Irony.

Hungry street kids raid food tables at African poverty summit.

Link (BBC via American Buddhist Net)

EEstor hypercapacitors getting ready to roll

Treehugger reports that EEstor has finally updated the company’s progress of readying its hypercapacitor-based energy storage system aimed at electric vehicles. EEstor says that they will begin shipping their “Electrical Energy Storage Unit” (EESU) to ZENN Motors this year for integration into their 25 MPH, 35-mile range electric vehicle. The press release also mentions that the EESU weighs only 100 pounds, so I hope that this technology can be scaled to much more powerful, longer range electric vehicles. Like my baby, the Tesla Roadster. EEstor’s press release at marketWIRE.

Heads up! Blogger Upgrade

Now that Blogger is out of beta, I'm upgrading to the newest goodies. You may see strange things as I reconstruct my custom template. Thanks for your patience!

Symptoms of Inner Peace

I was doing some more or less random surfing (i.e. not mindful), and found this little gem:

Be on the lookout for symptoms of inner peace. The hearts of a great many have already been exposed to inner peace and it is possible that people everywhere could come down with it in epidemic proportions. This could pose a serious threat to what has up to now been a fairly stable condition of conflict in the world. Some signs and symptoms of inner peace:

• A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than on fears based on past experiences.
• An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
• A loss of interest in judging other people.
• A loss of interest in judging self.
• A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
• A loss of interest in conflict.
• A loss of ability to worry (this is a very serious symptom).
• Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
• Contented feelings of connectedness with others and nature.
• Frequent attacks of smiling.
• An increasing tendency to let things happen rather than make them happen.
• An increased susceptibility to the love extended by others as well as the uncontrollable urge to extend it.

WARNING: If you have some or all of the above symptoms, please be advised that your condition of inner peace may be so far advanced as to not be curable. If you are exposed to anyone exhibiting any of these symptoms, remain exposed at your own risk.

I walked into the family room where Dr Phil was on TV earlier, with a show where family members were screaming obscenities at each other. I couldn’t stand to watch it, so I left the room (and yes, I’m beginning to wonder about Dr Phil’s motivations). I think the sixth item in the list is becoming stronger in me, hopefully a result of studying Buddhism. The site where I found this, Wildmind looks like an excellent resource for learning meditation. I really like the personable way in which the Online Meditation Guides are written. The site also offers in-depth meditation and Buddhism courses for a fee, and has an online store full of CDs, DVDs, MP3s and music. Since the author of the site where I found this mentioned that he found it at his chiropractor’s office, I wonder if this is available as a poster somewhere, and I wonder who wrote it. I’ll update this post if I find anything.

The Pragmatics of Electric Cars

Biodiesel, fuel cells, hydrogen combustion — what do they have in common, besides the hype? They need painful, massive overhauls of the way we get our personal transportation moving. The guys over at Tesla Motors have given all of this a lot of thought and explain why they went with straight-up electric. Here’s a quick look:

• Infrastructure: the so-called “hydrogen economy” is burdened by a few very heavy problems, a significant one being lack of infrastructure (transport and fueling stations). The electrical distribution grid in the US is already in place and far more efficient in total at 92%.
• Production capacity: Electrolysis of hydrogen from water is extremely inefficient, and is most easily produced from natural gas — yet another fossil fuel. Why not just put that electricity right into the grid? The amount of acreage needed for adequate production of biodiesel is staggering, and solar needs only a fraction of the area to produce the same unit of energy.
• Flexibility: Electricity is source-neutral. You can generate it from coal-fired plants, nuclear reactors, hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar panels. The end result is energy that is available everywhere. Oh, and you can put a solar panel on your carport to charge your Roadster. Any excess you generate over what the car needs gets credited to your electric bill. Imagine being payed to drive your car around.
• Net total emission reduction: using one step from source fuel to electricity means that even though the emissions are “shifted,” they are still greatly reduced. In addition, new technology from a Georgia company promises to handle that last pollutant from coal-fired plants: carbon dioxide. Scrubbers take the CO₂ from the smokestack and turn it into crop fertilizer, sequestering the carbon dioxide. And it’s easier to reduce pollutants at a relative few power plant smokestacks than it is at millions of exhaust pipes.
• “A world of 100% hybrid vehicles is still 100% addicted to oil.” — Mark Eberhard, CEO Tesla Motors. Hybrids may be a viable stepping stone to independence from fossil fuels, but they are not the answer to that independence. More pros and cons of hybrids are in the article “Hybrids, Plug-in or Otherwise” at Tesla Motors’s site.

Tesla has come along and shown us that you can build an all-electric car with performance, in this case better than most gasoline automobiles, and have the range of gasoline-powered cars. The technology that is enabling this more than anything is the lithium-ion rechargeable battery, just like in your laptop or iPod. Though auto aficionados are already well aware of the Tesla Roadster, Tesla has yet to make themselves known to the general public, great press coverage notwithstanding. That will change when Tesla’s family sedan appears in 2008-2009. I have a hunch that they’ll sell out of those too, and suddenly GM, Ford, and all the rest will stop wasting time with natural gas, hybrid systems, and fuel cell automobiles for the general car buyer. That day can’t come soon enough. Wanna know more? Check the Tesla Motors White Papers and read “The 21st Century Electric Car” (PDF).

Maker Nerd Dream: The CarveWright Woodworking System

First go here: The CarveWright Woodworking System. I’ll wait. If you’re a CNC nerd, be sure you have a towel handy, because you’re gonna drool. Back? Did you read how the guys that make this thing are ex-NASA robotics engineers? Did you watch the video and see how it carves amazing detailed and intricate designs? Did you download the free trial software and design a few things of your own? Do you want one now? The final blow for me was when I went to that download page. I had first seen the machine rebranded as the Sears Craftsman CompuCarve, and noted that it was said to support Windows only. But when I went to the CarveWright site, I noticed a little prompt for PC or Mac on the download page. I figured they were gauging interest. I was blown away when I saw that Mac Disk Image (.dmg) file started downloading. But I didn’t believe it. Maybe it was a Windows installer wrapped in a .dmg, for us dual-boot Intel Mac users. I was wrong — it’s all Mac, baby. I fired up the program and started playing with the library of designs. The software is completely intuitive and it looks to be extremely powerful. In addition to the library of designs, you can create your own using the built-in lines, rectangles, circles and spirals. There’s a type tool as well! You can drill holes and route edges, create 3D pattern fills over areas. The hardware is impressive as well, though obviously if you don’t have it in front of you, you can’t play with it. The specs look amazing: It carves soft materials like wood and plastic, but not glass, stone, metals, ceramics, or concrete. It handles work pieces up to 14 inches wide, 5 inches thick, and 12 feet long. It has bit adapters that let you use almost any 1/2- or 1/4-inch bit. It will cut your work piece to size if your design is smaller than the piece of stock. There’s even a freakin’ probe device you can use to copy existing carved items — say to reproduce an antique moulding! I haven’t yet researched how fast the CarveWright does its thing, but I won’t begrudge it for taking a while. That little bit inside has a lot of work to do, and no doubt large pieces would take quite a while to complete. Considering that I don’t have the skills to carve even a small 4″ × 5″ item to save my life, I can deal with the wait. So now I’m off to see what other cool things you can do with it, especially to see how to create more advanced designes. I’d love to use this to make carved panels with Buddha images for myself and as gifts for friends. Since it cuts too, maybe I could use it to build parts for that R2-D2 Astromech I wanted to build a couple of years ago — but couldn't get into because of the amount of custom CNC work needed. I’m thrilled to see a relatively affordable CNC device for the mass market. So many geeks, in addition to spending inordinate amounts of time not watching TV, really enjoy creating things. Physical, touchable things. This device lets talented, creative people create physical items that before they couldn't even attempt. How cool is that?