Why you know what's going on across the world but not across town.

I often wonder why it's harder to find news from across town rather than what's going on half way around the world. Most news seems to concern people and places that most of us don't particularly care about. It's as if the media exists more to distract than to inform.

When it comes to finding the truth in media, it's sometimes like, in the words of Will Farrel, "taking crazy pill shit." The duplication of messages is creepy. As an example, the Conan Obrien show demonstrated how seemingly different media centers reported exactly the the same story in the same way.

So, how is it possible to sort the real news from manufactured falsehoods? How can we tell the difference between some lazy reporters just grabbing an AP news feed on a slow news day versus active manipulation of the media? Well, there is no way of knowing.

Even if we can't tell truth from fiction, we can still put out a hypothesis then look at the facts. Then ask, do the facts fit the hypothesis? If so, the model may be good enough for rough predictions. For example, if most news sources say the weather will be sunny and you happen to live in Arizona, absent other sources, that prediction is probably true. Still, it's sometimes wise to have a bit of doubt and pack an umbrella if other sources disagree!

Another technique is to use media that can't be revoked easily. Physical books have this property along with newspapers, photographs and even old video tapes. The whole premise of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit_451 was based on the idea that the people who want to control society rely on people forgetting about past events. To solve this problem, they relied on a massive program of book burning. In George Orwell's book, 1984, that fictional world was also without books. Rather, people relied on flat screens for all of their communication and entertainment needs. Hmmm. Sound familiar? When people needed access to past information, they could look up archives. And this is where the character Winston Smith came in. In the story there is a description of Winston Smith's job. At work, Winston describes, the archives would be edited, facts changed, then filed again. The old media would then be thrown down a "memory hole". The function is opposite what it's name would suggest. It was a hole in the wall with a chute connected to an incinerator in the basement.

However, revisions of history regularly happen in the real world too. Rather large stories are forgotten like this one. Physical media insures stories are remembered or at least forgotten more slowly. Even if the stories are inaccurate, having them in physical form at least prevents quick manipulation of stories one way or another. That means critical thought at critical moments can have a chance of happening.

The last and most important thing is to not rely on mass media. Take notice of what's going on around your town and city. Talk with your neighbors to get verbal history. Perhaps do a bit of gossip. Talk with older people and learn the oral history of your city or town from the perspective of the ones who lived it. Sometimes a change in the seemingly trivial is just as news worthy as what you'll see on a TV. The difference is, the changes happening in your neighborhood will more likely affect you than anything happening overseas.

Interships and co-ops- cheap till it's not

A few years, I had a conversation with one of my friends about how it would be possible to make an enormously profitable company by using nothing but interns who were required to work for welfare benefits. As is frequently the case, if I can think it, somebody else is already doing it.

For years companies and schools would hunt together for cheap help. The practice was widespread in the graphic arts fields, radio and television fields. Their preferred prey would be a matriculated (tuition paying) student who needs to get "experience". So, they get the student to do an "internship" for "credit". However, the physical reality of this situation means they not only work for free, but pay college tuition to do it! The presumption is that the student would learn all sorts of useful skills. The reality is that they often only do very routine work. I've personally seen this and it was nothing short of employee exploitation. As an example, years ago, I was managing a Radio Shack. For about a month, I had a Syracuse University student employed in a sales position. During his stay, he made a little bit over minimum wage being a sales clerk just like the other minimum wage sales clerks. I tried teaching him some basic selling techniques, how to stock shelves and count change - the same skills that were taught to others who didn't have a college degree. I hope he picked up something else since he was paying S.U. tuition just to be in my store!

I had thought that interning had fallen out of style. Nope. It's expanded in a big way. I recently found this out when I was offered a "co-op" position at an I.T. company. At first, I thought I would be working for a real co-op which usually requires "sweat equity" to "buy" a voting share on the board (rather than investing a bunch of money as a lump sum). However, that wasn't the deal. I was simply playing the supply-demand game and currently it's a buyer's market.

I've found several other "job offers" that were like this. One of the worst examples was at a company that make of all things, products for I.T. security! It is amazing these companies are taking such large risks with their business infrastructure. The position of an I.T. person is as much about trust as skill. An I.T. person can easily install tools to allow them to make off with production secrets, sell customer information, gather credit card information or simply embezzle. An inexperienced I.T. person can accidentally open security holes and knock out many computers at once. All but the lowest level I.T. person can have more access to company information than the chief financial officer. Yet for all this power, entry level I.T. workers are either underpaid or unpaid. The fact that I.T. interns sometimes make less than a floor sweeper really shows how saturated this field has become.

Judging from the existence of these low-ball offers, I can only conclude that there is currently a massive over supply of I.T. people or an under-supply of competent management. Other industries that have legitimate shortages of workers frequently offer training deals or bonuses for joining. That's rare in I.T. except for very specialized skills. Ah, but the market is constantly changing. Here's to hoping it will start changing for the better soon!

Time to retool with a visit to the innovators guild

The conventional economy is undergoing changes. I realize this as I contrast how my father's generation and my generation differ in terms of occupations. Had I known even 10 years ago what I know now, I would have no problem finding employment at top dollar. Now, it's very difficult to find paid work at all. The difference? What I know now is now known to more people. So, I need to find a way to re-gain some exclusivity in the market place.

One of my favorite places to do this is at the Syracuse NY hackerspace. Being in Syracuse, it's a bit far for me to regularly travel to. However, it's still worth an occasional trip. So, I decided to stop by to see if I could do some networking (more social than technical)

The event I participated in this time was soldering instruction. The exercise was to put together an Arduino kit. Although there wasn't quite enough time to finish up my board, it did get me interested in the technology. Thanks to the soldering tips I received that night, it was easy to quickly finish up the through-hole soldering at home. It is nice to know my soldering skills are still good. The board works flawlessly!

The idea of the Arduino is to have an open source, low cost platform available to people so they can build small low cost electronic projects. The most popular board uses a "shield" approach which allows for easy expansion with supplemental electronics such as temperature sensors, RFID sensors, lights, relays and other ready-made boards. It also gives a nice platform for making user designed boards too. Rather than requiring an expensive programmer and support electronics, the boards can be programed with only a USB cable.

This technology, combined with RepRap technology, could in theory allow people to engage in manufacturing of niche products right in their own home! Just as sewing machines allowed some households to make their own clothes and occasionally get extra income from selling wedding dresses, a person could make electronic products for their own use and possibly make some money servicing niche local markets with custom electronic products.

The Arduino is only one technology which is at the hackerspace. There are others. From analog radio to video production, the space is frequently a fountain of ideas and answers. The only problem for me is that it's quite far away. So, I can't visit physically as often as I would want. However, being a technology group, it's still possible to visit it virtually. It's at http://SIG315.org.

I'm also working on a project using the board I built. If you want to know more, visit http://plasticnerd.blogspot.com

Sequestering carbon dioxide

Some say the answer to global warming is to sequester carbon dioxide from power stations as it's burned. Even if this idea was technically practical, my opinion is that it's doomed to failure. The reason has little to do with technology and everything to do with human nature.

"If you have enough of anything, it's valuable"

The example on the right illustrates the point. To most people, manure is something to be removed as soon as possible. Very elaborate and expensive sewer systems have been constructed to remove this product. Yet other people have become rich selling manure. So, it's likely that sequestered carbon from coal fired power plants would present a similar opportunity.

Just as a manure vendor with a large amount of material will eventually find a market for that product, somebody will figure out a way to sell railway cars full of sequestered coal plant byproducts. Short term, the most likely market will be the U.S. government. It's yet another way for politicians to subsidize the fossil fuel industry while getting a re-election subsidy themselves. By the time the public realizes this, the U.S. government will likely have entered into multi-year contracts that will force the government to pay top dollar to transport the carbon to underground in former gas wells. But will that really solve the problem? It might be possible to economically transport the gas to an underground location and successfully contain the gas. It might even be efficient rather than having the problem of Ethanol where it takes nearly the same amount of energy put in as is released. However, assuming it was efficient and technically possible, there is another problem. There is more than one way for gas to escape.

The fact is, storage facilities might be able to be built to withstand the pressures of escaping gas but few systems can withstand government corruption! It's a good bet that this resource will simply be re-sold a few years later by private companies as is now being done with helium reserves. Unlike other coal fired waste products such as mercury or sulfur, carbon dioxide is non-toxic (in the same sense water is) and would be made relatively pure in the process of being compressed. This makes it an attractive resource to re-sell or even steal.

Due to this, it's likely that railway cars and trucks of this material will re-appear in the open market. If prices become low, percolating the last dregs out of tired oil wells becomes economical. If prices become still lower, I suspect entirely new uses will develop too. Perhaps inexpensive dry-ice powered camping refrigerators will appear in the market. Perhaps people will insist on auto tire inflation with dry CO2 just as some buy nitrogen tire fill-ups now. Compressed air engines may also appear on the market, fueled by inexpensive CO2. I know not the uses that will come into being if gas sequestering coal plants are built. However, human nature being what it is, I am relatively sure that zero profit geological formations will not be the final destination for most captured carbon dioxide.

A visit to Green Drinks of Syracuse

The event was at the hotel Skyler. The building was a former library turned hotel. It has a very nice new lounge and bar area with high prices to match. I decided to try to be ecological and drive my motorcycle there. In spite of the reasonably warm temperatures, most people were driving automobiles rather than cycles. There were a small group of chemistry students from ESF who were taking the opportunity to network. There were also some Green Drink regulars too.

One of the interesting conversations was with a person who sold industrial gassifiers. Now there is a person in a high-growth industry! This industry barely existed 10 years ago. The last time I looked at the industry in 2001, I could find only a few references to WWII gassifiers used in transport, an article in Mother Earth news about a truck mounted gassifier and only a few industrial scale gassifiers such as the electric power plant in Burlington VT. Since then, there has been a huge amount of progress. Even with the temporally low natural gas prices, there has a been some tremendous progress in this technology.

Gassifiers can be setup to use several different types of woody biomass fuel. The image on the right shows a layout for an electrical generation station. Small models are good at providing efficient heat and some have been modified to power vehicles. Industrial scale ones can efficiently provide electricity as was done in Burlington VT in the late 70's. A rather new development is that some industrial scale units have the ability to produce relatively pure syngas which can be processed into polymer products such as transport fuel that can stay liquid at remarkably low temperatures. Some demonstration plants show that it is possible to provide a non-gelling diesel fuel from woody biomass. The production price of this diesel equivalent might be as low as $10 a gallon. Very encouraging news!

For more on gassifiers (at least the older ones) visit HERE.

The possibility of a newer better world

I'll admit have not read the book "Ecotopia". From what I can gather, it's a fantasy novel about how several western states broke off from the rest of the U.S. and decided to abolish the car, embrace vegan diets and try to live in harmony with nature. At least, that's my uninformed cynic synopsis. However, even if the plot seems a bit sketchy, the book probably has some good practical ideas on how to make life be better. I say this based on an article about the author.

...Chick had left a final document on his computer, something he had been preparing in the months before he knew he would die, and asked if TomDispatch would run it. Indeed, we would. It’s not often that you hear words almost literally from beyond the grave -- and eloquent ones at that, calling on all Ecotopians, converted or prospective, to consider the dark times ahead. Losing Chick’s voice and his presence is saddening. His words remain, however, as do his books, as does the possibility of some version of the better world he once imagined for us all.

Maybe his book is OK. Maybe not. However, his last brief work "Epistle to the Ecotopians" is worth a read. Farewell Ernest Callenbach!