Deciding To Be Excellent

One of my friends in Grade school was a notorious prankster. He was once seen on the Kansas City evening news, explaining to a reporter how he had stopped dozens of motorists on the highway with a wallet he’d attached to a fishing line. I recently remembered him when at the entrance to a grocery store; I discovered the quarter I tried to pick up had been glued to the pavement. I enjoyed an odd conflux of anger and amusement over this, but still hesitated before kicking it loose. I don’t believe there is much to be gained these days by making one feel like a sucker.

True it is, that luck may not be in the ascendency these days, but I fear that the collective politic that is America, has been too obsessively trying to pick up that quarter.

Despite the obvious ironic humor, of watching our congressmen grill Chrysler and GM executives for their “irresponsible spending”, we don’t need to play the fool anymore. The housing market has nearly collapsed, the Fed drops its rate to 1%, but I still can’t get my mortgage down from what I paid 3 years ago. The banks are basically getting their bail outs just to stay in business.

Excepting the price of gasoline, we’re not really getting many breaks, nor do I expect much “bail out” for us within the next few years.

The automotive giants (only the giants can play this game) are petitioning congress for 35 billion dollars, also to stay in business. Why don’t they just give all of us Americans, $35,000 dollars to go out and buy a brand new American automobile? That should ‘fix’ things.

The gimmicks of course, are the one-dollar salaries (after last years 20 times salary bonuses), using a commercial airliner, and driving a hybrid car to Capitol Hill. The real gaps with this industry lie primarily in bloated labor costs (about 40 % more than Japan), the recent higher gasoline costs, and extended losses in the value of the American Dollar. Yep, its true here as well, guess who gets millions of dollars in handouts from the very industries holding their hands out now to congress within the last two months?
Answer: Our good old congressional and senatorial reps are looking pretty fat and happy these days. Their silly thespian appeals notwithstanding, fewer people will continue to accept explanations for government excess as the pain threshold from this recession ratchets up notch after notch. One can almost hear this supernatural clicking sound, like the pawl on an Inquisitor’s winch. “Confess! Confess you self-reliant infidel! Only the government can save you! You are nothing without your government!”

“No! Never! I well never accept a government bail out! Never!”

I digress once again.

Please accept my apologies for this insipid detour into the macabre.

But I’m not here to complain. I merely see opportunity knocking on our American doors. Truth is an amazing thing. No matter how confused we may get, no matter how trifling it seems to be when times are easy, it waits for us to return, eon upon eon. And, not to be too surprised, some of us do come back after our defeats, for another look now and then at TRUTH.

I see the opportunity for “change”, now to abound more before the specter of collapse than during our lazier days of plenty.

Before our sine wave can ascend, it must pass zero, descend into the trough of its minimum – and then begin anew. When we have exhausted ourselves of failure, success will still be a viable option.
Not to rant, consider what already waits in the wings of progress:

I frequent the patent archives as an inventor and keep up pretty well with the technical science literature. I invite you to Google and flip through 30 or so recent issues of Scientific American.

During the last fifty years, Americans have paid out trillions of dollars into a vast nuclear defense system. A thimble full of Plutonium ‘sells’ for about one hundred thousand dollars. About 20 of these can go into a warhead/warheads, that goes into a rocket, that is serviced by about 100 highly paid people a year and . . . whoopee dingo; that’s a lot of money!

The American taxpayer saves the world from communism, our politicians sign treaties to dismantle thousands of warheads and lots of the left over plutonium then goes into ‘peaceful’ domestic nuclear power production.

First the taxpayer pays for the plutonium, the rockets, the guidance systems, the politicians who signed the treaties, the air force that protects and maintains the systems . . . and then . . . then we pay again for the power generated from the plutonium we already bought!

We also pay for the disposal of toxic radioactive isotopes in the burial grounds largely paid for by the defense department that uses these too . . . and . . . nearly every American still buys the same dumpy excuse . . . that we are using up all of our worlds resources . . . that mankind seems an alien on his own planet, that we must somehow prioritize our worth . . . based on our ‘carbon foot print’ . . . to get at the back of the food chain somewhere behind polar bears and sharks, so that Mommy Earth, Gia, cosmic consciousness, Al Gore (or lengthen the list how you may) will be contented to see that humanity at large . . .

Just does NOT get too UPPITY.

Well here is an ‘UPPITY’ fact.

There is no energy shortage.

I love oil and coal and biodiesel, etc., but . . . Thorium (what the heck is Thorium!?) costs about $1 per pound. It is cheaper than lead and though not fissionable, is a nuclear-fertile element. A small seed of fissionable uranium emits neutrons, which Thorium then absorbs, then transmutes into Uranium 233 which then feeds more neutrons into a chain reaction of further transmutations of other Thorium/Uranium atoms, etc.

A reactor with only a ton of Thorium can produce a billion watts of power for at least a year. We have enough Thorium in the United States for another one hundred and sixty million years (by then we should have evolved and be using anti-matter space drives)

Pound for pound, Thorium (very cheap stuff) is capable of producing more energy than either uranium or plutonium (very expensive stuff).

Well, the taxpayer helped pay for the research reactors that tried the thorium fuel cycle and also paid universities (federal grants) for much of the research on the new intrinsically stabilized pebble reactors that Thorium could be used in. And, Thorium radioactive waste is very small compared to uranium and plutonium waste. Thorium is not dangerous to handle like Uranium and Plutonium. Thorium would be of no use to a terrorist. It would lower the average operating costs of even the cheapest utility by at least 45%.

Don’t you think the American taxpayer should get that 45% decrease in his utility bills?

I do.

Habitable land is supposed to comprise a mere 7 million square miles (only about 12 percent of the worlds actual land mass). This includes cities, farms, amusement parks and highways. Planet Earth currently sustains about 6 billion people with less than half of its farm land being used effectively (some of us eat too much too) and our planet has twice as much water than land on its surface.

Do we really need all these deserts to be so big?

My Grandparents lived in a small farming town in the middle of the Nevada Desert. Fallon is apt testament to the proposition that almost anything will grow in an arid environment when supplied with water. The Lahontin water project diverted some of the Carson River which made this town possible. The Carson river lies on the dry east side of the Sierra mountains and contributes only a fraction in volume compared to other water projects, yet there are the Walker, Lahontin and Pyramid lakes within a two hour drive of Fallon.

Today, the discovery of carbon nanotubes has spawned research into many composite super materials, chemical detection systems and . . .

Ttaah daaahh! (drum roll, cymbal snap, thud!)

One hundred times more efficient osmotic separating barriers!

With the new carbon nanotube separation technology, a desalination plant the size of a high school gymnasium, could provide a river of absolutely salt-free, pure water, the size of which would rival the Colorado river and could be supplied from virtually any shoreline in the United States.

Water, the staff of life, (all life, including polar bears) could be pumped inland with Thorium fueled power plants (which need the cooling anyway). There is no square inch of land on this planet that needs go to waste. Fresh water streams could be multiplied and at last . . . high volume toilets that can really flush, should be affordable and guilt free . . . once again!

Then we have the automobile:

Batteries are also in the ascendency these days, not because of Washington DC, but because of clear thinking productive folks who are prone to more scientific efforts.

Most battery-powered cars don’t deserve to be on the highways. After conventional electric cars destroy 10% in rectifying alternating current into DC current, 10 % of the electricity in charging losses and then throwing another 10 % away in discharge losses, any righteous feeling one had about not polluting because he drives an electric car, will get a sound slap in the face with these facts:

Conventional Utilities convert about 53% of their coal fired plants into electricity, then electrical losses reach an average of 8% due to transmission losses in the power grid, then the batteries and charging system loose 30% of the remaining 45% electricity delivered from the utilities . . . thus rendering the current electric car at a measly 15% efficiency (which is a little less efficient than a well tuned model T).

Modern gas combustion automobiles can do 28% efficiency with fuel injection and about 33% (may old Otto reign supreme) with diesel. And then there is the lead, cadmium, nickel hydride, or whatever the batteries were made of, that has to be recycled or land filled.

Oops! I thought electric cars were a GOOD thing! This stuff is really toxic! (Ralph Nader should be ashamed of his pompous, Washington DC, congressional, do gooder, ass!) Who new?

Honestly, it is really hard to get good news out into the media these days.

Well, surprise!

Batteries may still improve the automobile very soon. Production batteries representing a new echelon of technology have been entering the commercial horizon, recently demonstrating very high efficiencies, longer charging life, growing power densities and shortening charging times down to within 6 to 9 minutes (about the time it takes to fill your car now with gasoline).

Discoveries in laboratories are proving battery power densities are approaching 2400 watt-hours per kilogram (Los Alamos laboratories, also funded with tax payer money, dangles this prize). These are not power densities better than gasoline or diesel, but after removing large heavy transmissions, replacing power conditioned electric motors for both the brakes and drive systems inside the wheels of a car and integrating the heavy battery source into a low CG automobile chassis, you have parity with even the best automobiles now in production.

But . . . we don’t now have an electrical power distribution system equal to this task.

Did I mention that a small pebble reactor with Thorium fuel could easily fit into the same space as an underground gas station fuel tank? Well it’s true. What a delicious fact aye?

Should Americans pay less for their automobiles? Shouldn’t we be less guilt ridden concerning what a lousy species we are? Shouldn’t we kick the louse of a representative we have sitting in congress, the senate and . . . the white house, right out on his keister?

Someone of conscience should serve us, the taxpayer, with far more due diligence and mindful humility. We do share some of the blame for the despots we have. VOTE smarter next time! Get rid of that guy who so easily used ten times the budgeted millions on the ‘visitor center’, so he wouldn’t have to “smell” us taxpaying ‘visitors’ stinking up his legislative burrow. Who votes for these people?

You should be spanked!

Shouldn’t we spend less of our taxpayer money protecting all the democracies of the world for free (including over 100,000 military personnel in Europe) and make Europe pay for it? After all, defending the world from evil has hurt American competitiveness with a higher tax burden. Shouldn’t we be able to “change” ( yes Obama, may Allah be praised) our destiny into a more favorable situation? I don’t see any Germans or Frenchmen stationed here to protect me from invaders, terrorists or riots.

Why do Americans have to keep taking crap from these neighbors . . . about how arrogant we are . . . how wasteful . . . how polluting?

Whenever I introduce a new invention (all inventors face this) I hear the same thing over and over. “This goes against an embedded technology”. While this is generally true, take this brief look at history:

The car went up against the ‘embedded’ horse. The Airplane went up against the ‘embedded’ car and the American citizen needs to believe it can disrupt any problem that is ‘embedded’ from the fabric of our existence.

We are NOT embedded!

We are Americans!

We decide to fix things!

We decided to kill Hitler and Saddam Hussein!

We decided to go to the moon.

We decided to stop Communism . . .

Embedded?

We can decide to be . . .

EXCELLENT!

Milton