Few people know the story of how the Japanese rose to prominence in technology. Briefly, if goes like this: At the end of World War II, Japan lay in ruins and had very few prospects for recovery.
Author: craigshields
Wind Energy with Compressed Air Energy Storage: An Update
A few weeks ago I wrote about an investment opportunity in the form of a project deploying wind energy integrated with compressed air energy storage (CAES), and mentioned some good news: a large investor group has offered $40 million in …
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Scientific Illiteracy: “80 Hours of Electricity??”
It pains me to see the horrific level of scientific illiteracy in today’s world. From Business Insider: Chinese students have figured out how to turn a spoonful of sugar into 80 hours of electricity. Electricity is not measured in units …
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Tagged with: scientific illiteracy
80% of Coal Power Plants in the EU Are Bleeding Red Ink
As I mentioned, the local high school kid I’m tutoring in history is studying the Industrial Revolution and its broad economic and social ramifications. Among the most important points here is laizzes faire capitalism / free market economics, as represented …
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Tagged with: Coal Power Plants
Building-Integrated Solar PV
GreenTech Media’s article Five Reasons Not to Get Too Excited About Tesla’s New Solar Roof is actually more compelling than I thought it was going to be when I opened it.
The Trump Phenomenon and American Education
The map below presents U.S. News and World Report’s ranking of the 50 American states in terms of a variety of parameters. Beneath that is a map focusing only on the quality of the states’ educational system. When overlaid against …
Plant Trees
The paintings of Italian artist Maurizio Rega’s inspire this two-word phase: plant trees.
Tagged with: plant trees
Support for the U.S. President
Those of us old enough to remember the end of the Nixon presidency recall that support doesn’t wane steadily. It hangs on and on, until it’s no longer considered tenable. Then it disappears, as if into a wisp.
Tagged with: Support for the U.S. President
On Human Scum
Can it shock anyone that Trump considers any who oppose him, be they from either of the two main U.S. political parties here in the formerly great United States, to be “human scum?” At this point it’s a cascading set …
Tagged with: Human Scum
Volvo’s First Fully Electric Car
Any automaker that expects to be around in 20 years has an electric vehicle program aggressively underway. Sure, some of these efforts are slow-rolled, as the EV adoption curve hasn’t yet gone into high gear, due largely to issues associated …
