The ‘why’ in all of this was found by Phil Plait at the Bad Astronomer who spoke with Planetary Resources President and Chief Engineer Chris Lewicki on the phone.  Lewicki was Flight Director for the NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars Rover missions, and also Mission Manager for the Mars Phoenix Lander surface operations.

Like most of us Plait assumed that the motive is profit, and while that’s a very long-range purpose, Lewicki’s answer surprised Plait, “The investors aren’t making decisions based on a business plan or a return on investment. They’re basing their decisions on our vision.”

The name “Planetary Resources” fits – the early investors want to be sure there are available resources at hand to assure a future in space for people.  The other motive is to understand asteroids and figure out how to deflect the ones inevitably going to crash into Earth.

Actually it’s more fundamental to the human mind.  While many or most are content to be well enough off to be comfy and entertained, a few are simply eager to tackle challenges.  Getting a private foothold off planet is a major challenge and it can be done.  There are people not just willing but eager to get on with it.

The ‘who’ leading the first private concern being Planetary Resources is Chris Lewicki with John S. Lewis from the University of Arizona joining the advisory board.  The founders are entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Eric Anderson and Peter H. Diamandis, M.D. Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation.  The hands on guys are Lewicki and Chris Voorhees. The current advisory board list counts seven, and nine investors have permitted their names to be disclosed.

The ‘what’ of it being about is much more than just mining an asteroid.  Diamandis put it best saying “Everything we hold of value on Earth – metals, minerals, energy, water, real estate – are literally in near-infinite quantities in space.”  Once folks off planet have this stuff, home for them is “out there”.  Some might say it’s the next step, a way out of the confines of life on earth, finally a place where people can live the way they want.  The motive is much like the first immigrants to the new world of America. Joss Whedon, the rather famous science fiction creator whose short lived television series ‘Firefly’ and the movie ‘Serenity’ that followed are set in a future where governments overwhelmed the free outposts, predicted the concept.  It’s an idea as old as and a response to – “civilization” and the unpleasantness that comes with it.

The ‘when’ is a bit problematic.  There are three proposed parts to the plan – survey, prospect and extract.  The firm is reported to have already contracted for robotics and worked up a roadmap kind of plan.  The first launches are expected in 24 months.  Still, the survey will focus on water to start, as water is needed for the extraction step.  Once surveys identify high value candidates, prospecting can prove up what is the best first choice.

‘Where’ all this takes place is deep space as compared to close up in earth’s orbit.  It’s too soon to say that a certain distance is too far, once asteroids are prospects, one can be sure someone will be willing to put it where it needs to be for a fee.  The where does have limits, too close to the sun would be quite uncomfortable and offer heat stress for extra engineering issues and too far would be about the opposite factors.  But asteroids are in this solar system for the most part, handily, in the useful range.  Asteroids are sure to be moved, but in time the extraction facility will go to them and the products moved where they need to be.

‘How’ is an open question.  The first step is destined to be robots doing the survey.  From there the plans aren’t firm, understandably.

That leaves us with the problems.  Technology is or can rise to the challenge to get it done.  Management is much like the situation faced by earlier explorers.  One can remember the competition and results in the Amundsen and Scott race to the South Pole where smarter planning won and the best of intentions resulted in disaster.

There are the real risks to the capital and our futures.  Just as the earlier and likely these explorers were seeking a life as chosen, government is sure to follow.  Governments may not wait – there is a lot of money involved and government’s favorite honey above all others is other people’s money.  Fees and taxes, perhaps an export to orbit tariff and other ideas are sure to pop up.  Planetary Resources had better figure on millions for lobbyists.

Then there are the legal matters.  One can not expect governments to stay out of the way.  Some bureaucrats are going to feel threatened as well as seek rents and opportunities.  Jurisdiction fights are sure to come up.  One suspects that getting living people up there as fast as possible is a crucial to long-term success.

The leaders and investors in this effort deserve our acclaim.  The whole endeavor is fraught with risk from every angle – and still they choose to press on.

Its audacity, courage and the human spirit come to life once more in assaulting the next frontier and making it our own.  Godspeed to one and all.

The story for Americans after a year of trials is to take a day for thinking of the positive and spending thoughts on what is good, lucky and successful.  No matter how hard, if one still has the ability for forward progress – thanks for any part of the steps past and steps to come are thoughts that are necessary for Americans and for leading forward anywhere.  It a holiday the whole word needs.  It’s a basic part of our American way of life – its fundamental for living – the mental oxygen for life.

Its astonishes to hear of so many without those positive thoughts reflecting on what is good in life, what is worthy of thanks, why we can go forward.

Your humble writer read something like an estimated nine percent of all American adults currently (reported in October of 2010) suffer from depression, according to a study published in the Centers for Disease Control’s latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  That’s more than one in ten – we all know more than one and many don’t know they have the condition.  Depression is a serious problem for the economy, progress and the welfare of all of us.

Depression Image.

If you’re experiencing the condition or care to help others there are new tools to find and – your writer is thankful this news broke this week:

New research led by the University of Exeter in the UK provides the first evidence that depression can be treated by only targeting an individual’s style of thinking through repeated mental exercises in an approach called cognitive bias modification.

The research shows how this new treatment could help some of the 3.5 million people in the UK and something near 30 million in the U.S. living with depression. The full paper is published at the journal Psychological Medicine and for the moment can be downloaded in a pdf file.

The background – for those curious or experiencing the condition is people suffering from depression have a tendency towards unhelpful abstract thinking and over-general negative thoughts, such as viewing a single mistake as evidence that they are useless at everything.  Hardship, lost confidence and uncertainty can only feed negative thinking.

The great thing is the study suggests an innovative psychological treatment called ‘concreteness training’ can reduce depression in just two months and could work as a self-help therapy for depression in primary care.  The pharmaceutical industry isn’t going to let this study get far – but the best successes known to this author came from those folks using cognitive behavior therapy – so the idea seems to have a strong basis in real world application.

Concreteness training (CNT) is a new and unique treatment approach that attempts to directly target the unhelpful abstract thinking and over-general negative thoughts tendency. Repeated practice of CNT exercises can help people to shift their thinking style.  That description looks a lot like mental habit retraining.

CNT teaches people how to be more specific when reflecting on problems. This can help them to keep difficulties in perspective, improve problem solving and reduce worry, brooding, and depressed mood. This study provided the first formal test of this treatment for depression in the UK’s National Health Service.

The formal study seems small where 121 individuals who were currently experiencing an episode of depression were recruited from GP (Genera Practices). They took part in the clinical trial and were randomly allocated into three groups. A third received their usual treatment from their GP, plus CNT, while some were offered relaxation training in addition to their usual treatment and the remainder simply continued their usual treatment. All participants were assessed by the research team after two months and then three and six months later to see what progress they had made.

The CNT protocol involved the participants undertaking a daily exercise in which they focused on a recent event that they had found mildly to moderately upsetting. They did this initially with a therapist and then alone using an audio CD that provided guided instructions. They worked through standardized steps and a series of exercises to focus on the specific details of that event and to identify how they might have influenced the outcome.

The results?  CNT significantly reduced symptoms of depression and anxiety, on average reducing symptoms from severe depression to mild depression during the first two months and maintaining this effect over the following three and six months. On average, those individuals who simply continued with their usual treatment remained severely depressed.

Although concreteness training and relaxation training both significantly reduced depression and anxiety, only concreteness training reduced the negative thinking typically found in depression. Moreover, for those participants who practiced it enough to ensure it became a habit, CNT reduced symptoms of depression more than relaxation training.

Professor Edward Watkins of the University of Exeter said: “This is the first demonstration that just targeting thinking style can be an effective means of tackling depression. Concreteness training can be delivered with minimal face-to-face contact with a therapist and training could be accessed online, through CDs or through smartphone apps. This has the advantage of making it a relatively cheap form of treatment that could be accessed by large numbers of people. This is a major priority in depression treatment and research, because of the high prevalence and global burden of depression, for which we need widely available cost-effective interventions.”

The Exeter researchers are now calling for larger effectiveness clinical trials so that the feasibility of CNT as part of the National Health Service’s treatment for depression can be assessed.

Lets offer a bit of thanks for the Brits work on the condition and that the funding is forthcoming. Clicking their website can only help.

It may not be conclusive yet, but sense allows that most of those suffering from depression have cause – that a culture and social system make very hard to handle without special tools.

The tools look to be coming. It may be worth a look just to have a sense of how to better talk with associates, friends and loved ones when the circumstance of their lives make a healthful thinking style become a self induced destructive habit that leads to a debilitating condition.

Yet counting one’s blessings once a year is a pretty healthy cultural thing and makes for a fine holiday.  It looks like counting them every day is a pretty good personal mental and physical health thing as well.

Here’s your author’s personal message – may your day be filled with blessings to count and thanks to give for them every day all the coming year!  Your being here is one of mine, so I Thank You.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all.

We’re pretty busy here without the grid feeding 7500 volts to the transformer.  An 8 hp 4000 watt gasoline generator is powering this writing and allowing the refrigerators and furnace to catch up.  The generator needed a trip to the parts supplier, more gasoline and a carburetor cleaning by flashlight.  Done.  We’re marginally powered.

Your humble writer wonders where global warming went.  It would have been handy today and tonight.

Its events like this that put the meaning into the site.  It’s amazing how dark it is when there is no electricity for miles around.

It’s been a tough year, confidence has dwindled, cash flow is down, prices are up – the squeeze is on.

It’s time to add some more labor to our efforts this coming year. We all have to become better managers and stewards of our work.  What we gain from our labor must be made to go further.

Work itself must become more valuable.  Everyone is competing with others around the planet.  Sometimes it seems any job can be done anywhere – a sense that’s becoming more true all the time.

The only thing that seems safe is government checks for the select employed and retirees who surely see warning signs in Wisconsin, Indiana and at the US Treasury Department.  Too many hands out– not enough national wealth to go around. This may get worse before some hands are turned away or national wealth grows again.  The lesson of the limit on the share of the wealth isn’t being discussed even yet, a sign that the turnaround remains far away.

But hope springs eternal.  There are parts of the economy doing well.  Some governments bit down and took the cuts, privatized and have not raised their share.  People help out others, families are strengthened, the safety net – while pulled tight – is still holding.  The one light that never goes out seems dim – charity efforts struggle – we who can and more of us need to give again.

Labor Day was, if recalled correctly, a concept of organized labor – born in the heady days when labor groups finally turned the tide of employer greed and contempt and put living wages into many jobs – a swing of the pendulum fully to one side.

Perhaps today – nearly a lifetime later, the pendulum has swung to the opposite side.  The organized jobs of yesterday have dwindled away, over 70% of the U.S. private economy is consumer spending.  Regular folks are richer than ever before.  The big organized labor groups are working for government units now – the only management that won’t manage effectively and can get away with it for long periods of time.

Now the call isn’t for the big employer to create jobs – its fallen to the little businesses to turn the economy around – a situation that defies organizing the labor force.  The career isn’t get some education and look for a job, its invent your own work and find a way to get paid.

The little businesses are almost everyone.  Even homeowners that have survived are in business to provide housing, build an asset, and create wealth through equity.  These little businesses are very hard hit.

For the economy to keep most of us it has to work for most of us.  If you have work to do, give it to someone for pay.  When enough of us do that the economy will be set right again.

By the time the next Labor Day comes around we’ll be in the heat of an election.  This time government not only can’t turn the economy around, it’s dragging it down. It will be an interesting choice in just 14 months.

For our families to prosper, our communities to be healthy and our nation to be safe we have to do business with each other.  All the needs can be met, the wants answered and the wishes come true when we do our work well and give work to others who give great value for the pay.

The self-reliant image of the American is a concept from revolutionary to pioneer to inventor to developer and innovator.  Self-reliant covers the poorest to the richest among us. History credits the concept as a long-term success.

Give a little better than you get and self-reliant can be pretty easy.  Here’s wishing you a more self-reliant next year.

Look at the nations of today – the winning trend is more self-determination for individuals.  Liberty and freedom have value that sees the many willing to sacrifice to cast off the bindings of the government.  Notice that what the current freedom and liberty seekers face is much more ruthless and violent than the British Empire circa 1800.

Individuals still fight on, seen in the Arab world this year.  As the progress mounts everyone gets safer.  Economies improve and interests seek commercial cooperation between nations and populations.

The kick off date July 4, 1776, applies to billions of people, planet wide.

American’s should be proud, and in spite of some resistance to supporting others’ freedom, the nation does do more than any entity in history to secure human rights.  Setting history’s example isn’t quite enough, a bit a war making is required for a better world.

American’s were fooled in the last election into electing a government that chooses its power over the liberty of the people in the guise of “what’s best for all”.   The economic mess driven by regulations pushing abnormal conduct has been answered with more regulation.  It’s nothing more than an attempt to shift responsibility.  It’s become better the government bails industry out than industry answering for its deeds.

Liberty suffers – bankruptcy for individuals is harder, creditors get bailed out.  The yoke is closing tighter.  Without noticing freedom is being replaced with servitude.  Credit companies stockholders and management are getting what seems like a grand deal, for people finding work is harder.

Taxes and regulations become barriers.  Cash is hoarded, investment and capital moves to friendlier places where the freedom, potential and safety seem better.  The top rung of today’s technology in energy, nuclear power, is leaving America for overseas. The gold standard research and safety regulation of the past is now a massive barrier.  The damage is incalculable.

John Stossel writes with another view worthy of the day.

Walter Russell Mead points out American still has a leading role.

So  . . . Celebrate the day.  Just remember to keep the day’s spirit the rest of the year, exercise it on election day, and when someone stumbles or falls help them up and point them back to work again.

Dave Chase writes in Linkedin’s Tech Crunch about a whole new system of delivering healthcare. Healthcare is sucking better than 17% out of the U.S. economy.  Some estimates have the paper blizzard consuming 40% of that and inflation is driving to 1 dollar of each 5 going to healthcare very soon.  With the government stack from the Feds down to the county and municipals sucking another 30% (some say half) the rest isn’t going to boost research and development – or increase the demand for jobs or get home prices and sales back to something normal.

Your humble writer strongly suggests a click over to Mr. Chase’s article. You’ll see some (debatable and incomplete) reasons that the health care delivery system needs an overhaul.  Operate outside of insurance and government pay systems and the savings are incredible.  You really want to click on the article.  Here’s why:

Dr. Samir Qamar in Monterey California recently opened a clinic called MedLion in the heart of Silicon Valley with a model that is revolutionizing how primary and urgent care are delivered.  Dr. Qamar’ breakthrough business model is enabled by cutting out insurance companies from their oversight and cash transfer of day-to-day healthcare. This allows Qamars’s MedLine to dramatically reduce the cost of day-to-day healthcare.

How much of a cut?  Dr. Qamar opened a practice with a dramatically lower price point. For only $49 per month and $10 per visit, MedLion is able to provide high quality medicine at a price point nearly any family can afford.  That’s $588 per year.  It’s not insurance for an emergency room, hospitalization or preexisting condition.  Yet for the vast majority of people that’s enough.  And that price, remember, is in Silicon Valley.

Dr. Samir Qamar of Medline. Click image for the largest view.

Dr. Qamar has received inquiries from doctors all over the country seeking to replicate MedLion’s success. These leading doctors are thrilled to remove the yoke of insurance and work for their patients rather than a faceless insurance company.

Dr Qamar’s website needs some clicks!

One innovation is exploiting the resources of the 21st century.  Like many direct primary care practices, MedLine is finding more than half of their patient interaction is via electronic means.  Because they aren’t forced by reimbursement rules to have a patient come to their office for something that could be done simply over phone or email, paperwork and overhead is reduced.

You and I are better served when our consulting physician is relaxed and freed from stress.  Dr. Qamar told Chase, “The gratifying part of being in a practice like ours is we can practice medicine the way we were trained while saving our patients a considerable amount. Many of my brethren in insurance-centric primary care share with me they believe they are only using 40% of their medical training when they are forced to have what I call ‘drive by’ interactions with patients. When they learn about how we practice, they are eager to transition their practices to our model.”

I’d rather my Doctor was relaxed and focused on me than the paper blizzard in the back room.

Something’s got to give.  The U.S. is being dragged down by a huge overhead running a paper blizzard for their profit called “insurance”.  But the U.S. has the most expensive care in the world and nowhere close to the best care ranking.

Healthcare is killing our economy.

Please, click over and read Chase’s article in full and then check out the MedLine website. If you have a chance to interest someone, pass the links on.  Book mark this page or the others as you see fit.  This is a page we need to go viral.

Thank you!

Before I left, Sunday January 2nd, 2011, I found the eminent, admired and widely circulated Robert Rapier, author of the R-Squared blog had left a comment on a week ago Tuesday’s post, December 28, 2010 in the spam file. I marked Mr. Rapier as ‘Not Spam’ and replied in the wee hours of Monday morning.

The documentation in the comments of the Dec 28 post is instructive and worth a review, not so much by yours truly, but by all of you.  The main divergence between Mr. Rapier and myself is in seeing the ethanol matter as a whole or taken apart into various points.

But to get an early grasp of the situation, please keep in mind that Mr. Rapier and John Stossel were cited as examples of the breadth and depth of the disinformation and misinformation circulating about ethanol. Also, Mr. Rapier is as far as I can tell, is fully independent, while Mr. Stossel is in the employ of Fox News, owned by News Corp. controlled by Rupert Murdoch., the Australian news empire owner.  Murdoch also has managed to gain the ownership of the Wall Street Journal that has also gone on the offensive against ethanol.

Mr. Rapier saw the Dec. 28 piece as a sort of personal affront, while Stossel simply ignored the work. Both men remain ignorant of the full context here.  Thus in respect I have apologized to Mr. Rapier.  But Rapier is a public figure and should become accustomed to being a part of others thoughts.  It’s the last apology from here and it’s my sincere wish Mr. Rapier will not need apologies again.

The issue in play is the petroleum to ethanol ratio.  The sly wish to use energy metrics; the wise will choose the economic, i.e. monetary facts existent in today’s reality.  Over the course of the conversation, one can see how it goes.  The closing point is, when I returned the night of January 5th 2011, Rapier was back in the spam file and had lit off another round of conversation.

From your review of the whole, in context, I seek your opinions.  Rapier may have a smashing Internet success in progress, but some of you are even smarter. What you think matters, perhaps even more if others can be apprised of your thoughts.

One parting shot before I retire to nurse my wee wound.  Its not a blast at Rapier, rather this writer thinks that even with the sophistication, investment and effort leading to immensely powerful and efficient internal and external combustion, burning fuels is a blunt and primitive way to extract the energy.  We can do better, and simpler fuels, richer in hydrogen to carbon ratios are sound, viable alternatives to simply burning stuff up.

Have a great weekend to start off the New Year.

BW

So forgive me if applicable, I wish you a Merry Christmas, Christian or not, your transgressions are forgiven, for all those with faith anyway.

That’s the true challenge, though.  Faith gets worldly challenges, a battering continuous over the whole year from Christmas to Christmas.  Perhaps Buddhism, which isn’t a religion, has a lot to offer. A peaceful mind, freed from the worldly dissatisfactions has a use of great merit.

For much of the world the past year has not been filled with great milestones achieved, or employment filled, incomes increasing, markets expanding, innovations gaining ground.  2010 felt a lot like treading water, with way too many people grasping to stay out of poverty.  Economists and the media dodge the point, but having even a few percent of a market, meaning the disposable income of a nation, reduced or displaced is going to have a major impact on every business – profit might be there for now, but where will the growth come from if the pie is smaller or poorer?

The point this writer is describing is that a bit like the ‘marginal’ barrel of oil supply, those fewer barrels not sold, which drives a higher price is analogous to the working population in reverse.  As the unemployment rate increases, the wealth of a nation deceases and the economic opportunities are diminished and postponed.  Its bad news, and the news has been bad now for more than two years.

This condition, admittedly massively simplified is affecting the energy and fuel markets particularly in the area between research and commercialization.  The development zone is lacking funds both from business and government.  Two recessive years is adding up.  Business has, rationally, slipped to hoarding cash and government has focused attention on restoring or adding to disposable cash flow in the population.  Both miss the main driver of economic growth – developing new products and industry.  When it should be the top priority it isn’t.  Two years have slipped away.

What made this writer an expert?  He’s not.  But 5 days a week the Internet is scanned and the information digested to choose the post of the day.  If you’re one of newenergyandfuel.com’s long timers, you too might have noticed that the post topic range has tightened up this past year.  Basic research fills the posts, little development to be seen.

That said, battery investment has started to get more products to market, the incredible news maker, the Chevy Volt is getting to consumers, so a bit of development is getting out. Solar panels are cheaper and installation costs are coming down.  There is good news, its just not much very news like information.

Some are noticing a lot of effort going into keeping technology gains harnessed or stopped. All that free cash and executive energy in slow times does tend to focus on oncoming competition.  Boards members are people too, and look the other way or encourage progress-resisting strategies.  Many think its not the time or mindset to plan for new risks, new business or new markets.

But these holidays might prompt a few leaders and forward thinking types to shake off the shackles of fear.  The best time to invest is when pricing for the future is low – like right now so more sales and better margins can be made when the market is robust and supports high prices.

One thought that comes to mind is: some of those MBA programs leave a lot to be desired. . . .

Sounds like a dismal point in time: But it isn’t.

The reservoir of basic science has grown; there is a rich trove of knowledge to build with now.  One could say the armory is packed with raw materials – and its true.

It’s going to take some courage, adjustment, and willpower to get the economy moving into growth again.

When balanced in mind this Christmas doesn’t seem so grim. Many people are in distress, and helping to relieve that is the human, the natural way to celebrate one’s success.  If Christmas is anything outside of the commercial effort, charity towards all is a healthy thing for the practitioner.

Yet the future, months and years out is the most valuable focus of true charity.  Teaching, investing, and risking, are all means to make the world a better place.  We do it for our children.

Centuries ago people hunted and gathered in the wild environment of the time.  Today the tools are more complex and sophisticated, the environment a construction of humanity, of markets and government – but hunters and gatherers we remain.  Now there are two tasks – both the hunting and gathering but also the construction of markets and government.  Recessions are nothing more than hunting and gathering getting ahead of the construction and development of markets and government – a never-ending task. We must all attend to the construction of markets and government with an eye for the future for everyone.

This view is your Christmas gift from this writer:  A challenge to make it pay for yourself, your children and everyone else – if you can.

Government comes in many forms, but all, one way or another, coerce with a range of tools from dictates, laws, regulations, rules, taxes and bureaucratic activity.  The sticks range from torture and death, torture and death of loved ones, execution, imprisonment, fines, seizure forfeiture and confiscations of property.  It’s a fearsome list.  Do something to offend a bureaucrat, police type on up to dictator or president and the consequences can be horrific.

The key in keeping social growth and improving the living standards (aka the American Dream) is not to cross the “line of fear” of the “mob”.  Even the most civilized of societies when frightened become a mob. Tyranny gets fear going early and quick, and struggles with violence to keep power.  Democracy gets to fear late and slowly and struggles with politics to find a way to keep the system intact. So, what is that line?

The “Positive” Incentives.

The danger zone for a national society is the use of carrots also known as incentives.  An incentive can be special treatment in law, regulations, rules, taxes and bureaucratic activity. Incentives are especially dangerous when treatment extends to passing money out.  It seems like a behavior motivator to the dispenser, but it’s always a psychological depletion of some kind for the recipient.  Many incentives do have positive effects to be sure, but once one is enabled others are sure to follow with inevitably less social value until burdensome for everyone.  At some point the burden’s growth displaces national growth and improving living standards.  National, social and cultural stagnation ensues, the cultural dream slowly dies and the burden is very hard to shake off.

The United States is deep into the experiment of how far incentives, with all the special interests competing with the interests of the whole, can go before an economic implosion.  Economists are vaguely aware and watch, but with a body of law through regulations, rules and taxes numbering in the millions of pages over thousands of activities and programs a model that’s credible defies construction.  It’s also pointless.  It’s plain to see that the U.S. economy is operating based with fear of government intrusion, not from hopes of research, development, taking risk and innovating to a better future.  Survival comes first.

Most people whether ready for the admission or not, realize they are paying for someone else’s carrot.  They also feel the branches of the sticks catch bits of them and know they’re just a step away from a full impact.  They also know something should be done to get the country right again.  Many are in denial; refuse to see world and its history, yet they too are behaving in a burdensome carrot world with sticks raised over them.

Lots of people wonder what to do.  Well, get real first.  The U.S. government and most others are an ‘intangible’ property like a contract or insurance policy.  It can be changed.  Some might say, “push the reset button” to borrow again from the world of computers.

A reset button push is not enough – a reset just reorganizes with a restart so things cooperate better and does nothing to remove the problems.  Politicians and the media love the “reset button” analogy because it seems ‘Cool!’.

In the world of computers a harddisk format clears the whole of the system to empty.  A re install puts in an operating system like Windows or Linux (government structure) with the default settings in place ready for programs (the laws, etc.).  All the stuff needed has to be put back and all the garbage and junk are sensibly and hopefully left out.  Computer people call it a “clean install” and it works wonders.

For the U.S. the operating system is the Constitution.  Ready at a moment’s notice for use with no license to pay.  Vacating the whole body of law might seem extreme, but there are choices and significant advantages. . .

Vacating the body of law back say 100 or 200 years will keep the military intact and the violent offenders behind bars.  Most every carrot and stick will disappear, 110 years and the IRS is gone.  It will also focus the attention of the Congress on what’s really basic and important – for years if not decades.  One might think chaos would ensue, but not if there are a few months or a year of advance notice.  The culture and society will have to take care of themselves again.  Personal responsibility would have meaning again.

Expediency would be more important than political maneuvers – something not seen in over 200 years.  The interests of the whole will supercede everything of special interests for years, too.

Of course it’s not that simple, but the potential exists and the path to do it was foreseen and written in the Constitution.  Something like the Tea Party of today could get state legislators in office and call the convention.  A simple government re install back to say 1875 would be great.

. . . With a 20-year expiration date clause for all new laws, just to keep the Congress working at its primary job.  It’s time to format the national system and reinstall the Constitution.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome.

The biofuel industry charged along quite well with the established base, mostly ethanol supply increasing nicely and offering those countries with an industry in place some security and a worldwide buffer in the gasoline market.  Ethanol’s opponents haven’t made much headway, but government policy isn’t something to ever count on: thus ethanol in North America is still at some risk.  But alternatives to crude have a solid foothold if policy can keep the market healthy enough to grow and drive to lower prices.

The cellulose based, algae, and synthetic alternatives are making incremental progress.  No big breakthroughs for the year, but the gap on production costs is closing, indicating that $70+ crude is good enough support.

Opposed to all of this is that consumer demand has adjusted, not happily to be sure, to oil’s higher price.  The market place has answered in the free world.  With biofuel products getting more competitive and more alternatives coming the oil business has answered as well with ever more discovery and more importantly better recovery techniques.

A good example is the Kern Oil field in California.  About a billion barrels has been pumped, and about a billion barrels are still there.  Its been going for 111 years. And there are lots more oil fields to re work.  All those efforts will produce more oil consuming healthy investment and using lots of well-paid labor and quality materials.

The liquid fuels market has been good this year and the future has gained improved confidence.

Power generation is a different story.  The main news is about small reactors and much more natural gas being used.  Natural gas for power generation still grows, which over time is sure to see a price peak again.

Yet a turning point has come in nuclear power.  2010 might be seen as the year with small reactors offering near full confidence in safety.  The proving is going to take time due to the hysteria of the past loading the regulatory framework slowing things down enormously.  But the science is getting around and many are offering the rest of us good insight on the science.

One prime example is the series of Nuclear Carnivals that seems led by Brian Wang and others.  Each of the Carnivals is a collection of articles, many of which are easily understood by ordinary people of average intelligence.  A review illustrates that safety hysteria, with some credence from Three Mile Island and especially Chernobyl should be history soon.  10 of the U.S. reactors are coming down with 104 remaining.  The power will have to be replaced. Small reactors and the reactor fuel thorium offer a sparkling future when the regulatory system catches up – if it catches up in a timely manner most worries could go away.

That brings us to fusion and others.  Eric Lerner, finally funded enough to get deep into the functional research has encouraging results.  The Nebel led Bussard fusion effort is going up a level.  Cold fusion has progressed nicely and might get firm physics answers that can overcome the naysayers soon.  The Blacklight Power idea has commercial traction started.  No big news, but good steady progress.  Yet the cold fusion research might help everyone soon . . .

Storage in 2010 has been incremental improvements.  Lithium ion holds the current lead, fuel cells are available in small sizes in Japan, catalyst work and cost cutting are making headway – the field is getting ever more complex and the new field of air batteries has a major push underway.

2010 has seen many points worthy of thanks to people, the creator and to nature.  The mind of man has made progress in understanding the physics, chemistry and biology of energy.  The comforting thought beyond the thanks – is the iceberg of knowledge has only been chipped.