Smalltalk with James Robertson

From Popular Mechanics:

In contrast, a station with eight Eaton/TEPCO Quick Chargers could theoretically fuel just 24 i-Mievs to 80-percent full in an hour. To match the capacity of a modest gas station, completely filling 160 i-Mievs to 100-percent of battery capacity (on 25 minute charges) in one hour, would take at least 67 Quick Chargers with one parking space for each charger. Figure 300-square feet of space for each charger and parking spot and that’s a half acre of land before accounting for driveways or other infrastructure

Mind you, that kind of "quick charge" also depletes battery life - everything I've been reading says that you would, as an owner, want to limit the number of quick charges you did. Which means the picture is even worse - imagine the typical recharge station requiring a 4-6 hour parking time. That's fine if everyone lives within range of their destination (work, say), and they don't ever have to drive anywhere else after they get to work. A few minutes pondering how we actually use our cars will puncture that fantasy pretty quickly.

Of course, there's another issue as well. The "clean power" for these vehicles doesn't jump magically from a wall; in fact, it may well come from a coal fired plant. And if you were to replace a significant number of cars with electric vehicles, well - I think you would need to start putting in new generation capacity as well.

Technorati Tags: electric car, power

This will probably annoy me as much as New Coke did:

The Pittsburgh-based condiment maker has started making batches of ketchup using a recipe with less salt. The new version will hit store shelves this summer.

And why, you ask? Mostly because complete morons like the mayor of NYC have taken it upon themselves to define how much salt I'm allowed to have. Meh.

Technorati Tags: ketchup, stupidity

Be Afraid:

If an unmanned Apache gunship makes your boots quake, you're not alone, but you won't truly have reason to fear until 2025. That's when the government estimates half of all Army aircraft will be OPV, and those bots will learn the more deadly behaviors, like swarming.

Thisis a combination of awesome and terrifying, all at the same time. The idea of a swarm of Apache choppers with aAI driven chain guns is sort of nightmare thing.

Technorati Tags: AI, military, robot, terminator

What Next in Iceland? If past trends repeat themselves, we could be in for a real whopper:

The eruptions of the comparatively small Eyjafjallajökull glacier volcano in Iceland have historically preceded massive eruptions by the more feared Mount Katla. Experts are concerned that the present volcanic eruption could trigger activity at Mount Katla, which is potentially much more dangerous. Its last major eruption was in 1918. Icelandic volcanologists consider it plausible that Katla may erupt, and that is why they are monitoring Katla very closely right now. There are eruption channels between Eyjafjallajökull and Katla and magma could shoot into the Katla volcano. Katla might only need a nudge. Effects of Katla's eruption would put the present air travel chaos in the shade, inflicting much greater economic losses upon Europe.

Say what you will about man's impact on the environment; when Mother Nature gets going, she can really put us in our place...

Technorati Tags: volcano, iceland

Now this is interesting - a professor decides that an easier proof to a mathematical problem exists, but thus far, it's just beyond his grasp. What does he do? He posts on it, and invites comments. Over the course of a year, enough knowledgeable and interested people collaborate in the comments that he gets his simpler proof.

Maybe crowd sourcing isn't just for flash mobs...

Technorati Tags: flash mod, crowd sourcing, collaboration

Now I've truly seen everything:

An Arkadelphia mother is charged with harassment for making entries on her son's Facebook page.

Awesome :)

Technorati Tags: social media, web

Nick Carr makes a good point about digital records and fragility:

The problem is magnified by the speed with which old digital media and recording techniques, including devices and software, are replaced by new ones. It's further magnified by the fact that even modest damage to a digital recording can render that recording useless (as anyone who has scratched a CD or DVD knows). In contrast, damage to an analog recording - a scratch in a vinyl record, a torn page in a book - may be troublesome and annoying, but it rarely renders the recording useless. You can still listen to a scratched record, and you can still read a book with a missing page. Analog recordings are generally more robust than digital ones. As Bollacker explains, history reveals a clear and continuing trend: "new media types tend to have shorter lifespans than older ones, and digital types have shorter lifespans than analog ones." The lifespan of a stone tablet was measured in centuries or millennia; the lifespan of a magnetic tape or a hard drive is measured in years or, if you're very lucky, decades.

Carr adds a worry about cloud storage overtaking local storage, and a resulting "storage monoculture" resulting what amounts to a single point of failure. I'm not sure we'll get there, but it is possible. For things like music and books, we still like to have local copies, because we'll listen (or read) over and over. Video is something else again - beyond a few favorites, most people don't want to re-watch something they've seen already. Storage is cheap (and getting cheaper) though, so I'm not sure that the cloud monculture issue will ever truly arise.

Technorati Tags: cloud, storage, media

If Amazon is smart, they'll push out a Kindle for iPad app (one would think that the iPhone app should work, given Apple's staements about apps). The app for the Mac is a nice "complete the stack" thing, but not the end game. Amazon needs to remember that their core business is not, in fact, selling hardware - the Kindle is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

Technorati Tags: e-books, amazon, kindle, iPad

The scuffling for position in the e-book space continues, with Apple's entry (the iPad) making Amazon nervous:

Amazon appears to be responding to the Apple threat by waging a publisher-by-publisher battle, trying to keep as many books as possible out of Apple's hands, while preserving as much flexibility as it can to set its own prices.

The competition should make things better for all of us, but in the short term, it will likely mean more stunts like Amazon's brief removal of Macmillan from the store.

Technorati Tags: books, e-book

Vint Cerf gave a good, thoughtful answer to the question "do smart phones make us dumb" - which is more than I can say for the glibness that people like Nick Carr usually have for this kind of question. It all goes back to critical thinking, as Cerf said.