Thought you might want to consider getting on board early.
A German Engineer just started his own business in Afghanistan He's making land mines that look like prayer mats. It's doing well. He says prophets are going through the roof.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Investment opportunity...
Investment opportunity... Reader Jim M. passes along this investment opportunity for your consideration:
Old Glory flying over the homestead...
Canada honors its hero from yesterday's terrorist attack...
Barn: insulated!
Barn: insulated! The insulation crew finished the entire job yesterday, and the results are pretty impressive. The blown-in fiberglass fills every last nook and cranny in the walls, which is how they manage to get such high R-factors. It was fun to watch them work; the modern materials and machines really made the job go fast.
For example, the netting was stapled up with hundreds upon hundreds of staples, at an average interval of about 2 inches. They did this with a staple gun that works like a machine gun – they just run it down a stud or rafter, and the staple gun spits out staples at a rate of 8 to 10 per second. When you see how many staples they put in, you'd think they spent days doing it – but it actually went very quickly.
Blowing the insulation in was also a fast job. A huge machine inside their truck has a hopper full of the raw fiberglass, and a large blower. When the installer presses a trigger on his “insulation gun”, this machine starts chopping and fluffing the fiberglass, then blowing it at high speed down a long flexible hose to his gun, where it fills whatever cavity he's working at that moment (see the last two photos below).
The bottom line: a three man crew installed top quality insulation in the walls and ceiling of a 4,000 sq. ft. barn in about 9 hours. That's darn fast!
For example, the netting was stapled up with hundreds upon hundreds of staples, at an average interval of about 2 inches. They did this with a staple gun that works like a machine gun – they just run it down a stud or rafter, and the staple gun spits out staples at a rate of 8 to 10 per second. When you see how many staples they put in, you'd think they spent days doing it – but it actually went very quickly.
Blowing the insulation in was also a fast job. A huge machine inside their truck has a hopper full of the raw fiberglass, and a large blower. When the installer presses a trigger on his “insulation gun”, this machine starts chopping and fluffing the fiberglass, then blowing it at high speed down a long flexible hose to his gun, where it fills whatever cavity he's working at that moment (see the last two photos below).
The bottom line: a three man crew installed top quality insulation in the walls and ceiling of a 4,000 sq. ft. barn in about 9 hours. That's darn fast!
Roof: the destruction continues...
Roof: the destruction continues... Most of our house's roof is so steep that the roofers cannot use their powered shingle-removal machine. They're reduced to hand tools that are about the same as they were 100 years ago – and a lot of muscle power. It's going to take them more than a week to strip all the old shingles off...
Rosetta's latest imagery...
In just a few weeks, Rosetta's little lander (Philae) will attempt to land on comet 67P. Awesome!
Environmentalists beaten about the head and shoulders with science...
Environmentalists beaten about the head and shoulders with science... Fracking doesn't cause water pollution...
The end of the vacuum tube era...
The end of the vacuum tube era... If you're not an electronics geek, you can be forgiven for believing vacuum tubes disappeared quite a few years ago, with the advent of flat screen TVs. In fact, millions of vacuum tubes are still being manufactured every year, and bought by consumers worldwide – including, quite likely, you. Every microwave oven manufactured since the 1940s contains a vacuum tube called a cavity magnetron – the gadget that produces hundreds of watts of microwave radiation to heat your food.
I've long been fascinated by cavity magnetrons, less for their technical attributes than for their contribution to the Allies victory in WWII. Their invention by British scientists, and mass production by American industry, led directly to small, lightweight, high resolution airborne radars – and gave the Allied air forces a huge advantage over those of the Axis. That same device is what cooks your food in today's microwave ovens.
But this is about to change. As this article describes, recently introduced high frequency, high power transistors are about to revolutionize the world of the microwave oven. The transistors are better in many ways, but what the consumer will notice is infinitely variable power, and no loud noise.
My electronic career got started with devices that used vacuum tubes as their active components. It's been many years since I last designed something using a vacuum tube, but I've still got a fond place in my engineer's brain for them. Once the microwave industry has converted (which I expect will happen extremely quickly), there will be no more high volume vacuum tube production – just low volume boutique production for the crazy people (some of my friends amongst them :) who think vacuum tube audio amplifiers sound better than solid state ones...
I've long been fascinated by cavity magnetrons, less for their technical attributes than for their contribution to the Allies victory in WWII. Their invention by British scientists, and mass production by American industry, led directly to small, lightweight, high resolution airborne radars – and gave the Allied air forces a huge advantage over those of the Axis. That same device is what cooks your food in today's microwave ovens.
But this is about to change. As this article describes, recently introduced high frequency, high power transistors are about to revolutionize the world of the microwave oven. The transistors are better in many ways, but what the consumer will notice is infinitely variable power, and no loud noise.
My electronic career got started with devices that used vacuum tubes as their active components. It's been many years since I last designed something using a vacuum tube, but I've still got a fond place in my engineer's brain for them. Once the microwave industry has converted (which I expect will happen extremely quickly), there will be no more high volume vacuum tube production – just low volume boutique production for the crazy people (some of my friends amongst them :) who think vacuum tube audio amplifiers sound better than solid state ones...
Minimum wage laws kill jobs, part 30,289...
Minimum wage laws kill jobs, part 30,289... This was totally predictable, and in fact many did (including yours truly). The reaction of businesses to high minimum wages is to automate every low-skill job in sight. The latest to announce a move in this direction: the classic low-wage entry-level employer: McDonald's. Yep, that's right: get ready for burgers flipped, built, and served by robots. As the McDonald's executives make abundantly clear, this is only happening because high minimum wages tipped the economic scales: investing in robotics is now cheaper than hiring high school kids.
Of course, with the tumbling cost of robotics and the rising cost of labor, this was inevitable at some point anyway. But high minimum wages are hustling that day forward, and long before society has adjusted to that reality. Once the robots are widely deployed at fast food joints, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Perhaps worse, one of the largest employers of young people with zero job experience will stop providing that valuable introduction to the world of gainful employment. As a society we don't have good alternatives yet...
Of course, with the tumbling cost of robotics and the rising cost of labor, this was inevitable at some point anyway. But high minimum wages are hustling that day forward, and long before society has adjusted to that reality. Once the robots are widely deployed at fast food joints, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost. Perhaps worse, one of the largest employers of young people with zero job experience will stop providing that valuable introduction to the world of gainful employment. As a society we don't have good alternatives yet...
Here we go again...
Here we go again... Fannie and Freddie are going to start providing loans at 97% loan-to-value to high risk borrowers. This is exactly what led to the popping of the last housing bubble, just a few years ago. This is unbelievably irresponsible and stupid from every perspective except one: political. CoyoteBlog has an excellent piece on this insanity, and Reason is on the case too. Unfortunately, the politicians we've elected know that good news today is worth a lot more, politically, than bad news down the road...
Amazing photos...
Early morning Beatles...
Early morning Beatles... Since about 3:30 am this morning, I've been kicked back in my little temporary “office” listening to the Beatles while I do some bookkeeping, answer some email, order some needed supplies, read the news, and update my blog. Listening to this music takes me right back to the '60s and early '70s, when I listened to the Beatles (and lots of other contemporaneous music) as I went about my (mostly awful) jobs. The music was great, though, and it still evokes the same happy enjoyment that it did when I first heard it.
It's wonderful that I can listen to it still, almost 50 years later, on incredibly high quality equipment that's tied to my computer.
It's been a hard day's night, say the Beatles...
It's wonderful that I can listen to it still, almost 50 years later, on incredibly high quality equipment that's tied to my computer.
It's been a hard day's night, say the Beatles...
Ballot fraud...
Ballot fraud... James O'Keefe puts the lie to the claims that there is no significant election fraud, so loudly made by (primarily Democratic) opponents of voter ID laws...
Rh null...
Rh null... What it's like to be someone with an extremely rare blood type – in this case, one shared by just 40 people on the planet...