This just in: Artist Shuts Down Eastern Power Grid, Several Injured

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

Wood fiber has about the same energy density as carbs, so it is essentially cooking a hamburger for your electronics <img class="smiley" src="http://cdn.videosift.com/cdm/emoticon/teeth.gif">

Burning wood isn't exactly "Green" though, so this is a clever marketing angle that is mostly untrue.

Edit, did some googling, and found their electrical output is about 2Watts (not enough to power most light bulbs), and they cost about 130 bucks. Those kind of cost to power ratios are WAAAAAAAAY out of touch of the needs of third world counties, you need kilowatts before you have any real needs met. If you ran this 24/7 for a year, the annual cost of electricity...not including the burning material is 7.42 dollars per KWH. The average cost of electricity in the US is about 10 cents per KWH, marking this as a third world solution is pretty shitty.


Actually, they have a bigger HomeStove as well, and neither it nor the CampStove are really meant to have a primary purpose of generating electricity - the main purpose is to cook things, and the surplus electricity is a nice side effect. According to this page: http://www.biolitestove.com/homestove/homestove-technology/ , the reason this is better than a regular fire or older rocket stove is fewer CO emissions (eco-friendly) and less smoke (health hazard) for cooking the same meals.

In India, there are tons of people with mobile phones, but the power grid is not reliable and there are frequent rolling blackouts. Of course, people could just wait for power to come back to charge their phone, but if you are cooking at the time, why not use the stove?

I think the high price of the CampStove is meant to help lower the price of the HomeStove for these other markets.

Cute, but I might have promoted it if they included something like Settlers or Power Grid.

And isn't Scrabble the "life size" version of itself?

>> ^dannym3141:

>> ^MilkmanDan:
I've entered my own personal bizarro world -- that was Family Guy, and I found it funny! Up is down! Black is white! Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!
In all seriousness though... /upvote

Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here!


"Is this true?"
"Yes. This man has no dick."

>> ^MilkmanDan:

I've entered my own personal bizarro world -- that was Family Guy, and I found it funny! Up is down! Black is white! Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!
In all seriousness though... /upvote


Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here!

Nuclear (breeder) power plants and electric transportation is the most sensible solution. People whine about Uranium also being fossil, but there's enough to fuel many times our current consumption for thousands of years, that's not even including thorium.

Nuclear waste is an issue easily dealt with. Breeder plants need a lot less uranium and produce a lot less waste, they can even 'burn' up most of the waste produced until now. Sure there will always be some waste, but it pales in comparison to the fly ash ponds produced by coal burning, which are also slightly radioactive but not secured.

I'm not saying we shouldn't use solar and wind but it will take much too long, use up a lot of resources, and cost a bunch (especially reconfiguring the power grid and making energy storage solutions). Nuclear baseload with solar/wind dealing with peak power.

"The comforts and safety that you describe, are exactly the kinds of suburban trapping that give us the illusion that ours is the ideal life. Take away electricity, transport, water service and supermarket food supply and like the majority of suburban dwelling people on this planet, we're up the creek. That's not freedom-it's a thinly veiled dependence on a system that is in the throws of downfall. }

Naturally (no pun intended), I disagree with you on this assessment. A civilized society is far more resilient and able to recover from all types of disasters (man-made and natural) than a nomadic civilization has ever been at any time in history. Do you have any idea of the kind of destructive effort it would take to completely wipe out the power grid, uproot every road that has been paved, root out the entire plumbing network buried underground? The only point that I agree with you on is the far larger dependence upon food that massive (and they are truly massive compared to hunter-gatherers) civilizations have. But as I pointed out in my first post food is now a global industry, so again you are limited to world ending catastrophes when it comes finding enough firepower to bring down modern civilizations.

"As far as freedom to move goes, I think the fact that if you step outside your door and walk into your neighbor's yard without permission, you're considered trespassing, shows how hemmed-in we really are. So long as we are paid customers, we have a right to be somewhere, otherwise we'd better stick to public places, or face the consequences."

Personally, I think that literal direction freedom is a paltry definition of what true freedom really is. I will gladly take the paved road and all those "restrictions" for all the benefits that I get from having that taken space actively and productively contributing to the advancement and well-being of humanity. I will drive around a massive hospital that's blocking me from going "as the crow flies" quicker than a crow can fly.

Every inch of space that is denied to me is in some way indirectly or directly contributing. Can you say that a plain of scrubs and rocks is providing the same amount of benefits to nomads as they walk in whatever direction they want over it? What about cumulatively?

"If you want to know how free you really are, try doing something really outrageous or subversive and see how many people are ready to block you. Try walking 10,000 km across your country, camping out where there's a drinkable water supply, for starters..."

Let me ask you a question then, why did you walk 10,000km in any direction? What was your goal? Did you need food, water, because you could? What tangible benefit have you derived from the endeavor you just undertook?

If you are so "truly" free why can't you walk to the Moon?

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

As far as efficiency goes, I'd take fission over solar.

The amount of square feet required to make solar energy as well as the material required for all of those panels- heavy metals and toxic chemicals- and a short equipment lifespan make them about as well thought-out as ethanol- which is to say not at all.

If we could get over our irrational nuclear fears- nuclear fission really is the best option for the planet in the short term, and then roll on the fusion when it gets here. 10 years right?
>> ^Psychologic:
Fusion has some great advantages, especially in the power-per-area department, but I still like solar better for a few reasons.
Fusion is an "all or nothing" tech. It takes a very large investment up front before anything significant can be done with it. Solar, on the other hand, is more of an evolutionary process. It already works, so the main goal is lowering cost and increasing efficiency (which is happening pretty quickly these days).
However, I think one of the largest advantages solar has over fusion is that it doesn't require a power grid. Once the cost and efficiency reach a certain level then you can create your own power, which will be huge in remote low-income areas. Villages wouldn't have to wait for their region to invest in a reactor or worry about power distribution being damaged.
Fusion is great and will greatly benefit the world, but I don't think it's our best option at this point.

Fusion has some great advantages, especially in the power-per-area department, but I still like solar better for a few reasons.

Fusion is an "all or nothing" tech. It takes a very large investment up front before anything significant can be done with it. Solar, on the other hand, is more of an evolutionary process. It already works, so the main goal is lowering cost and increasing efficiency (which is happening pretty quickly these days).

However, I think one of the largest advantages solar has over fusion is that it doesn't require a power grid. Once the cost and efficiency reach a certain level then you can create your own power, which will be huge in remote low-income areas. Villages wouldn't have to wait for their region to invest in a reactor or worry about power distribution being damaged.

Fusion is great and will greatly benefit the world, but I don't think it's our best option at this point.

In reply to this comment by Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Uh oh Psychologic... You're daring to bring the taboos of logic, common sense, and reason into this discussion. That's going to get you labeled as a neocon. Get ready for it - because the neolibs won't stand for your simple, correct assessment of the world's capacity to generate resources.

One of the fundamentaal premises of the kook neolib left fringe is that the world is hovering on the brink of resource exhaustion. Look at this thread. It is filled to the brim with literal idiots who are talking all kinds of bull about stuff they know absolutely nothing about except what has been spoon-fed them by equally ignorant professors and media hacks. Check out this glittering example...

"Ideal population growth is as close to 0% as you can get..."

That's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Not only does this dingus believe that he knows what number of humams should/shouldn't be born, he also believes he knows what the Earth's 'ideal' population should be. Based on what math? None of course. It's just his opinion.

The neolib left is chock full of these kinds of psuedo-intellectual dipsticks. They go around spouting complete nonsense on topics they know sod-all about and perpetuate fallacies that any person with two gangelon to rub together can see are patently false at face value. But they LOVE this particular left-wing piece of idiocy (overpopulation) because it lets them engage in their favorite pasttime... Making stupid laws to take away freedom, control people, and limit happiness & prosperity based on junk science treated as 'fact' through no other virtue than faith and the psychological makeup of a lemming.

Late to the party but oh well.

Lets see: You bash "the kook neolib left fringe" for their baseless assumptions that the world is hovering on the brink of resource exhaustion, yet you take Psychologic's statement that "we could multiply the Earth's population many times over and still have enough resources for everyone" as gospel. Hmmm. Hypocrisy says hi!

Also, I love how you take Psychologic's assessment that "Infrastructure is the problem" and "The number of people involved isn't the major limiting factor." as "logic, common sense, and reason". Funny. I don't see any logic there considering the fact that "Wars, inept governments, and transportation costs" doesn't automatically exclude population as a significant contributor to famine. War = famine, therefore high population not = famine. Amazing logical inference there.

Hmmm. Perhaps when you say "logic, common sense, and reason", you're talking about Psychologic's claim that "Newer techs will help though. As cheap solar power matures there will be less dependence on power grids (eventually none), and manufacturing processes involving nanotech will reduce the cost of producing necessary items (eventually food too)."

What a prediction! The man must be a psychic or something! He knows in his heart that this "nanotech" thingy will be our salvation! What a brilliant scientific conclusion.

Seriously though, Psychologic's post is as full of bullshit as the posts that preceded it. It just happens to be your preferred flavor of bullshit. But hey, lets stick to the topic at hand here. I wouldn't want to bring something irrelevant such as politics into a discussion about population growth. Oh wait, you beat me to it.

And may I commend you on that wonderfully written diatribe against neolibs. It was definitely not full of your own opinion, and was instead nicely supported by facts, statistics, and science. I especially like the part where you called varietube a "dingus". I'd say something like "childish insults score no points here", but you already mentioned that yourself in your post to varietube below this.

Let me remind you of a quote of yours: "I simply find that I am - sadly - the only person on the sift who is able to provide this much-needed counterbalance in a way that is not inflammatory at its face value."

If your vitriolic rhetoric against neolibs wasn't inflammatory, then I don't know what is. You might want to start practicing what you preach. Unless of course, you feel like it's your duty to counterbalance all the "liberal idiots" on videosift with your own brand of shit.

I think the focus on population is the fallacy of the argument (either side). If you're talking about the total number of people and the total amount of resources available then we could multiply the Earth's population many times over and still have enough resources for everyone.

The problem is infrastructure. Just because the planet has everything we need doesn't mean that we can get it to everyone who needs it. Wars, inept governments, and transportation costs (including safety) can all prevent delivery of needed supplies. It's difficult to move products around when you're being shot at, for instance. The number of people involved isn't the major limiting factor.

Newer techs will help though. As cheap solar power matures there will be less dependence on power grids (eventually none), and manufacturing processes involving nanotech will reduce the cost of producing necessary items (eventually food too). Such advances will also reduce the need for "dirty" forms of energy like coal and oil.

Most projections I've seen show the total population of Earth leveling off... the specific dates aren't as important as the general trend. Either way, the number of humans alive is not the reason people are starving.

Just an observation: Apparently you're either a Republican or a Democrat. There can be no middle ground if I were to believe some of the posts here.

My feeling is that people need to be responsible for their actions. If you purchased a house you can't afford, why should I bail you out? I hate the sense of entitlement I see going on. People aren't entitled to a damn thing other than what the constitution spells out. You aren't entitled to a $20+/hr job. You aren't entitled to a house. These are things that must be earned via providing a service that someone needs and is willing to pay for. You might classify that as Republican thinking.

Yet, I also think the tax cuts aren't the way out of this mess. I agree with the notion that if we are going to spend hundreds of billions on a stimulus, we should have something to show for it, like new roads, an updated power grid that doesn't knock out a third of the country's power when someone flips the wrong switch, and maybe some alternate energy to boot. Woah, now I'm a bleeding heart liberal Democrat! How'd that happen?

The war in Iraq is a catastrofuck by any reasonable measure. I thought it was a bad idea from day one (you know, back when opposition to that war made you anti-American or pro-terrorist), and I stand vindicated today (though this is a point I would have been glad to be wrong on given the human losses).

So my point is you can't just bin people into the extremes of the two camps. Being a Democrat doesn't automagically make you a hardcore socialist, and believing in personal and financial responsibility doesn't make you a money grubbing warmonger.

In any case, I'm glad to see Obama found his voice. Being bipartisan is great, but when the other side is proven wrong, it's time to press on without them.

In reply to this comment by jonny:
It's certainly true that the U.S. economy has been shifting away from making stuff over the last 50 years, but it's still the case that most cities and towns in the U.S. are completely dependent on their local manufacturing base.

Oh yes that is true, that is a factor I forgot about, small scale suppliers providing for larger multinational firms. But I wonder how many of these jobs have started to be outsourced and will eventually be outsourced to places like China?

Do you think that eventually a manufacturing base in the US is sustainable in the long run?

But that doesn't change the fact that hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people in the U.S. are employed in the agricultural business. Again, I was just using it as an example of producing stuff. Perhaps this points out a fundamental flaw of using GDP as a measure of a country's economic strength.

I agree that yes you have a significant population in the agricultural business, I just simply disagree with subsidization of this industry by the government. I mean post 9/11 they wanted to enforce a renamed act called something like Food Security Act that would increase subsidization of the agricultural industry in certain key states. Since most of the voters are part of those, there is large political pressure to sustain them.

Really? I was under the impression it was more the other way around, i.e., the third world nations were begging the west to stop their subsidies and "level the growing field".

Yes third world nations beg but its the first world nations that have the larger political and legal expertise in WTO negotiations, its a form of bureaucracy, so you have nations that have litte understanding of the paths or argument points that need to be made. Not to mention that the first world is always more keen about its own objectives then the development of the third world to which they are more keen to send a few million dollars in USAID. Sorry I have this big thing against western nations, aid and Africa where I lived. But its a whole another topic.

That I just have to disagree with. It is only because of political realities and labor costs, not farming practices or technology (i.e., true efficiencies). There is no way that it is more efficient to grow corn in Zambia than it is in Iowa.

But do the cost benefit analysis, third world nations that are wholly dependent on agricultural industry, have larger real estate and much lower costs of production then America. Efficiencies in the US come from economies of scale and mechanization, something that is simply lacking in other nations. But you look into FDA rules, the lax rules towards food quality, the large penetration of manufactured foods, the chicken farms that stack chickens in cages one after the other. There is a seeming problem in this. Notice how its only the first world that so far has had problems with regards to food contamination problems.

The subsidization I talked about creates further ramifications further down the line, a certain supply level is reached but the subsidization increased keep going on, you have over supply, with over supply you start dumping this production into the global market. The reason that even in Kuwait we get US apples, bananas and other exotic fruit. It's hilarious.

Ultimately, that's how a company should be run, but how many companies do you know of that have that kind of long term vision. (This is really worthy of another conversation on the ethics and ultimate sustainability of commerce. Too much to handle here.)

Oh of course, you can never expect altruistic behavior from companies, but their profit motive is an easy to read incentive. But you have the IMF which already dictates nation policy to nations to allow for better free market behavior, and yes there is exploitative behavior, but there is enormous room for growth and market formation. The reason I pretty much am planning to come back to Kuwait eventually after University, its an untapped market.

I believe that with IMF, ILO and other NGOs giving good solid economic policy advice we could have FDI into developing nations without exploitative behavior taking place that is still cost efficient to foreign companies. We haven't had much of that mostly due to that fact that these NGOs sometimes expect market knowledge and legislation to magically pop out of thin air instead of being advised.

There is already trade exploitation when you can get EU and US products in the developing world, we got Kellogg and OMO and so on. The problem I see in the developing world is that its this no possible development outlook by both citizens and firms, while the reality is that there is not motivation for FDI in these nations. Africa is always seen as this war torn cess pit of corruption, but thats media for you.

It's a complicated issue, but I still believe that there is avenues for large growth, because the more nations that become developed the more benefit is there for world wide trade as a whole. When I was in Zambia it was a perverted picture, alot of companies and NGOs entered and provided highly technological solutions to very basic problems, shock growth I would say instead of embryonic growth. You don't give powered water pumps to a nation that has no electrical power grid. You don't lie down phone lines and so on. The development profile has to be totally different for example mobile market exploded in Africa because deploying mobile towers and phones is cheaper then laying land lines. I worked with a NGO called Engineers without borders that provided basic technological solutions to problems, real bronze age stuff that could be easily built and more importantly kept up by local populace. This transmission of information is very important. But am a idealist here as well. I want to see the developing world progress, especially Africa which has seen GDP decreases since colonization ended.

I have twice personally "bailed out" close friends. I doubt it was complete ignorance, but there was certainly a lack of understanding of just how much it would cost to run up large amounts of debt.

I agree. But there is alot of access to seemingly low credit and very little knowledge being passed on about controlling run away debt. Consumerism is pushed at the American public at far higher rates then anything else, sophisticated marketing and advertising is far more alluring then sensible financial behavior. It's this consumer pressure that I disagree with, the constant psychological pressure that buying something will make you feel good, the buying for the sake of buying not because its a good product that you need. But am an idealist like that.

Of course you're right that true and fair globalization (as opposed to exploitation) is the best solution. How much luck have you had convincing your neighbors? I haven't had much.

Almost none. Its a hard topic to explain because it requires a very wide macroeconomic viewpoint instead of a localized view. I mean would say 90% of the people I knew in University on one hand wanted development in the third world but were against the implications that developing the third world would mean a short term loss of certain industries locally. But its going to happen eventually. We can't all be growing bananas.

In reply to this comment by bamdrew:
Aha! You feel that the role of government is solely to protect the individual, while I feel that the purpose is not even individuals first, it is the community first. Its a huge philosophical difference, and I can see now why we disagree so strongly about what Bill was talking about.

Precisely. I derive my entire philosophy from "the right to life" (defined in my bio)--be it my stance on free market economics or my stance on a limited government and voluntary taxation. So at its core, that is the fundamental difference between our viewpoints.

A problem facing a community naturally requires a community's choice (investing collected funds into updating national power grids), while a problem facing an individual requires an individual's choice (changing from Duke-Cinergy to Green Mountain Energy).

So given that statement, I can see why you are placing an emphasis on the community--but how does that mesh with individual rights in cases where the community at large is not involved? Or is this bypassed by the notion that rights must always be an agreement between two men (and thus always form a community, in effect)?

You give the role of delivering justice to the group of individuals,... a strict individualist would argue that laws would naturally be a byproduct of a free market.
I am a strict individualist, but I derive it the other way around--I view the free market as being a byproduct of individual rights. That is, each person's individual right to choose to buy and sell goods, and thus enter into voluntary cooperation and trade with others is what forms for basis of the free market. Likewise, laws are derived from the principle of individual rights which forbids the initiation of physical force on others (theft, fraud, assault, murder, vandalism).

You concede your point here, as you recognize that individual human beings will make choices that contradict what other individuals may otherwise prefer happen and see how a group of individuals can sort out these problems without waiting for the problem to become economically problematic to the individuals causing a ruckus. You go so far as to say that the group of individuals restricting the amount of smog a power plant can put out to 'dirty your shirt' (which I read as "poison your lungs and environment") is compatible with a free market economy! BUT, for whatever reason that is as far as you're willing to recognize that we are a group of a few hundred million people with a shared problem that should be solved with shared solutions.

You are correct in your interpretation of the phrase "dirty your shirt". If you look at pollution from the perspective of individual rights, you see that one group is initiating force on another--that is, they are imposing costs (lung cancer, dirty shirts, etc.) which both parties did not agree to. Now, normally when one person initiates force on another they would take it to court, but it is almost impossible to determine just who is affected and to what extent by a company emitting pollution 10, 100, or even 1000 miles away. Nor is to practical to have millions of people filing civil suits for impossible-to-determine sums against each polluter. For this reason, it becomes necessary for the government to impose the costs directly when and where they are emitted--hence my suggestion of an effluent tax. However, as with the cases above the basis for this is in an individual's "right to life."


Again, my take-home-point here was that a free market economy is how a group of individuals chooses to engage in trade;

I agree with you there

its not the United Free Market of America, we are more than our goods and services, we are more than our laws, we are more than our individuals, we are a community of individuals who agree to be governed by very specific rules and regulations, agreed upon locally by vote or by representatives of sub-communities, and more broadly by general rules set forth a few hundred years ago by some rather spectacular community representatives.

I think I agree here, but I am a little confused. In the system I envision there would still be congress, a president, and a judicial system. There would still be a national defense, fire fighters, police force, and legal system. Fraud, theft, rape, murder, vandalism, and assault would all be illegal and strictly enforced. However, the distinction I make is that the government has no right to initiate the use of force--only to respond to the initiation of the use of force (e.g. arresting a burglar). I agree there is a role for government, and even a role for government in the market--but I firmly believe that no human, government official or otherwise, has the right to initiate force against another human.

Yep. Thought I'd take a second and back you up.

In reply to this comment by MycroftHomlz:
That's what I said... but he doesn't read other peoples comments. He just waits until he can speak again.

In reply to this comment by bamdrew:
Those profits aren't "available", you have to fight long and hard for them against an entrenched, experience, wealthy, connected foe. Not only that, but you must then convince investors, city councils, etc. that what is often a fairly unproven or novel idea will be a better investment in very financially tight times than putting in a coal or natural gas plant (especially since our power grid system was designed for these nearby, constant power sources).

Anyhow, I don't want to start driving into the details... my response in a nutshell is the barriers from idea to operation are very significant, requiring tons of work and tons from tons of employees, which means tons of money.



>> ^imstellar28:
^tell me this. why do you need incentive for people to enter a $1,000,000,000,000 industry? you don't think the sheer profit available is enough?