Technology to Change the World

We have more than enough energy to satisfy our greatest needs and desires.  It's out there in the environment -- in the sun on our faces, the wind on our back, the vibration of the freeway, the rattling of trains, the surf eroding the shore, the atoms we split, the garbage we rot, and the coal we burn.  The only problem is that it's not where we want it, when we want it.  Our goal for the 21st century should be to fix that problem

Mobile technology, computing technology, communications technology and related items have really changed the world over the last 20 years.  What's the next step?

Batteries.

If we can develop dramatically more efficient, less expensive, and (ideally) more eco-friendly battery technology, we can change the world again in the next 20 years.

Improved battery technology can drive electricity costs down. Imagine being able to charge your home's batteries at night when powerplants are underutiltized.  Power can be cheaper in the off hours, and we can eliminate a lot of the Brown-Out and rolling Black-Out problems parts of the country face on hot summer days.

Electric vehicles, like the Nissan Leaf and Tesla family of cars are giving us a viable alternative to gasoline, but they still are limited in range to about 100 miles for the Leaf and under 300 miles for the Tesla. Imagine battery technology that's good for 1000 miles.

Combine those vehicles with off hours charging and household batteries and we get world changing benefits.  Even charging cars with electricity from coal powerplants produces less greenhouse gas  than driving on gasoline.

These two battery solution gives us even more benefits, though.  Storing power locally gives us better disaster preparedness.  When powerlines go down due to wind, rain, or hurricane, household batteries can keep the lights bright and the refrigerator cold.

Alternative energy solutions at the local level, whether those solutions are roof top solar panels or home sized windmills become much more viable with the right battery technology.

Large scale alternative energy solutions, again, whether they are hydro-electric, geothermal, solar, wind, or wave action are all more viable when we can efficiently store they energy.

And back down to the small scale, as we migrate more and more to cloud computing, keeping those laptops and smart phones charged is critical.

I'm not sure if it's just a question of more efficiently scaling our current technology -- of making refinements to what we already have -- or if we need massive conceptual shift in areas of chemical and electrical engineering that I know nothing about.

The company that can master battery technology -- the country that can master battery technology -- will own the economy of the future.

Battery technology isn't sexy.  It's not exciting.  It rarely makes headlines.  But it should.  

Our nation's infrastructure and ecnomy depend on it and demand advances in battery technology.

The question is, how do we capitalize on it?

How to dispose of an air conditioner in Seattle

Over the weekend my GF decided to get rid of her old air conditioner. She replaced it a couple years ago with a more powerful, quieter, and probalby more energy efficient one. The old one sat on her deck for a few season and went through a couple floods.

Trying to sell it after that seemed like a bad idea.

And we didn't want anyone else in the apartment building to acquire it for free let the entire building burn down.

But you can't just throw an air conditioner down the trash chute. For one thing, it's heavy. For another, it doesn't fit through the opening. Finally, the sanitation department has a problem with people just leaving appliances in the trash.

What's the solution? In Seattle, we have to take such things to a recycing center.

King County lists a bunch of them on its website. We took her old air conditioner to Total Reclaim, which also collects TVs, monitors, computers, and all sorts of other things you aren't supposed to just throw out. They had pallets of that stuff.

It was a short drive down there, and the hours were fairly convenient.

And they were happy to take the old, noisy, dead, potentially dangerous air conditioner for $50. That's right, we had to pay $50 so they would accept the air conditioner for proper recycling and disposal.

It's a bit of sticker shock. I don't know if it's a ridiculous price, although it certainly feels that way. I suppose that's how much it costs when you consider the chemicals, labor, and energy involved. Still, it's frustrating.

But I guess it's better than dropping it off a ferry.

Apparently, College has Gotten too Cheap

Students today have so much stuff, they are abandoning dumpsters full at the end of school.

There are some interesting aspects to the volume of stuff college kids discard.

Some find anthropological significance in the mixture of the odd and humdrum.

A typical catch might include "hula hoops, dishes, a can opener, a couple of condoms and notebook paper," said Kim Yarbray, environmental sustainability coordinator at Guilford College, also in North Carolina. She sees it as a kind of symbol of the intersecting stages of life of college students: childhood playfulness, adolescent experimentation, the first tools for adults who must work and take care of themselves.

"Their whole life is right there," she said. "You can just see it in the things they choose to discard."

But mostly it's just an amazing volume of stuff they spend money on and then just get rid of some summer time.

Full Article here.

DAVIDSON, North Carolina (AP) -- With 1,700 students, Davidson College may be small. But you'd never know it when you see the stuff students leave behind at the end of the year.

In a large room at a fraternity house, stacks of clothing, furniture, lamps and electronics were already piling up days ahead of last Sunday's graduation. Mixed in were odds and ends that could only wind up together in a college trash pile: a pair of giant Homer Simpson slippers; a collection of Pokemon cards; a batch of fashion disaster dresses you can only hope were costumes from a campus theme party called the Five Dollar Prom.

College students have more possessions than ever, and in the frenzy of finals, commencement and last-gasp partying before the end of the school year, little time is left for an orderly move. Purging is often easier than shipping or storing.

...

Davidson isn't the only college trying to put its student left-behinds to better use. Next Saturday, up to 10,000 people are expected to descend on Penn State's Beaver Stadium to pick their way through 62 tons of student detritus at the annual "Trash to Treasure" sale, which has raised more than $200,000 for the United Way. Boston College collects up to 100,000 items annually for dozens of community groups. In the 15 years since its program started, the University of Michigan has channeled 123 tons of "gently used" student gear back to the community.

Programs also have sprung up in recent years at numerous other schools, among them Tufts, Santa Clara University, the University of Colorado, Furman University and Carleton College in Minnesota. Sometimes, student environmental groups are the driving force. But many colleges like the idea, too -- at least more than paying to haul it all away.

...

Mostly, however, the left-behind items are the predictable, timeless staples of college life: casual clothes, low-grade furniture, countless unopened Ramen noodles. Penn State's sale features about 4,000 carpets, along with stacks of sweaters and T-shirts running down a row 100 feet long and 3 feet wide.

The Coolest Idea of the Month

This is just awesome.



toasted bagel + avocado in a CD spindle
"bagel to go" by Rodrigo Piwonka


This is a great use for an empty CD spindle. Of course the material probably isn't food safe and might make the sandwich poison, but I still want to do this.