The ramblings of an Eternal Student of Life     
. . . still studying and learning how to be grateful and make the best of it
 
 
Thursday, May 6, 2021
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ... Technology ...

Here’s another fashionable article about green energy. It appeared yesterday on the Bloomberg web site, in the “Green” section. Bloomberg.com, as you may know, is the corporate and media aspect of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s empire. It pretty much reflects Mr. Bloomberg’s world view, which is very pro-business and pro-wealth, but mixed with a tincture of liberal concern and even a bit of corporate “wokiness” of late. So of course there is a “Green” division of Bloomberg Media, which reports on climate change and how business is adapting to modern environmental concerns. And why not, given that there is money to be made by somebody!

Given all of that, I wasn’t too surprised to learn from the title of this article that “Replacing Coal Plants With Renewables Is Cheaper 80% of the Time”. And as if that wasn’t enough, the subtitle goes on to tell us “A new report shows that the economics may not even support running U.S. coal plants, let alone building them.” Wow, sounds like the revolution is under way! If the economics now line up so powerfully in favor of green energy, then who needs AOC (Congresswoman Andrea Ocassio-Cortez) and Bernie (Vermont Senator) and their “Green New Deal”? It’s all over but the shouting (and maybe a few billion dollars of financing deals and construction projects) . . .

In a nutshell, this article reports on the results of a recent report from a non-partisan climate and energy research group called Energy Innovation. The first few paragraphs of the article make it sound like the end is nigh for fossil fuels.  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 5:27 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Friday, April 30, 2021
Current Affairs ... Foreign Relations/World Affairs ... Technology ...

NY Times columnist Tom Friedman just had a very good article on whether a war with China is inevitable, as retired Admiral James Stavridis and former Marine and intelligence officer Elliot Ackerman forecast in their new best-seller “2034: A Novel of the Next World War“.

From the title, it’s obvious that Stavridis and Ackerman are positing a war with China occurring in 13 years. But why not now, given all of the sabre-rattling military exercises that the Chinese have been holding near Taiwan? Some US naval experts predict that China will start the invasion (and presumably a big war with the US) before 2034; earlier this year, US Admiral Philip Davidson, former commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, stated that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) could attack Taiwan within six years – by 2027. Shortly thereafter, his replacement, Admiral John Aquilino, testified before Congress that China might attack even sooner than that — “closer than most think“.

Friedman gives a good reason why it may take over a decade for China to make its move. They aren’t likely to start a fight with us until they are confident about winning. In recent years, they have invested a lot into their military, and many believe that they are reaching parity with the US in terms of military capability. But Friedman makes the point that they still have one area of deficiency; their industrial economy  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 8:24 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Photo ... Technology ...

One more pic before we start the 2020’s. Actually, this looks more like a tribute to the 1920’s! It looks pretty industrial, maybe even a nuclear power plant! But no, it’s just a mechanical room in a government office building. I used the word “just”, but this is the equipment that keeps several hundred people warm in the winter and cool in summer, and gives them electricity and running water. Without this stuff, the whole office wouldn’t be possible. Maybe someday, technology will eliminate the need for offices, and we can all work and communicate from home or where ever else we are. But until then, or as long as people like the idea of working together under the same roof, we’re gonna depend on relatively low-tech stuff like this to keep our society going.

◊   posted by Jim G @ 9:47 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Economics/Business ... Society ... Technology ...

I sometimes expend some mental energy pondering where America seems to be going, from the perspective of a social and economic historian. (OK, I’m not a professional social and economic historian, but I find it interesting and I have previously shared some thoughts on this blog about that). Yes, I know that sounds awfully boring. But it does relate to how people will be living their lives in the future. It also helps us to see some things that are already happening to ourselves.

So, a recent article on the American Affairs Journal website (yes, sounds very boring) caught my eye. The article is entitled “America’s Drift toward Feudalism”, and was written by Joel Kotkin, a fellow in urban studies at Chapman University in California. So what the heck does it mean to “drift toward feudalism”?

Well, feudalism was a social and economic system that dominated Europe during much of the Middle Ages. In feudal Europe, the economy was basically agrarian, land was the most important asset, and the great majority of the land was owned by a small handful of rich people, sometimes known as the lords or barons. A fair amount of land was also owned by churches and monasteries in the Catholic fold. The great majority of the population was quite poor (the “peasant class”) and didn’t own any land, nor anything much else. They tried to stay alive (barely) by farming the land for the rich owners.  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 12:20 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Current Affairs ... Economics/Business ... Technology ...

We hear that many in the Democratic Party today are warming up to the idea of socialism; and that many young adults now favor socialism over capitalism.

One of the strongest criticisms of socialism, in academic terms anyway, came from the 20th Century philosopher and economist Fredrich Hayek. In a nutshell, Hayek said that the problem with socialism, relative to free market capitalism, regards information. According to Hayek, free markets make good and efficient use of economic information, automatically – no one oversees the information flow, but it works out in a very good way. Whereby, in a socialistic economy controlled by a centralized government, human intervention gets in the way of information flow, and makes the overall economy very inefficient.

A New York Times article put it this way —

[Hayek] argued that most of the knowledge in a modern economy was local in nature, and hence unavailable to central planners. The brilliance of a market economy was that it allocated resources through the decentralized decisions of a myriad of buyers and sellers who interacted on the basis of their own particular knowledge. The market was a form of “spontaneous order,” which was far superior to planned societies based on the hubris of Cartesian rationalism.

A web site dedicated to this “knowledge problem” includes this summary of Hayek:  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 5:11 pm       No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment
 
 
Friday, August 31, 2018
Current Affairs ... Technology ... Weather ...

Eight years ago, I posted some words here about whether climate change was as serious as it was being made out to be, and whether the evidence that global warming was being caused primarily by man-made CO2 and other greenhouse gasses was as solid as climate advocates had asserted. Today, given the evolving weather trends over the past decade or so, I tend to be more sympathetic to the view that climate change is real, and I generally agree that the trend is towards higher temperatures
(both air temps and sea temps) and more instability in established weather patterns.

Personally, I don’t think that emission reduction or green energy strategies are going to do much to stem the change, at least not in the next few years or even decades. In the longer term, technology will make our industrial and transport infrastructure more efficient and less dependent upon carbon-based fuels. “Renewables” (aka “green energy” sources such as wind and solar generators) along with nuclear power now meet about 21% of global energy demand. This will get close to 25% by 2020.

Renewables and nuclear might hit 50-50 parity with carbon-based fossil fuels by around 2070, according to some optimistic projections; these scenarios assume that carbon-based fuel use starts declining by 2020. However, a 2016 US Energy Information Agency projection (made during the Obama Administration) indicates that carbon fuel usage will continue to grow thru 2040. In the EIA scenario, renewables and nuclear account for  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 6:42 am       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Religion ... Society ... Spirituality ... Technology ...

I want to talk today about a young Roman Catholic priest from Minnesota who seems to be getting more and more attention amidst the faithful for his social media skills. His name is Father Mike Schmitz, and his videos and use of Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram are quite impressive. He appears to be one of the first, if not THE first, Catholic spokesperson to make truly effective use of “the new media”, even though it’s been around now for more than a decade. I think that Father Mike is someone to watch, if you at all interested in the American Roman Catholic Church; I get the feeling that he is a rising star, someone you will be hearing a lot more about.

During the 1930’s, Father Charles Coughlin became know as “the radio priest” and got a national following for his commentaries during the Great Depression and World War 2 (especially considering his often fiery political views, such as his support of Huey Long and his opposition to US involvement in the War). After the War, the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton used the increasingly popular paperback book medium to gain fame through his conservative pro-Church writings. His 1948 autobiography Seven Storey Mountain was said to have inspired thousands of young people to a Catholic clerical vocation. Then in the 1950s, Bishop Fulton Sheehan became the “television priest”, supporting Catholic doctrine with a popular TV show. Then came Mother Angelica and her pioneering use of cable TV in the early 1980’s, with the formation of the EWTN network. The Internet and its social media infrastructure has been awaiting a charismatic Catholic spokesperson to come along and defend the magisterium on YouTube and Facebook, and it looks like Father Mike is the guy. You can check him and his thoughts out at his Ascension Ministries website channel, his page on the University of Duluth Newman Center site, on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

This guy has a HUGE footprint on the Internet !!

Father Mike has a LOT of videos out, over 100; I have watched about 10 or 11 of them so far. Each lasts about 6 or 7 minutes, and each roughly follows the format of a priest’s sermon at mass. For the most part, Father Mike  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 6:26 pm       Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Friday, August 18, 2017
Current Affairs ... Society ... Technology ...

I usually avoid offering “real time” commentary on significant national events, as my inner nature is more tortoise-like than hare-like. I try to wait a while and let things cool off, if possible, before making judgments. Given that I graduated from engineering school way back in 1975 (BS Industrial Engineering summa cum laude), and then at age 47 took a half year break from my working career for a rigorous software training program (Chubb Institute’s long-gone “Top Gun” program), I was immediately drawn to the story of James Damore, the former Google software engineer who wrote and distributed a letter questioning Google’s diversity policies.

As you probably know, Mr. Damore was subsequently cashiered from the “Googleplex”. I.e., he was fired for criticizing Google’s vigorous efforts to recruit and maintain female technical and engineering personnel (mostly software designers and coders). These efforts include hiring preferences favoring women over men, on-the-job support programs for women only, and mandatory training for male technical staff warning against both explicit and implicit (i.e. sub-conscious) negative actions and attitudes regarding female techies. What made it tricky for Google was that Damore cited a variety of scientific studies to support his argument that the predominance of male technical staff is “natural” and nothing much can or should be done about it.

Over the past week or so, there have been a whole lot of opinion pieces about Google’s firing Mr. Damore. People with liberal / Democratic party biases generally support Google, while those with conservative / GOP sympathies think that Google was wrong. Also, more men oppose Google’s decision and more women seem to support it. But of course, you can find plenty of cross-over individuals. However, on average . . . ah yes, “on average”. This is at the core of what got Damore in trouble.  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 7:48 am       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Current Affairs ... Technology ...

When I was a kid, I really enjoyed building plastic models from Revel kits. Most of the stuff I built was military in nature, because military stuff seemed a lot more technically interesting than the civilian stuff. E.g., a Navy ship had a lot more do-dads than a cabin cruiser or even an ocean freighter ship. And military planes were a lot more zippy than a Cessna or a Boeing 707. I especially like fighter jets. I had my own air force in my room, ready day and night to take on any 1/48 or 1/72 scale enemies of liberty!

So, despite my general opposition to war, I’ve always stayed up on the doings of the US Air Force, especially with regard to its fighter fleet. I have a post from a few years back reflecting on the new multi-service F-35 Lightening 2 jet, and all the troubles it was running into. Well, it’s now 5 years later, and although the F-35 is finally taking to the air in the cause of defending freedom, its troubles have not gone away. In fact, the US House has ordered the Air Force to study the option of building more of the F-22 Raptor fighters, which the F-35 was supposed to more-or-less supersede. (The F-22 is mostly an air-superiority fighter, whereas the F-35 is supposed to do it all, from close ground combat support to bomber interception. However, it is now feared that a jack-of-all trades plane like the F-35 could be vulnerable to the increasingly lethal stealth fighters that Russia and China are now developing, including the T-50 PAK-FK and the J-31.)

Because of financial considerations, most observers do not expect the F-22 to be revived. The F-22 is allegedly a good high-end interceptor and dog-fighter jet, but reviving a very high-tech production line after wrapping up the program back in 2010 would soak up a big chunk of the USAF budget, and cut into its many other procurement priorities (F-35, B21, KC46/KC-Y, C130J, T-X trainer, Minuteman replacement, etc.). But given the increasingly sophisticated fighters that Russia and China are now building, there is legitimate concern that the handful of existing F-22s (186) might not be able to  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 8:13 pm       Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment
 
 
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
Public Policy ... Technology ... Weather ...

The world today is a really, really complicated place, and it’s hard sometimes to figure out what makes it better and what makes it worse. One confusing issue regards natural gas as a major energy source. There are some big disagreements as to whether we should encourage or discourage the production and use of natural gas. On the plus side for natural gas: as with petroleum and coal, it’s a practical way to provide energy where ever and whenever you like, in large or small quantities; it can be stored without energy loss; it’s relatively cheap and easy to produce, especially given newer drilling technologies such as fracking; there is plenty of it in the USA and in many other places around the world; and it burns relatively cleanly, without smoke and with half the carbon dioxide by-product that coal emits per unit of energy obtained (e.g. the BTU), and 2/3 of what oil emits.

Natural gas requires infrastructure to safely utilize, e.g. a network of storage tanks and pipelines and pumping stations — but most of that already exists in the US. It’s not quite as portable as a petroleum product (e.g. gasoline and diesel fuel), given that gas is harder to contain than a liquid. Thus, natural gas may not be a good fuel for most transportation needs, although there are some buses and trucks that can utilize it. But for many uses including home heating, power generation and commercial/industrial processes, it seems to be superior to both coal and oil.

Given that human-made climate change is now widely recognized and accepted as a real and significant phenomenon, a phenomenon that could have very costly and disrupting effects on human civilization in the coming decades; and also given that climate change is largely driven by carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, it would seem that we should encourage  »  continue reading …

◊   posted by Jim G @ 5:22 pm       Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment
 
 
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