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phil.gs › Likes
Brain will be battlefield of future, warns US intelligence report - http://www.kurzweilai.net/news...
phil.gs liked this
WordPress Tips + Things You Can Do After Installing Wordpress - http://www.labnol.org/interne...
phil.gs liked this
Rush on the Colbert Report - http://www.youtube.com/index...
phil.gs liked this
Awesome! Still one of the best concerts I've been to. Also, my wife and I had a conversation on our second date that went something like this. Me: "I used to listen to a lot of Rush." Her: "Did you play Dungeons and Dragons?" Me: <awkward silence>. At least she can't say she didn't know what she was in for! :)
- phil.gs
This interview was hilarious, but the one bad thing was that they cut off right in the middle of the song. I think some producer screwed up and couldn't watch the clock properly.
- Tim Finucane
Live Search with Quicksilver Style - http://orderedlist.com/article...
phil.gs liked this
It's a very cool technique, but I'm not sure non-geeks will immediately grok it, potentially limiting it's usefulness.
- phil.gs
The Fight to End Aging Gains Legitimacy and Funding - http://www.wired.com/medtech...
phil.gs liked this
Open the Future: SimFuture(s) - http://www.openthefuture.com/2008...
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phil.gs, Amit Patel and Ray Grieselhuber liked this
"I've long been a fan of the use of games and sims as a way of working through future-facing issues. The big advantage of games as a foresight device is the capacity to fail in interesting ways: you can try out different, even bizarre, strategies for success, and do so without worry of harming yourself or others. It's a form of rehearsal, a way to understand the ways in which the present may be manipulated to create a desirable tomorrow. Three interesting examples of simulations as rehearsal popped up on my radar recently."
- Jason Wehmhoener
The Vertical Farm Project - Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond | www.verticalfarm.com - http://www.verticalfarm.com/Default...
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Xavi, Krishnan Subramanian, Carlin and 26 other people liked this
"By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?"
- Jason Wehmhoener
Where would the light come from?
- John μller
Depends on the design, but the light problem is solved by windows, light pipes, low-light crop varietals, and yes, artificial light (typically low pressure sodium). Green roofs seem like a more obvious win to me, but vertical farms can be built in one place with centralized infrastructure and maintenance without convincing hundreds of property owners to green their roofs.
- ⓞnor
I'd love to see a business plan. Urban property isn't cheap, and the building and infrastructure is nothing to sneeze at either. That being said, I agree that it seems like a necessary step.
- Jason Wehmhoener
Plants only need certain wavelengths of light; you need some way to take broad spectrum solar energy and convert it to just the frequencies the plants need, and that'd allow you to take the light falling on the Earth (X m^2) and turn it into enough red light for N floors of plants (X*N m^2). I've pondered vertical farms before but always thought they'd go underground, so that the surface could remain scenic, for tourism.
- Amit Patel
Amit, what do X and m represent? How does the conversion to red light increase efficiency? Any pointers to the appropriate physics I should be studying? I'd also be curious to know about the nutrition and plant health impact of red light vs. broad spectrum light.
- Jason Wehmhoener
By the way, the "Presentations" page on the site has a bit of detailed info http://www.verticalfarm.com/Present...
- Jason Wehmhoener
I contacted Dr. Despommier (maintainer of verticalfarm.com) asking for links to any research regarding cost and production estimates and he replied "not yet, it's still an embryo!"
- Jason Wehmhoener
There are plans to build a 30-story farm here in Vegas... http://gizmodo.com/345550...
- Chris Reed
Jason, X is the surface area you're using on agriculture. If you replace a farm with an N story farm, you get N times as much food (roughly), but you have 1/Nth as much light from the sun. (Background: my scifi scenario was replacing ALL farms on the Earth with underground farms.)
- Amit Patel
Plants use red and blue (http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$depart...) but not green, infrared, ultraviolet, and all the other light the sun sends out, so we just need to convert it to red/blue. You may not even need both red and blue all the time. So even though you have 1/Nth as much light, if you look at the total energy we get from the sun vs. the amount of light the plant really needs, you can choose N to match that ratio, so that you don't need nuclear/coal/oil for added energy.
- Amit Patel
I'm not familiar with any techniques for efficiently changing the color of light.
- ⓞnor
A little bit more detail on the Las Vegas vertical farm: http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1... "Although the project initial cost is high at $200 million, with annual revenue of $25 million from produce and another $15 million from tourists the 30 story vertical farm would be about as profitable as a casino with operating expenses only being about $6 million a year."
- Jason Wehmhoener
Amit, what I get out of that Alberta dep of agriculture article is that plants actually need fairly broad spectrum light in order to be healthy (red and blue are not next to each other on the spectrum).
- Jason Wehmhoener
I think I'm going to agree with @nor: we need green roofs everywhere now. Vertical farms can follow once business models have been established by adventurous early market leaders. (In other words: let's wait and see if this Las Vegas thing pans out)
- Jason Wehmhoener
Jason, I was trying to compare sun spectrum (http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images...) to what plants need (http://www.uic.edu/classes...) and got the impression that there's a lot of energy in green, plus a lot of energy at longer wavelengths that we should be able to harness. I'm a little surprised by the Vertical Farms project though; it didn't seem feasible to me for another 300 years.
- Amit Patel
http://www.newscientist.com/article... talks about photonic crystals, which can be used to convert wide band light to narrow bands without loss of energy. Making photonic crystals seems to be a nanotech process, but the article is from 2003 so perhaps there have been simplifications since then. Worth a deeper look! :-)
- Jason Wehmhoener
Alex Chiu (the immortality ring guy) mentions skyscraper farms on his site: http://www.alexchiu.com/philoso...
- Laurence Gonsalves
The whole discussion about not wasting green light reminds me of an SF story I read a year or two ago (probably in either Asimov's or Analog) where plants were genetically modified to make use of the full solar spectrum. This resulted in them having black leaves.
- Laurence Gonsalves
The color of plants on other worlds: http://www.sciam.com/article...
- Jason Wehmhoener
It's funny, you gotta admit - http://img409.imageshack.us/my...
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Bob, Mack D. Male, TranceMist and 32 other people liked this
Nice.
- Gordon Swaby
from Alert Thingy
not so funny as much as it's truthful ...nahhhh that's funny :)
- John Blanton
from twhirl
Funny indeed, that comment from John is too :)
- directeur
Seriously! At $30/month, for 2 years, it's like you're buying more than one iPhone.
- flammable
AT&T is the only reason why I do not have an iPhone.
- TranceMist
Oil Editorial by BP CEO - http://paul.kedrosky.com/archive...
Magnus Jonsson, edythe, carson mehl and 7 other people liked this
This editorial seems to be saying "please let us pump more oil, please please please, and if you could get rid of those pesky regulations, thx". Point two uses a strawman of total hydrocarbon depletion to distract from the very real concern of peak oil production. I'm not even sure what point three is trying to say, except to vaguely pooh-pooh renewable energy. Basically, this is just...
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- ⓞnor
how can we even consider planning advice from oil barons? don't they have a vested interest? don't they want us to keep giving them a return on their invested capital?
- ben rogers
from twhirl
That's like saying "How can we take technology advice from Web 2.0 professionals?"
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Anyone who really wants to stick it to big oil should realize that rhetoric won't do any good. Everyone needs to do what they can to reduce demand for the commodity. As long as the demand exists, the oil companies have the responsibility to meet the supply. As demand for oil decreases, the commodity will become less valuable and oil companies will become less profitable. Then they'll have an incentive to move to alternate fuel sources.
- Rob Safuto
@Rob Safuto - Bravo. We have to stop giving our hard earned readies to the people who are poisoning the world in which we live.
- Joe
I don't think it's the oil companies' responsibility to stop us from using oil. It's ours. They sell us what we want to buy. We have to wake up and realize we choose how to live.
- Amit Patel
Carbon tax, plz.
- ⓞnor
Oh yes, brilliant. Let's give our money to the government, because that always solves all our problems. Oil companies don't poison the world we live in any more than your precious spring water bottles do. I'm tired of everyone pretending to be an expert on ecology, economy and peak oil while basing all their "facts" from data found on FromTheWilderness. There is a lot of exciting technological development going on in the oil business, and the peak oil theory has been more or less debunked as a myth.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
I've been a software developer, market designer and strategic analyst in the energy industry for the past decade. I base my opinions on first hand knowledge of the markets. I'll take a carbon tax on fossil fuels over cap-and-trade any day of the week. At least under that model I know what I'm paying and can plan for the extra cost of energy. With carbon taxes I can also adjust my behavior to reduce tax exposure. With cap-and-trade the cost bleeds through via many unpredictable and unavoidable costs.
- Rob Safuto
Rob, I wasn't speaking directly to you with my comment, but if you're speaking in support of a carbon tax, I guess by proxy I am. Carbon taxes are just a sneaky way to introduce re-distribution of wealth schemes that ironically disproportionately inhibit the upward mobility of the lower class.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Also, from the point of view of investing in alternative energy, I really want a stable price floor on carbon-based energy, so I have a predictable market and a solid target to shoot for. If anything, cap-and-trade increases the volatility. (I'll still take cap-and-trade over no greenhouse mitigation at all.)
- ⓞnor
I was just sayin Mark, because there are a lot of people who view the situation from the three minutes a night they hear on the news. What we're headed for is a real mess. Because the northeast has got RGGI on tap which is a regional cap-and-trade program, which would compete with a national program. The uncertainty stunts investment. I'd prefer no tax in favor of using less energy while investing in nuclear, wind, solar and electric cars.
- Rob Safuto
As a side note. There's a live webcast of Google's (yes Google's) plugin electric forum going on right now. http://www.google.org/recharg...
- Rob Safuto
i like this discussion.
- edythe
Personally, I'm all about the alternative energy solutions. I just don't think there should be undue market burdens put in place by the government for us to get there. I completely agree with the CATO institutes analysis on world oil markets, particularly since the analysis I heard several years ago continues to come true. Essentially, once oil reaches the per barrel prices it currently exists at, alternative energy becomes more viable as an investment opportunity....
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
...we're seeing a real shift to investment in this sector not due to ecological evangelists like Gore, not due to whatever damage may or may not be occuring to the environment from carbon emissions, and certainly not due to a peak oil situation. We're seeing the shift occur because there is financial incentive to do so. When the price of a tank of gas rises to a certain point, demand decreases. Artificially playing with that price by the government only takes money out of the pockets of potential ....
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
... greentech/cleantech investors, not to mention joe and jane schmoe.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@Chris, yea they're related since the price of oil is normally quoted in dollars and a large chunk of our oil is produced outside the US. But most of the increase in price is not due to the value of the dollar.
- Kevin D. White
If you don't want the oil companies pumping more oil, don't complain about the gas prices. We need to reduce dependency on oil by using alternative fuels -- no carbon taxes, no windfall / oil company taxes.
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
One of the biggest influences on the price really is speculation. I know it is easy to discount the OPEC answer as the product of people invested in wanting you to believe in their supply, but the amount of index investors speculating the oil commodities is almost equal to the demand increase from China. You can read about it in the .pdf I posted here earlier today (be warned... it's long...) http://friendfeed.com/e...
- Andrew
err... I phrased that wrong, the demand for oil by speculators is almost equal to the demand from China. Not the number of speculators is equal to the number of barrels of oil china is trying to get... which would be an amazing and meaningless coincidence.
- Andrew
Exactly Chris, it's not like we can't get oil right now. I haven't seen gas stations without product to sell. So even if there are slight variations in supply, it can't be enough to justify a more than doubling in the price of oil over the past year.
- Andrew
The speculators are a big part of the problem in my opinion -- it seems they can drive the price up significantly based on their fears, but even if they are wrong the price doesn't seem to come down.
- Shey, Jamaican of FF
The vast majority of oil futures trades are made on behalf of companies (like airlines and shipping companies) who are locking in prices for oil. In short, the real consumers have the most effect on price. Also, for good measure. ExxonMobil paid $105 billion in taxes in 2007, a 44% rate. It would be disastrous to lose that revenue by attempting to nationalize the oil business.
- Rob Safuto
@Mark: You may indeed be right that the current natural price of oil will provide the necessary economic incentives for the creation of alternative energy sources. However, there's still a lot of wiggle room in the statement "undue market burdens". A number of energy sources (oil among them) are well understood to cause harm that is currently ignored by the market (an "externality"), and there's no reason whatsoever to assume that the economic incentives created by high oil prices will favor solely ...
- Joel Webber
... low-carbon alternatives. One way of accounting for an economic externality such as this is to tax the behavior you want to discourage. If we don't account for it in some way, then there is no guarantee that we'll reduce carbon emissions. Any alternative proposal (such as "just let the market sort it out") must define the process that will reduce carbon emissions, or explicitly state that such reduction is not a goal.
- Joel Webber
I'm Voting Republican - http://www.imvotingrepublican.com/
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phil.gs liked this
Cassandra's Reflection - http://www.blog.speculist.com/archive...
phil.gs and Victor Kotusenko liked this
jQuery UI 1.5 - clean API, test your effects, skin any UI widget, this is what next gen looks like - http://www.reddit.com/goto...
phil.gs liked this
Awesome. I loves me some jQuery.
- phil.gs
Dual N-Back Training for Intelligence - http://www.soakyourhead.com/
Victor Kotusenko and phil.gs liked this
Top 10 Things that Math Probability Says About the World - http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~aldous...
Noah Carter, phil.gs, RAPatton and 3 other people liked this
"In an old joke, two men are running, pursued by a grizzly bear. One turns to the other and says "why are we running -- we can't outrun the bear!". The other replies: "I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you!". This thought applies to gambling (on horse races or football games, say) and to stock market type investments; you don't need a crystal ball that says what's...
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- edythe
a guy on my team was talking about the probability of people sharing birthdays today (probably saw this link) and said that his father, an engineer, had come up with a formula of probability for people falling in love. according to him, it was scientifically measurable.
- edythe
The birthday probability is usually something they do on the first day of stats class.
- RAPatton
Warren Ellis: Singularity 'indivisible from religious faith' - http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008...
phil.gs liked this
No time for the singularity - Karl Schroeder - http://www.kschroeder.com/weblog...
phil.gs liked this
Drop-Dead Brilliant Ads for Evil Dead: The Musical - http://madsimian.tumblr.com/post...
phil.gs liked this
Just the concept is hilarious. I love it when pop culture fulfills needs I never even knew I had.
- phil.gs
Since everyone seems to be sharing their muxtapes today; http://evansims.muxtape.com
phil.gs liked this
Very awesome mutxape. Really hits the spot for my current music craving.
- phil.gs
Michio Kaku talks invisibility, teleportation and ray guns - http://reddit.com/goto...
phil.gs liked this
Here's another interview with Kaku: http://www.sfsignal.com/archive...
- phil.gs
Discovery of 12,000-year-old Temple Complex Could Alter Theory of Human Development - http://reddit.com/goto...
phil.gs liked this
SimplePie: Super-fast, easy-to-use, RSS and Atom feed parsing in PHP. - http://simplepie.org/
phil.gs liked this
Neat Tool: Test your Websites in multiple Versions of IE at the same time. - http://reddit.com/goto...
phil.gs liked this
A virtual desktop manager for Windows that doesn't suck? Shockingly, I think I may have found one. http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/
phil.gs liked this
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