RE: off topic economics
I find it particularly disturbing whenever I read something like this: > Our own Fed chairman, guardian of the nation's money...custodian > of its economy...night watchman of its wealth... > How could he do such a thing? And yet he has done it. He turned a > financial bubble into an economic bubble. Not only were the prices > of financial assets ballooned to excess...so were the prices of > houses...and so were the debts of the average household. > Where does it lead? The force of a correction is equal to the > deception that preceded it. Mr. Greenspan's whopper must be > followed by a whopper of a slump. This shows almost total ignorance of the nature of the Federal Reserve and its purpose. The Federal Reserve, while it has a government charter, is a private company. Its purpose, and that of its chairman is to stabilize banks and to maximize their profits. Usually, when I inform people of this, they think I must be some sort of conspiracy nut. One only needs to read the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It's not very long and should be required reading for every child in school. Mr. Greenspan is not the "custodian of (the nation's) economy". He is merely the public face of the Federal Reserve. The Fed makes decisions attempting to make the most money for banks, especially members of the Fed. When that corresponds with a healthy economy, as it generally does, then the Fed is doing us all a favor. Aren't we lucky? The public assumes great knowledge and omniscience must reside in institutions such as the Fed. The simple fact is that it's made up of human beings who can guess wrong and make really stupid mistakes, just like the rest of us. Tightening the money supply just as the Great Depression was descending upon us is an example of such foolishness and wrong- headedness. M. ___ Join Excite! - http://www.excite.com The most personalized portal on the Web!
Re: Re: Mars in a Month - Reactive Sails
> From: "Mike Carrell" > > About solar sail starcraft driven by laser cannon, does > anyone remember "The Mote in God's Eye"? > > Mike Carrell > Hi Mike, Yes, I do. Larry Niven came up with a rather interesting reproductive cycle for those "Moties", didn't he. I'll never forget the comment about how it was discovered that Moties love a good cup of hot chocolate, especially with a drop of machine oil. And we think WE have problems with run away green house gasses. Talk about a desperate situation. Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
RE: More on liquid air engines
I like it. In fact, I like almost anything better than
that policy wonk's paradise, the "hydrogen economy."
M.
=
--- On Sat 02/12, Jones Beene < [EMAIL PROTECTED] > wrote:
From: Jones Beene [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: vortex-l@eskimo.com
Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:47:21 -0800
Subject: More on liquid air engines
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Imagine a super-efficient and ecologically sound 2-cycle engine... yet...
surprise, surprise... an internal combustion engine with no intake
manifold !
John Steck should get a "laugh" out of this. How can a real engine have no
intake manifold?
Ans: It is powered by a "form" of liquid air. The cryo-liquid is injected
directly into the cylinder at TDC and expands upon irradiation. Much of the
engine can even be made of injection molded engineering plastic, as it can
operate at around 500 degrees F.
Just for some factitious *Laughs,* let use nitrous oxide as our
"whipping boy" i.e. fuel. In reality, the fuel would not be
nitrous per se, but it would be a similar NOx mixture, which is more light
sensitive but might contain 60-80% N2O and would be used at a colder
temperature
than where nitrous liquefies.
IOW the fuel mix would be designed to rapidly decompose into oxygen and
nitrogen upon laser irradiation. Some small amount of CO2 is tolerable,
perhaps 5% of what a gasoline engine would emit. This fuel/oxidizer compound
liquid would have a much smaller energy content, compared to gasoline, but
could
produce similar net torque in an actual engine because of a very beneficial
expansion ratio, lack of normal air intake and parasitic compression
losses, and exceptional Carnot efficiency. A laser or even RF can
be used as this engine's spark plug, depending on the fuel composition.
Nitrous oxide, N2O, is a colorless gas that was first discovered by a
clergyman and so must have been a gift from God Priestley made N2O in
his garage... err, stable... from simple ingredients like iron powder; and so
could millions of future laymen make our nitrous-like fuel in the next decade
in
their garages at night, using off peak power.
For the next 250 years or so the primary use of N2O has been dentistry and
recreational enjoyment. Many famous people (of their time) including clergy,
royalty and dignitaries worldwide used to inhale the Priestlly-Davy nitrous
oxide for recreational purposes, so it is not particularly toxic. Ecologically,
nitrous is about as close to real "air" in composition as it gets in the
molecular world.
It was once know as factitious air. An excellent choice ! especially
for a Madison Ave-type sobriquet, one can imagine. If we can keep the
additives low, perhaps we can keep the name!
When the decomposition reaction of this liquid occurs in the
combustion chamber of an automobile, 3 moles of gas would be produced from 2
moles of sprayed liquid, providing an extra boost to the piston over the normal
800-1 ratio, as well as liberating heat, unlike other cryo-fuels like LN or
liquid air. The expansion ratio should be much more favorable than normal. It
also has a number of other benefits. The oxygen provides efficient combustion
of
any tiny amount of hydrocarbon additive (butane?), the nitrogen buffers the
increased cylinder pressure controlling the decomposition, and the latent heat
of vaporization of the N2O reduces the exhaust temperature. We could probably
keep the exhaust gases closer to regular air by taking carbon out when this
fuel
is made.
Of course N2O is occasionally injected into the fuel lines of racing cars
to give more power to the engine and to give the car exceptional acceleration,
so there is a long history of this.
Here the purpose is different, of course, and again the fuel would not be
nitrous, per se... we might want to add in a touch of LP or methane to initiate
the decomposition reaction, if necessary. Yes, that is some of the
dreaded-carbon, but one can imagine that, as an interim measure, the net result
would be a reduction in net carbon released per unit of torque by a
humongous ratio maybe 20-1... we can use this kind of reduced carbon technology
with hundreds of millions of Chinese needing future powered transport.
...giving us a much longer "grace period" before runaway...
Say "adieu" to CO2, Gracie... OK George, Adieu to CO2
Factiously yours,
Jones
___
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The most personalized portal on the Web!
Re: Mars in a Month - Reactive Sails
About solar sail starcraft driven by laser cannon, does anyone remember "The Mote in God's Eye"? Mike Carrell
Re: Mars in a Month - Reactive Sails
In reply to Terry Blanton's message of Sat, 12 Feb 2005 15:14:08 -0800: Hi, [snip] >http://www.physics.uci.edu/faculty/Acceleration_of_Sails.pdf > >Excerpt from PDF file: > >The major points in this report are: > >(a) Beamed power can drive thermal desorption from LEO >sails, giving high initial velocities, using coated >sail surfaces. > >(b) This capability will open many kinds of fast-start >interplanetary solar sailing missions > >(c) Sun Diver missions, which need to have sails >tested to high temperatures, can be studied in LEO, >observing their response to power beamed to (or from) >LEO. [snip] The side of this not mentioned, is that it would require high powered beamed power sources, on the surface &/or in space. The space based variety would make an ideal weapon to suppress humanity. Regards, Robin van Spaandonk All SPAM goes in the trash unread.
Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations?
Terry Blanton wrote << What's in it for Amazon? A fee?>> From the small print... Does it cost me anything to use the Amazon Honor System? No. There are no fees for making a payment to a participating Web site. To cover our administrative and processing costs, Web sites collecting money with the Honor System are assessed 2.9% of your payment plus a fixed cost of $0.30 per transaction
Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations?
And it's good for me because I live in Canada and I have a Paypal account :-) Colin - Original Message - From: "Grimer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Sent: Saturday, February 12, 2005 6:17 PM Subject: Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations? At 12:59 pm 12-02-05 -0800, you wrote: --- William Beaty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: AMASCI.COM TIP JAR http://amasci.com/tipjar.html Now *that* is a kewl concept. I was able to pay throught my Amazon account. What's in it for Amazon? A fee? Terry That's especially convenient for me since I'm in England but I do have a US Amazon account. Frank Grimer
Re: OFF TOPIC N.Y. Times offers bad advice to HP
--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I bet it uses a lot less energy than what an > equivalent sized CRT monitor would as well. 80 Watts according to the specs. __ Do you Yahoo!? Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Get it on your mobile phone. http://mobile.yahoo.com/maildemo
Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations?
At 12:59 pm 12-02-05 -0800, you wrote: > >--- William Beaty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>AMASCI.COM TIP JAR >>http://amasci.com/tipjar.html > >Now *that* is a kewl concept. I was able to pay >throught my Amazon account. What's in it for Amazon? >A fee? > >Terry That's especially convenient for me since I'm in England but I do have a US Amazon account. Frank Grimer
Mars in a Month - Reactive Sails
http://www.physics.uci.edu/faculty/Acceleration_of_Sails.pdf Excerpt from PDF file: The major points in this report are: (a) Beamed power can drive thermal desorption from LEO sails, giving high initial velocities, using coated sail surfaces. (b) This capability will open many kinds of fast-start interplanetary solar sailing missions (c) Sun Diver missions, which need to have sails tested to high temperatures, can be studied in LEO, observing their response to power beamed to (or from) LEO. (d) Laboratory sail flights can test acceleration & stability of carbon sails now. (e) This basic physics can apply to sails heated by lasers as well. There is a wide variety of promising possible materials for laboratory studies. __ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do? http://my.yahoo.com
More on liquid air engines
Imagine a super-efficient and ecologically sound 2-cycle engine... yet... surprise, surprise... an internal combustion engine with no intake manifold ! John Steck should get a "laugh" out of this. How can a real engine have no intake manifold? Ans: It is powered by a "form" of liquid air. The cryo-liquid is injected directly into the cylinder at TDC and expands upon irradiation. Much of the engine can even be made of injection molded engineering plastic, as it can operate at around 500 degrees F. Just for some factitious *Laughs,* let use nitrous oxide as our "whipping boy" i.e. fuel. In reality, the fuel would not be nitrous per se, but it would be a similar NOx mixture, which is more light sensitive but might contain 60-80% N2O and would be used at a colder temperature than where nitrous liquefies. IOW the fuel mix would be designed to rapidly decompose into oxygen and nitrogen upon laser irradiation. Some small amount of CO2 is tolerable, perhaps 5% of what a gasoline engine would emit. This fuel/oxidizer compound liquid would have a much smaller energy content, compared to gasoline, but could produce similar net torque in an actual engine because of a very beneficial expansion ratio, lack of normal air intake and parasitic compression losses, and exceptional Carnot efficiency. A laser or even RF can be used as this engine's spark plug, depending on the fuel composition. Nitrous oxide, N2O, is a colorless gas that was first discovered by a clergyman and so must have been a gift from God Priestley made N2O in his garage... err, stable... from simple ingredients like iron powder; and so could millions of future laymen make our nitrous-like fuel in the next decade in their garages at night, using off peak power. For the next 250 years or so the primary use of N2O has been dentistry and recreational enjoyment. Many famous people (of their time) including clergy, royalty and dignitaries worldwide used to inhale the Priestlly-Davy nitrous oxide for recreational purposes, so it is not particularly toxic. Ecologically, nitrous is about as close to real "air" in composition as it gets in the molecular world. It was once know as factitious air. An excellent choice ! especially for a Madison Ave-type sobriquet, one can imagine. If we can keep the additives low, perhaps we can keep the name! When the decomposition reaction of this liquid occurs in the combustion chamber of an automobile, 3 moles of gas would be produced from 2 moles of sprayed liquid, providing an extra boost to the piston over the normal 800-1 ratio, as well as liberating heat, unlike other cryo-fuels like LN or liquid air. The expansion ratio should be much more favorable than normal. It also has a number of other benefits. The oxygen provides efficient combustion of any tiny amount of hydrocarbon additive (butane?), the nitrogen buffers the increased cylinder pressure controlling the decomposition, and the latent heat of vaporization of the N2O reduces the exhaust temperature. We could probably keep the exhaust gases closer to regular air by taking carbon out when this fuel is made. Of course N2O is occasionally injected into the fuel lines of racing cars to give more power to the engine and to give the car exceptional acceleration, so there is a long history of this. Here the purpose is different, of course, and again the fuel would not be nitrous, per se... we might want to add in a touch of LP or methane to initiate the decomposition reaction, if necessary. Yes, that is some of the dreaded-carbon, but one can imagine that, as an interim measure, the net result would be a reduction in net carbon released per unit of torque by a humongous ratio maybe 20-1... we can use this kind of reduced carbon technology with hundreds of millions of Chinese needing future powered transport. ...giving us a much longer "grace period" before runaway... Say "adieu" to CO2, Gracie... OK George, Adieu to CO2 Factiously yours, Jones
Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations?
--- Steven Krivit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bill, do you find the 3 bucks to be an ideal choice? I think we were giving $10 per year previously. I was a bit behind; so, I just highlighted the $3.00 and changed it to my desired amount. __ Do you Yahoo!? The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do? http://my.yahoo.com
Re: OOPS, WRONG ADDR Thanks V & Bill B & Donations?
--- William Beaty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >AMASCI.COM TIP JAR >http://amasci.com/tipjar.html Now *that* is a kewl concept. I was able to pay throught my Amazon account. What's in it for Amazon? A fee? Terry __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
Re: off topic economics
Thanks Ed for posting the Bill Bonner writing on Greenspan. Don Rumsfield recently commented on the US Govt debt.. saying.. " deficits don't matter". He is correct.. they don't matter anymore! Anybody that don't see the huge chasm in the middle of the road about June of this year is blind and lying to himself. The hoard of cash and credit made available ( in lieu of hard work) has spun the world in ever increasing speeds where no one dare try to change because it could bring the house of cards down.. so the name of the game is " keep the balloon up" The world banks thought they could win at monolopy by printing their own money. (Rothschild said once ..he didnt care who ran the Government as long as he ran the bank.) ( which ultimately dictates to the Government as the Chinese are learning) What do the bankers win?? They win play money because thats whats its actually worth when the game ends.. It used to be that the winner of the game of monolopy had to put all the play money, the hotels, cards and dice back in the box before bedtime. What to you bet they don't ! They will leave it to the losers to put the game back in the box, complaining of what rotten losers we are. Brings to mind Geo. Washington's departing speech.. "beware of foriegn entanglements". W is a "Yalie". Not even a Yalie can get himself out of this mess and Yalies are known to be able to wiggle out of almost anything. Richard <>
off topic economics
In case some of you are still not too bored about economic discussion, here is a very good article about how we got into the mess we are in. The combination of low interest rates, outsourcing, and deficit spending both in government and industry has created a witches brew that is expected to produce economic collapse in the very near future, regardless of what China does. Bush et al., based on the submitted budget, show no awareness of the problem and are continuing to base policy on lies. The only defense is personal awareness on which you can base a personal defense before the axe falls. Regards, Ed GREENSPAN'S WHOPPER by Bill Bonner "You are wasting your life and your talents writing about Alan Greenspan every day," said an old friend. For years, we have been working on Greenspan's obituary. As far as we know, the man is still in excellent health. But we do not want to be caught off guard. Maybe we could even rush out a quickie biography, explaining to the masses the meaning of Mr. Greenspan's life and work. Perhaps our friend is right. But then again, we weren't doing anything special before we started keeping up with the Fed chairman. Besides, we see something in Alan Greenspan's career...his comportment...his betrayal of his old ideas...his pact with the Devil in Washington...and his attempt to hold off nature's revenge at least until he leaves the Fed...that is both entertaining and educational. It smacks of Greek tragedy without the boring monologues or bloody intrigues. Even the language of it is Greek to most people. Though the Fed chairman speaks English, of course, his words often need translation and historical annotation. Rarely does the maestro make a statement that is comprehensible to the ordinary mortal. So much the better, we guess. If the average fellow really knew what he was talking about, he would be alarmed. And we have no illusions. Whoever attempts to explain it to him will get no thanks; he might as well tell his teenage daughter what is in her hotdog. We persevere anyway, more in mischief than in earnest. The background: The U.S. economy faced a major recession in 2001 and had a minor one. The necessary slump he held off by a dramatic resort to central planning. The "invisible hand" is fine for lumber and poultry prices. But at the short end of the market in debt, Alan Greenspan's paw presses down, like a butcher's thumb on the meat scale. The Fed quickly cut rates to head off the recession. Indeed, never before had rates been cut so much, so fast. George W. Bush, meanwhile, boosted spending. The resultant shock of renewed, ersatz demand not only postponed the recession; it misled consumers, investors and businessmen to make even more egregious errors. Investors bought stock with low earnings yields. Consumers went further into debt. Government liabilities rose. The trade deficit grew larger. Even on the other side of the globe, foreign businessmen geared up to meet the phony new demand; China enjoyed a capital spending boom as excessive as any the world has ever seen. What the Greenspan Fed had accomplished was to put off a natural, cyclical correction and transmogrify an entire economy into a monstrous ECONOMIC bubble. A bubble in stock prices may do little real economic damage. Eventually, the bubble pops and the phony money people thought they had disappears like a puff of marijuana smoke. There are winners and losers. But in the end, the economy is about where it began - unharmed and unhelped. The households are still there...and still spending money as they did before...and the companies still in business. Only those that leveraged themselves too highly in the bubble years are in any trouble - and they probably deserve to go out of business. Even a property bubble may come and go with little effect on the overall economy. House prices have been running up in France, for example, at nearly the same rates as in America. But in France there is very little mortgage refinancing...or "taking out" of equity. The European Central Bank was repeatedly urged to lower rates in line with those in America. It refused to budge. Without falling rates, there was no "refi boom." Nor were European banks offering "home equity lines of credit." Property could run up...and run down...and the only people who cared would be the actual buyers or sellers, who either cursed themselves or felt like geniuses, depending on their luck. But in Greenspan's bubble economy something remarkably awful happened. Householders were lured to "take out" the equity in their homes. They believed that the bubble in real estate priced created "wealth" that they could spend. Many did not hesitate. Mortgage debt ballooned in the early years of the 21st century - from about $6 trillion in 1999 to nearly $9 trillion at the end of 2004. Three trillion dollars may not seem like much to you, dear reader. But it increased the average household's debt by $
Re: OFF TOPIC N.Y. Times offers bad advice to HP
> From: "John Steck" > It's already a great day in the professional graphics > world... > http://www.mwave.com/mwave/viewspec.hmx?scriteria=3505972 > > -john > Yes, the day is approaching. Nice resolution specs! They still need to shave about a thousand dollars off the current price tag. It will happen... I bet it uses a lot less energy than what an equivalent sized CRT monitor would as well. That should please most Vorts. Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
