Stirling Solar

I was listening to NPR's On Point this morning and they were talking about Stirling Solar Power. Here are some pictures. Apparently Southern California Edison has contracted for a plant from this company which will produce 500 MegaWatts (enough to power about 300,000 homes). Their explanation is better than mine, but basically instead of using solar cells to go from solar power to electricity they use mirrors to concentrate the sun's heat on an engine which then produces electricity.

Breeze helps firefighters battle blaze

Oh, so this is why it smells like BBQ and traffic has been so bad.

Owning ideas

This article is fairly interesting. It explains some of the current problems with the patent system. I'm not sure I agree with everything it says since I think that some patents are good and important and the article does not show where the distinction is. However, it all of the particular instances it brings up I agree with.

Freakonomics

I just read Freakonomics. It was quite interesting. I'm not sure I'm fully convinced of all of his results, but he does bring up some interesting points and interesting ways of looking at problems, such as how he shows that Roe v. Wade is actually the cause of the massive drop in violent crime at the end of the '90s and swimming pools are more dangerous for children than guns. I think the three big take away points are correlation does not apply causation, common sense isn't always right, and even seemingly big and vague questions can be answered by properly framing and studying the question. Ok maybe those are just somethings I think and happened to see in his book, but it's my blog so I get to state what the point of the book is. If you disagree feel free to post a comment.

I like those points so I'd recommend the book, but I think there are a few downsides. Ok at first I was unhappy that there are no footnotes with references to the research he sites, then Mike told me to look at the end of the book and then I saw the quite extensive end notes - so never mind on that one. While I did appreciate his discussion of correlation not implying causation, in most of his examples he shows lots of evidence for his claims but he doesn't do a very good job of stating which evidence supports correlation and which evidence supports causation. The one other thing I didn't like is that before each chapter there is a quotation about how great he is - now I know he co-wrote the book with someone else so it was probably the other person who put them in - but still...

So overall I'd recommend it, but would recommend you buy a little salt to go with it.
Thanks Mike and Laura for loaning it to me - of course I finished it on the way back from Boston... Oh well guess I'll have to see you again so I can give it back.

If you are wondering about correlation not implying causation you can read about how a lack of pirates is causing global warming, scroll down to see the graph that proves it (thanks to Max for pointing that one out).

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Right now I am listening to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and I'm just a bit more than half way through but unless something really interesting happens my verdict is b-ah-or-ah-ing. As I drive along and listen when I'm paying more attention to driving it sounds kind of interesting and then I pay more attention and realize he's just jabbering on and while it kind of sounds deep it really doesn't make any sense. At first I was actually liking it because he was somewhat pro-technology, but then he started making comments on technology and science that were just silly. And his statement that quality is kind of the all encompassing force in the universe (well not quite how he states it, but close enough) seems awfully arbitrary to me. Well hopefully I haven't offended any fans of the book but that's my opinion.

The World Is Flat

Not sure anyone cares, but I thought I'd get back to posting some book reviews. It has been a while so I'll post some as I think of them.

Recently I listened to The World Is Flat. I was really impressed. I was actually surprised to hear such a reasonable discussion of the flattening of the world (globalization, outsourcing, and all that entails). Even if you are not in a field that has been affected by outsourcing there is a lot of good discussion of the many other affects of increased communication around the world.

The one thing that I thought was missing from the book is an interesting point I learned about in the IT and the US labor market class I took. The one thing that I never hear anyone talk about (other than one time on NPR) is the equalizing effect of currency exchange. If so much money is going to India and China then eventually the US dollar's value will drop relative to theirs and then the price of their labor will increase. Now of course even if it was a 2x affect outsourcing would still be quite inexpensive but it would take a big chunk out of the gains. There are two arguments I would imagine people would have with this. The first is why hasn't this already happened with China and Japan. Well that's because they have artificially kept it from happening by storing lots of dollars so eventually it will hit, but right now those countries are implementing policy to promote manufacturing in their countries. The other argument would be that having the value of the dollar drop is bad for US consumers. But outsourcing is good for US consumers so it doesn't really make sense to want to reduce or slow outsourcing, but be concerned for the US consumer.

Well now I'm done with that little rant. Anyway if you are looking for an interesting read The World is Flat is pretty good.

Boston

Last weekend I headed to Boston to see Mike and Laura and a lot of other people who either stopped by or are still in Boston. It was really good to see everyone! We spent most of the weekend talking, reminiscing and eating. The one downside is that I was hungry all weekend - if only Laura would have cooked some food - maybe some cookies or lemon squares or a few feasts... Luckily the weather was actually pretty good (well for Boston in November). Mike and Laura found a good place and in a cool area.

Thanks Mike and Laura for having me over and getting everyone together and for all of the food!

Max

Two weekends ago Max came out to sunny CA, except, unfortunately, it was not so sunny. So that changed around the usual tourist activities. In addition, that Monday someone I am working with and myself decided to go crazy on the project I am working on and implement a circuit involving two feedback loops instead of dropping down a few delay cells so I was not able to get away as much as I had hoped - sorry about that Max.

If you want to read about Max's take on the trip and/or see some pictures you can check out his blog. Friday I got away for a bit and we walked around Santa Barbara. Saturday we enjoyed a slow day hanging out around Carpinteria.

Sunday we went to Disneyland with Eric and his roommate. Eric's roommate works for Disney so we got to go for free! The park was far from empty, but it definitely wasn't the on season so we got to hit quite a few rides and see the big water/fire/anything else they could merge into the show, show. Eric's roommate not only got us in for free, but provide a bit of a tour with info about when rides had changed and some anecdotes.

Monday just got to share the ride to the airport with Max.

It was good to see you Max - good luck back in Israel!

Thank you for the gifts from the Getty your supah sekrit European sources - they came out cool looking. Whenever I am near or by buy a digital camera I will take some pictures.

Now back to moving little boxes...