Category Archives: innovation

Renewable Energy & Efficiency Expo + Policy Forum

Taken from the web site:

The Sustainable Energy Coalition, in cooperation with Members of the U.S. House and Senate Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Caucuses, invites you to the 14th annual Congressional Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency EXPO + Policy Forum. This year’s EXPO will bring together more than 50 businesses, sustainable energy industry trade associations, government agencies, and energy policy research organizations (see list below) to showcase the status and near-term potential of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. Members of the U.S. Congress, Obama administration, and exhibiting organizations will give presentations on the role sustainable energy technologies can play in stimulating the economy, strengthening national security, protecting the environment, and saving consumers money. Click here for video and other details from last year’s EXPO.

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required.

Agenda

More details:

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2011 Invention Awards: From Waste To Water | Popular Science

Bjorn Carey, writing in Popular Science (print and on-line), describes a waste disposal system which relies in large part on existing boat engine heat to reduce human waste to water vapor and carbon dioxide.  From 2011 Invention Awards: From Waste To Water:

The exhaust of an idling engine is at least 550°F, which is hot enough to flash evaporate the waste and thermally oxidize the organic materials. Quite simply, the device can break down anything organic that’s put into it. The process eliminates all odors, Nassef says, and the main by-products are carbon dioxide and clean water vapor.How It Works: Zero Liquid Discharge: Waste flows from the boat’s toilet to an equalization tank, which breaks it into small pieces. The material next moves into the homogenizer, a container where it gets chopped into particles. The injector pump pressurizes the material and sprays it through a nozzle into the engine’s exhaust system, where the heat cleans it. Blanddesigns.co.ukNassef built a ZLD prototype in 2004 from washing-machine parts and a five-gallon paint bucket. The current version, his 11th update, uses only as much energy as ten 100-watt lightbulbs, sterilizes waste without any of the harsh chemicals of other portable toilet-waste-disposal systems, and can be scaled up or down. In 2007 it earned a certificate of approval from the U.S. Coast Guard for marine sanitation devices.Nassef is starting with boats, but the ZLD has the potential to work in just about any vehicle with hot-enough exhaust and a toilet. He’s drawn interest from RV manufacturers and the U.S. military, which often resorts to burning waste with jet fuel at a total cost of $400 per gallon at its forward operating bases. Another promising market is airlines, which could plug the ZLD into existing toilets, allowing some planes to shed up to 500 pounds of wastewater weight over the course of a flight.

via 2011 Invention Awards: From Waste To Water | Popular Science.

Not only is the development itself remarkable – but approval by the Coast Guard in three years seems pretty prompt.

Pornography, organized crime and the military-industrial complex (is pornography's business model threatened by new websites?)

Reverse Cowgirl

– the ever-perceptive Ms. Breslin – has posted about a Claire Hoffman piece in Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com which notes precipitous declines in revenue at commercial porn sites, occasioned by the emergency of three free-download sites, in the nature of YouTube: Megarotic (megarotic.com), YouPorn (youporn.com), and Pornotuben (pornotube.com) (note links broken due to the positive correlation between porn sites and computer viruses and the negative correlation between porn sites and computer security. Ed.)

Link to Claire Hoffman’s piece on Portfolio.com.

WNYC’s On The Media– ran an excellent piece in 2002

interview with Jonathan Coopersmith, Douglas Rushkoff, and others making the case that pornography is often the driver of new communications technologies.

For my part, I’d put porn on a plane with two other markets which have different, but no less intense, needs for innovative advantage: illicit markets, and military/law enforcement uses. More my area of knowledge – I can easily name examples:

  • There’s no end to examples of military organizations as first adapters of new technologies: two -way radio, the fax machine (during WWII – before the War Department figured out what to do with telecopiers, they used them for a while over radio – placed in vehicles in the States – sending new information to soldiers and officers who were in vehicles, driving around, making death notifications to the families of service members who had been killed) ((Personal conversations with the late Jack Fitzstephens, whose first military assignment in WW II was in “graves registration” – following behind troops, clipping dog tags, preparing bodies for burial. But not so far behind that he didn’t get shot at)).
  • As soon as there were phones, organized crime (bootleggers, gamblers) used hijacked phone lines – called “cheeseboxes” in New York – so that when authorities followed a phone line to an address – they’d find an empty apartment – with a wired connection to another phone line – sometimes appearing in another apartment or nearby building – which redirected the calls. They could shut the line down, of course – but by the time the connnections got sorted out – targets and evidence had been moved away.An NYPD source has provided me with an explanation of “Cheesebox” as the name – one of the early such setups was hidden in a closet – the wiring then hidden in what had been a shipping crate for cheese.
  • The first mobile telephone I ever saw or used was in law enforcement. (The person I had personal knowledge of using a car-based “radio telephone”was a United States Attorney General; this may be public record now, but not when I came by the information, so we’ll hold the name for the moment, it not being necessary to make the point);
  • Let’s not forget what immediate use urban illicit drug-selling organizations made of pagers and then mobile phones;
  • The first reported use (that I’m aware of) of a “silent,” vibrating pager was by Richard Helms, then DCI, who was reported in the early 1970’s as been “paged” at dinner parties by the then state-of-the-art “beeper.”
  • The FBI was using portable audio recorder hard drives before anyone thought to add “i” to “pod.” Well

before.

Sex, drugs, and espionage in the same piece. We’ll try to keep connecting these things as often as possible.

I’m not sure, though – about the extinction of porn as a business – perhaps this is a just a lull before some newer, better porn medium – with some sort of DRM – makes people willing to pay more for better.