Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency

I have been fuming about this raging stupidity known as the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency, or UTOPIA, for years. Steam has been coming from my ears and I have been sputtering about how ridiculous I find the whole thing. So, I finally condensed my opposition into one reason. The reason I hate UTOPIA is because I am being coerced into paying for it. So there it is in one simple sentence. Let me repeat. I hate UTOPIA because I am coerced into paying for it.

Never mind that the whole idea behind it is a delusion, the business model sucks, the name is infantile, it has no accountability, its principals pretend to have never heard of the Rigas family or WorldCom or iProvo or etc, etc.

None of that would matter one whit to me if "my" property had not been put up as collateral for the bonds being used to build the network. Brigham City Council twice voted to use tax revenue as collateral to obtain the bonds and tax revenue to ultimately pay the bonds, if the venture fails.

Utah has long been the target of schemers, shysters, and conmen, some of who are smart enough to go for the deep pockets!

Batteries?

Batteries are the Achilles' heel of electric cars and always will be. It's a fact of chemistry and physics. However, I submit to you that electric cars really don't need stupid, unobtainable, heavy, expensive, low-power density batteries any more than they need to carry the road with them.

Modern, gas-burning cars need roads. Look out your window in any direction and you will see this reality. Cars that don't need roads are called four-wheelers or Off Road Vehicles (ORV). Now, I don't think that the greens are really suggesting that we develop electric ORVs, so we can conclude that electric cars are intended to be used on roads (infrastructure). Thus, if electric cars need roads to function, then they don't need batteries. Here's why - electric power can be added into the existing roads and the electric cars can pick-up the power they need from the road. Only a small battery would be required to take the car from the garage to the electrified road. The driver could even be billed monthly for the electricity used since the car could connect to the road grid with a unique IP-like address, similar to a cell phone or other wireless device and keep track of the kilowatt-hours used.

Of course, a nuclear power plant would have to be "connected" to the road, or what would be the point of burning coal instead of gasoline? This arrangement would also have the added benefit of supporting both gasoline powered cars and electric cars at the same time.

Note: Non-contact power transmission devices have been available for industrial uses for a few years. I believe that they could serve as a model for the type of electric car that I am talking about.

Peak Uranium

I want to be the first to predict the coming shortage and potential crisis if humanity becomes dependent on nuclear power. I have dubbed this looming catastrophe, "Peak Uranium". Based on known supplies of uranium and breeder reactor technology, humanity will reach the peak of production of uranium in approximately 2 billion years. We need to act now to prevent this cataclysm! This crisis is as critical to the survival of the planet as is global warming. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away!

Seriously, folks, breeder reactor technology has the ability to provide all of humanity with the energy it needs for as long as this planet is estimated to be habitable (3 to 5 billion years) See Abundant US Energy-Supply Options for the Very Long Term, by S. S. Penner http://www.ddponline.org/penner08.pdf

By the way, I have addressed the non-issue of nuclear waste in a previous post. Mr. Penner also further comments about this non-issue in the above link.

Killing General Aviation

The June 2009 issue of Kitplanes has a very relevant editorial by Marc Cook, entitled "Airport Security: Out of hand and getting worse". He concludes the article: "If you had a master plan to kill general aviation in this country, I can't think of a better one than to combine obscene and ineffective security rules with a brutally bad economy". I couldn't agree more!

As a kid, I lived on a bluff overlooking the Elko, Nevada Municipal Airport. I used to ride my bike to the airport and just look around. One afternoon two Mustangs flew over the city and landed. I easily persuaded my dad to quickly take me to the airport. He grabbed his camera and us kids piled in the car. In those halcyon days anyone could wander out on the ramp and see the planes. Here are pictures of the two Mustangs as proof. One of them was the "Red Baron" of Reno Air Race fame.

In addition to the profane costs of flying that have devastated general aviation for decades due to the monopoly of FAA certification, we now have to deal with the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. I bet if those names were translated into Russian or German their letters would be NKVD or SS. But hey, that's the price we pay for living in a free country!

More Slogans

I came across this tidbit in the Mesa, Arizona CAF Museum on a box of matches: Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer. One People, One Nation, One Leader. They called it the fuhrerprinzip. W called it the unitary executive. One wonders what Obama will call it? I hope I live to see the end of the evil done in the name of nationalism.

The Biggest of the Big Lies

This is a whopper of a lie. Who could even imagine that the sun, which is the dynamo that drives our climate, is at a 100 year low in solar activity? You would never know from the rubbish that masquerades as news. Google "sunspots" and find out for yourself. Lack of sunspots is correlated with cooler, wetter weather. Direct, observational data of sunspots goes back over 400 years and the sun is currently very quiet with over 200 days without sunspots in 2008. No one understands the physics that drive these solar cycles, yet we are to believe global circulation models that predict anthropogenic global warming when the biggest input into the models is not understood by scientists!

An Improbable Place

Lambayeque, Peru is a very improbable place, or at least it was very improbable that I visited the very factory that makes King Kong. Here is a picture of some that my in-laws just brought back from Peru. Yum Yum.