Viral Batteries Now Viable
Posted 7:38 AM

Viral battery experiments have paid off with a breakthrough in battery assembly.

"Current lithium batteries are expensive to produce, requiring high temperatures and toxic organic solvents."

The new technology uses viruses as workhorses to move around molecules and assemble microscopic battery components. If developed, this promises cheap, scalable, non-toxic Li-ION batteries - exactly what electric cars need to push out liquid fuel rivals. The problem has gone from a research issue to an engineering issue.

For anyone who's been investing in lithium mining (i own some SQM), one big downside has been the toxicity of the batteries and their expense of production .... it looks like, with investment, it's now *possible* to scale this up globally - which it was not before. I think just the existence of this tech removes some key risk components of the electric-lithium play.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Roxana's Book Deal
Posted 9:20 AM

A reporter from Iran comes to America, operates without press credentials for 2 years and is later arrested for buying illegal substances. Because of his working status, he is detained without trial for a while, and then subjected to a closed-door hearing.

Will he get national press and a book deal? Will presidents and pundits pine for his release? It happens over and over in one form or another, really, it's not even news anymore. U.S. jails, offshore prisons and immigration detentions centers are full of similar cases.

But when the tables are turned and it's a pretty American woman named Roxana.... well, that's just not fair.

No, I'm not saying Iran is right here, far from it. But I am saying that, given how we treat foreigners who work in the U.S. without credentials and buy illegal things, it should come as no surprise.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Vector TD 2 Challenge
Posted 9:16 PM

Vector TD and Vector TD 2 are my new favorite TD's.

Why Tower Defense games all the sudden? Blame the customer service rep at Sprint who gave me "unlimited data" for 90 days to "try out" their online services. There was a TD game on the phone, and that brought back a fondness for the genre. Sorry to those of you who became addicted because of my last post and have been emailing me to stop posting new games. This is the *last one!*

Some of the TD high scores posted at candystand are impossible, based the 30% fund excess bonus per level, but mine aren't hacks and I can, after about 3 days of puzzling, get on the "monthly" leaderboard for any level/puzzle combo of both games.

I'm not anywhere near good enough to post my games to Youtube, but here's a challenge ... open to friends and former business associates only, not random internet packet hackers ... register at candystand, tell me your username, and then beat any of my monthly leaderboard games within the next 5 days (that's how long I had) and I'll give you 50 bucks and a picture of me doing something ridiculous (you decide ... not porn).

My name at Candystand is "simulx".


[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Obama's New Banking Deregulation
Posted 6:23 AM

Barack's turning out to be a very well spoken, intelligent, and *exactly the same* as Bush and Clinton.

Myth 1 & Barack's Solution:

There is a myth that deregulation helps financial markets. This myth caused the current recession. Actually, deregulation allows banks to inflate earnings outlooks and increase leverage.... moving bad results until "later".

Barack just deregulated financial markets further, allowing banks to "invent prices" for assets so they don't look bad on balance sheets. As it is, banks use highly inflated estimates for housing prices, 10%-20% higher than true values. Barack's rule will allow them to put "projected prices" on their books.

Myth 2 & Barack's Solution:

There is a myth that wars make us money and creates jobs. This is a myth. Modern wars take money from taxpayers and blow it up. They are pure waste. (Some have noted that they do reduce unemployment). In the old days we'd annex a colony or take resources to pay for a war. Now we just spend and then spend some more to help rebuild.

Barack's now increasing troop commitments by moving troops to Afghanistan. So, he's still *spending billions on wars we can't afford*. And it doesn't look like that's going to change.

For some, it will be *comforting* that Barack is more of the same. But not for the millions that voted for change. I helped finance his run-up, and I'm not some oddball constituent... actually I'm pretty middle-of the road ... Why is he so disloyal? Why is there no .gov website (as he promised) where I can talk about this stuff and have my concerns assuaged by a well-meaning moderator? I think, at least, we deserve an answer to that.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

The "Laughing Fly" Trope
Posted 3:30 AM

Somehow while using Google images to search for a picture of a laughing fly, I stumbled across the site tvtropes.org where the discussion Jiggle Physics naturally caught my attention.

"Trope" is a word used to describe a common literary theme, not necessarily with the same negative connotation as a cliche. A cliche can be defined as an "overused trope seen as negative or too obvious".

For example, I would consider using dead parents as a plot excuse for an unsupervised child's "adventure" to be nauseatingly cliche, but somehow most critics still seem to consider it a "valid trope". More generally, this is classified as the parental abandonment trope.

I liked the discussion of Flanderization, in which a character who starts off as subtle evolves towards exaggerated social stereotypes to meet lazy scriptwriting demands.

The site, while juvenile in vibe, is enlightening. It brings to light many of the implanted memes arising from the years I spent watching TV as a kid.

Labels: humour

[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]