Hmm- well, not certain if it's the sort of thing you're looking for, but at some point, there's going to be a big changeover in processor manufacturing techniques, mainly due to heat problems- switching to any number of things, for example diamond substrates (there was a good article in Wired about how artificial diamonds could affect this, with their usual cheerleading).
Of course, folks have been predicting this for years, and they've managed to stave it off with nifty chip architecture solutions, but it's always there.
The Muirs' translations are the most widely circulated, and they're serviceable. I greatly prefer the Muirs' "gigantic insect" to the "giant bug" favored in more recent translations, so that's the Metamorphosis for me. (Neugroschel's "monstrous vermin" is best and closest of all, but his translation reads awkwardly in English. I think it hews too closely to the original syntax.)
SEDs are supposed to be the hot new display technology. They'll require new facilities, I believe. Related: I don't know as much about carbon nanotube technology/nanotech in general, but it seems likely that scientists will come up with various new and thrillingly expensive ways of manufacturing them in the near future.
If WiMax takes off, it'll require some money. In fact, even though we have all this wonderful dark fiber, it seems likely to me that someone will have to drop a ton of money on the last mile problem sooner or later.
The main thing to know is that Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor, actually cut passages from different texts before publishing them. He also makes Kafka seem very theological and not funny, which he is, very, in his dark way. This flaw is true of a lot of the early Kafka translations.
Michael Hoffman's Amerika: The Man who Disappeared is pretty good -- and what it replaces was a mess. very bad, lots missing, even the title changed by Max Brod - don't go there.
I don't have strong opinions about the others - I've heard good things about Harman's new The Castle - am still fond of phrases from the old Muir translations of the short stories -- but in general the series of new translations being issued now will always have the posthumous Max Brod interventions removed, and that's all to the good.
I hope you read the short stories! the Trial too, but most importantly the stories - Josephina the Singer and the Mouse Folk -- the Penal Colony -- Description of a Struggle -- the Hunter Gracchus -- !
(unless you've totally discounted my opinion by now... but who cares, you'll still be floored by kafka!)
kafka was a bureaucrat expert in insurance claims for workers injured in industrial accidents...he went to nudist camps, insisted he & his fiancees do Mueller physical exercises by an open window in the mornings year-round...and he loved silent movies and Yiddish theater, but he didn't know Yiddish. And died young. i feel like you should know all those things first, too. and now, go ahead and read!
I definitely recommend the Muirs' Amerika over Hoffman's Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared, if that's the one you're talking about. Hoffman greatly downplays the book's clever, subtle masturbation sequences—when a character fidgets obsessively with a button while staring at another person, for example, becomes a nonessential detail about fidgeting.
In the original translation's defense, I don't think Hoffman is any better able to reconstruct the incomplete Amerika than Max Brod was, and I think the extent and hostility of the latter's intervention has been overstated.
"It's beyond me why an author would have the hero of his tale turn into a beetle when he could just as well transform him into a poodle, a cuddly kitten, or at worst, a butterfly. But, then again, there's no accounting for taste, is there?
"After he becomes a bug (one paragraph --- no scientific explanation offered) Gregor Samsa is forced by the author to spend the next ten pages of "Metamorphosis" trying to get out of bed. He spends the subsequent ten pages thinking of how he is going to get to work in his new bug-body.
"Since he's a salesman, his extraordinary appearance might have an adverse effect on his monthly sales figures. Here he is a six-foot beetle with 24 tiny legs, trying to sell time-life insurance to some poor sucker there in 1920s Vienna.
"Finally, when he figures out that he's a bug, Gregor insists on crawling across the ceiling and sleeping under the bed. He also refuses to eat anything besides rotten fruit, aged vegetables, and putrid meat-pies. His good Austrian family is, as you would expect, grossed out by all this.
"They try to keep him hidden in the bedroom so he won't be scaring the wits out of the paying boarders --- but no --- at night naughty Gregor has to sneak into the living-room to listen to his sister playing the violin. A beetle infatuated not with the Beatles but with Bach."
I'm sorta afraid to put this out there, because I don't suppose it's really great advice, but I find that with books of this genre Vintage press usually prints the translation most to my liking.
When my internet connexion is spotty, sometimes it is not the best idea to just go ahead and rely on my memory without checking first. As there aren't any Vintage editions of Kakfa's works still in print, the above advice can be disgarded.
Coming technology: the Space Elevator. If we can use carbon nanotubes to make a cable with a strength of 63 gigapascals (about five times better than we've managed so far), we'll be able to build a Space Elevator for $5-10 billion that will reduce the cost of putting things into space by a factor of one hundred. Solar power satellites, orbiting hotels, cheap missions to the Moon and Mars, big, high-powered satellite radio and television transmitters, scout troops launching space probes, etc. It'll happen in the next 5-15 years, or turn out to be impossible and never happen.
7: Man, once I went to see the adorable, pixieish, twenty-something guitarist/composer Khaki King, who I'm sure lights fires in the loins of many a son of Williamsburg, and during the second set she invited her friend, the drummer to come out and play with her. He was about five times her size, and floppy and sweaty. He totally diminished the performance; she wasn't really audible above his decidedly average drumming. But in addition, he stared at her the entire time, his mouth slightly open, his eyes at once focused and glazed, as his drumming became more and more frenetic. "I think he's secretly in love with her," I ventured to my companion. "Ya think?" he asked sarcastically. I decided to try my uncensored observation out on him: "It looks like he's masturbating symbolically with the drums." "I was thinking the exact same thing," he said. So you know it really, really looked like he was masturbating.
"Hey, speaking of nanotech, does Glenn Reynolds really know anything about it, or does it just give him an erection?"
Depends what you mean by "knows anything."
He's no more an engineer than I (so far as I know, which isn't all that much), but, while I've read Glenn extremely little in the past two years, based on what I've seen him say on the topic over the years, I'd certainly say he "knows something" in the same sense I "know something" about the subject, which is to say, a fair layperson's grasp; I wouldn't assert I've seen any reason to say I know more than he does, but I'm just a layman who follows along on practically everything I follow along on in my auto-didactic way.
Tom's point probably highlights that your analyst is barking up the wrong tree. Energy really is a top candidate for major investments, but corporate tech guys aren't the ones to see it on the horizon.
1. Medical - the infrastructure for genetic analysis and synthesis. Big computers, special programming.
2. Consumer - HDTV and all that entails. Display technology is just now getting over the hump.
3. Energy - There is still way too much money to be made from oil to allow serious competition. As a matter of fact oil profits will continue to skyrocket with no new technology needed. Wind turbines will be the only significant other energy investment. Hybrid cars are mostly a marketing scam, suitable for niche markets only.
Tom's point probably highlights that your analyst is barking up the wrong tree. Energy really is a top candidate for major investments, but corporate tech guys aren't the ones to see it on the horizon.
Well, your point about me basically being a dope is well-taken. But seriously, plenty of governors in coal-laden states are going start trying to attract dollars for this nonsense. I'm not saying it'll actually be an important part of the country's energy policy, just that people will make some noise and waste some money.
OK, so I'm a Schweitzer fan, but what's wrong with Fischer-Tropsch? It seems that the major point against it is that it's expensive, but it's turning economical very quickly as oil prices rise. It's also got a lot of "reducing dependence on foreign oil" going for it.
The other thing I'd say is, in the energy arena, we *should* (although probably won't, and it's too late now anyway) be putting capital into carbon sequestration soon.
I just want them to get this SpElevaor working so that we can secure He3 from the moon and get everyone running on fusion.
Synthetic diamonds for computer chips as in 1 above
Carbon nanotube based materials fabrication as in 5,18,33 above
I sorta disagree with 46 re: energy. Seems to me that the high and potentially rising oil prices may indeed result in economically feasible alternative energy sources. Don't know what will make sense, but wind in already economically viable, nuclear may come back strong. Mobile energy may go to electric or hydrogen, though seems to me, either is a long long way from mainstream and neither is a sure bet in the long run.
In the long run, say 40 years or more, fusion power for electricity generation seems a sure thing. The capital outlays in the near term seem only to be undertaken by nations. Although, it would be cool to see a Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, or Richard Branson sponsored fusion reactor project.
It takes energy to perform the conversion, so it is much less efficient than simply buring the liquid refined oil, and the whole process creates about twice the greenhouse gases per unit of energy created compared to directly using the petroleum today.
So essentially it is more expensive and dirtier than the fuels we have today.
Oh, and we've got lots of coal, sure, but the surface pockets have already been mined so now you are talking strip mining to get what is left.
But hey, anything to keep driving that Hummer, eh?
I can go out and buy helium-3 right now, today, for $250 per liter. Before I hear any more nonsense about mining the crap on the moon, I want the following:
1. Demonstrated fusion.
2. Demonstrated presence of He-3 on the moon, not just loopy supposition.
3. A believable economic analysis that shows it can be mined for less than $250/liter.
Until you have those items, just shut up. Please.
The really, really annoying part of the whole He-3 mining argument is that we can manufacture He-3 right here with a tank of helium and some plutonium. It's not even hard, and surely safer than going to the moon.
People that focus on the economic feasability as the price of oil rises make a big mistaken assumption. They assume unlimited oil at the new price.
If we had unlimited oil at $100/barrel it would make sense to da da da.
The second mistake people make when discussing oil replacement is to forget about scalability.
Hey - I can drive my diesel car on the leftover oil from Chinese restaurants so obviousy everybody can. Or I can drive my car on the biofuel grown in two acres so everybody can.
We got to this point in our development, supporting seven billion people, on the backs of wood power, coal power, and finally petroleum power. The stored energy of millions of years of solar power.
There just is no viable replacement on the horizon. Wind power will help but it will provide nowhere near the energy we currently get from fossil fuels.
Here's a fun thought experiment: what happens if there's a fundamentalist coup in Saudi Arabia, backed by China, and they take their oil out of the market and make an exclusive deal with their benefactor?
Just a comment that _Amerika_ contains one of the best sentences I know - Kafka compares the gleaming sunlight on NYC to a sheet of glass being shattered over the city every second.
Ok, what the hell, here it is:
Und morgens wie abends und in den Träumen der Nacht vollzog sich auf dieser Straße ein immer drängender Verkehr, der, von oben gesehen, sich als eine aus immer neuen Anfängen ineinandergestreute Mischung von verzerrten menschlichen Figuren und von Dächern der Fuhrwerke aller Art darstellte, von der aus sich noch eine neue, vervielfältigte, wildere Mischung von Lärm, Staub und Gerüchen erhob, und alles dieses wurde erfaßt und durchdrungen von einem mächtigen Licht, das immer wieder von der Menge der Gegenstände verstreut, fortgetragen und wieder eifrig herbeigebracht wurde und das dem betörten Auge so körperlich erschien, als werde über dieser Straße eine alles bedeckende Glasscheibe jeden Augenblick immer wieder mit aller Kraft zerschlagen.
Hmm- well, not certain if it's the sort of thing you're looking for, but at some point, there's going to be a big changeover in processor manufacturing techniques, mainly due to heat problems- switching to any number of things, for example diamond substrates (there was a good article in Wired about how artificial diamonds could affect this, with their usual cheerleading).
Of course, folks have been predicting this for years, and they've managed to stave it off with nifty chip architecture solutions, but it's always there.
Posted by Moleman | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 3:37 PM
The Muirs' translations are the most widely circulated, and they're serviceable. I greatly prefer the Muirs' "gigantic insect" to the "giant bug" favored in more recent translations, so that's the Metamorphosis for me. (Neugroschel's "monstrous vermin" is best and closest of all, but his translation reads awkwardly in English. I think it hews too closely to the original syntax.)
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 3:45 PM
I've been reading a selection of his short stories, but held off as I wasn't sure if it was the correct translation or not. It's the Muirs.
Posted by text | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 3:47 PM
Has anyone read the recent translation of America? Would you recommend it?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 3:49 PM
SEDs are supposed to be the hot new display technology. They'll require new facilities, I believe. Related: I don't know as much about carbon nanotube technology/nanotech in general, but it seems likely that scientists will come up with various new and thrillingly expensive ways of manufacturing them in the near future.
If WiMax takes off, it'll require some money. In fact, even though we have all this wonderful dark fiber, it seems likely to me that someone will have to drop a ton of money on the last mile problem sooner or later.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 3:50 PM
The main thing to know is that Max Brod, Kafka's friend and literary executor, actually cut passages from different texts before publishing them. He also makes Kafka seem very theological and not funny, which he is, very, in his dark way. This flaw is true of a lot of the early Kafka translations.
Michael Hoffman's Amerika: The Man who Disappeared is pretty good -- and what it replaces was a mess. very bad, lots missing, even the title changed by Max Brod - don't go there.
I don't have strong opinions about the others - I've heard good things about Harman's new The Castle - am still fond of phrases from the old Muir translations of the short stories -- but in general the series of new translations being issued now will always have the posthumous Max Brod interventions removed, and that's all to the good.
I hope you read the short stories! the Trial too, but most importantly the stories - Josephina the Singer and the Mouse Folk -- the Penal Colony -- Description of a Struggle -- the Hunter Gracchus -- !
(unless you've totally discounted my opinion by now... but who cares, you'll still be floored by kafka!)
kafka was a bureaucrat expert in insurance claims for workers injured in industrial accidents...he went to nudist camps, insisted he & his fiancees do Mueller physical exercises by an open window in the mornings year-round...and he loved silent movies and Yiddish theater, but he didn't know Yiddish. And died young. i feel like you should know all those things first, too. and now, go ahead and read!
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:00 PM
I definitely recommend the Muirs' Amerika over Hoffman's Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared, if that's the one you're talking about. Hoffman greatly downplays the book's clever, subtle masturbation sequences—when a character fidgets obsessively with a button while staring at another person, for example, becomes a nonessential detail about fidgeting.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:04 PM
In the original translation's defense, I don't think Hoffman is any better able to reconstruct the incomplete Amerika than Max Brod was, and I think the extent and hostility of the latter's intervention has been overstated.
This review, however, nails Metamorphosis:
"It's beyond me why an author would have the hero of his tale turn into a beetle when he could just as well transform him into a poodle, a cuddly kitten, or at worst, a butterfly. But, then again, there's no accounting for taste, is there?
"After he becomes a bug (one paragraph --- no scientific explanation offered) Gregor Samsa is forced by the author to spend the next ten pages of "Metamorphosis" trying to get out of bed. He spends the subsequent ten pages thinking of how he is going to get to work in his new bug-body.
"Since he's a salesman, his extraordinary appearance might have an adverse effect on his monthly sales figures. Here he is a six-foot beetle with 24 tiny legs, trying to sell time-life insurance to some poor sucker there in 1920s Vienna.
"Finally, when he figures out that he's a bug, Gregor insists on crawling across the ceiling and sleeping under the bed. He also refuses to eat anything besides rotten fruit, aged vegetables, and putrid meat-pies. His good Austrian family is, as you would expect, grossed out by all this.
"They try to keep him hidden in the bedroom so he won't be scaring the wits out of the paying boarders --- but no --- at night naughty Gregor has to sneak into the living-room to listen to his sister playing the violin. A beetle infatuated not with the Beatles but with Bach."
No need to thank me, Labs.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:10 PM
I don't need Kafka for masturbation sequences, thank you. And I doubt that you do either.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:12 PM
The definitive comment on Metamorphosis is an exchange in Ann Beattie's "The Burning House":
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:17 PM
I'm sorta afraid to put this out there, because I don't suppose it's really great advice, but I find that with books of this genre Vintage press usually prints the translation most to my liking.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:18 PM
As far as the review Smasher linked, Read The Whole Thing.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:18 PM
When my internet connexion is spotty, sometimes it is not the best idea to just go ahead and rely on my memory without checking first. As there aren't any Vintage editions of Kakfa's works still in print, the above advice can be disgarded.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:28 PM
Instead, I recommend getting the one with the nice cover.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:40 PM
uh... the Brod-edited Muir version not only excises many long passages Kafka wrote but also changes the title and the ending.
you decide.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:46 PM
I find his stories to be quite kafkaesque.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:47 PM
Then it's settled. I need to brush up on my German.
(Seriously, thanks for the advice. I may end up going with whichever Amerika I find first in a bookstore.)
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 4:53 PM
Coming technology: the Space Elevator. If we can use carbon nanotubes to make a cable with a strength of 63 gigapascals (about five times better than we've managed so far), we'll be able to build a Space Elevator for $5-10 billion that will reduce the cost of putting things into space by a factor of one hundred. Solar power satellites, orbiting hotels, cheap missions to the Moon and Mars, big, high-powered satellite radio and television transmitters, scout troops launching space probes, etc. It'll happen in the next 5-15 years, or turn out to be impossible and never happen.
Mars, bitches!
Posted by Bob Munck | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 6:34 PM
I was gonna say WiMax, although I usually just pass of Bob Cringely's insights as my own.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:12 PM
Crap: pass off
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:13 PM
Have you been messing with the stylesheets, ogged?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:48 PM
No, what looks off?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:50 PM
The post titles weren't bolded for a bit, then they were again, so I thought you might be trying different things out.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:52 PM
or turn out to be impossible
I'm very confident it will be achieved.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:52 PM
I was all, "Titles! Hooray!"
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 7:54 PM
I've noticed that, on my mac, the left column is bolded down to the 7th latest comment, at which point it resumes regularness.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:03 PM
7: Man, once I went to see the adorable, pixieish, twenty-something guitarist/composer Khaki King, who I'm sure lights fires in the loins of many a son of Williamsburg, and during the second set she invited her friend, the drummer to come out and play with her. He was about five times her size, and floppy and sweaty. He totally diminished the performance; she wasn't really audible above his decidedly average drumming. But in addition, he stared at her the entire time, his mouth slightly open, his eyes at once focused and glazed, as his drumming became more and more frenetic. "I think he's secretly in love with her," I ventured to my companion. "Ya think?" he asked sarcastically. I decided to try my uncensored observation out on him: "It looks like he's masturbating symbolically with the drums." "I was thinking the exact same thing," he said. So you know it really, really looked like he was masturbating.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:04 PM
yes, but was he also crying?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:11 PM
I would bet he'd temporarily stopped.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:11 PM
Kaki King.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:11 PM
Maybe he cries while drumming to pictures of her at home.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:14 PM
Wolfson, I downloaded that Sam Cooke at the Harlem Club you mentioned, it's really good.
Posted by washerdreyer | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 8:15 PM
"...things you see coming down the pike in the world of technology...."
What timeframe? A year? 5? 10? 25? 50? 100? 500? I have some good bets for a few thousand years from now, but I can't recommend a brokerage.
In the 10-50 range, I'd keep an open-mind about carbon nanotubule production for the space elevator, and I'm deadly serious.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:34 PM
Also quantum computing.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:34 PM
Ah, I see there's a consensus. Or repetition, anyway.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:37 PM
Hey, speaking of nanotech, does Glenn Reynolds really know anything about it, or does it just give him an erection?
Posted by FL | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:42 PM
"Khaki King"
Kaki King.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:48 PM
"Hey, speaking of nanotech, does Glenn Reynolds really know anything about it, or does it just give him an erection?"
Depends what you mean by "knows anything."
He's no more an engineer than I (so far as I know, which isn't all that much), but, while I've read Glenn extremely little in the past two years, based on what I've seen him say on the topic over the years, I'd certainly say he "knows something" in the same sense I "know something" about the subject, which is to say, a fair layperson's grasp; I wouldn't assert I've seen any reason to say I know more than he does, but I'm just a layman who follows along on practically everything I follow along on in my auto-didactic way.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 9:53 PM
Hey, speaking of nanotech, does Glenn Reynolds really know anything about it, or does it just give him an erection?
It just gives him an erection. But what a feat of engineering!
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 10:05 PM
37, meet 30.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 10:07 PM
39: Yeah, it's amazing such a nanoerection can stay rigid! Even if only for 2 minutes!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 10:18 PM
I had assumed that his bionic cock would tend to outperform more pedestrian cocks.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 10:30 PM
An apposite question anyway, in light of the transit strike.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 12-20-05 10:40 PM
Oh yeah! How could I forget: coal gasification plants seem likely to become a major new target for government pork in the next five years.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 6:09 AM
coal gasification
Tom's point probably highlights that your analyst is barking up the wrong tree. Energy really is a top candidate for major investments, but corporate tech guys aren't the ones to see it on the horizon.
Posted by cw | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 6:18 AM
Where will the money be in the next ten years:
1. Medical - the infrastructure for genetic analysis and synthesis. Big computers, special programming.
2. Consumer - HDTV and all that entails. Display technology is just now getting over the hump.
3. Energy - There is still way too much money to be made from oil to allow serious competition. As a matter of fact oil profits will continue to skyrocket with no new technology needed. Wind turbines will be the only significant other energy investment. Hybrid cars are mostly a marketing scam, suitable for niche markets only.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 8:10 AM
Tom's point probably highlights that your analyst is barking up the wrong tree. Energy really is a top candidate for major investments, but corporate tech guys aren't the ones to see it on the horizon.
Well, your point about me basically being a dope is well-taken. But seriously, plenty of governors in coal-laden states are going start trying to attract dollars for this nonsense. I'm not saying it'll actually be an important part of the country's energy policy, just that people will make some noise and waste some money.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 9:14 AM
OK, so I'm a Schweitzer fan, but what's wrong with Fischer-Tropsch? It seems that the major point against it is that it's expensive, but it's turning economical very quickly as oil prices rise. It's also got a lot of "reducing dependence on foreign oil" going for it.
The other thing I'd say is, in the energy arena, we *should* (although probably won't, and it's too late now anyway) be putting capital into carbon sequestration soon.
I just want them to get this SpElevaor working so that we can secure He3 from the moon and get everyone running on fusion.
Posted by McDuff | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 9:55 AM
Synthetic diamonds for computer chips as in 1 above
Carbon nanotube based materials fabrication as in 5,18,33 above
I sorta disagree with 46 re: energy. Seems to me that the high and potentially rising oil prices may indeed result in economically feasible alternative energy sources. Don't know what will make sense, but wind in already economically viable, nuclear may come back strong. Mobile energy may go to electric or hydrogen, though seems to me, either is a long long way from mainstream and neither is a sure bet in the long run.
In the long run, say 40 years or more, fusion power for electricity generation seems a sure thing. The capital outlays in the near term seem only to be undertaken by nations. Although, it would be cool to see a Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos, or Richard Branson sponsored fusion reactor project.
Posted by Mr. B | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 10:12 AM
what's wrong with Fischer-Tropsch?
It takes energy to perform the conversion, so it is much less efficient than simply buring the liquid refined oil, and the whole process creates about twice the greenhouse gases per unit of energy created compared to directly using the petroleum today.
So essentially it is more expensive and dirtier than the fuels we have today.
Oh, and we've got lots of coal, sure, but the surface pockets have already been mined so now you are talking strip mining to get what is left.
But hey, anything to keep driving that Hummer, eh?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 10:32 AM
Mr B,
Fusion still has the enormous problem of containment, doesn't it? I'm not very optimistic we will solve that one.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 10:34 AM
I can go out and buy helium-3 right now, today, for $250 per liter. Before I hear any more nonsense about mining the crap on the moon, I want the following:
1. Demonstrated fusion.
2. Demonstrated presence of He-3 on the moon, not just loopy supposition.
3. A believable economic analysis that shows it can be mined for less than $250/liter.
Until you have those items, just shut up. Please.
The really, really annoying part of the whole He-3 mining argument is that we can manufacture He-3 right here with a tank of helium and some plutonium. It's not even hard, and surely safer than going to the moon.
Posted by alex | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 10:43 AM
People that focus on the economic feasability as the price of oil rises make a big mistaken assumption. They assume unlimited oil at the new price.
If we had unlimited oil at $100/barrel it would make sense to da da da.
The second mistake people make when discussing oil replacement is to forget about scalability.
Hey - I can drive my diesel car on the leftover oil from Chinese restaurants so obviousy everybody can. Or I can drive my car on the biofuel grown in two acres so everybody can.
We got to this point in our development, supporting seven billion people, on the backs of wood power, coal power, and finally petroleum power. The stored energy of millions of years of solar power.
There just is no viable replacement on the horizon. Wind power will help but it will provide nowhere near the energy we currently get from fossil fuels.
Billions of people will die before this is over.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 11:42 AM
I'm in Tripp's camp, even up to the last statement.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 11:45 AM
Here's a fun thought experiment: what happens if there's a fundamentalist coup in Saudi Arabia, backed by China, and they take their oil out of the market and make an exclusive deal with their benefactor?
Horrible things in the US, is what.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 11:47 AM
Tripp:
Isn't there a newish form of solar generator that uses a heat engine to generate power (as opposed to photovoltaic generation)?
What about geothermal? (I'm talking core tap, not hot springs)
What about tidal generators?
What about oceanic thermocline generators?
What about biomass?
Hell, isn't there some talk that we should be able to get a heckuva lot of energy off a space elevator using the earth's electromagnetic field?
I in no way an expert on any of these technologies, but it seems to me that I've heard that each of them has a fair amount of promise.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 12-21-05 4:15 PM
Just a comment that _Amerika_ contains one of the best sentences I know - Kafka compares the gleaming sunlight on NYC to a sheet of glass being shattered over the city every second.
Ok, what the hell, here it is:
Und morgens wie abends und in den Träumen der Nacht vollzog sich auf dieser Straße ein immer drängender Verkehr, der, von oben gesehen, sich als eine aus immer neuen Anfängen ineinandergestreute Mischung von verzerrten menschlichen Figuren und von Dächern der Fuhrwerke aller Art darstellte, von der aus sich noch eine neue, vervielfältigte, wildere Mischung von Lärm, Staub und Gerüchen erhob, und alles dieses wurde erfaßt und durchdrungen von einem mächtigen Licht, das immer wieder von der Menge der Gegenstände verstreut, fortgetragen und wieder eifrig herbeigebracht wurde und das dem betörten Auge so körperlich erschien, als werde über dieser Straße eine alles bedeckende Glasscheibe jeden Augenblick immer wieder mit aller Kraft zerschlagen.
http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/kafka/amerika/ameri21.htm
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 8:52 PM
Billions of people will die before this is over.
With seven billion non-immortal people on the planet, this is true, no matter we do.</wolfson>
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-23-05 9:53 PM