Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Solar Fountain Harvard Square



Harvard Square, November 2007

Ecological Design Principles
by Bill McDonough

Waste equals food
Use only available solar income
Respect diversity
Love all the children







Harvard Square, October 2007

This is a Solar IS Civil Defense arrangement.

The posters around the fountain include A South-Facing Window Is Already a Solar Collector and reproductions of historic WWII posters:



Ambrose Spencer has a larger solar fountain that he displays from time to time and I just read about Charles Goldman's portable solar fountain that he walked from Brooklyn to the Bronx.

click for movie
Ambrose Spencer and SunToys at AltWheels 2005

Video courtesy of http://energyvison.blogspot.com

For years, I've been recommending that people take these things to the public squares and most especially the farmers' markets, a core constituency of any green movement, as in the story "Mr Franklin's Folks".

It's all part of a Solar Survival Show and the sooner we start performing it the more likely we are to survive.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

Solar Insurgency

Small super-empowered vanguards can, with the use of systems disruption to amplify effort, delegitimize weakened governmental hierarchies and force them into the box of hollow states. However, instead of a pure organic government envisioned by Che, an organic open source insurgency, composed of a plethora of small super-empowered groups (that appeal to primary loyalties of tribe, cast, clan, family, gang, ideology, etc.), form in the vacuum. This open source insurgency will only bring fragmentation and perpetual conflict. The vanguard's role, is merely as a catalyst for its formation.


John Robb, Global Guerrillas

What if the global guerrilla vanguard was constructive rather than destructive? What if the vanguard was building resilience and autonomy, survival and security instead of chaos and destruction?

Small super-empowered groups can also do potholes as, reportedly, Hizbollah has been able to show in Lebanon. Maybe not global guerrillas but certainly a localized, decentralized model, Cuba's already gone through their Peak Oil experience and adapted through lots of public transport, bicycles, and local agriculture. In the 70s some of the 60s civil rights/antiwar/feminist/environmental energies of the Cold War baby boomers went into community gardens, farmers' markets, food coops, feeding programs, local agriculture, sustainability and environmental restoration. These networks still exist.

In the face of oil-funded terrorism, an oil war in Iraq, an overstretched, under-budgeted, corrupt social welfare system, and increasingly expensive natural disasters and emergencies Solar IS Civil Defense can be a logical open source guerrilla response.

For instance, a minimal amount of solar electric photovoltaic PV power charges batteries. Combine that with a hand crank, foot pedal, or string pull generator and you have virtually permanent personal electric power (cell phone, flashlight or reading light, computer, camera...) for emergency situations, just in case.

Before the invasion of Afghanistan, NATO forces dropped solar/dynamo AM/FM/SW radios for the civilian population. After the invasion, they gave away more radios. Unfortunately, the solar/dynamo wouldn't allow for battery switching. The NATO radios charge only the internal hardwired battery. If the solar/dynamo could charge batteries in the external battery bay, then you could charge one set of batteries while you used in rotation another two or three sets of batteries to operate a cell phone and light as well as the radio. The solar/dynamo would be a source of electricity day or night, by sunlight or muscle power, at least for the lifetime of the batteries, crank, pedal, string, and PV panel. Now add a bicycle.

The Bogolight charges standard size AA batteries and thus does allow for battery switching. The Bogolight is a solar LED flashlight or reading light that provides 4 hours of light for every 8 hours of sunlight. It is very well designed. You buy one for $25 and they donate a second light to various development programs around world. Solar IS Civil Defense at home and abroad.

The human scale combination of solar power with human muscle power allows the human power component to become a kind of Solar Swadeshi. Instead of turning Gandhi's spinning wheel making thread for khadi cloth, cranking or pedalling or pulling a string, the repetitive practice of personal power producing electricity for an AA battery all the way back to the grid.

Open source global guerrilla vanguard as solar scholar warriors fomenting resilience, cooperation, and the free exercise of the imagination, green ecological designers to save us at the last possible moment, the promise of the Whole Earth Catalog, Woodstock, New Alchemy Institute, the Viridian greens, Burning Man, worldchanging...

Friday, September 21, 2007

Solar Water



The Watercone® is a solar powered water desalinator that takes salt or brackish water and distills it into freshwater. It is simple to use, lightweight and mobile.

Designed to produce 1.5 liters a day, it provides a child's daily needs for fresh water and reduces the number of children who die as a result of drinking unsafe water, currently estimated to be 5000 or more each and every day.

The WATERCONE® is a long lasting UV resistant Poly Carbonate product and can be used up to 5 years daily. The material is non-toxic, non-flammable and 100% recyclable. The black pan for the saltwater is already made out of 100% recycled PC. Even when the WATERCONE® becomes old and tarnished, it can still be used to collect rain water, as a roof panel or container for other goods.


The Watercone® project is looking for investors and companies to initiate mass production tooling and distribution. So the Watercone can be manufactured for a lower price and become affordable to the people in need...

Single products are not available at the moment!




The Watercone® was tested in Yemen in 2004 and in the Lake Baikal region of Russia in 2005.

Thanks to Ecogeek for bringing this design to my attention.

Until everybody who needs one can get a Watercone®, you can pasteurize water in clear plastic bottles by exposing them to the sun.



The Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS) process is a simple technology used to improve the microbiological quality of drinking water. SODIS uses solar radiation to destroy pathogenic microorganisms which cause water borne diseases.

SODIS is ideal to treat small quantities of water. Contaminated water is filled into transparent plastic bottles and exposed to full sunlight for six hours.

Sunlight is treating the contaminated water through two synergetic mechanisms: Radiation in the spectrum of UV-A (wavelength 320-400nm) and increased water temperature. If the water temperatures raises above 50°C, the disinfection process is three times faster.


You can raise the temperature of the water in transparent bottles by putting them in the sun against a dark background.

Simple Solar Rules:
Dark heats up
Light reflects
Clear keeps off the wind

As suggested above, years from now, when your Watercone® wears out, you can use it to collect rainwater for the gravity drip irrigation system exhibited at the recent Design for the Other 90% show at NYC's Cooper-Hewitt Museum.



Change the color of the gravity drip bag to black and you have a solar hot water heater. [See Simple Solar Rules above.]

There are lots of other things you can do with sunlight and plastic containers.

I plant my garden a month or six weeks early by practicing Recycled Solar. Place a ring of plastic bottles on the soil, fill them with water, plant seeds of your choice (I've grown tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and greens with this technique) in the middle, and cap it with another bottle with its bottom cut out. This makes a solar heated coldframe or cloche.



Solar IS Civil Defense.

Monday, August 27, 2007

M. Preston Burns, Pandora's Box, Experiential Geometry

I've been experimenting for over thirty years with geometric models. Recently, my collaborator and the man who introduced me to this work, M Preston Burns, died and I have been going over his portfolio and papers. Mel or, as I knew him, Bud Burns worked primarily with the cube and the tetrahedron. He divided the square faces of the cube on the diagonal revealing the equilateral tetrahedron packed inside. He cut and hinged the cube and made a winged tetrahedron, eight hinged equilateral triangles, to fit inside. Then he filled the corners with ToyBlox, wooden forms which demonstrated the two-fold symmetries of the cube and tetrahedron. He called it Pandora's Box and demonstrated six inch, one foot, four, six, and eight foot models publicly since around 1970 when he built the first prototype.

This is a short video of what was probably his last presentation of Pandora's Box :



The advantage of working with these models is that they teach geometry and symmetry experientially, without the need of numbers or words. These forms are inherent in dimensionality. They are true, in the way a carpenter measures true - straight, level, plumb. By having three dimensional models you can turn around in your hands, you develop a hand-eye relationship with fundamental geometric forms. The cube and tetrahedron models of Pandora's Box teach the relationship between the right triangle and the equilateral triangle as well as two-fold and three-fold symmetry viscerally. This is full contact mathematics.

If you are interested in this kind of experiential geometry, there will be a symposium on "Synergetics and Morphology" at the Rhode Island School of Design on November 3 and 4, 2007 in Providence, RI. Further information is available from the Synergetics Collaborative

Another short video of Bud outlining his symbology system:



His friends will remember M Preston Burns at the current exhibit of his work in Cambridge, MA at Toscanini's Ice Cream, 899 Main Street on Tuesday, August 28 at 7 pm.



You can see more of his drawings at Bud's Gallery

Monday, August 06, 2007

Dancing the Cube in Jamaica



This is a video Julie of Videosphere took December 2006 of Azisu, Nikita, Chaka, Werner, and Bud playing with a magnetic Quanta Cube, a cube made of 72 A and B Quanta. The A and B Quanta are the smallest common symmetrical tetrahedra of the regular tetrahedron and octahedron, two of the Platonic Solids. They were first discovered and analyzed by R Buckminster Fuller and Dr Arthur Loeb. Both the A and B Quanta come in left-hand and right-hand pairs, they are mirror images of each other, enantiomorphs. As positive/negative pairs, they are perfect for magnetic coupling and there are magnets at the centers of each of the four faces of each Quanta in the Quanta Cube, 288 magnets in all.

The Quanta Cube is derived from the work of M. Preston Burns, Bud, the skinny old dude in the video, who built his first Pandora's Box nearly 40 years ago. We worked together building various models of the box at different scales from eight feet to six inches and demonstrated them before the public and as part of an arts curriculum with Tribal Rhythms. Bud dissected a cube along its diagonals, hinged the pieces, and packed a "winged tetrahedron," a hinged tetrahedron with eight equilateral triangles, in the center. He filled the corners of the cube with ToxBlox, illustrating the symmetrical divisions of the cube. That is Pandora's Box.

One day, I was playing with a set of A and B Quanta I had made and discovered how to fill the box with A and B Quanta. Later I developed the magnetic coupling system with Carl Fasano of RISD.

More on Synergetic geometry and R. Buckminster Fuller at
http://www.rwgrayprojects.com/synergetics/synergetics.html
http://synergeticists.org
http://www.bfi.org/

More video of the Quanta Cube at
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/evolution-of-cube.html

More geometry video from RISD:
http://energyvision.blogspot.com/2006/02/geometry-study.html

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

"You Can Fix All the World's Problems In a Garden"



"You can solve them all in a garden. You can solve all your pollution problems and all your supply line needs in a garden. And most people actually today don't actually know that and that makes most people insecure."

So says Geoff Lawton from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. He proves it here with a video describing how permacultural design and a local team desalinated the soil and grew a garden on 10 acres of barren desert land two kilometers from the Dead Sea. Within four months, the trees produced their first figs.

"We could regreen the Middle East. We could regreen any desert...."

I think Candide would agree. I'm not sure about Voltaire.

Here's a recycled solar cloche I found in Candide's garden.

Solar IS Civil Defense

Thanks to worldchanging for alerting me to this permaculture story.

Originally posted at dailykos.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Invisibility of Solar Power

We swim in sunlight and solar power every day and every minute of daylight. We just don't recognize it as btu's, lumens, or watts. We don't count the calories in our solar diet and include no accounting in our energy budget for all the sunlight we already use.

Part and parcel of this invisibility is our inability to see actual working solar when it is right in front of our eyes. Probably the most common solar electric device around your town is the portable electric sign powered by PV panels. It's that orange thing behind the tree.



Can you see the PV panels on this health center in Brookline, MA? Would you recognize it as solar, glancing up from the street or your car window as you passed by?



This is the Porter Square Shopping Center in Cambridge, MA. The story I heard, is that the owners, one of whom was John O'Connor, author of _Who Owns the Sun?_ and an environmental activist, wanted people to see the PV panels so they raised them up on steel girders, an investment more costly than the panels themselves. I always thought they should have included some legend on the steel like "Solar Energy at Work" or "Solar Energy Works!" I think that might be a good idea on other public solar installations too. [The Porter Square Shopping Center has a geothermal heating system in addition to PV solar.]




This is one of those poles with PV panels you can see by the side of many highways. They are monitoring traffic, counting cars, sending congestion alerts. I've seen some powering emergency equipment too. They are all over the place once you recognize them.


This trash container is a solar powered trash compactor. They were invented in Jamaica Plain and Boston is testing out 50 around the city. This one is in Davis Square in Somerville. The first one I saw was on Spectacle Island last summer.



Boston is also trying out solar powered parking meters. As a bicyclist, I think there are still some design issues to be worked out.

Keep your eyes open. At least when the sun is shining.

Cross-posted at dailykos as an entry in my diary there.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Cell Phone Solar: The Video



I wrote about Cell Phone Solar before at solarray and in one of my diaries at dailykos.


What I wrote a few months ago and what I learned in Jamaica is still true:

Cell phones change everything
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale
The price point should be $10 American or less

Monday, February 26, 2007

Solar in Thirty Second Segments

I made these thirty second public service announcements for public access TV around 1991. They served as intro and outro to the videos of the Boston Area Solar Energy Association lectures I shot and cablecast on Cambridge Community TV for a few years. The tape archive of all those lectures needs to be digitized.



The modern history of solar is hidden in plain sight but the best book I know on the earlier 2500 years is still A Golden Thread by John Perlin and Ken Butti.



I still don't understand the relationship between a calorie and a watt. I understand the btu though. Sorry, physicists.



These two trick questions were collaborations with the polymathic Ed Hill.

Friday, February 09, 2007

Minimum Solar Light



Combine one of the new powerful LED lights powered by a couple of CR2032 button batteries like the Energizer Trim Flex LED with a solar panel from a novelty solar hat fan or one of the PV chips from a solar education kit, connect them together, possibly with a IN4003 blocking diode between the solar panel and the batteries to prevent electrical discharge through the panel at night (correct me if I'm wrong), and you have an effective solar rechargeable light suitable for reading.

There is a button battery solar charger which works fairly well. There is also the Micro Solar LED which I have not tried yet. You can also buy rechargeable button batteries and AC chargers.

I'd like to see solar light as available and affordable as a disposable cigarette lighter anywhere and everywhere around the world. Right now the price for this level of solar light is between $20 and $10. Commodity production and pricing should bring that down to $5 to $1.


Solar PSAs
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=gmoke

Solar Experiments
http://solarray.blogspot.com/2006/03/solar-video.html

Interviews and Site Visits
http://energyvision.blogspot.com

Crossposted to http://gmoke.dailykos.com


Solar IS Civil Defense

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha




For all those
in war
and the danger of war,
refugees and dispossessed,
sufferers of famine, pestilence
and disaster
on this day.


Unknown Auschwitz Satyagraha

On April 21, 1985 I saw a public television program on the Holocaust. It consisted of the survivors meeting at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, Yad Vashem I believe it is called, looking for those they had lost and telling the stories of what had happened to them. Most of the images were tight close-ups of faces saying things the eyes would not forget.

One woman said she had been a prisoner working in a typing pool in Auschwitz. The SS officer in charge told her when she arrived that she was allowed three mistakes a day or off to the ovens. They worked twelve hour shifts and typed thousands of reports all in quadruplicate. And only three mistakes a day.

Eventually, she was transferred to another job, another SS officer. He seemed to be a gentleman and she couldn't understand why he was in the SS. On the first day, he took her to a storeroom. It was in chaos. He asked, "Do you think you can clean this up?" Of course she said yes. He prohibited only one thing. She was not to open one certain door.

There came a time when she was working in the storeroom and heard screams. They were like the sounds "of a dying animal, being beaten to death, indescribable really." Naturally, they came from beyond the forbidden door. She had to open it. Behind the door was a set of stairs leading down. She descended and saw her gentleman SS officer beating a Polish worker with his belt in front of a group of other workers. She said, "The workers looked up and were struck as if they saw an angel. They had no idea women had worked above them. We had no idea there were men there below." The SS officer looked up too and saw her. He told her to get out but she didn't move. He came up the stairs and told her to go back but she didn't move. She said, "I'm not a hero but something happened. I grabbed hold of his sleeve and wouldn't let him go. He told me to leave but I looked into his eyes, for minutes, for a few seconds, for me it seemed like an eternity. And still I wouldn't let go of his arm. Finally he said, 'It's all right, go.' But I looked into his eyes for another eternity, holding his sleeve for dear life. Then he said, 'It's all right. I won't beat them anymore,' and I walked back up the stairs."

Later, she found out that the SS officer had been beating a worker to death with his belt every week, but from then on he stopped. Still later, just before a death march, the workers sent her a pair of high-topped boots and she believes it was only those boots that kept her alive through the march. She was an angel for them and those workers were angels for her.



Perhaps this story shows us what might have happened if Gandhi had met Hitler. Maybe he would have held Hitler's sleeve and searched his mad eyes into his madder soul until Hitler too said, "It's all right. I won't beat them anymore."




That evening there was a story on the Cambodian Holocaust on "Sixty Minutes" and the next morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition a piece on the Armenian Holocaust.

The documentary I think was called "The Gathering," produced by Joel Levitch for Jason Films broadcast on April 21, 1985 on WGBH-TV Boston, MA.



Editorial Comment: I first published this piece online on August 1, 1997, although I wrote it the 80s, read it publicly in the early 90s, and produced a video version of the piece that was cablecast locally and exhibited in a museum show on courage in NY.

May we remember the example 
of this woman and Dr King and Desmond Tutu and Gandhi
and Tolstoy and Thoreau and King Ashoka and
create peace on this day,
if only for a moment,
for a breath,
for ourselves.


Video version

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Cell Phone Solar: What I Learned in Jamaica


Driving up to Junction on twenty miles of bad road, we stopped for directions at a gas station and picked up an older woman waiting for a ride who guided us the rest of the way. A mile or two later, we turned a corner and saw a line of wind turbines on the slopes of Don Figeroa Mountain, the Wigton wind project (http://www.mct.gov.jm/energy_5.htm). I turned in my seat and asked the woman on her way to Junction whether the wind machines had made any difference.

She said, "No, mon, we still have to pay for the electric and the gas."

A little farther down the road we passed a sign for DigiCel, the local cell phone company. I turned to her again and said, "But the cell phone changed everything, didn't it?"

She smiled widely and nodded deeply.


On the sun porch and veranda, we videotaped the solar electric light system we'd brought. We showed the three different sizes of interconnecting solar panels and LED lamps with batteries in their cases and displayed the different sets of connectors. We had one connector to go from the battery to a USB device, another was a 12 volt socket like a car lighter. We had a set of attachments to charge cell phones from the solar batteries and another that let us connect directly to the solar panels as well.

In fact, we also had a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio which we were using to charge the rechargeable AAs the digital cameras required and a hand cranked dynamo specifically designed for charging cell phones. From what we saw, people in Jamaica were using mostly AAs and D cell batteries but we didn't have a D cell battery bay, only the one for AAs, a set of alligator clips,, and the multimeter.

We had cell phone solar.

Cell phone solar and AA/D cell charging: that's emergency, camping, and most of the world and it's a scale that is understandable, accessible, and probably affordable.


One night, I was talking to some Jamaican kids at Doreen's bar, the local watering hole a few steps away from the guest house. We showed them the lights and explained how the batteries in the lamps could also charge cell phones. They liked that idea a lot. I told them that the large solar lights cost $75 American and the smallest, the one on my backpack, was $30 American. They didn't like that. I said I thought solar lights and cell phone chargers could probably be available for $5 to $10 American and their eyes lit up.


Here's what I learned in Jamaica:
Cell phones change everything.
Cell phone solar with AA/D battery charging is a useful minimum scale.
The price point should be around $10 American or less.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Solar Boston - Boston Harbor Islands



I like to visit the Boston Harbor Islands at least once every summer. Last year, I noticed all the wind and solar in use out there. The Hull wind turbines dominate one section of the horizon and the skyline of Boston rises like some science fiction Oz from another. On the islands there is quiet and distance, a magic place only a ferry ride away.

This year my friend Werner and Julie of Videosphere joined me to island hop and produce a video about what we've seen. There are solar assisted composting toilets, solar electric panels, solar hot water heaters, small and large wind turbines, and even solar vehicles. The future is already here. All we have to do is recognize it.

Monday, July 31, 2006

It's All One War That Never Ends





Al Gore was in town to sign his book, An Inconvenient Truth at Harvard Book Store, a great independent bookstore. The line was around the block and down the street. The store said he signed over 600 books in the hour he was there.

I went to give him a selection of WWII posters that have special resonance for today and my basic game plan for doing public education on practical renewable energy and resource conservation at such local events as the over 3700 farmers markets that happen every week during the growing season all around the USA (see http://solarray.blogspot.com/2004/12/three-solar-projects.html for further details).

You can see me hand him my paper on video at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5oiZLNF0QQ&search=Videosphere
I'm the guy in the maroon shirt.







Here are copies of the four posters I gave Mr Gore. He said he liked the first image. I hope he saw the other images, too, and maybe even read my proposals about direct action on energy education. I'd like to see him train 1000 people to do practical solar as well as the 1000 people he plans to train to do his presentation.

For those of you who want more Gore, here's a 20 minute video of him at the TED conference in winter 2006 where he digs a little deeper on solutions to climate change

http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/06/al_gore_on_tedt.html#









You can find these and many more WWII posters at http://www.library.northwestern.edu/govinfo/collections/wwii-posters/


The Project for an Old American Century
(http://www.oldamericancentury.org) and the Propaganda Remix Project (http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html) are reworking some of these posters for 21st century purposes but I tend to be a purist and prefer the originals for their jarring resonances across the decades.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Solar Survival Show: Solar Fountain

Take a look at Ambrose Spencer's SunToys and you will see why I say that if you are going to do only one public solar demo, you should do a solar fountain.

click for movie
Ambrose Spencer and SunToys at AltWheels 2005

Video courtesy of http://energyvison.blogspot.com

A floating solar fountain can be bought for $60 or less. It will be less impressive than Ambrose's larger model but add a basin and some water and you still have a great display that kids love to turn on and off with their shadows.

It already is a solar wishing well.

Floating and other solar fountains available from
http://www.siliconsolar.com/shop/catalog/Floating-Solar-Water-Fountain-p-9.htm
http://www.improvementscatalog.com/product.asp?product=217612zz&dept%5Fid=12130&cm_ven=NexTag&cm_ite=12130&code=macs=MP6NEXTAG
and
eBay

Buy one and set it up at the local farmers market or public square. Raise a little consciousness and make a few rainbows.

Cross-posted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/6/26/233752/597

Sunday, June 18, 2006

No Solar Energy


nosolarg, originally uploaded by gmoke.

My friend M. Preston Burns drew the cartoon and I wrote the caption.

Too bad it cuts so close to reality.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Solar Video

I did some video of my solar projects with Werner Grundl of VideoSphere and http://energyvision.blogspot.com. He's is adding to his video blog (vlog) all the time, most recently with some important statements from the NE Sustainable Energy Association's "Building Energy" conference.





This video is about my solar reading lights which I wrote about in My Solar Bedroom in December, 2005.







This video is about my solar bike lights and back pack.


Click on picture This is a video of a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio modified to charge AA batteries thus becoming the flashlight, radio, and extra set of batteries recommended to have on hand in case of emergency as well as a permanent source of low voltage DC power day or night.

Solar is civil defense.



Update 3/21/07:

Here is the schematic that Richard Komp of Maine Solar Energy Association and Grupo Fenix drew for me when he modified one of my solar/dynamo flashlight/radios to charge AA batteries.

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Solar is civil defense.


Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Science Fiction Fairy Tales

Global Pendant

Once upon a time...

She was wearing a very interesting pendant. It first appeared to be a cloudy blue bead about an inch and a half in diameter hanging from a delicately linked chain around her neck. But it changed. On closer observation, the cloudiness moved slowly and steadily across the surface of the bead and the within the swirls of white and blue that could be water was the outline of the continents in green and shades of gray. It was a real-time composite satellite image of the Earth from space projected onto the surface of the pendant. You could see the latest hurricane developing in the South Atlantic that very evening.

She explained that her body network linked wirelessly to the Net through the PDA in her purse and then loaded the images into the bead. The Earth from space was only one of the programs available.

"Where's the dashboard for Spaceship Earth?" he asked.

"I don't know if there is one," she replied.

...and they all lived happily ever after.

But that's another story...


Earth from Space
World Cloud Cover
North American Jet Stream
Astronomy Picture of the Day

If anybody has seen something like a dashboard for Spaceship Earth, please let me know.


Nanobot Road

Once upon a time...

It started with self-repairing nanobots. These were devices that worked on the cellular level, on a biological model rebuilding damaged tissue cell by cell, protein by protein. It soon went beyond any previous DNA limits as these miraculous machines amplified our own, human repair systems. They were indefatigable and virtually immortal and remade us in their own image.

Now some of us have replaced fallible flesh with metal and plastic. We have optimized our abilities to see into the infra-red and ultraviolet, hear sounds dogs and whales are deaf to, made our skins resistant to heat or cold, the vacuum of space and the depth of the ocean. Our brains are faster than quantum computers. We can blush quicksilver and shine like mirrors if we wish.

We are immortal, self-remade clone cyborg replicants of our old human selves. Death is just a memory now and we go on forever rebuilding ourselves cell by cell every day, performing miracles each moment. History means nothing to us anymore, "humanity" even less.

And they lived happily ever after, ever after, ever after, ever....

The National Center for Design of Biomimetic Nanoconductors has announced the development of nano-sized batteries which can be implanted into the body to power various devices, starting with an artificial retina (http://www.primidi.com/2006/01/16.html#a1415). The Center will design and build "nanomedical devices based on natural and synthetic ion transporters -- proteins that control ion motion across the membranes of every living cell." 

Monday, January 09, 2006

Werner Grundl Is Video Blogging

Werner Grundl is video blogging (http://energyvision.blogspot.com/).

The clips online so far are about the peace economy from Japan, the newest Hull, MA wind turbine, and Jerzy, a kid, performing "I Want to Be a Kid."

Werner is just beginning to play with online distribution onto the Web and the Net and is transferring the Videosphere archives from VHS to .mov, from tape to DVD, the Internet and beyond. In digital format, through the video blog, Werner Grundl and Julie O'Neil, Videosphere (WJulesvern@aol.com), can make thirty years of events and performances, debates and speeches, lectures and street corner and coffee table discussions about politics, arts, science, spirit and life around the world available to the world. In theory, at least.

Thirty years ago, we used to sit around in some of those coffee table discussions and talk about a technology that would allow us to record something on the street or the studio and distribute it to all those interested in real time as it's happening. Now we can do just about that with our cell phones, when all the connections work, when we can figure out how to make all the connections work. Or so I am told.

In theory, at least.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

My Solar Bedroom

My bedroom is now basically off-grid.

For years my bedside radio has been a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio. This particular one has been modified to charge AA batteries besides the hard-wired internal battery it was designed to charge. It gives me about two months of radio for an hour or more a day before running down. Then I place it next to the window for two days and have the use of a radio for another two months. In a pinch, a minute of turning the crank gives me about ten minutes of radio.

Of course, since I have been experimenting with these things, I have a few solar/dynamo flashlight/radios so I always have one charging in front of the window. You can see an example of a solar/dynamo flashlight/radio at http://www.modernoutpost.com/gear/details/om_sdradio.html. It's not the one I'm using but it looks to be much the same, without the ability to charge AA batteries in the battery bay, and is close to half of what I paid.

Now I've installed two solar powered LED lights above my bed so that my reading light is off the grid as well. Came in handy just the other day when we had a black-out for a couple of hours. The lights are attached to solar electric panels I place in the window and have batteries in the base of the lamps that provide power for up to 24 hours on a full charge. You can see the specs and order them at http://www.kansaswindpower.net/portable_led_lights.htm

This system is still a work in progress but for about $150 I've got one room that is independent of the grid, that provides me with radio and reading light for the foreseeable future without the use of coal, oil, gas, or nuclear energy. I have one room running on sunlight. 

Now on to the next.

Update: Take your spare room off-grid! (http://www.off-grid.net/index.php?p=294) describes a solar electric system that powers two lamps, TV, Stereo, satellite box, dvd, vcr, and XBox, and a battery charger for the rechargeables in the battery powered clock.

This 600 watt hour system includes solar panels, batteries, and inverter and prices out at $1300.

I think that's a little pricey. A few years ago I assembled the parts for a one window solar electric system. It consisted of a 2 foot by 2 foot Kyocera panel, peak wattage around 64 kw, a power controller, battery, and wiring. The cost for those pieces was around $500, but I have yet to built the frame, hang the panel, and connect the system. In fact, I've since given the pieces to a friend in the hopes that he can finish the project before I would probably get around to it.