in a world of turmoil, you could have a situation where gold goes up even when inflation does not. So they’re not exactly the same. And Einhorn was talking about gold, not TIPS, so that’s what I picked up on. The truth is, I hate that I’ve even been suggesting GLD, or that I own any myself. For most of my life I’ve mocked it as a sterile investment, which it is; a metal that derives its value less from its utility than from its scarcity so that digging up more of it adds no real value. But if you read the Einhorn piece, you might decide to have some – very small – portion of the you’ve worked a lifetime to build in gold. Brett Scheiner: “Einhorn’s gold commentary mentioned in your column Friday was much discussed among my value investing lot, as was Ackman’s pithy counterpoint. Einhorn is clearly a brilliant man and a deeply thoughtful investor – I truly enjoyed his new book, Fooling Some of the People – but I found Ackman’s thinking far more compelling: buying strong US businesses whose prices will rise with the inflation that concerns Einhorn is as good a hedge as gold with the additional benefit of profits (and dare I suggest dividends?) flowing while you wait. And the chance to buy a few of those businesses at a meaningful discount to what you believe to be their intrinsic value?” Peter S: “I have been saying for some time that the real heart of the problems faced by the United States (and there are many, and they are HUGE) is that our senators and congressmen/women do not have term limits. Instead, we see people who get elected, then have the incredible resources of the incumbent to give them an overwhelming advantage in the next election. These elected offices are treated as a career, when the framers of the Constitution intended for people to serve for a limited time and then return to private life. When FDR was elected for a 4th term, Congress passed an amendment to limit presidential terms. Do you see a body that is intoxicated with wealth, power, and fame voting to restrict their time in office? And they wonder why Congress has an approval rating that is lower than used car salesmen! The end result is that they act to do things in the short term that will get them reelected, which means that they are not willing to make the decisions that are fiscally sound over the long term. We continue to spend money on the national credit card, to a point where there is likely no realistic way we will ever pay it back.” ☞ I agree the problems are huge and that political reluctance to do anything unpopular is one of them. But I disagree on term limits. There are certainly reforms to be made – including LOTS more exceptions to the custom that chairmanships are based on seniority rather than competence. In my view, though, the issues that legislators have to deal with are so complex, it makes sense to build real, deep expertise and have continuity. I’m not sure we should deny voters the choice of reelecting someone they like. I think Clinton would have been reelected and that the world would have been better off if he had. I’m not sorry FDR got to serve almost four terms. I’m really glad Barney Frank is still in the House. I wish Ted Kennedy were still in the Senate. And so on. ENERGY – THE NEW FRONTIER And now for the hopeful part of the story. If there’s a deus ex machina available to sweep aside some of the huge problems Einhorn outlines, it is the continuing acceleration of technology (see, as always, Ray Kurzweil’s dazzling take). Imagine our managing to muddle for a decade even as alternative energy gets closer and closer to being cheap. Imagine printed solar-voltaic film on every window powering buildings. Imagine the low-hanging energy efficiencies we could wring out of our economy in the meantime. Imagine zinc-air batteries that store more than three times the energy of lithium-ion. Cheap clean energy, if we can make it from here to there, offers the prospect of tremendous prosperity. And, of course, greater national security and hope for the environment. And we now have a President, again, who gets it. Who appointed a Nobel-Prize-winning physicist to be his Energy Secretary instead of an industry lobbyist. I haven’t met Secretary Chu, but I did have a chance to hear his senior advisor Matt Rogers recently as he talked about the grants and loans the Department of Energy is engaged in making – and the highly competitive merit-based process by which they are awarded. In the area of cutting-edge technology, they have thus far chosen 37 projects to fund, any one of which, if it panned out – like a battery that promises to bring down the cost of storage by 95% – would be a total game-changer. I can’t do all this justice, but I tell you it filled me with hope. Just listen to the President addressing the MIT community three weeks ago: [T]he Recovery Act that we passed back in January makes the largest investment in clean energy in history, not just to help end this recession, but to lay a new foundation for lasting prosperity. The Recovery Act includes $80 billion to put tens of thousands of Americans to work developing new battery technologies for hybrid vehicles; modernizing the electric grid; making our homes and businesses more energy efficient; doubling our capacity to generate renewable electricity. These are creating private-sector jobs weatherizing homes; manufacturing cars and trucks; upgrading to smart electric meters; installing solar panels; assembling wind turbines; building new facilities and factories and laboratories all across America. And, by the way, helping to finance extraordinary research. In fact, in just a few weeks, right here in Boston, workers will break ground on a new Wind Technology Testing Center, a project made possible through a $25 million Recovery Act investment as well as through the support of Massachusetts and its partners. . . . Hundreds of people will be put to work building this new testing facility, but the benefits will extend far beyond these jobs. For the first time, researchers in the United States will be able to test the world’s newest and largest wind turbine blades — blades roughly the length of a football field — and that in turn will make it possible for American businesses to develop more efficient and effective turbines, and to lead a market estimated at more than $2 trillion over the next two decades. . . . Now, even as we’re investing in technologies that exist today, we’re also investing in the science that will produce the technologies of tomorrow. The Recovery Act provides the largest single boost in scientific research in history. Let me repeat that: The Recovery Act, the stimulus bill, represents the largest single boost in scientific research in history. . . . And my budget also makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent — a tax credit that spurs innovation and jobs, adding $2 to the economy for every dollar that it costs. And all of this must culminate in the passage of comprehensive legislation that will finally make renewable energy the profitable kind of energy in America. John Kerry is working on this legislation right now, and he’s doing a terrific job reaching out across the other side of the aisle because this should not be a partisan issue. Everybody in America should have a stake — (applause) — everybody in America should have a stake in legislation that can transform our energy system into one that’s far more efficient, far cleaner, and provide energy independence for America — making the best use of resources we have in abundance, everything from figuring out how to use the fossil fuels that inevitably we are going to be using for several decades, things like coal and oil and natural gas; figuring out how we use those as cleanly and efficiently as possible; creating safe nuclear power; sustainable — sustainably grown biofuels; and then the energy that we can harness from wind and the waves and the sun. It is a transformation that will be made as swiftly and as carefully as possible, to ensure that we are doing what it takes to grow this economy in the short, medium, and long term. And I do believe that a consensus is growing to achieve exactly that. The Pentagon has declared our dependence on fossil fuels a security threat. Veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are traveling the country as part of Operation Free, campaigning to end our dependence on oil — (applause) — we have a few of these folks here today, right there. (Applause.) The young people of this country — that I’ve met all across America — they understand that this is the challenge of their generation. Leaders in the business community are standing with leaders in the environmental community to protect the economy and the planet we leave for our children. The House of Representatives has already passed historic legislation, due in large part to the efforts of Massachusetts’ own Ed Markey, he deserves a big round of applause. (Applause.) We’re now seeing prominent Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham joining forces with long-time leaders John Kerry on this issue, to swiftly pass a bill through the Senate as well. In fact, the Energy Committee, thanks to the work of its Chair, Senator Jeff Bingaman, has already passed key provisions of comprehensive legislation. So we are seeing a convergence. The naysayers, the folks who would pretend that this is not an issue, they are being marginalized. But I think it’s important to understand that the closer we get, the harder the opposition will fight and the more we’ll hear from those whose interest or ideology run counter to the much needed action that we’re engaged in. There are those who will suggest that moving toward clean energy will destroy our economy — when it’s the system we currently have that endangers our prosperity and prevents us from creating millions of new jobs. There are going to be those who cynically claim — make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary. So we’re going to have to work on those folks. But understand there’s also another myth that we have to dispel, and this one is far more dangerous because we’re all somewhat complicit in it. It’s far more dangerous than any attack made by those who wish to stand in the way progress — and that’s the idea that there is nothing or little that we can do. It’s pessimism. It’s the pessimistic notion that our politics are too broken and our people too unwilling to make hard choices for us to actually deal with this energy issue that we’re facing. And implicit in this argument is the sense that somehow we’ve lost something important — that fighting American spirit, that willingness to tackle hard challenges, that determination to see those challenges to the end, that we can solve problems, that we can act collectively, that somehow that is something of the past. I reject that argument. I reject it because of what I’ve seen here at MIT. Because of what I have seen across America. Because of what we know we are capable of achieving when called upon to achieve it. This is the nation that harnessed electricity and the energy contained in the atom, that developed the steamboat and the modern solar cell. This is the nation that pushed westward and looked skyward. We have always sought out new frontiers and this generation is no different. Today’s frontiers can’t be found on a map. They’re being explored in our classrooms and our laboratories, in our start-ups and our factories. And today’s pioneers are not traveling to some far flung place. These pioneers are all around us — the entrepreneurs and the inventors, the researchers, the engineers — helping to lead us into the future, just as they have in the past. This is the nation that has led the world for two centuries in the pursuit of discovery. This is the nation that will lead the clean energy economy of tomorrow, so long as all of us remember what we have achieved in the past and we use that to inspire us to achieve even more in the future. I am confident that’s what’s happening right here at this extraordinary institution. And if you will join us in what is sure to be a difficult fight in the months and years ahead, I am confident that all of America is going to be pulling in one direction to make sure that we are the energy leader that we need to be. Thank you, everybody . . . ☞ Have a great weekend.
Enjoy . . . November 5, 2009March 16, 2017 CURRENT.TV This site has come a long way. I can’t imagine that you have any more time than I do; but – in theory at least – you could spend all day here and never get bored. POMEGRANATE And as if that weren’t delight enough, pomegranates are in season! What for $3 can you possibly find that’s more fun, more delicious, or healthier? Refrigerate until nice and cold, then eat the abundant, translucent, ruby-red seeds. Here’s how . . . although a real guy will basically just rip one open, never mind staining his t-shirt with juice, and dig his snout into every luscious nook and cranny, spitting out the pulp as he goes. I’m guessing not all of you have ever even tried a pomegranate. I would be honored to be the one who introduced you to them.
And the Winner Is . . . November 4, 2009March 16, 2017 With the polls still open as I write this . . . SKYPE VS VONAGE VS MAGICJACK I recently asked how anyone could fail to have a Skype account. And I’ve recently seen about two billion TV ads touting a thing called the MagicJack – and even saw them for sale in a 7-Eleven. So? There’s a lot more to this analysis, but it concludes: Skype is the best service if you are looking of a complement to your cell phone. This is exactly how Spot Cool Stuff uses Skype: We use our cell phones for domestic calls and then Skype for international ones. In fact, with the fantastic Skype iPhone app you can use Skype on your cell phone (presuming you have an iPhone). Except for video chats, we exclusively use Skype via an iPhone. (Speaking of video chats, it is very cool and surprisingly high quality on Skype). At the start of this article, though, we stated that we were looking for the service that could best replace a telephone company land line. Without a doubt, the best service for that task is . . . Vonage. If we were to stealthily break into your house and replace your telephone company land line service with Vonage you might never notice a difference. You’d have the exact same phone number (not so with MagicJack or Skype) and the exact same phone (not so with Skype); you could use your phone without a computer (not so with MagicJack) and you’d be unlikely to notice much quality difference. Yes, Vonage is the most expensive of these three services. But this is one of those times when you get what you pay for. INSTANT RUN-OFF VOTING In a move no one cleared with me, the Oscars are going to have ten Best Picture nominees this coming March instead of five. I’m not sure I like that. But I do very much like how the voting will work. Arlen Long: “Click circle #2 and then #3 and then #4 to see the animation. Instant Runoff Voting for the Oscars might generate understanding of how this would work for the Presidency.” ☞ And that, as I’ve argued before, would be a very good thing (and not just for the Presidency – for any election with more than two candidates).
$100 Trillion Over 20 Years Plus: Guru on DNDN November 3, 2009March 16, 2017 I owe you counterpoint to Friday’s gloomy Einhorn link. But today: SAVE THE PLANET Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice: How We Can Solve the Climate Crisis, launches today. Buy it here. Or the young reader hard cover edition here. Wouldn’t it be nice to keep the planet habitable for human life? THIS IS TOTALLY COOL Here’s a plan for the world to become entirely independent of fossil fuel (oil/gas/coal) in 20 years. We’d go 100% to wind, water and sun . . . at a cost of $100 trillion . . . which assumes no improvements in current technology (which of course there would be) and with no increases in conservation and efficiency (which there would be, also – as when I replaced the 400 incandescent watts in my kitchen with 24 LED watts that work just as well at a 94% energy reduction) . . . $5 trillion a year globally . . . lots of jobs . . . saving trillions on oil and coal each year . . . ending air pollution and reducing carbon emissions to pretty much the shavings when we sharpen pencils. Obviously, nothing so dramatic is likely to happen. But Scientific American has done an amazing job of bringing this idea to life. Lots of cool stuff to click on, lots of important stuff to learn. Don’t miss this one. DNDN PUTS Daniel: “I have a question about your Dendreon speculation [January, 2011, 20 puts bought for $5 each]. The study currently underway has a statistical endpoint that is based on overall survival, and everything that has been released seems to me to support that they will satisfy that part of the requirements. So, my question to you (or really your expert) is does he expect the drug to fail because the study results are going to be poor (i.e., overall survival not statistically improved), or does he expect the FDA to reject it despite the study since they still don’t show a decrease in disease progression (despite the alleged statistical survival benefit)? Personally, I think if they meet their endpoint, I don’t see how they cannot be approved given the lack of other viable alternatives and an extremely vocal patient base clamoring to try it out (if it is conceded as safe, which the FDA has already done).” Guru says: “The rejection will come because DNDN ran an invalid study. The study they ran – the one on which they report statistical significance – does not conform to the agreement they have with the FDA (the SPA*). For recent examples of companies who were rejected for running the wrong trials in cancer, see Genzyme’s Clolar and Vion’s panel.” * “Special Protocol Agreement. It is an agreement between the company and the FDA on the terms of the protocol. People are bullish on DNDN because in 2005, they got an amendment to the protocol for trial 9902B that was called an SPA. Fine, the protocol was amended. What the FDA did not say is that the way 9902B had been run before the amendment would satisfy the new amendment. In fact, the FDA said in 2002 in writing that a change that was virtually identical to one made in 2005 would require the start of a new trial. To satisfy the SPA as amended in 2005, Dendreon needed to start an entirely new study – 9902C. They did not start this new study. Instead, they mixed the ongoing study 9902B (which had been running since 2002) with a new study based on the amendment of 2005 and produced a final study that is not a valid satisfaction of the 2005 SPA. They should have started an entirely new study.” So then I asked Guru: “Okay, okay . . . but does the drug WORK?! What’s your best guess as to the positive effects, if any, of the drug?” “No,” he replied. “Unfortunately, the drug cannot possibly work.” He could be wrong about that of course; and even if he’s right, he could be wrong that the FDA will reject it. So this is a speculation to be made – like all speculations – only with money you can truly afford to lose.