Navy Deploys Lasers

The US Navy is set to deploy ship-board laser weapons this summer.  They can target drones, small boats, light aircraft, and missiles.  It uses commercially-available technology and costs less than a dollar per shot.  The current defensive weaponry being replaced spews thousands of rounds of depleted uranium. 

CO2 Recycling

Liquid Light's CO2 converter can turn this troublesome byproduct into over 60 chemicals.  Other companies are working on even more such processes.  So instead of sequestering CO2, fossil power plants should start looking at selling it to these chemical fabricators.

What do New Jersey, Texas and Arizona have against Tesla?

Back in the last century, auto dealer franchise laws were adopted in response to the monopolistic behavior of car manufacturers.  They also kept a portion of the profits from car sales in the states where the cars were being sold.  The inefficient layer of middle-men may have inflated prices a bit but some of that money remained in-state where it could be taxed for effectively.

Now,Tesla is challenging that business practice.  In any given location, there aren't enough cars sold to support a traditional dealership.  And the prices are already steep enough such that bumping them up to support middle-men would hurt the small volume of sales even more.  Furthermore, no smudge-pot car dealership is going to be effective at selling Tesla's because of the conflict of interest that comes with selling a product that would supplant the product line that generates almost all of your profits.

Hypocrisy Lobby

Y'know, if you are going to deny coverage for you employees to use certain contraceptives, you should really stop investing in the companies that make them.  Hobby Lobby's 401k retirement plans have $73 million in mutual funds that hold stocks in the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the birth controls to which the company objects.

Natural Gas Into Liquid Fuel

Over at BYU, they are turning raw natural gas into upgraded liquid alcohol fuel.  The catalysts are not exotic and the process runs at around 180 degrees Celsius. 

Mugshots from DNA

With a surprisingly small sample database, researchers have built eerily accurate facial reconstructions from just a person's DNA.  My first thought is the forensics applications but it could go so much farther than that.

Failed Republican Experiment

In 2012, Kansas enacted severe tax cuts.  They could have been the shining demonstration of the success of a the Republican low-tax utopia.  But instead of the wet dream, low-tax Kansas became a nightmare.  Schools are poorly funded.  The damage by the Great Recession to public services has been deepened and extended rather than alleviated.  There was no improvement to the Kansas economy.  New jobs and earnings have lagged behind the rest of the country.  And the situation is projected to continue to be worse than the rest of the nation.  But it was good for the wealthy.

Do we need any more evidence that those calling for lower taxes are only interested in lining their pockets at the expense of society as a whole?

H/T Hullabaloo

Nifty Fuel Cell

This solar-induced fuel cell catalyzes biomass such as powdered wood into electricity.  It can use all kinds of biomass and the catalyst functions from sunlight or low-grade heat.  Pretty cool, I say.

A Collection of Appropriate Technologies

First there's the solar power light in a soda bottle.  Then there's a solar powered desk light.  And finally, there's the disease-fighting microscope made from paper.  Cool stuff!

The Bankers' Big Lie

The bankers want us to believe that the American financial consumers were responsible for the Great Recession.  The evidence shows that bankers were the real villians is this.  They inflated valuations and issued bad mortgages by changing their own rules.  And nothing has been done to keep them from doing it again.

Sorry, everybody was not to blame. “We” didn’t all do it. “Main Street” didn’t succumb to a new tulip mania, and cheap credit didn’t expose anything but the corruption and immorality of a financial industry that systematically put huge numbers of even credit-worthy borrowers into defective products. Cultural theorizing—especially the evidence-free kind—should be seen for what it is: an exercise in complacency. It’s easy. And it’s what you lean on when you don’t want to take on structural problems, the kind you actually have to do something about.

Taxing All College Graduates

Josh Freedman makes the case for using an income tax bump on college graduates as a means for funding public higher education.  Then, he tries to find problems with the proposal.  I find his counter-arguments weak so maybe the time has come for this idea.

The arguments for it include: no debt taken on by students, repayment is tied to income, ease of administration, poor people will not be supporting higher education through general taxes, and more poor people could avail themselves of higher education.

In trying to construct some viable argument against the proposal, Freedman gets lost in the weeds about poor people being under-represented at private schools.  But that's irrelevant.  He also argues against an idea that isn't in the proposal.  Again, irrelevant, and a waste of bits.

Here's a link to Oregon's attempt to put such a thing in place.

Texas’ New Abortion Law is Driving Women to Extremes

Texas abortion laws suck and this is why.  Any genuine medical reason for an abortion runs afoul of the small-minded laws written by anti-choice activists who could care less about human medical realities.  Methinks the "God" they worship has something to be desired as well.

Not Biodiesel But 'Biogasoline' From Plant Waste

Chemists at UC Davis have derived a chemical process that can be use to convert cellulose into sustainably-sourced gasoline.  Cellulose is processed into levulinic acid which is then processed into the gasoline-like hydrocarbons.  It has a high yield and doesn't involve fermentation like previous methods.  Provisonal patents have been filed.

Five-second Food Rule Validated

Recent research supports the applicability of the 5-second rule.  So if that food hits the deck, snatch it up quickly and proceed with your meal.

Netflix Link to Pandora's Promise

Pandora's Promise on Netflix.

Obamacare and the Part-Time Economy

Obamacare has not yet turned America into a nation of part-time workers, as many of its strongest critics have long said it would. 

In fact, the opposite seems to be happening, according to new government numbers published Friday: The number of part-time jobs is actually shrinking, and full-time jobs are being created instead.

The critics may not be all that good at business.  Smart employers take a broader view that just saving a few nickel and dimes by engineering ways to not have to pay for their employees' health care.  If they have the demand, they need good, healthy, motivated, and experienced employees. It saves money in the long run because the business itself operates better.  However, when demand is iffy, it just gets harder to do that and the businesses go into survival mode and are forced to cannibalize themselves just like a malnourished body begins to consume it's own muscles.

On That Minimum Wage Thing...

Washington state posts highest job growth while having the nation's highest minimum wage.  Could there be a causal relationship?  Hmm.

Better Than A Minimum Wage Hike

Warren Buffet has a better idea.  An appropriate increase in the EITC would put more money into the working poor's hands without the economic impact employers.  That money would come out of tax revenue, so maybe we could not build quite as many warplanes.

Dave Camp has some more ideas on improving the tax code.  These include streamlined educational tax credits, a larger standard deduction, and a larger child tax credit.  He also would eliminate special interest tax advantages and a great many loopholes.  Since he is writing in the WSJ, he has to float the canard that lower taxes would magically create jobs, but we can forgive him for that since many of the things he lists get bipartisan support.

Update: Obama's budget has an expanded EITC and child tax credit in it.

Methanol from Carbon Dioxide

Just below I linked an article that talked about a method using microbes to generate sugars for fuel production from atmospheric CO2.  Today the folks at SLAC have identified a catalyst that can do pretty much the same thing, without the messy biology.  This stuff synthesizes hydrogen and CO2 into methanol.

USPS and the Economy

Could the Post Office save the economy?  Postal banking is an old idea that may be worth thinking about again. More poor people could get affordable banking services.  It would make the delivery of federal benefits to the poor more cost effective by cutting out the commercial banks that skim those dollars by charging fees for access to food stamps and unemployment benefits.  A protected savings method for the poor could be provided.  More banking could be provided to the immigrant population since many of them already use money order services provided by the Post Office.  Postal banking could lead the way in improving measures against identity fraud by rolling out more secure "chip-and-PIN" debit cards.  It could lead the way in establishing mobile phone banking services.  Established banks have been slow to do this because they see the lead-in costs as too expensive.  Postal banks wouldn't sell your personal information to advertisers like other banks do.  Recessions could be dealt with efficiently by putting stimulus money directly into the hands of consumers with a Federal Reserve ATM system.