Critical Mass for Ignorant Republican Cabin Boys : reached

In a bizarre turn of events which neatly mirrors the Open Source Media fiasco, a group of highly touted enthusiastic wingnut frosh has decided to name their blog Critical Mass. I decided to warmly welcome them to the blogosphere.

I am glad you guys have decide to tackle one of the most pressing issues of the day, that of our over-reliance on the automobile.
I look forward to spoking the pavements in synergy with you once a month at your favorite urban center.

April 1, 2006 | Webster Hubble Telescope

I believe the 'minionists have finally reached a critical mass; as to what that entails, I don't think they even fathom. Neither do the nimrods at Powerline. Ha Ha.

Remember, these youngsters will turn into the Karl Roves, Jack Abramoffs, Grover Norquists, and Ralph Reeds of tomorrow. I wonder if David Gelernter home-schooled his highly observant son?

Connect the DOT

From an interesting connect-the-dots read, this post from Daily Kos titled "Is Neil the link between Bush crime cartel and Dubai ports deal?" lays out some of the players. I can easily get lost in following the relationships, so I decided to whip out the freely-available GraphViz/DOT directed-graph tool to make it visually (un)appealing. Click on the thumbnail to see the fully connected network of cartel members.

A net-list governs the components and edges in the layout (shown below); DOT does the rest of the rendering.

digraph BushCo {
  EdRogers -> NewBridge;
  EdRogers -> GeorgeHWBush;
  EdRogers -> Diligence;
  EdRogers -> BGR;
  LannyGriffith -> BGR;
  BGR -> RepublicanParty;
  LannyGriffith -> NewBridge;
  LannyGriffith -> GeorgeHWBush;
  EdMathias -> Carlyle;
  EdMathias -> Diligence;
  DiligenceMiddleEast -> Diligence;
  DiligenceMiddleEast -> NewBridge;
  Diligence -> RichardBurt;
  RichardBurt -> BGR;
  RichardBurt -> Carlyle;
  JoeAllbaugh -> NewBridge;
  JoeAllbaugh -> Diligence;
  JoeAllbaugh -> GeorgeWBush;
  GeorgeHWBush -> Carlyle;
  DubaiHoldings -> DubaiInternationalCapital;
  DubaiHoldings ->  DubaiInvestmentGroup;
  DubaiInternationalCapital -> Carlyle;
  JohnHowland -> NewBridge;
  JamalDaniel -> NewBridge;
  JohnHowland -> NeilBush;
  JamalDaniel -> NeilBush;
  NeilBush -> Crest;
  Crest -> NewBridge;
  NeilBush -> Ignite;
 JamalDaniel -> Ignite;
}

DOT can create huge graphs, and BushCo weaves a tangled web, so I will keep adding linkages until the sucker breaks. I bet monkeygrinder appreciates this one.

Last gasp of a dying organization

General Motors has thrown their marketing campaign to the winds. Get a load of the submitted video found on the www.chevyapprentice.com site.


Update: I made my own submission right here.

Raising Cane & Corn

I garuntee that makinfun of Bush gets easier every time. Bush certainly has an impediment in classifying ordinary objects. In the past he has talked about "human-animal hybrids". Lest we all get confused again, the "hybrid batteries" he refers to in his press conference today, have to do with batteries for hybrid vehicles and not some genetic experiment gone wild.

Read the following and it appears that the articulate Bush alternates with the non-sequitor Bush. The non-sequitor Bush perches on his shoulder , inserting inanities as soon as Bush starts to say something intelligent.

Q From Australia. I've got a question about global warming -- in the Australian Parliament, Tony Blair called for greater action. And this seems to be something that the U.S. President could make a major difference on. There's a virtual consensus that the planet is warming. If you addressed issues like emissions, fuel efficiency, issues to do with alternative energy in your last few years as President, it could make a significant difference I think to the --

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate you bringing that up.

Q -- and I suppose I want to know, what is your plan?

THE PRESIDENT: Good. We -- first of all, there is -- the globe is warming. The fundamental debate: Is it manmade or natural. Put that aside. It is in our interests that we use technologies that will not only clean the air, but make us less dependent on oil. That's what I said in my State of the Union the other day. I said, look -- and I know it came as quite a shock to -- for people to hear a Texan stand up and say, we've got a national problem, we're addicted to oil. But I meant what I said.

Being addicted to oil is a problem for our economy. In a global economy, when burgeoning economies like India and China use more fossil fuels, it affects the price of gasoline here in America. In a world in which sometimes people have got the oil we need, or don't like us -- it's kind of a undiplomatic way of putting it -- it means we've got a national security issue.

I have -- much of my position was defined early on in my presidency when I told the world I thought that Kyoto was a lousy deal for America. And I tell you why it was a lousy deal for America. It meant that we had to cut emissions below 1990 levels, which would have meant I would have presided over massive layoffs and economic destruction. I believe the best way to put technologies in place that will not only achieve national objectives like less addiction to oil, but also help clean the air, is to be wealthy enough to invest in technologies, and then to share those technologies with parts of the world that were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol.

And so I guess I should have started differently when I first became President, and said, we will invest in new technologies that will enable us to use fossil fuels in a much wiser way. And what does that mean? Well, it means that we've got to figure out how to use ethanol more in our cars. Ethanol is produced mainly by cane and corn. But we're near some breakthroughs that we can use sawgrass and biomass to be able to produce ethanol

That means we got to continue investing in hybrid batteries. Ours is a country where many people live in urban centers, like Washington, D.C., and it's possible to have a hybrid battery breakthrough which says that the first 40 miles of an automobile can be used by electricity alone. Right now the hybrid vehicles, as you know, switch between gasoline and electrical power. But that consumes gasoline, which means we're still reliant upon oil. The idea is to get off of oil.

On the electricity front, we need to be using nuclear power more in this country, in my judgment. It is a renewable source of energy that has zero gas emissions. We've got a great natural resource here in America called coal. We have 250-plus years of coal reserves. But we also recognize that by -- burning coal causes environmental problems, and so we're spending billions on research to come up with clean coal technologies. And we'd like to share those technologies with other nations of the world that are beginning to grow so that they are good stewards of the environment, as well.

And so I got a comprehensive plan that uses technologies to help this nation from a national and economic perspective, but also will help improve the global economy -- the environment from those new, burgeoning economies that are -- like China and India, to be exact.

Like a blanket of smog moving into the valley, I think I get the drift, kinda, in a way.

UK Update

I have seen a particular style of production graph in only a few places, usually referencing natural gas. Jerome via TOD brought it to my attention again:

This plot shows the decline of individual fields on top of the overall production curve, which essentially provides a compact and instructive look at trends.

I asked a follow-up question at TOD referring to the possibility of similarly plotted graphs for oil fields. Sure enough, another commenter pointed out a UK study (PDF) which contained that kind of plot for North Sea oil. Apparently, the UK requires very detailed reporting of yearly production so the plot comes out quite clearly (click below for expanded view).

But another commenter pointed out that this data only extended to the year 2000, with only an extrapolation given for the ensuing years. So I offered up data to extend the profile to 2005.

Stepback then craftily combined the two sets of data, and voila:



The red line indicates the updated data trend (corresponding to the yellow dots). Click to expand.

WaPo unrights itself, kind of

Coinciding with the embarassing blogging debacle with home-schooled wing-nut Ben Domenech (advice: the guy should sue his parents for not teaching him about the evils of plagiarism), the Washington Post hosted an on-line discussion with Noam Chomsky on Friday

First question out of the gate:

Arlington, Va.: Why do you think the US went to war against Iraq?

Noam Chomsky: Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world, it is right in the midst of the major energy reserves in the world. Its been a primary goal of US policy since World War II (like Britain before it) to control what the State Department called "a stupendous source of strategic power" and one of the greatest material prizes in history. Establishing a client state in Iraq would significantly enhance that strategic power, a matter of great significance for the future. As Zbigniew Brzezinski observed, it would provide the US with "critical leverage" of its European and Asian rivals, a conception with roots in early post-war planning. These are substantial reasons for aggression -- not unlike those of the British when they invaded and occupied Iraq over 80 years earlier, at the dawn of the oil age.

My advice to WaPo: Give Noam the vacant blog spot.

Germ Anium

Intriguing, yet frustrating in its lack of content, this press release disguised as an article in Red Herring raises more questions than it answers.

While the high-efficiency material is expensive, SolFocus' system uses so little of the germanium — 1 square centimeter per panel — that the company is able to cut the installed price of solar in half, compared to the average price today, and still make a healthy margin.

Gives us the size of the panel.

Describe the geometry of electrodes that the wafer uses.

You need a lot of current to overcome the low band-gap of germanium.

---

Update: For more info look at the comments below; PV-expert SW provides the needed clarification regarding the technology. As more info becomes available, I will try to summarize in full. In short, I may have to change this post's title from Germ Anium to Gallium Arsenide. GaAs has double the bandgap of Ge, so at least that question gets answered.