Brians Blog

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Contactless Energy Transfer System #2

Looks like somebody at USU has been reading my blogs. I wrote about contactless energy transfer over 2 and 1/2 years ago. Wow, the USU Spin-out (spin out - doesn't that have negative connotations?) company seems to have figured out that "Battery limitations represent the largest roadblock to full-scale electric vehicle market adoption". Imagine that?

The actual technology has been around for some time and is used in industrial settings. I wonder if they will sent me a finders fee?

Cyclone of Fire

I saw this experiment at engineering day at the U and decided I had to try it myself.

The burner is a tin can with a corrugated cardboard wick, fueled with charcoal lighter. An aluminum window screen, formed into a cylinder and supported by four wooden dowels, is supported on a plywood disc, which spins on a lazy susan bearing.

Apparently, the screen entrains air in a circular motion, which allows the flame to be fed more combustion air, which increases the flame height.

I'll do some investigating and post anything informative that I find.

Monday, January 2, 2012

Here is a close-up of a plasma electrolysis experiment that I conducted recently. I won't bore you with the details, but if you are interested, Jean-Louis Naudin as written extensively about the subject.

BTW, the electrode is pure tungsten.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

For Matt

I think that Thorium is a really cool element. One thing that makes it so amazing is that it is the most energy dense element in the universe. It also has a half life of 14 billion years, which is the same thing as saying that it is very weakly radioactive.

"Man, I wish I had some thorium," I was thinking to myself the other day. Then, it dawned on me, "I do have some thorium."

Don't rush to call the federales just yet. The thorium is in the form of thoriated tungsten TIG welding electrodes.

You can read about them here. The 2% thoriated electrodes have a red stripe on the end.

Here is a photo of some thoriated tungsten TIG electrodes and a Geiger counter.

Next, is a video clip of the geiger counter measuring background radiation.

Lastly, are two clips of the thoriated tungsten TIG electrodes next to the Geiger counter.

As you can see, they are very weakly radioactive. Cool, huh?

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Utopia

I saw the new iPhone on Sunday and I was really amazed by it. It will do just about everything. It has GPS, HD camera, HD video and makes phone calls of course and it has Siri. It's Apple's answer to Google.

You can ask the phone in a verbal command to search the web for this or that. It will send a text to my wife - tell her I'll be home late - by verbal commands and dictation. It does all of this and it's a tiny little phone that fits in your hand. It's amazing and has incredible pictures and you can watch HD movies on it. There is just about nothing it won't do. There are so many applications (apps) for it. The younger generation is enthralled with this phone it is so incredible. This phone (and other smart phones) will be the death of Utopia. I can only hope to live to see it.

Fiber to the home is mostly malarkey. No one in the rising generation cares about fiber to the home . No one under 30 goes home to send a text or e-mail message from their home computer. They have smart phones; iPhone and android phones. They stay connected with their phones.

They're totally mobile! These phones are wireless and fiberless. They are not physically connected to anything. This will definitely be the final final final bankruptcy of Utopia.

If the managers of Utopia were smart/honest they would sell now to the highest bidder at what ever price so the new owner can connect the fiber network to cell towers.

So, once again I'm predicting the insolvency of or the continuing insolvency of Utopia. Now all we need to do is get out of the way and let it collapse.

If you don't believe me just ask your kids or your nephews and nieces or the neighbor kid to show you their iPhone or their android phone. They are incredible, relatively cheap and they do so much. Mobility trumps the speed of fiber optics because wireless is better.

That is my post for today. Once again I am predicting the insolvency of Utopia.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Fools' Gold and Fools' Copper

I got these really great iron pyrite crystals (fools' gold) from my son-in-law, D. They are from the Rio Tinto Kennecott mine in Bingham Canyon, Utah. I have seen other samples from the same mine, but these were really pretty. The smallest one looks almost perfect.

Of course, iron pyrite is worthless as a source of industrial materials. The iron is too hard to separate from the sulfur to be economically viable. Rio Tinto already produces about 1 million tons of sulfuric acid as a by product of the copper smelting process, according to their literature.

The post-1982 penny is almost worthless, also. That is what I am calling fools' copper; a zinc slug covered in copper. Whereas before 1982, the penny used to be mostly copper. I have blogged about the penny here.

Friday, September 2, 2011

Dad's Pueblo Style Wood Shop

My dad built this incredible Pueblo style wood shop in his backyard in Southern Utah. I have been after him to post construction photos of the shop, but he hasn't gotten around to it yet, so I snapped some shots to show my readers just how great it turned out.

This is the custom gate he built that leads to the vegetable garden

The sun was just at the right angle to cast shadows from the vigas onto the front wall

The pole construction on the inside is just as amazing

Great job, Dad!

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Culture

The self-educated individual – confident in his gender, his heritage, his religion, and the traditional culture that he seeks to project into the future – stands as a threat to the very existence of the state: He does not need its ministrations.

Where then to begin the creation of capitalist culture? The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward the realization of a capitalist culture….

Terry Hulsey

I would add:

The destruction of the moral pretenses of the state is the irreducible first step toward preserving traditional culture.

Delusionists

The delusionists are those who believe that the current system can be reformed, made more efficient, streamlined. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies act on market-like incentives. The delusionists believe that those in government bureaucracy can be convinced to reduce their role and influence. The delusionists believe that the president is in control of the bureaucracies. The delusionists believe that government bureaucracies are led by good people just trying to do the right thing. The delusionists believe that individuals, acting as central planners, are even capable of identifying the right thing to do.

Bionic Mosquito

The State

"A state is absolute in the sense which I have in mind when it claims the right to a monopoly of all the force within the community, to make war, to make peace, to conscript life, to tax, to establish and disestablish property, to define crime, to punish disobedience, to control education, to supervise the family, to regulate personal habits, and to censor opinions. The modern state claims all of these powers, and, in the matter of theory, there is no real difference in the size of the claim between communists, fascists, and Democrats." - Walter Lippmann

Solving the Crisis of American Schooling

"The logic of compulsory schooling in the middle of a democracy is a contradiction of the original national charter; it breaks the contract of the Bill of Rights, using as its justification the excuse that kids can't learn any other way, that they can't be trusted with responsibility. The truth is exactly the opposite: unless they are trusted with responsibility they cannot learn much, and under the thumb of central compulsion the lessons they do learn are bad ones."

John Taylor Gatto, "A Different Kind of Teacher", pg. 193-194

Robert P. Murphy

In particular, the market interest rate coordinates the "intertemporal" (i.e., across-time) activities of investors, businesses, and consumers. If consumers become more future oriented and want to reduce consumption in the near term in order to provide more for later years, what happens in the free market is that the increased savings push down interest rates, which then signal entrepreneurs to borrow more and invest in longer projects. Thus resources (such as labor, oil, steel, and machine time) get redirected away from present goods, like TVs and sports cars, and the freed-up resources flow into capital or investment goods like tractors and cargo ships.

Now when the Federal Reserve artificially reduces interest rates below their free-market level, it sends a false message to entrepreneurs. Firms begin expanding as if consumers have increased their savings, but in fact consumers have reduced their savings (due to the lower interest rates). Businesses that churn out durable goods, such as furnaces, cargo ships, and, yes, houses will find business booming, because these sectors respond positively to low interest rates.

On the other hand, other sectors don't need to contract, because (unlike the scenario of genuine savings) nobody is cutting back on consumption. This is precisely why the Fed-induced boom is unsustainable — real resources have not been released from consumer sectors in order to fuel the expansion of the capital sectors. Because modern economies are so complex, the charade can continue for a few years, with entrepreneurs cutting corners and "consuming capital" (i.e., postponing necessary replacement and maintenance on equipment) while both investment and consumer goods keep flowing out of the pipeline at increased rates. But the music eventually stops, since (after all) the Fed's printing of green pieces of paper doesn't really make a country wealthier. When the Fed "cuts interest rates" it isn't really creating more capital for businesses to borrow; it is instead distorting the signal that the market interest rate was trying to convey.

From mises.org

Gary North

Gary North recently wrote a great article on the politico-economic outcome caused by the anti-nuclear media forces following the Japanese earthquake and tsunami:

"Energy is the key to output. This has been true for over 200 years. To control a primary source of energy is to get rich. China will be able to buy uranium by means of its output from uranium. It will convert uranium into wealth. It will do so with the lowest energy cost-per-output ratio of any nation. Its people will find employment.

I think this has shifted the balance of economic power away from India. India will face public resistance to nuclear power. China will not. India has a lot of advantages: English, the legal system, the free flow of ideas, and a lot of motivated, well-educated people. I am not saying that India will fall behind the world. It will advance. But with respect to the job market for millions of recent arrivals from rural districts, nuclear power will give China the edge.

The anti-nuke forces will never talk about this in public. They will never say publicly, "We have delivered the world's economy into the hands of China." But they will have done just that."

Lew Rockwell - again

The beauty and glory of economic science is that it consists in a series of laws and principles that do not change according to time and place. The prescription for prosperity and stability and human economic flourishing is always and everywhere the same: freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of enterprise, freedom to trade across borders without penalty, sound money that is redeemable in something besides paper, private property rights, wages and prices that adjust by market conditions, and a legal structure that shores up these institutions rather than undermines them.

James H. Polve

“Mechanical engineers design and manufacture machines, machines to help mankind, to ease his burden and to make like more abundant. Machine work supplants slave labor and provides power far in excess of muscle power to free men from hard labor and yet provides the means to accomplish. Automobiles, airplanes, tractors, electrical and nuclear power plants, steam plants and many other similar kinds of plants and machines are typical examples of design and manufacture by the mechanical engineer. His special abilities are aimed at coupling natural laws with natural materials to produce work. He channels energy available on earth, and wherever possible in the universe, through devices into more usable forms to aid man. He can multiply man’s strength and quickness through hydraulic, pneumatic, and electrical devices. He can transport men and goods faster, further, and more efficiently than man can walk or carry. He provides for warmth in the winter and coolness in the summer. He is aided and yet constrained by the physical laws and the characteristics of resources that surround him; and yet he has made great advances to free men somewhat from the edict ‘In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, til thou return unto the ground’ (Gen. 3:19).”

Ted Rockwell - The Best Quote Ever

That tactic, of making problems out of advantages—making sow’s ears out of silk purses, I call it—permeates the whole nuclear enterprise. The advantage that radioactivity continually and automatically gets less and less toxic every day, is converted to, “it stays toxic for thousands of years.” And this is implied to pose an unprecedented problem that humanity is not equipped to deal with. And breakable light bulbs containing mercury are called “green,” and radioactivity is called uniquely hazardous.

http://www.nucleartownhall.com/blog/townhall-qa-rickover-to-the-renaissance/

Thesis Topics for Research

How much money will UTOPIA ultimately consume? Currently they have spent $516 million. I bet the total goes over $700 million before bankruptcy is declared.
Why does lightning occur with earthquakes? Is Harold Aspden's theory about this correct?
Where was Joseph, the Carpenter when Christ was crucified? Had he already died?
What was it like to be a Christian in the 1st century, when the Apostles were still alive?
What influences Americans against nuclear power?
Chinese Trade - what was it paid with in AD 800?
History of Property Taxes in Utah. When Brigham Young said "This is the right place", there weren't any property taxes.
What determines left or right-handedness?