Like, whatever

Thanks, Mum:

The solution to the impending energy "crisis" lies deep.

Several thousand feet deep, actually.

I should clarify something first: the energy crisis about which your resident harbinger of doom prophesies will never come, hence the quotation marks in the title. I know this because I'm not a moron. Every few weeks I see articles on websites like PhysOrg.com heralding vast improvements and breakthroughs in alternative energy research.

For example, the first photovoltaic cells (converting sunlight directly to electricity), developed in the 1880s, were about 1% efficient; in comparison, the newest solar cells are capable of 40% efficiency and higher. Another example is a recent breakthrough in fuel cell technology, allowing scientists to extract pure hydrogen from liquid water using an aluminum-gallium alloy as a catalyst. In essence this means liquid water may replace liquid hydrogen as a fuel source.

Anyway.

Companies like Exxon Mobil, posting $12 billion QUARTERLY profits, and Royal Dutch Shell, raking in an average of $3 million per HOUR, will not soon loosen their grip on the trillions of dollars still to be made in the billions of barrels of oil sitting underground, and they will do everything in their power to retard or preclude entirely the emergence of viable, alternative sources of energy. This is probably why most people, especially here in the United States, don't hear much about developments in these venues outside of highly specialized news outlets like PhysOrg.com.

Having said all of this, I now return to my admittedly vague allusion beginning this article. In my opinion, the answer to all of our energy problems is not solar, wind, nuclear, or even my beloved fuel cells, but rather the least publicized of all the alternative energy sources - geothermal. MIT recently published a massive report concerning the prospects of geothermal energy; I'm only a few pages into it, but I hardly expect anybody else to read it in its entirety as I plan to do, so I'll highlight a few interesting points contained within this e-Tome:

• The concept of geothermal energy harvesting is very simple. Superheated water located several thousand feet below the earth's surface is used to drive steam turbines, generating electricity. The steam cools and condenses after it passes through the turbines, and it is collected and piped back to its source in the earth, where it is naturally reheated and sent through the cycle again and again.
• Geothermal power plants have virtually no environmental footprint
• Based on rough estimates, the amount of geothermal energy available in the UNITED STATES ALONE could supply all of humanity's annual energy needs for the next 30,000 years
  
• We already have the technology available to dig tunnels deep enough to reach geothermal hot spots, each of which would cost somewhere between $10 and $15 million (compared to the $3 billion it costs to build a nuclear power plant, plus the $500 million to decommission it at the end of its life)

I also learned on the History Channel yesterday that a geothermal plant supplies power for about 20,000 households in Reno, NV. Pretty cool. I didn't think the U.S. had any commercial geothermal plants at all.

As for mobile power (i.e. cars), they'll all be running on rechargeable batteries soon enough, so we'll be indirectly powering them with electricity anyway.

So yeah. Geothermal will solve all of our problems. We don't need the sun, wind or uranium-235, and we sure as heck don't need oil. Even if one of these energy sources proves to be completely unfeasible financially, there are so many other options to choose from that we'll hardly feel any setback at all. We are certainly selfish, greedy, and collectively stupid creatures by nature, but we're also incredibly adaptive, and that, friends, is why I have no worries about the future.

John Gibson is a giant turd sandwich.

I am sure people have said worse things than John Gibson did in the clip linked below, but until I hear them, he will officially remain the smelliest turd sandwich on the planet.

• The original Daily Show clip aired 20 Sept. 2001
  
• John Gibson's response (scroll down a bit to hear the audio clip)
  
• Keith Olbermann's response to John Gibson

Stephen King's take on Mrs. Rowling's little tale

A fascinating read. I wish I understood books the way he does.

Among the greatest things Jon Stewart has ever said

Here's the thing, Mr. President: people that use the phrase "in other words" think you don't understand what they're saying. We understand what you're saying; the look on our face isn't confusion... it's disbelief. In other words, we understand - we just don't &!$#ing get it.

At least your next-door neighbor hasn't been dead for 103 years

Our biotech grad student got an e-mail from one of her friends who just started graduate school at UNT in Denton. He moved into an apartment this weekend and discovered that his backyard is, in fact, a graveyard.

Poker face test #2

More Tom and Ray hilarity.

Kurdish politicians don't act like children

I was reading a few minutes ago on the BBC that a whole bunch of Kurds were elected into the Turkish parliament for the first time in almost 20 years. I came across this quote from a newly elected Kurdish MP:

In our strategy we still have lots of criticisms of the rules because they are completely undemocratic rules, but anyway until we change them we will follow them.

Wow. I certainly don't hear things like that very often.

On J.S. Bach's French Suites (BWV 812-817), and Norwegian commandos

So as I'm slowly, slowly learning how to play Robert Schumann's behemoth of a piano concerto, I decided to tackle a few side projects that would not make me feel like a total failure. I was listening to Glenn Gould play J.S. Bach's French Suites when I suddenly realized that some of them actually aren't too difficult to play. Once again, imslp.org came to the rescue, and I found sheet music for every one of them. I started with Menuet I and II of Suite No. 1 since they're fairly slowly paced, and I can already play them fairly decently.

It wasn't until I started playing them myself that I realized just how mesmerizing these suites actually are. I think it's because Bach wrote nearly all of them in such a way that the melody of the song shifts quickly and seamlessly back and forth between the left and right hands. Maybe there's more to it than that, but that's the extent of my analytical ability.

Also, I was reading in Making of the Atomic Bomb a few days ago that the real reason the Nazis during World War II failed to develop an atomic bomb before the Allies was not because the Allies were quicker, but rather because of a handful of Norwegian commandos who twice sabotaged Nazi efforts to obtain deuterium with which to build their bomb.

The first time I think was in 1939, when the Nazis first commandeered a dam in Sweden that produced small amounts of deuterium as a by-product. They didn't think to guard it very well, and a single commando snuck in and destroyed the tanks containing several gallons of heavy water with some very small explosives (the few guards who were present didn't even hear it). That set the Nazis back several months.

The second instance was in 1943. The dam was reinforced with many more guards, precluding the possibility of a second such intrusion. Instead, another Norwegian commando waited for the Nazis to load the tanks of deuterium onto a boat to ship acrosss some body of water (can't remember which one). He snuck onto the boat, planted a few charges in the hull, snuck out and detonated them, which punched large holes in the bottom of the boat, sinking it. After that incident the Nazis permanently abandoned their efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

So the moral of the story is, the next time you see a Norwegian commando, thank him that you're not speaking German.

God bless America... and especially Oklahoma

This is why I am so proud go to school in Oklahoma.