from the desk of stinkpot

i got to meet lee lynd today and see him talk at the mit energy initiative colloquium. he’s one of the big dudes, it seems, in bioenergy. he co-leads a small consortia of government and academic labs aimed at producing energy from biomass (if i recall correctly).

he gave a pretty broad, policy-level talk on the future of bioenergy, specifically on the production of ethanol from biomass. what was really interesting was how upbeat he was; this was the first energy talk i’ve ever heard that didn’t say the world was going to end soon. in fact, lynd even claims that with only incremental advances in current technology, the US will in the relatively near future be able to rely on biomass-produced ethanol as a source of transportation fuel. since his talk was so general, it was difficult to evaluate how outlandish a statement that was. nonetheless, it was reassuring that his projections didn’t require any miracles eof science.

and, i thought he cited a nice quote for engineers:

If engineering is the application of science for human benefit, then the engineer must be a student of not only the application of science, but of human benefit as well. [John Prausnitz]

i hope our prez has thought this energy thing through. then again, i really shouldn’t worry, since everything his administration has done so far has been meticulously planned out.

Diplomatically, Mr. Bush’s ambitious call for the replacement of 75 percent of the United States’ Mideast oil imports with ethanol and other energy sources by 2025 upset Saudi Arabia, the main American oil supplier in the Persian Gulf. In an interview on Wednesday, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Turki al-Faisal, said he would have to ask Mr. Bush’s office “what he exactly meant by that.”

[link].

over the past couple of days, i’ve been trying to follow the fracas surrounding the publication of an inflammatory cartoon over in denmark. it seems that a danish newspaper has managed to offend several hundred million muslims by publishing a caricature of mohammed. this was upsetting for two reasons: 1) muslims consider it blasphemous to depict mohammed in any way; 2) the cartoon placed a very visible bomb in mohammed’s turban. (predictably, the mainstream news outlets neglect to reprint the cartoon – i think i’ve found a copy of it here.)

understandably, several muslim nations were outraged and the newspaper that published the cartoon was forced to issue an apology. but what makes this all really interesting is that several muslim nations have called for the danish government to apologize or at least publicly chastise the newspaper as well. of course, the danes have demurred, arguing that to do so would infringe on danish free speech.

people have gotten quite worked up about this. there have been big protests in the middle east. ironically, a crowd in saudi arabia even beat two danish workers.

meanwhile, a handful of european newspapers in france, germany, the netherlands, italy, spain and switzerland, incensed at muslim demands to curtail free speech, have gone ahead and reprinted the cartoons. (one editor just got sacked for having done so – turns out the paper is owned by an egyptian.)

it’s fascinating watching two huge cultures clash over fundamental differences in the supremacy of secularism or religion; this is a great example of two entire populations not comprehending how or why the other one thinks the way it does. i hope some good can come out of the uproar and people will walk away with at a little bit more understanding about one another.

although, i have to admit, i think the europeans are in the right. as a couple of commentators have pointed out: there are never any official denunciations from the middle east when al-jazeera broadcasts tapes made by terrorists calling for the west’s destruction. or when religious clerics say crazy “anti-zionist” things. to demand an official response when they are offended, however, makes the muslims look a bit hypocritical.

but what i consider to be really unfortunate is that this kind of event only reinforces an increasingly common western view that all muslims are just religious fanatics. as usual, i’m sure only a fraction of muslims have staged any real protests; they’re they ones though that make it on cnn and end up speaking for their entire religion. the majority of muslims with a more reasonable take on things just go unheard and will be unbeknownst to the west.

as usual, watching a bush state of the union address was an exercise in disbelief and frustration.

nevertheless, i really can’t be displeased with the prez’s remarks that science + innovation will sustain american economic dominance … and that he’s upping research funding (hopefully this year, they’ll increase funding faster than the inflation rate). and, it was nice to see that he at least acknowledged that math and science need to be emphasized in schools – sadly, it seems that many americans (and europeans!) could stand a little more scientific training.

and, of course, i got pretty excited when the prez talked about ending “america’s addiction to oil.” christina and i both had to lift our jaws off of our couch when we heard the texan oil baron say that. the guy sounded like an environmentalist for chrissakes. in any case, hearing that he wants to up the DoE research budget by something like 20% makes me giddy; my current lab just submitted a grant proposal to the DoE for work on improving ethanol production from cellulose.

nonetheless, the prez did speak for 40 minutes on “terror” and only about 5 on energy. which shouldn’t be confusing at all, given that none of the regimes producing terrorists derive revenue from oil. heh, this editorialist really didn’t mind either.

i also wanted to mention that i thought the prez omitted discussing a big national threat in his speech tonight: obesity. (nick kristof got me thinking of it yesterday) seriously – think about about how many americans have been killed in the past 10 years by “the terrorists.” then, consider how many americans have been killed by obesity and its effects (i.e. diabetes and heart disease) over the past decade. not even close.

for people who’ve been over to my dorm or apartment and seen the music playing in the shower, i’ve made some quick notes on how to build your own shower server.

they’re here.

upon rereading them, i’ve realized that they assume familiarity with the unix command line. if you’re really interesting in building your own music server but are new to the command line, feel free to fire me some e-mails – i’ll be happy to provide much more detailed intstructions.

talk about david vs. goliath – the enemy is among the most powerful companies, ever. the insanity! exxon made $36 billion in profit in 2005 – the largest annual net income in history for an american company. last quarter alone, they brought in $99 billion in revenue. the scale of these numbers is mind-boggling.

it really isn’t hard to see why change will be a hard fight.

alternative energy articles keep making mainstream news outlets.

i just came across this suprisingly lengthy piece on cnn money about the prospects of ethanol as a gasoline substitute. there’s a lot of cheerleading in the article, and unfortunately, not much serious discussion about real hurdles to overcome, such as overall efficiency (i.e. do you spend more energy watering/fertilizing/harvesting/refining ethanol sources than you get out of burning the ethanol itself?) nevertheless, a nice read.

i was really excited to read tom friedman’s editorial calling for a change in american energy policies the other day in the nytimes. [for those of you who haven't figured out a way yet to sneak onto times select, i've put a transcript of the article at stinkpot.afraid.org_colon_8080_slash_friedman_dot_html, at least until i get an angry letter from the nytimes.]

although the article is a bit all over the place, i’m still relieved that prominent thinkers like friedman are starting to recognize that america needs to rethink its fossil-fuel-based energy economy. oil is growing scarcer as china and india continue to strengthen, meaning we’ll increasingly have to stuff even more money into the pockets often hostile petrol-regimes. coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel – fumes from burning it cause acid rain and a disproportionate percentage of greenhouse gases.

nonetheless, we’re just so dependent on these fuels. oil for instance, puts gas in our cars, provides reagents for making plastics, and serves as a building block for commercial fertilizers. coal is used to generate electricity in over half this country’s power plants. without these things, the american economy would grind to a halt. which is why, as friedman points out, the daunting process of breaking free from fossil-fuel energy sources should be seen not as a potential burden, but as a national opportunity – a chance for our nation to reassert its greatness in science and engineering [cue national anthem].

still, i don’t think it’s unduly cynical of me not to expect any real energy policy changes in the near future, for several reasons:

1) lobbying power. oil companies are rich and as the abramoff case so well illustrates, money buys influence. renewable energy companies (which are still in their infancy) aren’t nearly as well off. and since it’s tricky to turn a profit selling nothing, you can imagine that the conservationists are having an even harder time getting heard.

2) infrastructure and cost. oil companies have spent billions setting up the current oil distribution networks – think of all those oil wells, oil tankers, oil refineries, gas stations, etc. it won’t be easy to convince oil companies to take an absurdly profitable industry and adopt a still unpaid for and unproven set of technologies. high costs are also the reason why natural gas, which is cleaner than coal and more abundant than oil, is having a hard time taking off – it costs a crapload of money to ship and refine natural gas. similarly, coal and the electricity it produces is very cheap, since coal is so abundant here in the US. in fact, i believe the US has the largest coal reserves in the world.

3) renewable technology is not yet cost-effective. for instance, you’d have to drive a hybrid car for quite some time (8 years) to make back the added cost of a hybrid engine. and, from what i’ve been reading here (highly recommended reading, btw), it appears that solar panels and wind turbines are usually not profitable without government subsidy.

4) the whole global warming thing. you see articles like this or that all the time nowadays and figure that global warming* must be going on. yet, after actually hearing a columbia prof. of paleoclimatology talk last year, i take these predictions with a grain of salt. the gist of his lecture was that yes, the earth is heating up. [greenpeace 1, bushies 0]. but, this kind of thing does happen fairly regularly in history – every couple tens of thousands of years or so. [greenpeace 1, bushies 1]. the latest episode of heating, however, has been the fastest measured (going off of ancient ice core readings, which date back something like 200,000 years!) he ultimately concluded that although humanity probably has contributed to recent climate events, some natural climate cycle is also likely to have played a strong role. given nature’s involvement and the extent to which the climate has already changed, he gloomily predicted that even if mankind was somehow able to immediately end greenhouse gas emissions, global warming would probably proceed anyway. and, if that wasn’t enough of a kick in the balls, he reminded anyone who drove a hybrid car that the amount of pollution they reduced annually by having a more efficient car was more than compensated for by the pollution they caused by taking just one trans-continental airline flight.

(that paleoclimatologist gave a really awesome talk. in spite of this, the first question during the Q&A came from some some halfwit asking about “the day after tomorrow.”)

* i’ve always though global warming was a terrible name for the phenomenon. they should’ve branded it “global climate instability” ‘cuz not everywhere is getting warmer – some places are predicted to get cooler!

just a stunning internet video clip. in all of 30 seconds, this clip manages to be hilarious, puzzling, offensive, and finally, tastelessly shocking.

man, i really need to grow up and stop posting this crap.

lately, i’ve come across a bunch of stories where victims of thefts or scams have been using the internet to get a little vengeance.

here’s a novel way with preventing a stolen laptop from getting sold on ebay.

this guy gives one of those nigerian scammers what he deserves (the e-mail transcript is a fun read).

and of course, there was the huge priceritephoto saga recently, where one abused customer single-handedly brought down one of those shifty brooklyn camera internet stores.

[edit] for completeness, i thought i’d add a link to what’s probably the most famous scambaiting story on the web.