One option is hydroponics. The most promising crop is algae. A study done at Sandia said some years ago that growing algae in foot-deep concrete "raceway" ponds (a circular stream) agitated by paddlewheels suggested that it should be economical before diesel fuel hit $3/gallon.
One company--GreenFuel Technologies--has already demonstrated that the best way to make biofuels is to grow oil-laden algae in vertical tanks fed by the exhaust gases of coal-fired or natural gas-fired powerplants. Not only do you substantially cut carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen output of the powerplant to WAY below Kyoto Protocol levels, but also grow potentially millions of gallons biomass for biodiesel fuel/heating oil, and the solid "waste" from this initial processing can be turned into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!:-) This is a major win-win for everyone, especially since it has very minimal impact on food production (no need to grow thousands of acres of corn or sugar cane just to extract into ethanol).
Interestingly, I don't listen to any type of morning zoo shows on radio. I'd rather listen to news or sports talk radio (that's why I'm a big fan of ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike in the Morning (which runs during US East Coast morning drive time) and The Herd with Colin Cowherd (which runs during US West Coast morning drive time) weekdays. Howard Stern is definitely risqué but his show is surprisingly restrained considering he's on Sirius satellite radio, which has no FCC oversight.
Opie & Anthony have a notorious history of questionable on-air behavior, and what happened recently was probably the last straw for XM.
I think teleworking has finally become a viable option because always-on landline broadband Internet access has become available in most metropolitan areas in the USA. That not only helps transfer data way faster but also makes it possible to do voice and even video teleconferencing at very low cost.
In fact, it's widespread broadband access and sites like eBay that makes it possible for a lot of people to actually become online resellers working from home, too.
However, combining bike riding with other forms of public transportation can be quite unpleasant.
The reason is simple: non-folding bikes tend to take up a lot of space inside a bus/trolley/train, and some public transport systems actually ban conventional bike riders during commute hours (e.g., BART in the San Francisco Bay Area). This is why folding bicycles sell quite well, since a folded bicycle takes up vastly less space than a conventional bicycle, which means you're not at the mercy of limited bike racks on the bus/trolley/train.
Such high prices in Europe does not hurt the European standard of living because many Europeans use public transportation; bus and trains are relatively cheap to ride.
That's because those high gasoline taxes are subsidizing the cost of public transportation in Europe.
I think in the end, the US may have to end up imposing excise taxes based on engine displacement and vehicle size similar to what is done in Europe and Japan now. Why do you think for example that excise taxes on an automobile in Japan goes up quite a bit if the width of the car is larger than 170 cm (66.93 inches)? Or why when the engine displacement exceeds 2.0 liters the excise taxes goes up quite a bit in Europe? These excise taxes are why most Europeans drive cars in the Ford Fiesta/Renault Clio/VW Polo category, the so-called B-segment automobile.
I don't think the successor to the current 2G iPod nano will go to touch screen--the player is physically too small for one. Besides, the current click wheel design for the nano is very hard to improve upon anyway. I do see Apple dropping the 2 GB model and introducing a 16 GB model, along with increasing the number of color choices for the case design (the orange color introduced on the 2G Shuffle would look great on the nano).
Interesting you mentioned Eurofighter Typhoon that despite the protracted development period and all the hassles involved, the plane now entering service is probably the second best fighter in the world after the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor. In simulated combat tests, the Typhoon has demonstrated it can fight on equal terms with the F-15C Eagle and F-16C Fighting Falcon, the two benchmarks for top-line fighters today.
John W. Young just missed out on flying the Mercury missions because he was among the Group II astronauts selected (which included Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon). Young was a bit of a joker, bringing a corned beef sandwich on the Gemini 3 flight (and getting severely reprimanded for it).
Problem with flywheel plants: they need very high quality metallurgy, ceramics or composite materials--none of which are cheap--to make them work, especially when you have to factor in the physics of a big, fast-spinning flywheel.
A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.
And you wonder why political weblogs on both the Left and Right have exploded in popularity. Everybody has a major mistrust of the old-time mass media because at Internet speeds, information can spread around the world in a matter of minutes. Look at how weblogs exposed CBS News' sham attempt to show President Bush didn't do his duty at the Texas Air National Guard in no time flat.
I think everybody ignores the biggest issue hurting music CD sales: the ridiculously high price for a new album-length CD regardless of source (record stores, big box retailers and even online stores).
They should price new CD's at a more appropriate US$12 per disc, not the US$17-$18 per disc as is common practice now. That high price not only discourages sales, but also increases the economic incentive to "cheat" system (e.g., music piracy). By lowering the suggested retail price to US$12, you can drastically cut the incentive to pirate music, which actually benefits everyone all around.
By the way, I don't think movie piracy is as big a problem as people think. I cite the following reasons: 1) Pirated DVD's usually have pretty poor quality video and audio; 2) Downloading a movie from BitTorrent takes a long time unless you have extremely fast broadband (very few people have anything over 6 mbps download speed broadband); and 3) DVD pricing is still reasonable considering what you get on a DVD nowadays with all its extra features.
One thing I have heard is that Buena Vista Home Video (the home video division of the Walt Disney Company) has said they can start producing HD-DVD home videos if the demand is there to do so. With the arrival of 45 GB triple-layer discs probably within the next 18 months, HD-DVD has pretty much erased just about all the advantages of Blu-Ray in terms of storage space.
If HD-DVD needs a major boost besides lower-cost players, they need movie titles that showcase the format at its best. I'd like to see Pixar movies and the Extended Editions of the three Lord of the Rings movies in HD-DVD format.
I remember reading in an automotive magazine recently about a British company modifying a Mini (the current design) to be powered by four powerful electric motors. The result was actually FASTER than the standard Mini, which shows that once we lick the battery storage problem electric cars won't be slow, that's to be sure. And since the electric motor is very compatible with computer controls it could mean built-in traction control and antilock braking all by controlling how each motor works.
Besides, by this fall we'll have true video widescreen iPods (based on iPhone technology) that might include a model with all flash memory that could contain as much as 32 GB of storage.
I personally think for most home users, a widescreen monitor is better than a dual-monitor setup, mostly because home users are more likely to playback multimedia files, especially DVD playback. A dual-monitor setup is better for people with more specialized needs such as programming, running CAD/CAM programs, and needing to see a LOT of data such as real-time monitoring of financial markets.
I think IBM did not consider the Motorola 68000 architecture because back then, the Motorola 68000 CPU was just WAY too expensive for what IBM wanted to do--a relatively simple, off-the-shelf part desktop computer.
Sure, it would be nice to get away from the x86 architecture in favor of the more modern PowerPC architecture, but note that thanks to the x86-64 CPU architecture (which AMD developed and now Intel supports more or less), the x86 CPU technology has just about erased all the advantages of PowerPC CPU's (why do you think Apple uses the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU for most of their computer line?).
...It's not likely we'll see steel-wheel trains go faster than 350 km/h (217 mph) in the near future in commercial service.
The reason is simple: physical contact. At these very high speeds, the physical contact force between between the overhead wiring and pantographs on the train and the the steel wheels and the steel rail is ENORMOUS, requiring strong, expensive metals to keep physical wear as low as possible. Remember, the record was done on a very short train under extremely tight tolerance conditions not encountered in regular service.
I think we should just forget the whole idea of electronic voting machines (which looks like it's just as faulty as the old mechanical voting machines used in much of the USA for many years) and go with mark-sense paper ballots filled out with permanent ink pens or markers.
Not only is it machine-readable, but the ballots can be hand-counted quite easily in case of close elections.
However, you still have a big problem: growing a lot of hemp still will tax agricultural resources of arable land, water usage, and argichemical usage, which is still not a very good idea.
GreenFuel Technologies' idea of "growing" oil-laden algae in vertical tanks makes the most sense, since the algae can be harvested many times per year to make millions of gallons of diesel fuel/heating oil per 200 acre farm of these tanks, and almost just as much ethanol from the solid waste of algae processing.
Actually, thanks to nanotechnology, we could be seeing the end of using fossil fuels to power personal vehicles within 25 years.
Remember MIT's announcement of a new type of high-density power storage using supercapacitors built up from carbon nanotubes back in February 2006? Developed to maturity that could result in the battery pack for an electric car reduced to about the size of the fuel tank of today's automobile, yet offer enormous range on a single charge (maybe up to 500 km per charge!) and charging times measured minutes, not several hours like older electric cars required. And with nanotechnology drastically reducing the cost of solar power panels, I could foresee by 2030 your personal vehicle charged from the solar panel at your home in maybe 15 minutes, and the vehicle will run up to a week in normal commute driving.
Actually, what happens is that the particulates in the exhaust get trapped by a special filter. At a certain point, the filter gets small electrical charge the "burns off" the particulates into harmless exhaust. That idea has been around since the late 1980's.
That was true in the past, but thanks to tough EPA/CARB (and soon European Union) mandates for dramatically lower diesel exhaust emissions, today's diesel engines aren't the loud-clattering and smoky engines we all remember.
With the availability of low-sulfur Diesel #2 fuel since October 2006 in the USA, diesel engines can now incorporate features like 2,000 psi common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection for extremely precise fuel delivery and the latest in exhaust emission controls to remove diesel particulates and lower NOx levels.
I would suggest you drive the Mercedes-Benz E320CDI sedan; it sounds almost exactly like a regular gasoline engine, and you don't see the big cloud of smoke from the exhaust, either, thanks to the BlueTec emissions control system developed by DaimlerChrysler. In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the VW/Audi Group and BMW have officially announced turbodiesel engines for the USA market that meets all our current emission control mandates that will arrive by 2008.
In fact, a company named GreenFuel Technologies has demonstrated you can "grow" oil-laden algae by feeding it the exhaust gases from a fossil-fuel powerplant.
The benefits are obvious:
1) You cut NOx and CO2 emissions way below even Kyoto Protocol mandates for the powerplant, since the algae absorbs most of the NOx and CO2 gases.
2) You can produce millions of gallons of algae biomass for diesel fuel/heating oil on a single farm of algae-growing tanks of a couple of hundred acres in size.
3) After the algae is processed into diesel fuel/heating oil, the remaining solid waste can be processed further into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel.
4) Because of the amazingly high production rate with oil-laden algae, you don't need to take up valuable farmland just to grow crops for make ethanol and diesel fuel/heating oil.
One company--GreenFuel Technologies--has already demonstrated how to use the exhaust gases from a coal-fired powerplant to "feed" tanks of oil-laden algae that could grow the algae at a tremendous rate.
This system offers a number of obvious advantages:
1. It reduces the pollutant output far below Kyoto Protocol mandates since the algae absorption of the exhaust gases cuts CO2 and NOx emissions way more than 50%.
2. With a couple of hundred acres of tanks fed by the coal powerplant exhaust, we could produce millions of gallons of diesel/heating oil fuel per year from ONE site.
3. The "waste" from the processing of the oil-laden algae could be processed into animal feed, plant fertilizer or even ethanol.
Actually, what makes the iPod since the so good was the incorporation of the Click Wheel pioneered by the iPod mini across the entire iPod line outside of the very small shuffle model. It's actually a very nice interface that is easy to master.
However, Apple really needs to do a complete overhaul of their iTunes software. The current version has a lot of quirks that take some experience to master, which can cause no end of problems with new iPod users.
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One option is hydroponics. The most promising crop is algae. A study done at Sandia said some years ago that growing algae in foot-deep concrete "raceway" ponds (a circular stream) agitated by paddlewheels suggested that it should be economical before diesel fuel hit $3/gallon.
:-) This is a major win-win for everyone, especially since it has very minimal impact on food production (no need to grow thousands of acres of corn or sugar cane just to extract into ethanol).
One company--GreenFuel Technologies--has already demonstrated that the best way to make biofuels is to grow oil-laden algae in vertical tanks fed by the exhaust gases of coal-fired or natural gas-fired powerplants. Not only do you substantially cut carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen output of the powerplant to WAY below Kyoto Protocol levels, but also grow potentially millions of gallons biomass for biodiesel fuel/heating oil, and the solid "waste" from this initial processing can be turned into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel!
Interestingly, I don't listen to any type of morning zoo shows on radio. I'd rather listen to news or sports talk radio (that's why I'm a big fan of ESPN Radio's Mike & Mike in the Morning (which runs during US East Coast morning drive time) and The Herd with Colin Cowherd (which runs during US West Coast morning drive time) weekdays. Howard Stern is definitely risqué but his show is surprisingly restrained considering he's on Sirius satellite radio, which has no FCC oversight.
Opie & Anthony have a notorious history of questionable on-air behavior, and what happened recently was probably the last straw for XM.
I think teleworking has finally become a viable option because always-on landline broadband Internet access has become available in most metropolitan areas in the USA. That not only helps transfer data way faster but also makes it possible to do voice and even video teleconferencing at very low cost.
In fact, it's widespread broadband access and sites like eBay that makes it possible for a lot of people to actually become online resellers working from home, too.
However, combining bike riding with other forms of public transportation can be quite unpleasant.
The reason is simple: non-folding bikes tend to take up a lot of space inside a bus/trolley/train, and some public transport systems actually ban conventional bike riders during commute hours (e.g., BART in the San Francisco Bay Area). This is why folding bicycles sell quite well, since a folded bicycle takes up vastly less space than a conventional bicycle, which means you're not at the mercy of limited bike racks on the bus/trolley/train.
Such high prices in Europe does not hurt the European standard of living because many Europeans use public transportation; bus and trains are relatively cheap to ride.
That's because those high gasoline taxes are subsidizing the cost of public transportation in Europe.
I think in the end, the US may have to end up imposing excise taxes based on engine displacement and vehicle size similar to what is done in Europe and Japan now. Why do you think for example that excise taxes on an automobile in Japan goes up quite a bit if the width of the car is larger than 170 cm (66.93 inches)? Or why when the engine displacement exceeds 2.0 liters the excise taxes goes up quite a bit in Europe? These excise taxes are why most Europeans drive cars in the Ford Fiesta/Renault Clio/VW Polo category, the so-called B-segment automobile.
I don't think the successor to the current 2G iPod nano will go to touch screen--the player is physically too small for one. Besides, the current click wheel design for the nano is very hard to improve upon anyway. I do see Apple dropping the 2 GB model and introducing a 16 GB model, along with increasing the number of color choices for the case design (the orange color introduced on the 2G Shuffle would look great on the nano).
Interesting you mentioned Eurofighter Typhoon that despite the protracted development period and all the hassles involved, the plane now entering service is probably the second best fighter in the world after the Lockheed Martin F-22A Raptor. In simulated combat tests, the Typhoon has demonstrated it can fight on equal terms with the F-15C Eagle and F-16C Fighting Falcon, the two benchmarks for top-line fighters today.
John W. Young just missed out on flying the Mercury missions because he was among the Group II astronauts selected (which included Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon). Young was a bit of a joker, bringing a corned beef sandwich on the Gemini 3 flight (and getting severely reprimanded for it).
Problem with flywheel plants: they need very high quality metallurgy, ceramics or composite materials--none of which are cheap--to make them work, especially when you have to factor in the physics of a big, fast-spinning flywheel.
A better solution is to develop MIT's nanotube supercapacitor power storage units, which eliminates the complications of fast-moving parts and still offer quite a lot of power storage in a unit not much bigger than an air conditioning compressor for a whole house.
And you wonder why political weblogs on both the Left and Right have exploded in popularity. Everybody has a major mistrust of the old-time mass media because at Internet speeds, information can spread around the world in a matter of minutes. Look at how weblogs exposed CBS News' sham attempt to show President Bush didn't do his duty at the Texas Air National Guard in no time flat.
I think everybody ignores the biggest issue hurting music CD sales: the ridiculously high price for a new album-length CD regardless of source (record stores, big box retailers and even online stores).
They should price new CD's at a more appropriate US$12 per disc, not the US$17-$18 per disc as is common practice now. That high price not only discourages sales, but also increases the economic incentive to "cheat" system (e.g., music piracy). By lowering the suggested retail price to US$12, you can drastically cut the incentive to pirate music, which actually benefits everyone all around.
By the way, I don't think movie piracy is as big a problem as people think. I cite the following reasons: 1) Pirated DVD's usually have pretty poor quality video and audio; 2) Downloading a movie from BitTorrent takes a long time unless you have extremely fast broadband (very few people have anything over 6 mbps download speed broadband); and 3) DVD pricing is still reasonable considering what you get on a DVD nowadays with all its extra features.
One thing I have heard is that Buena Vista Home Video (the home video division of the Walt Disney Company) has said they can start producing HD-DVD home videos if the demand is there to do so. With the arrival of 45 GB triple-layer discs probably within the next 18 months, HD-DVD has pretty much erased just about all the advantages of Blu-Ray in terms of storage space.
If HD-DVD needs a major boost besides lower-cost players, they need movie titles that showcase the format at its best. I'd like to see Pixar movies and the Extended Editions of the three Lord of the Rings movies in HD-DVD format.
I remember reading in an automotive magazine recently about a British company modifying a Mini (the current design) to be powered by four powerful electric motors. The result was actually FASTER than the standard Mini, which shows that once we lick the battery storage problem electric cars won't be slow, that's to be sure. And since the electric motor is very compatible with computer controls it could mean built-in traction control and antilock braking all by controlling how each motor works.
I agree, why bother.
Besides, by this fall we'll have true video widescreen iPods (based on iPhone technology) that might include a model with all flash memory that could contain as much as 32 GB of storage.
I personally think for most home users, a widescreen monitor is better than a dual-monitor setup, mostly because home users are more likely to playback multimedia files, especially DVD playback. A dual-monitor setup is better for people with more specialized needs such as programming, running CAD/CAM programs, and needing to see a LOT of data such as real-time monitoring of financial markets.
I think IBM did not consider the Motorola 68000 architecture because back then, the Motorola 68000 CPU was just WAY too expensive for what IBM wanted to do--a relatively simple, off-the-shelf part desktop computer.
Sure, it would be nice to get away from the x86 architecture in favor of the more modern PowerPC architecture, but note that thanks to the x86-64 CPU architecture (which AMD developed and now Intel supports more or less), the x86 CPU technology has just about erased all the advantages of PowerPC CPU's (why do you think Apple uses the Intel Core 2 Duo CPU for most of their computer line?).
...It's not likely we'll see steel-wheel trains go faster than 350 km/h (217 mph) in the near future in commercial service.
The reason is simple: physical contact. At these very high speeds, the physical contact force between between the overhead wiring and pantographs on the train and the the steel wheels and the steel rail is ENORMOUS, requiring strong, expensive metals to keep physical wear as low as possible. Remember, the record was done on a very short train under extremely tight tolerance conditions not encountered in regular service.
I think we should just forget the whole idea of electronic voting machines (which looks like it's just as faulty as the old mechanical voting machines used in much of the USA for many years) and go with mark-sense paper ballots filled out with permanent ink pens or markers.
Not only is it machine-readable, but the ballots can be hand-counted quite easily in case of close elections.
However, you still have a big problem: growing a lot of hemp still will tax agricultural resources of arable land, water usage, and argichemical usage, which is still not a very good idea.
GreenFuel Technologies' idea of "growing" oil-laden algae in vertical tanks makes the most sense, since the algae can be harvested many times per year to make millions of gallons of diesel fuel/heating oil per 200 acre farm of these tanks, and almost just as much ethanol from the solid waste of algae processing.
Actually, thanks to nanotechnology, we could be seeing the end of using fossil fuels to power personal vehicles within 25 years.
Remember MIT's announcement of a new type of high-density power storage using supercapacitors built up from carbon nanotubes back in February 2006? Developed to maturity that could result in the battery pack for an electric car reduced to about the size of the fuel tank of today's automobile, yet offer enormous range on a single charge (maybe up to 500 km per charge!) and charging times measured minutes, not several hours like older electric cars required. And with nanotechnology drastically reducing the cost of solar power panels, I could foresee by 2030 your personal vehicle charged from the solar panel at your home in maybe 15 minutes, and the vehicle will run up to a week in normal commute driving.
Actually, what happens is that the particulates in the exhaust get trapped by a special filter. At a certain point, the filter gets small electrical charge the "burns off" the particulates into harmless exhaust. That idea has been around since the late 1980's.
That was true in the past, but thanks to tough EPA/CARB (and soon European Union) mandates for dramatically lower diesel exhaust emissions, today's diesel engines aren't the loud-clattering and smoky engines we all remember.
With the availability of low-sulfur Diesel #2 fuel since October 2006 in the USA, diesel engines can now incorporate features like 2,000 psi common-rail pressurized direct fuel injection for extremely precise fuel delivery and the latest in exhaust emission controls to remove diesel particulates and lower NOx levels.
I would suggest you drive the Mercedes-Benz E320CDI sedan; it sounds almost exactly like a regular gasoline engine, and you don't see the big cloud of smoke from the exhaust, either, thanks to the BlueTec emissions control system developed by DaimlerChrysler. In addition to Mercedes-Benz, the VW/Audi Group and BMW have officially announced turbodiesel engines for the USA market that meets all our current emission control mandates that will arrive by 2008.
In fact, a company named GreenFuel Technologies has demonstrated you can "grow" oil-laden algae by feeding it the exhaust gases from a fossil-fuel powerplant.
The benefits are obvious:
1) You cut NOx and CO2 emissions way below even Kyoto Protocol mandates for the powerplant, since the algae absorbs most of the NOx and CO2 gases.
2) You can produce millions of gallons of algae biomass for diesel fuel/heating oil on a single farm of algae-growing tanks of a couple of hundred acres in size.
3) After the algae is processed into diesel fuel/heating oil, the remaining solid waste can be processed further into animal feed, plant fertilizer and/or ethanol fuel.
4) Because of the amazingly high production rate with oil-laden algae, you don't need to take up valuable farmland just to grow crops for make ethanol and diesel fuel/heating oil.
One company--GreenFuel Technologies--has already demonstrated how to use the exhaust gases from a coal-fired powerplant to "feed" tanks of oil-laden algae that could grow the algae at a tremendous rate.
This system offers a number of obvious advantages:
1. It reduces the pollutant output far below Kyoto Protocol mandates since the algae absorption of the exhaust gases cuts CO2 and NOx emissions way more than 50%.
2. With a couple of hundred acres of tanks fed by the coal powerplant exhaust, we could produce millions of gallons of diesel/heating oil fuel per year from ONE site.
3. The "waste" from the processing of the oil-laden algae could be processed into animal feed, plant fertilizer or even ethanol.
Actually, what makes the iPod since the so good was the incorporation of the Click Wheel pioneered by the iPod mini across the entire iPod line outside of the very small shuffle model. It's actually a very nice interface that is easy to master.
However, Apple really needs to do a complete overhaul of their iTunes software. The current version has a lot of quirks that take some experience to master, which can cause no end of problems with new iPod users.