I've been reading steadily lately. It's nice. Maureen McHugh's "Nekropolis" is sort of a science fiction book, but there are really only a couple of science fiction-y elements (though they are key). A young woman bound into the service of a family in Islamist Morocco falls in love with a pseudo-human slave and attempts to escape their captivity. It's not really a book where a whole lot happens; it's much more about presenting personal perspectives in a particular setting. It's good at that, but I prefer books where more happens; maybe that's an immature preference, but I'm ok with it.

Kazuo Ishiguro gives us "Never Let Me Go," which is another book in which little happens. Three children grow up in a boarding school in the English countryside, their only purpose in life being to supply organs to non-cloned humans. Ishiguro is a fine writer, and really conveys mood and character, but the story is weak, the behavior of the characters is inexplicable and frustrating, and he leaves our far too much back story. I don't know if it makes it better or worse that those flaws are certainly intended, and not considered flaws at all by the author, who seems more invested in the medium than the message. He's quite good at that, but it doesn't make for satisfying reading.

I reread "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt, which I first read 6 years ago. I don't know if I was so impressed with it the second time around. I dunno.

After enjoying the "V For Vendetta" movie (which rehabilitated my opinion of the Wachowski brothers after the disastrous "Matrix" sequels), I grabbed the graphic novel on which it was based, which tells the story of an anarchist's rebellion against a totalitarian Britain of the future. Perhaps I am not in tune with graphic novels, or having seen the movie ruined any impression I could have of it, but I was underwhelmed. There were a number of characters who seemed extraneous. Some things, like the computer that ran everything, were too briefly covered. Other things were painfully over-the-top (which maybe goes with the medium). Overall, it was all right, and it certainly didn't demand a lot of time.

Last up is Neal Asher's "Cowl," a bizarre and richly imagined story of time travel and a war between two factions in the 43rd century with consequences that could affect the beginnings of life on Earth. My description makes it sound a little silly, but it's not. It's very well-paced. The two protagonists are well chosen and their paths through the story give Asher substantial opportunities for expounding on his vision. There is one poorly-done arc where one of the characters goes through a personal transformation, which mars but does not destroy an otherwise fine book.

¶ 1401 Posted at 12.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

¶ 1404 Posted at 12.32 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

It's becoming increasingly obvious that we need more fission power to sustain our economy. Wind and solar are all well and good, but they can't run all the time. Natural gas is better than oil, but it's similarly limited, and US production has peaked. Fusion is still a pipe dream. And coal is awful in so many ways.

Fission power has come a long way since the first reactor under the bleachers at the University of Chicago. There are reactor designs that can't melt down and can't explode. However, there are still problems. They produce lots of radioactive waste. Uranium requires a lot of expensive and energy-intensive refining to isolate the fissionable U-235 (0.7% of all Uranium) from the not-so-useful U-238 (99.3%). Uranium reactors also produce plutonium, making it a dicey proposition to allow countries like Iran, North Korea, or India to build and run them. We can avoid a lot of that by switching to a different fuel: Thorium.

Thorium has all kinds of nice features. By far the most dominant isotope is Th-232, which is perfectly good as a fuel. Thorium is much less radioactive than Uranium, so there's much less danger in handling it. Reactors using Thorium have a closed loop where all highly radioactive elements remain in the reactor. And the Thorium reaction cycle produces no plutonium. Why did we focus on Uranium in the first place? Because we wanted the bombs. The original nuclear power plants applied the knowledge gained from the Manhattan Project; it didn't make much sense to invest effort into a different path, especially when we wanted to build thousands of warheads. Now, well, things are a little different. Even better, a Thorium reactor can consume other radioactive elements. That means that the Plutonium sitting around from disarmed nuclear warheads, or the spent fuel from Uranium-based nuclear power plants can be burned away rather than sitting around for centuries spewing neutrons. Here's more info. The first article mentions a CERN report claiming that Thorium power generation cost would be 1/3 that of coal, which is the cheapest current source 1 .

I'm not one to say that the government ought to take the lead in doing something like this, though it would be nice to see some support. Hmmm... there's a publicly-traded company developing Thorium Power. I think I'll take a little gamble.

¶ 1406 Posted at 12.36 PM ⇒ No Comments ( energy )

We want to use less energy. Compact fluorescent light bulbs use much less electricity than incandescent bulbs. So it makes sense for, say, Australia to ban incandescent bulbs, right? Except... GE has developed an incandescent bulb that uses the same amount of electricity as a CFL. That's great news for everyone who doesn't live in Australia. This is an excellent example of why governments shouldn't try to pick winners. If you want people to use less electricity, make electricity more expensive. People will figure out their own solutions. Some people will do nothing and pay more. Some people will install better light bulbs. Others will put in skylights. And others will just sit in the dark. I don't care what they do, and neither should the government. What matters is that people use less electricity, not how they do it. One size does not fit all. Try running an Easy-Bake Oven on a CFL.

The hybrid tax credit is the same. If you pay taxes in the United States and I buy a hybrid, I want you to know that the income tax credit that I get for that is a waste of your money. I drive a 30 mpg Toyota Corolla a distance of about 5,000 miles per year. It makes no sense to give me $3,000 so that I use 100 gallons of gas per year instead of 160. And that $3,000 isn't going to get a Hummer driver into a Prius. You make gas more expensive, and I won't care because I don't use much anyway, but the Hummer driver will take notice. If consumption of gasoline is the problem, make gasoline expensive. 1

The City of Austin is considering mandating that all houses sold in the city be made more energy efficient at the time of sale. That's the same sort of one-size-fits-all solution that wastes money. My neighbor is a bachelor living by himself. He doesn't eat much food or do much laundry. Why should the city force him to have a new dishwasher or clothes washer? On the other hand, we eat at home nearly every night of the week, and having a toddler in cloth diapers means a buttload (haha) of laundry. It might make sense for us to have new appliances. But that should be our decision. After all, we could easily switch to using disposable diapers. Even a general mandate such as investing 1% of the sales price in such measures is misguided; there are year old houses and 100-year old houses, and they use vastly different amounts of energy. Applying no upgrades to the former and 2% of the value of the latter will achieve far more good than a flat 1%.

Higher prices aren't (just) about profiteering. Price is an important mechanism for balancing supply and demand, as I described in a hypothetical example last year. If you want less demand, increasing the price is the simplest and best way of doing it. It allows people to reach their own accommodations with the new reality, whether through substitutes, conservation, avoidance, or just ponying up the extra dough. It keeps the focus on the real issue. Mandating compact fluorescent light bulbs does not deter electricity wasted on a TV nobody's watching. It also makes it obvious exactly what's going on; how much do you suppose Toyota and Honda lobby for the hybrid tax credit? Let's be clear: we as a society do not want compact fluorescent light bulbs. We don't want hybrid cars. We don't want Energy Star appliances and weather stripping. What we want is for people to use less energy. Let people find their own ways of getting there.

¶ 1407 Posted at 02.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( energy | politics )