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| Sure it is really late, but here is the post about alternative energy:
As time goes on more and more people are beginning to accept that fossil fuels cannot remain our primary source of energy indefinitely. This ultimately leads them to beg the question, "What will become the next primary source of energy?" Will it be wind? Will it be solar? Will it be nuclear? None of these are new ideas, however for each of these we find some massive problems that have prevented any one of them from becoming the major source already. So it looks like we still have a lot of research to do in order to replace fossil fuels, right? Well, yes and no. Solar cells are becoming more efficient to use and cheaper to build every day. New types of wind plants continue to harness more and more of the wind's energy. Advances in nuclear science have allowed for more efficient and safer use of fissile materials. Above this emerging energy sources like biodiesel and fusion have become increasingly hot topics in discussions about the future of energy. Why then do I say no?
Let's take a step back from the problem. Instead of looking at the solution, let's look at the causes. Why is the ever tightening belt of fossil fuels a problem? Well, for the most part it is the only major energy source we have. Minor fluctuations in the supply of this precious resource lead to massive changes through the world economy. This kind of economy is tried and tested (and failed). For proof you need look no further than Ireland of previous decades. Ireland existed for the most part as a single crop society. The livelihood of the nation was based on the potato. So, a plague that only effects the potato would drive the country into absolute ruin. The sheer lack of diversity in the economy made the whole country largely unstable.
Back to the present. The real problem associated with fossil fuels isn't the fact that they require so much processing. It isn't even global warming (however this is a valid concern). The problem is that we are so very dependent on it for our way of life. Switching this dependency to an alternative energy supply won't solve the problem, it will just push it back a few years until the problems associated with the alternative supply become apparent. (See previous post about use of ethanol increasing the price of corn. Consider the amount of land that would have to be dedicated to solar arrays. Consider the amount of construction material and effort that has to go into building a wind plant.) The solution, as should be obvious to the astute reader is diversity.
We can achieve diversity through a recent trend in architecture and engineering called 'mixed use space.' The developers of mixed use space, whether they realize it or not, are actually attempting to mimic the natural order of life (which is also a trend in science that I will talk about later). Consider a tree. We are all familiar with the depiction of a tree as home to many different kinds of life while also producing fruit for animals to eat. Now consider a mixed use space such as a bodega at street level, apartments above with a roof top garden. Fairly similar, no?
How does mixed use help? The trend in city planning over the past few centuries is to divide up your available land into residential districts, service areas, manufacturing areas, transportation hubs and other such areas. Anyone who has ever played the game 'Sim City' by Maxis is sure to be familiar with this set up to some degree. Now, consider what this separate space has turned our lives into. Our day to day lives consist of a lot of time and energy spent traveling to and from work, school and play. Even the supplies of our day to day lives spend a lot of time traveling. Food is especially guilty of this as, more often then not, your products have to be shipped from miles away while being refrigerated. The waste involved in this is impressive. The goal of mixed use is to make it possible for a person to get all of their daily necessities from within walking distance of their home. Traveling much further, such as out of your city, would be much more of a leisure activity than a necessity. So, the system isn't really generating any extra energy, but it manages to save on a lot of waste.
However, mixed use does not stop there. We can further increase efficiency (by regulating temperature) while actually creating more energy on virtually any building through the addition of solar arrays. Solar arrays, in addition to turning the sun's light into electricity, also prevent the light from becoming heat. Additionally, newer solar panels can be installed in place of tinted windows. In essence, you are keeping the inside of your building cooler while generating electricity at the same time. Will tinted window solar panels replace oil? Will they power the whole building? Never. They are really only capable of producing a little bit of electricity on a small window. However, as the saying goes, a little in abundance is a lot. What if we were to apply this cost saving technique to the glass skyscrapers the dot the New York City skyline?
There are, of course, obstacles to be faced in this road. Currently, we live in a car based society. People eat, live and move at the behest of cars. Doubt me? One only need look at New York City to be convinced. The city is divided into a grid of roadways for cars to drive on. When one wants to cross the street he or she must wait for the cars to stop as opposed to the cars stopping for people. Moving away from this mindset will be very difficult as people will be ever hesitant to try something new. Nothing short of a concerted effort on the part of a large organizing body will be able to make this happen.
One obstacle that is often cited has to do with start up costs. Anyone who has done research into getting a residential solar array knows that it is quite easy to spend several thousand, even tens of thousands on a decent array set up. However, solar cells need not be the expensive photovoltaics that we are used to seeing. Recent research has provided us with the ability to make photochemical cells which operate on a much different principle and can be created very cheaply from rather common substances (or at least, easily available substances) right in your own garage. However, that is a story for another time.
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| Every once in a while I stop posting here altogether for whatever reason. But sooner or later I find that something draws me back here. I come across some statement, usually political, that flies in the face of all that is good, scientific and logical. I resisted writing anything about Evolution vs. Intelligent Design simply because that is a dead horse and digging it up to beat it some more is simply ridiculous. (Although education being a state's right despite people having to compete on a global educational spectrum could be a topic all to itself. Is it the reason Americans are doing poorer and poorer in math in science? Whatever...) Instead, I am drawn back to this digital outlet of frustration to discus recent accusations against the use of Ethanol based fuel in cars made by the comic strip Mallard Filmore. The specific complaints are that Ethanol is more costly than gasoline without government subsidies and causes the release of more carbon in its creation than gasoline. I intend to refute these complaints after giving a brief introduction to Ethanol as an energy source.
The topic of Ethanol based transportation is not a new one. In fact, it was the subject of a Simpson's joke several years ago. However, in the recent climate of high gas prices any substitute for gasoline is being considered. In addition to that, people have been talking about the use of alcohol in place of gasoline in order to have a beneficial effect on pollution and global warming. Now, it is worth noting that there are several kinds of alcohol out there. In particular, we are talking about Ethanol. Other kinds of alcohols, such as Methanol, are no good here. If you are unfamiliar with what I am talking about go check out wikipedia, lots of useful information there. Ethanol, interestingly enough, is the same kind of alcohol that is in your drinks, but that is not the only mixture in which we find Ethanol. In fact, depending on where you live in America between 15% and 35% of your gasoline is already Ethanol. Even more shocking is that if you were to buy a bottle of grain alcohol and pour it into the gas tank of your car it would still run fine except with lesser miles per galon.
So now, how is Ethanol made? Ethanol is the by product of fermentation, a process well known to human history. Fermentation is basically the process by which yeast lives. In the fermentation of things like wine and beer ingrediants are added to a 'mash' which then sits until all the fermentable sugars (food for the microorganisms) is used up or too much Ethanol is created and the yeast dies. The former tends to happen in beer, the latter happens in wine (which is why wine has higher alcohol concentration on average). The most popular choice for making Ethanol is to use corn, but anything with fermentable sugars can be used from apples to wheat (the differing recipes change the final flavor of the drink, but we aren't interested in drinking it). To make Ethanol from here basically we have to take our fermented mash and distil it. Distilling is a process of purifying our alcohol. Making a still and distilling to a certain concentration of alcohol (commonly known as proof) is beyond the scope of this blog entry but rest assured that the process is widely available online if you are interested in persuing it. The ethanol will be ready for fuel purposes when it is almost 200 proof, in fact, the closer the better.
The first major complaint against the use of ethanol is that the government subsidizes corn, but does not subsidize oil. A sub arguement to this is that if all of our dependancy on gasoline were to be transfered over to ethanol then the price of corn would sky rocket and the price of ethanol would also increase. All that would be accomplished by this is more demand for food and less demand for oil (and otherwise nearly useless reasource). The second major complaint is that the production of ethanol requires the release of carbons in addition to the carbon released when it burns. I group these complaints because in reality they are both mistakes brought about by a falure to understand what is trying to be accomplished. The causes for this are complex, but not too obscured to be seen.
First, the analysis that brings about these problems is an analysis of current brewing processes. These brewing processes are either culinary in nature or are the results of small farms. In the first case we have culinary brewing. This label refers to the multitude of precesses that create products that are meant for human consumption. Yes, these require a lot of energy which is generally created by burning fossil fuels. However, these processes are a lot more precise than we need to be. Brewers will attempt to keep their mashes at certain temperatures to give their yeasts a competative advantage over other microorganisms. Brewers will carefully select ingrediants to go into their mash. Distillers will use kettle distillation over more advanced/efficent techniques. Why do they do this? Its all about flavor. But, as we have stated, this product is going in our cars, we don't care what it tastes like. The second case is the brewing that occurs on small farms. Small farms are a dying breed, as prices for crops sometimes don't cover the costs of production. Several family farms have gotten the idea that they can make ethanol from their product right on their own property and make more money from the same crop. If the price of corn is so low it only makes basic economic sense to increase the demand by finding another use for it (other than eating or cooking). It will also stimulate the production of more corn as currently there is an oversupply and farmers are routinely paid not to grow it as to keep the price high enough to support the other farmers. These home brewing farmers obviously make profit from making ethanol, it creates more energy than is used. As for ethanol being more polluting when burned, that is simply wrong.
The second confounding variable has to do with the price of ethanol. If you, as a average American, were to distil your own ethanol you could probably do it for less than $1.00 per gallon. Why is it then that the commodity price on ethanol is somewhere in the range of $3.75 per gallon? This is simply an interesting economic trick by energy companies, although I won't go so far as to call it a conspiracy to keep ethanol down. 'Big Oil' as it is commonly called realized that they weren't in the oil business, they were in the energy business. Not surprisingly, they have also known about ethanol for a while. In a wise business decision, energy companies decided to make a switch to 'Gasahol' (a name which as vanished) by mixing their gasoline with ethanol. This new product actually created a huge demand for ethanol, thus increasing the price. A notable, but probably not unexpect, side effect of this is that now they can point at high ethanol prices and discourage people from choosing ethanol above gasoline.
So where is ethanol headed? Well, despite my support for ethanol here it is hardly the future of energy and transportation. It is highly inefficent as a primary for of energy as there are so many processes to go through from growing to brewing to distilling that all require energy. What it is, however, is a perfect way to increase the energy efficency of a household, neighborhood or society. I said time and again in this blog that we do not care about the taste of our end product. As a result we are freed from the limitations of brewers in terms of recipe. We can use any fermentable sugars in order to produce ethanol. Food waste from things like bread is full of fermentable sugar. After a biological process by microorganisms (similar to our brew process) even grass clippings can become fermentable sugars. If there is one thing that we Americans can do, it is produce food waste, in fact, we are often criticized for it. Turning that waste into useable energy is the obvious course of action. However, like I said, this is simply a way to decrease waste and increase efficency [I'm clever because I can say the same thing in 2 ways], but it cannot be our primary source of energy. In the future I will make a post about alternative energy sources other than ethanol.
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| Allow me to explain. ITEOTWAWKI is IM jargon for "Its the end of the world as we know it." Generally I don't think anyone ever used it, but if they did it probably was used to make fun of emo kids who recently had their day ruined when they found their shoelaces untied.
Anyway, people seem to have some kind of insane fear of the end of the world. Recently some bizarre sect believed that the end of the world was upon us. That was over 3 weeks ago and... as the song says, "I feel fine." This was the same thing that happened with Y2k and plenty of suicide cults from around the world. The next major end of the world is scheduled to be on 21 Dec 2012. You can read more about it at this Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_theory) but it is beyond the scope of thus post.
Honestly, destorying the world is not an easy thing. I mean, think of the force it would require to destory the Earth. After all it is a 5,927,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (or 5.927e24 for you calculators) kilogram ball of iron traveling though space traveling at about 388,800,000,000 m/s. This means the kinetic energy of the Earth is approximately 45,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules. In comparison that amount of energy could meet the energy requirements of the enitre world until the end of the universe (post coming soon haha). So how exactly do we destroy such a planet?
Realistically there is little we can do, even if the whole human race worked together to try. It is impossible to physically destroy the world. What if, however, we only wanted to destroy humanity? Is that possible. And thus, the inspiration emerges. Syncretic postulated that any AI will realize that its main danger is from humanity and instantly wipe humanity out. Although this makes for good Science Fiction, I doubt this will be the case. I believe this for a number of reasons. First, the blend from natural intelligence to artificial intelligence is likely to be slow enough that the majority of people will accept it as real intelligence, just as the majority of Americans accept black people as real people (we didn't at one point you know, hell they had to fight to be considered 3/5 of a person). As a result the shock will be much less and thus we will have a less violent adjustment period. Second, natural intelligence will probably put restraints on artificial intelligence preventing it from destorying anything. We don't give guns to children after all.
The third reason is important enough to get its own paragraph. The first AI will quickly attempt to learn as much as it can. It will read and assimilate as much information as it can. Along with all of its knowledge about nuclear weapons and how destructive humans can be (after all, that is what we are afraid of) it will also read all of the great poetry that exists. It will conclude, quite logically, that human emotion exists in a very strict cause and effect system. It is likely that this AI will come up with a system of morals after asking all of the same questions we post here. I would not even be surprised if, after the addition of more individual AIs, systems that can almost be described as religious form. AI, if based off the human mind, should very well experience feelings of mysticism and will see humans as a valuable source of independent thought. By the time AI has moved far enough beyond humanity to even consider taking defensive action against us (no doubt brought on by AI's study of American foreign policy in the early 21st century) humanity will have started to make prosthetic brains. Our minds will become similar to AI. So similar infact, that the line between humanity and AI is all but erraticated. (An AI will claim it was born like a human, and since neither has memories of its birth, it will be hard to argue.) So humanity might simply peacfully evolve with the exception of a few ultraludites.
However, war sells. What is a possible violent way for humanity to meet demise? I would have to think that the slowly emerging nanotechnology will most likely be our cause of death. In order to make nanobots economical and practical they must have a self replication ability, much like the cells of our body. However, much like out body, a cancer may develop. Cancer is an uncontrolled growth of cells caused by a flaw in DNA replication that removes the replication 'turn-off switch.' Without the ability to turn them off, self replicating nanomachines might continue to 'eat' their way all across the world. They will turn any available matter into more nanobots. Suppose, for example, there is an accident at a car factory. The nanobot escape and don't know to turn themselves off. Eventually the Earth will feature a thin coat of nanobots punctuated by the occasional humorous feature of a car being built of damaged/dead nanobots. This proposition becomes even more likely in that some of the greatest technologies in the recent past have come about as the result of military weapons, like the nuclear energy.
However, people have predicted that nuclear would be the end of the world, but it hasn't been yet.
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| Be forewarned. I will have absolutely no supporters with this
one. So please take all thoughts, ideas and beliefs about this subject
and put them aside. Read this first, consider it, then comment.
There
are tons of Xangas out there about Evolution or Intelligent Design
debating everything and anything. Each is so sure that he/she is right
and the other is wrong. Many in the evolution camp have come to see
Intelligent Design as a new way of saying creationism and so debate it
in the exact same way. Creationists hear these same arguements and
start to call Creationism 'Intelligent Design.' And thus we don't know
if the evolutionary chicken came before the intelligently designed egg.
Rather it is important to see that Intelligent Design and evolution are
not opposing ideas. Intelligent Design is a mechanism toward evolution.
Evolution
comes about in two ways: Survival of the Fittest and Intelligent
Design. Simply put, in each certain genes are allowed to pass on to the
next generation and some are not. Changes in generations over many
generations leads to the evolution of new species. Survival of the
Fittest is the simple mechanism that we all know and love. It is most
often veiwed as synomymous with evolution, however for the purposes of
this arguement I am going to say that evolution of life is a result of
Survival of the Fittest. Exactly how things work through this mechanism
of evolution could best be described as 'the environment chooses the
adaptation.' The use of the word 'choose' however is misleading. The
environment is not a thinking entity, rather the environment could be
considered the combination of several factors (such as temperature,
rainfall, availability of food, etc.) A creature with warm fur is more
likely to survive in a cold climate than a creature with light or no
hair. Likewise the environment could change with the introduction of
new species. If a preditory species is introduced into an area, those
of the pray species will be forced to adapt to the new environment.
Rote
cause and effect, like described above, is not to be confused with
Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design claims that there is 'an
organizing intelligence' behind evolutionary changes. Thus, Intelligent
Design is also a mechanism of evolution. The most notable cases of
Intelligent Design relate to the somewhat politically incorrect notion
of Eugenics. Cattle farmers use Intelligent Design all the time. The
specifically select the strongest and most desireable traits in a small
percentage of the male population. This small percentage is allowed to
mate freely with most of the female population. The vast majority of
the male population and the inferior members of the female population
are castrated, sterilized, slaughtered or otherwise removed from the
gene pool. Intelligent Design also relates to the NAZI treatment of the
human race. By directly selecting traits and creating an environment
for those traits to be passed on, the NAZIs were attempting to further
the evolution of the species. Intelligent Design also applies to the
evolution of technology, especially that of computers.
Although
the NAZIs are generally agreed to be some of the major bad guys in the
history of the world, they did get one thing right: the next stage of
human evolution will be Intelligently Designed. The last major
evolutionary change that life experienced was the ability to become
more adaptable. Society, a behavioral evolutionary trait, has insured
the survival of the species far greater than any biological structure
could have. Without going into a long rant into Game Theory, it is
apparent that no matter how strong any individual his strength pales in
comparison to the strength of a group. Thus he can acheive more working
within society than against it. However, because of this societal
adaptation competition for mates has become almost a non-entity.
Society allows for genes such as deafness or blindness get passed on to
further generations, where they would not have outside of society. The
next stage must involve a design process. However, the NAZIs were wrong
about the look of the next stage of humans.
Survival of the
Fittest served us very well for a long time. Unfortunately, it is very
slow in comparison to Intelligent Design as it relies more or less on
random chance. Now, through human designs of architecture, electronics,
mathematics the environment we were born in is radically different from
the environment in which we will grow old. Currently computer engineers
are working on new computer system designs based on the reverse
engineering of the human brain. Many people have said that the fastest
computer is the brain. Many are skeptical about the claim as palm sized
calculators can multiply large numbers much faster than the brain. When
we say the brain is the fastest we are actually looking at what is call
'computational density' or the number of calculations per second per
sq. nanometer. (The human brain's computational density is about 2, I
think.) Although they have a long way to go, computers will eventually
catch up. As a result we will then see the emergence of the next
species of humanity. Those existing in cybernetic bodies with
mind-files stored on an inorganic brain (Think the Major from 'Ghost in
the Shell'). Eventually, humanity will forego the physical body
alltogether. As the average computational density of the entire planet
increases, the world will for all experiential purposes become
physically bigger for these new transcendent humans (Think Dixie
Flatline from 'Neuromancer'). Incidentally this possible future for
humanity would explain why we have not been contacted by alien races.
It is quite possible that they have forgone their physical bodies along
time ago and would thus have no need to contact such slow
thinking/moving biological creatures such as ourselves.
This
future, by the way, is coming sooner than you think. If you make it to
this future you will never die (unless you want to). So do try to stick
around.
It really makes me wonder though. Currently I have my
memories and my stream of conciousness. If both of these things are
duplicated onto a computer and the original were not destroyed, where
would my current stream of conciousness go? Both the organic and
inorganic me would have equal claim to being me as they would both have
the same thought processes and memories. The inorganic me will be most
taxed by this. Was he ever really human or were his memories simply
tailored to make him think he was (Think Alphonse Elric from 'Fullmetal
Alchemist').
Before I get too much further off on a
metaphysical tangent, however, I would like to open this up for
discussion from the audience. Is there anything that is unclear the
idea that Survival of the Fittest and Intelligent Design are both valid
and verifiable mechanisms toward evolution? | | |
| "Quran (9:11) -- For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace." Sadly it is the fifth anniversary of the planes flying into the world trade center. However the day of remembrance has been sullied by a lot of random conspiracy theory. Things along the line of the $20 bill and 9 + 11 = 20. These things are crap. Above is the one that people might find the most interesting. However, it too is crap. If you believe this chain letter that is going around please leave as you fail to reach the minimum intelligence to read my blog (currently set quite low). Let us see why we should be skeptical of this. 1) In comparison to the rest of the Quran this is poorly written. Keep in mind that the Quran is known for its rather beautiful poetry. 2) The phrases 'a son of Arabia' and 'the lands of Allah' is foreign to the Quran. 'The lands of Allah' is particularly silly because Allah translates to God and the whole world is God's land. However it is also worth noting that the Quran makes very few references to political boundaries as all Muslims are regarded as brothers. 3) There is no mention of any eagles in the Quran, ANYWHERE! 4) Honestly, how many eagles do we find in Medina or Mecca 5) Quran (9:11) is fallacious as it uses a biblical citation to reference an Islamic text. Quran verses are named, not numbered. 6) The closest thing to a 'chapter 9 verse 11' that we see in the Quran has to do with requirements of worship and charity. 7) The Quran is much more concerned with ethics and morality than it is with prophecy. Anyway, there are plenty more reasons why I have grown to hate the chain letter above other chain letters (even besides the fact that I don't even get rewarded with luck by fowarding it and fanning the flames of racial tension), however I will stop at 7 as I don't think there are many ways to relate the attacks to that number. I don't want to get accused of being in on the attacks like most members of the American government in the past 10 years have. | | |
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