| Wednesday, January
23, 2008
Not a great night, largely due to a cold. Nasal springy
strips helped some, as did Vick's and Sudafed, but I still find myself a
mouth breather, and that's no fun. Presumably I'll get over all that. I
do hope it's gone by the time they schedule me for more visits to those
scanning tubes. The worst of it is that this morning getting up and
becoming vertical hasn't helped much.
If we are intelligently designed, I would like to submit a
design modification involving the sinus and nasal passage system. The mouth
by-pass works, but it's sure an uncomfortable expedient. If those easily
stopped up passages are the result of Darwinian selection and survival of
the fittest, I am eternally grateful that it worked as well as it did.
One of the arguments that drove Voltaire crazy was the
notion that this is the best of all possible worlds: everything is connected
to everything else, and if there were fundamental changes in the design of
the world, what look like improvements would cause unforeseen problems; the
sum total would be worse, not better. The result of Voltaire's disgust with
this argument was Candide, and Dr. Pangloss.
I'm not sure if this set of musings leads anywhere. Mostly
it's inspired by an uncomfortably stuffy head.
================
From another conference:
This one hurts.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/area_eccentric_reads_entire_book
=======
11:30 AM Mr. Hertz, our family lawyer, is over to
confer.
I am scheduled for a full body CAT scan Monday afternoon,
and a bone marrow examination next Wednesday morning, at which time they
will either know what's going on, or find they can't figure it out without
boring holes in my skull. Since if they can find out from the periphery I am
not sure I want that outcome, but looking forward to a biopsy isn't all that
cheering either.
I am certainly learning more about modern medical science
than I really wanted to know.
==============
A new policy for
America
The Global Warming Hoax continues. Not that warming itself
is a hoax; the Earth probably is warming. There may even be a contribution
from CO2. The hoax is (1) that the CO2 is the major factor responsible for
the warming, and (2) the best course is some kind of crash course in carbon
elimination. And with the hoax is a scam: that you can pay money to Al Gore
or someone else who will do something to balance your carbon emission and
thus give you expiation.
It's clear enough that the best energy policy for the
United States is (1) massive investment in nuclear power, (2) development of
many of our domestic oil resources including construction of new oil
refineries, (3) investment in development of commercial space access leading
to solar power satellites, and (4) investment in development of new forms of
energy storage to allow electricity to take over a much larger share of
transportation energy supply.
Now this will in fact have the effect of (1) reducing CO2
emissions, (2) reducing dependence on foreign oil, (3) lowering the price of
oil, (4) depriving the trust fund oil states of most of their discretionary
income thereby leaving them less to invest in spreading revolutionary jihad,
and (5) doing a pretty good job of reviving the US economy.
Couple that energy policy with a 10% tariff on all
imports.
Nuclear power: 100 fission plants, each producing 1,000
megawatts of power. Cost? At a guess, an average cost of no more than $2
billion each (the first one might cost $50 billion, but the last one would
be down around $1 billion as near as I can model the learning curve; and
much of the costs are regulatory, not technical). And once the marginal cost
of a nuclear plant is under $1 billion we can allow the market to take care
of the rest while we gear up to produce power in space and get the polluting
industries off the earth entirely.
And finally, the simplest way to invest in the needed
technologies is to establish massive prizes for achievement of stated goals.
For the American owned company that first flies the same ship to orbit 12
times in one year, $4 billion. For the American owned company that first
puts 31 American citizens on the Moon and keeps them there alive and well
for 3 years and a day, $10 billion. For the American owned company that
first beams down to a receiver in the United States 10 megawatts of power
per day for 320 days in a single year, $10 billion.
We do all understand that a couple of hundred square
kilometers of solar panels in space would relieve energy supply problems?
And that while space solar panels are big, they're light in weight, and if
you want big structures, space is the place to put them: no wind loading, no
snow, no rain, no dust storms...
Now of course I made up those numbers, but I think they
are enough to do the job, and if we can afford a trillion dollars for
foreign wars, we can certainly afford relatively small amounts like the
above. Does anyone think this plan has no chance of working? I'd put the
odds at well about 5:1; and note that the only big costs are nuclear power
plants. Prizes cost nothing unless someone wins.
And see
previous comments
made years ago.
See also mail.
=========
As for pictures, Deb sent this and it could go on Wikipedia if someone
knows how to do that.
It's only fair to include the entire picture from which this was cropped
(and which was taken by Deb's husband, George). Roberta was unable to attend
the Seattle SF Convention at which I was given the Heinlein Award, so I
borrowed Deb and her husband as table companions. That's George in the
second picture.
==========
It has been a long day. With luck I'll get some sleep
tonight and get back to work in the morning.
==========
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