Hunter S. Thompson’s campus tour during the Gipper administration.
More Hunter S. Thompson posts:
- Hunter S. Thompson political ad. (1970)
Tags: Hunter S. Thompson, Ronald Reagan
"Hunter insisted on meeting an imprisoned Hearst, the granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst."
On Grantland, Jonathan Abrams profiles current NBA players’ union executive director Billy Hunter, who enjoyed a fascinating legal career even before being at loggerheads with league commisioner David Stern:
“President Jimmy Carter appointed Hunter as the U.S. Attorney for Northern California in 1977. He was one of the youngest lawyers to ever hold the position and became entangled in several historic moments. He brought the first major federal cases against the Hells Angels and Black Panther Party.
Hunter also prosecuted the surviving members who aided Jim Jones’ cult after the mass suicide of more than 900 people in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Hunter visited Jonestown following the assassination of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan.
‘We got there just on the eve of the Guyanese Army evacuating all the bodies,’ Hunter said. ‘The bodies had blown up because of the heat and all the bodies up there. It’s hot as hell there.’
Hunter also recommended Patty Hearst’s sentence be commuted and visited Hearst while she was imprisoned. At first, Hunter perceived that his bosses simply wanted him to sign off on the decision. Hunter insisted on meeting an imprisoned Hearst, the granddaughter of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who was first kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and later sympathized with the militant group.
They talked about life, and Hunter noted the irony of how he, a poor kid from New Jersey, was holding the key to the freedom of one of the country’s most wealthy heiresses. At the end of the three-hour conversation, Hearst plainly asked Hunter of his intentions. ‘I told her that I would recommend getting her out of here.'”
••••••••••
The SLA has a gunfight with the LAPD the year before Hearst’s arrest:
Tags: Billy Hunter, Patty Hearst
"Upon the first fire Cochrane was shot in the forehead--the ball ripping up a portion of his skull, and scattering a teaspoon full of the brain."
The most famous duel in American history was the Aaron Burr-Alexander Hamilton tragedy that played out in Weehawken, New Jersey, in 1804. But plenty of other gun-and-sword battles occurred in this country in the 19th century. The following are several stories about duels that appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
••••••••••
“Duel Near Washington” (February 19, 1844) “A duel was fought near Washington on Friday last, between a couple of young men named Julian May, a lawyer and student of medicine, and Joseph Cochrane, brother to John F. Cochrane, Esq., of the War Department. They fought with rifles, at fifty paces, and upon the first fire Cochrane was shot in the forehead–the ball ripping up a portion of his skull, and scattering a teaspoon full of the brain. The wound is considered mortal. The quarrel originated in a billiard room, between friends of the parties, and ultimately led to a discussion touching their bravery. Until dueling shall be branded and punished as murder, we must expect to hear of such brutalities.”
••••••••••
"One received a sword thrust through the breast."
“Fought A Duel With Swords” (December 17, 1886): “Chicago–A duel with swords was fought early yesterday morning in Humboldt Park. A little before 7 o’clock closed carriages entered the park, each carriage contained a principal, with his second and a surgeon. They drove to the western end, where they alighted and concealed themselves behind a clump of trees. The arrangements being completed, the principals each drew a saber and the contest began. Soon both were wounded. One received a sword thrust through the breast and his opponent was cut across the face.
With the drawing of blood the duelists seemed satisfied, for they were quickly put in their carriages, and rapidly driven to Frerksen’s drug store, at the corner of North and California Avenues. There the wounds were dressed. Then the men were carried to their carriages and rapidly driven away. So quickly was the duel fought that the park policeman who saw the carriages go out of the park was not aware of what had occurred, nor were several people who saw them drive up to the drug store and away again. The only witnesses of the duel besides those immediately interested were some boys who were skating in the park. The boys say one of the men was large and fully bearded, with a military bearing. The other was younger. Mr. Frerksen, the druggist, was very reticent about the matter, though he admitted that a duel had been fought and that the participants were the editor of a pharmaceutical journal and a young medical man. It is said the affair was over the hand and favor of a young lady.”
••••••••••
“Duel Between Father And Son” (December 11, 1890): “Gainesville, Tex.–A fatal duel took place last night in Paine’s Valley between Senator Samuel Paul, of the Chicasaw legislature, and his son, Joe Paul, in which Joe received a bullet wound to the back and one in the breast, and the father received a dangerous wound in the thigh, made by a pistol ball fired by the son. Reports from Paine’s Valley state that the young man died of his wounds this evening, but that the father will recover. It is said that the difficulty grew out of a quarrel over a woman of bad repute. Deputy Marshal Thomas left Gainesville this evening to place the senator under arrest and take him before a United States commissioner for preliminary trial.”
Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Ikeelas Dodge
What did Sandra Bullock and Coolio and Newt Gingrich think? (Thanks Reddit.)
Cover of November 1968 "Esquire": "Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, John Sack--Chicago."
Late literary journalism legend John Sack filed a report for Esquire in 2001 about a California convention of Holocaust deniers, which he was invited to despite being Jewish and having a far firmer grasp on history than his hosts. An excerpt from “Daniel in the Deniers Den“:
“I’m sure many antisemites say the Holocaust didn’t happen (even as they take delight that it really did) but I met none that weekend. The only debatably antisemitic comment that I heard was on Friday night, when I dined in the downstairs restaurant with a prominent denier in a NO HOLES? NO HOLOCAUST! shirt, an Alabama man whose name is Dr. Robert Countess. A gangling scholar of Classical Greek and Classical Hebrew, he had taught history at the University of Alabama and had retired to a farm outside of Huntsville, where he played major-league ping-pong and he collected old Peugeots—he had twenty-two, some dating back to the Crash. While scarcely cranky, he had a cranky-sounding voice, and in the open-aired restaurant he was practically grinding gears as he discoursed on the Septuagint and as I, not Countess, brought up the Jewish sacred scrolls the Talmud. ‘What’s called the Talmud,’ Countess lectured, ‘Talmud being the participle form of lamad, in Hebrew learn, developed in Babylonia as rabbis reflected on certain passages in the Torah. Some of these rabbis engaged in a syncretism, a bringing together, of Babylonian paganism with the religion of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So if you read much of the Talmud, and Elda will tell you her favorite story—’
‘No,’ said Elda, Countess’s wife, who was dining with us.
‘It’s unbelievable, but it’s in the Talmud,’ said Countess.
‘No no. I don’t want to tell it,’ said Elda, embarrassed.
‘Go ahead and tell it,’ Countess entreated.
‘Well,’ said Elda, blushing, ‘iit’s in the Talmud that if a Jewish man’s repairing the roof, and if his sister-in-law is down below, and if he falls onto her and she becomes pregnant—’
‘He falls off the roof in such a way—’ Countess laughed.
‘Can you picture it? Then the child won’t be a bastard,’ said Elda. The tale would be antisemitic rubbish if it weren’t indeed in the Talmud (in Yebamoth, and again in Baba Kama) and if the Countesses were just amused and not also appalled. ‘You and I laugh about this,’ said Countess, ‘but I sit in stark amazement saying, Jews aren’t stupid people! How can they go along with this?’
‘The answer is, We don’t,’ I explained. By bedtime on Friday, my impression of the Countesses was like my impression of UFO devotees. Everyone in America believes in one or another ridiculous thing. Me, I belong to the International Society for Cryptozoology and I firmly believe that in Lake Tele, in the heart of the Congo, there is a living, breathing dinosaur. Fifteen years ago, I even went there to photograph it—I didn’t, I didn’t even see it, but I still believe in it. Other people believe other things, and the Countesses and the other deniers believe that the Holocaust didn’t happen. Like me in the Congo, they’re wrong, wrong, wrong, but to say that emphatically isn’t to say (as some people do) that they’re odious, contemptible, despicable. To say that they’re rats (as does the author of Denying the Holocaust) is no more correct than to say it of people who, in their ignorance, believe the less pernicious fallacy that Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy. Oh, did I hit a sore spot there?'”
Tags: Dr. Robert Countess, John Sack
In a new article in Wired, Clive Thompson interviews Microsoft’s principal researcher, Bill Buxton, about the “long nose” theory, which holds forth that innovations that seemingly come out of nowhere are actually incubated for a long time. At the piece’s conclusion, Thompson predicts which technology is ready to dominate in the next decade. An excerpt:
“Using a ‘long nose’ analysis, I have a prediction of my own. I bet electric vehicles are going to become huge—specifically, electric bicycles. Battery technology has been improving for decades, and the planet is urbanizing rapidly. The nose is already poking out: Electric bikes are incredibly popular in China and becoming common in the US among takeout/delivery people, who haul them inside their shops each night to plug them in. (Pennies per charge, and no complicated rewiring of the grid necessary.) I predict a design firm will introduce the iPhone of electric bikes and whoa: It’ll seem revolutionary!”
••••••••••
Prodeco Technologies introduces the next generation of electric bikes:
Tags: Bill Buxton, Clive Thompson
The Prime Minister of Norway refuses to overreact to shocking politicized violence. From the New York Times:
“‘It’s absolutely possible to have an open, democratic, inclusive society, and at the same time have security measures and not be naive,’ Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg told reporters in Oslo. ‘I think what we have seen is that there is going to be one Norway before and one Norway after July 22,’ he said. ‘But I hope and also believe that the Norway we will see after will be more open, a more tolerant society than what we had before.’”
•
David Foster Wallace, completely unburdened by political office, took things a step further in response to 9/11. From the Atlantic in 2007:
“Are some things still worth dying for? Is the American idea one such thing? Are you up for a thought experiment? What if we chose to regard the 2,973 innocents killed in the atrocities of 9/11 not as victims but as democratic martyrs, ‘sacrifices on the altar of freedom’? In other words, what if we decided that a certain baseline vulnerability to terrorism is part of the price of the American idea? And, thus, that ours is a generation of Americans called to make great sacrifices in order to preserve our democratic way of life—sacrifices not just of our soldiers and money but of our personal safety and comfort?
In still other words, what if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price? Is monstrousness why no serious public figure now will speak of the delusory trade-off of liberty for safety that Ben Franklin warned about more than 200 years ago? What exactly has changed between Franklin’s time and ours? Why now can we not have a serious national conversation about sacrifice, the inevitability of sacrifice—either of (a) some portion of safety or (b) some portion of the rights and protections that make the American idea so incalculably precious?”
As the narrative goes, postwar Japan rebuilt itself through discipline and transistors. That’s largely true–apart from the motorcycle gangs and brawling. From 1976. (Thanks Documentarian.)
Tags: Mitsuo Yanagimachi
"He is also loaded with facile junk, as all personal journalists have to be."
In 1965, when he was still known as Kurt Vonnegut Jr., the sci-fi novelist wrote, “Infarcted! Tabescent!” for the New York Times, a review of Tom Wolfe’s The Kandy-Colored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. An excerpt:
“Wolfe comes on like a barbarian (as Mark Twain did), like a sixth Beatle (Murray the K being the fifth), but he is entitled to call himself ‘Doctor Wolfe,’ if he wants to. He has a Ph.D. in American studies from Yale, and he knows everything. I do not mean he thinks he knows everything. He knows all the stuff that Arthur Schlesinger Jr., knows, keeps picking up brand new, ultra-contemporary stuff that nobody else knows, and arrives at zonky conclusions couched in scholarly terms. I wish he had headed the Warren Commission. We might then have caught a glimpse of our nation.
He is also loaded with facile junk, as all personal journalists have to be–otherwise, how can they write so amusingly and fast? His language is admired, but a Wolfe chrestomathy would drive one nuts with repetitions, with glissandi and tin drummings that don’t help much. The words ‘tabescent’ and ‘infarcted’ appear again and again, and, upon investigation, turn out to be not especially useful or piquant. Young breasts (‘Mary Poppins’)–point upward again and again like antiaircraft batteries, and women’s eyes are very often like decals, and transistors are very often plugged into skulls; and feet very often wear winkle-picker shoes.
Then again, America is like that. And maybe the only sort of person who can tell us the truth about it any more is a Ph.D. who barks and struts himself like Murray the K, the most offensive of all disk jockeys, while feeding us information. Advanced persons in religion have been trying this approach for some time. Who can complain if journalists follow?”
••••••••••
Vonnegut profiled in the 1970s:
More Tom Wolfe posts:
- Wolfe explains New Journalism. (1972)
Tags: Kurt Vonnegut, Tom Wolfe
"Exclusive blend of white cement and USG casting plaster."
authentic faces of famous people – $30 (Long Island)
A life mask is taken when the person is alive. What you see is their actual face, life size, with every detail, just as it was the day they sat for the life mask.
These are original, limited edition casts and will make a prized addition to any home theater, media room, or memorabilia collection. In 2000 these life masks officially became museum quality.
Casts measures approximately 13″ high x 5″ wide x 4″ deep
Each cast is from a Limited Edition and is numbered.
Mask is cast in UltraStone (an exclusive blend of white cement and USG casting plaster) with a sturdy wire hanger on the back for secure wall mounting.
Finished with an exclusive 5 color coat process by a retired prop builder with over 50 years experience, this original system is often imitated, but never duplicated. Each mask is sealed, multistage painted, then sealed again to last a lifetime
Each life mask is a unique, single and original work of fine art, not to be confused with mass produced imitations.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK (very famous profile)
JACK NICHOLSON (SOLD)
GEORGE REEVES (the original Superman from the 1950’s TV show)
CLARK GABLE (Gone with the Wind)
••••••••••
“Liz Learmont, Life Mask Sculptor”:
Even before his steep fall from grace, John Edwards always seemed a mealymouthed charlatan who had all the slickness of Bill Clinton without any of the prodigious political talent. But even the best and brightest can sometimes look at a situation and completely misread it. I was looking up some articles by Barbara Ehrenreich and was reminded of this:
“For my money, John Edwards is the best candidate out there. Clinton has Iraqi and American blood on her hands; Obama has yet to lay out clear economic alternatives; and, although they might once have been Republican moderates, McCain and Giuliani are shamelessly snuggling up to the Christianist Right. I like Edwards because he’s taken up the banner of the little guy and gal in America’s grossly one-sided class war. He’s laid out a plan for universal health insurance; he wants to repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the rich; he shows up at workers’ picket lines.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich
José Contreras-Vidal demonstrates his brain-cap technology.
Not Modesto, but possessing a stunning likeness. (Image by Hans Hillewaert.)
Ciudad Juarez in Mexico has been a hyperviolent hotbed of crime and murder for so long that locals have been forced to remain inside as much as possible, which, of course, makes those who do venture out even more unsafe. Could an increasing number of people visiting a park to see a giraffe be a sign that things are changing? From Damien Cave’s well-written article about the significance of Modesto the Giraffe in the New York Times:
” Oblivious to crime, nearly 20 feet tall and tough enough to withstand wild temperature swings, Modesto the giraffe has become more than just another oddity in this bizarre borderopolis of malls and murders. He has become a magnet for people trying to escape fear and the cooped-up life caused by violence.
‘We need places that are peaceful,’ said Eduardo Ponce, 44, an elementary school teacher whose 2-year-old son was entranced by Modesto on a recent afternoon. ‘I try to think positive.’
That seems to be a little more common these days. Several parks here in Ciudad Juárez have been attracting crowds again, residents say, because of a desire that often emerges after several years of war or widespread crime — a desire to get out, to stop hunkering down, to believe that things are better, or will be.
It is far from clear that this hope is yet realized. Murders in Ciudad Juárez appear to be down compared with last year, but the past few weeks have been especially bloody, with 21 people killed in a single day this month. No one here seems to think the struggle against the city’s rampant drug violence is over. Many are just tired of letting it rule their lives.”
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Modesto la jirafa:
Tags: Damien Cave, Eduardo Ponce, Modesto
From 1967.
Tags: Groucho Marx, William F. Buckley
On Singularity Hub, David Hill argues that Borders going bust is good for writers and the book business. It may seem counterintuitive, but it’s really not. An excerpt:
“So with the loss of one of the key spots for authors to promote their work and for book publishers to make sales, how in the world is the end of Borders good for writers? The main reason is that it is accelerating massive change in the publishing industry by putting authors, and not publishers, in control of creative works.
For years, books have been entirely controlled by big print publishers. They’ve decided which authors get published and what readers get to read as well as when they get to read it. Furthermore, what gets published has had to fit into specific compartments that have been defined by marketing departments. The timeliness of print has also been a problem as it’s no secret that the traditional publishing route takes years from the manuscript to stock.
But e-books change all of that as authors can now dictate just about every aspect of production and marketing on top of generating the manuscript. Publishers have been slow to recognize that the power has shifted away from them to the writers themselves.”
••••••••••
Where will Kat Von D go to sign copies of her tattoo books now?
Tags: David Hill
Frank Sinatra, that erstwhile Liberal Democrat, supporting his Hollywood buddy Ronald Reagan at the 1980 Republican Convention. Chris Wallace and Lynn Sherr do the honors. Lousy audio, but still worth it.
Another post about a celebrity political endorsement:
Tags: Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan
"...and the young kid who looks like Jesus Christ."
ASSHOLE OF THE DAY (PATHMARK SI NY)
Usually I buy low salt cold cuts here as not every place has them and I figure they serve a lot of people so the product is fresh. So I walk over and and wait, watching 3 deli employees including the Manager, who has his face hanging up on the wall. He is asking this “Tony” thing to go over and wait on me. It squawks and takes its sweet time.I ‘m standing there and decide there are other places that must want my money and walk away. As i am walking to check out my other items the manager sends another deli person over and says that the manager will personally take care of me. I refuse. I’m done with the attitudes of the Pathmark Deli people. The little brunette who can’t be nice even if you treat her like gold, the blonde who constantly walks away from her post, the older woman who goes in 2 speeds, stop and reverse. I feel the only people who care are the asian kid the older lady with a ponytail and glasses and the young kid who looks like Jesus Christ. My $ 10 dollars a week in deli just went to someone else, Thanks Tony/Toni.
I always hear how Pathmark is on the verge of going under… Can’t understand why?
In Philip K. Dick’s too-bleak 1972 essay, “The Android and the Human,” there is, unsurprisingly, some truth:
“I would like then to ask this: what is it, in our behavior, that we can call specifically human? That is special to us as a living species? And what is it that, at least up to now, we can consign as merely machine behavior, or, by extension, insect behavior, or reflex behavior? And I would include, in this, the kind of pseudo-human behavior exhibited by what were once living men — creatures who have, in ways I wish to discuss next, become instruments, means, rather than ends, and hence to me analogs of machines in the bad sense, in the sense that although biological life continues, metabolism goes on, the soul — for lack of a better term — is no longer there or at least no longer active. And such does exist in our world — it always did, but the production of such inauthentic human activity has become a science of government and such-like agencies, now. The reduction of humans to mere use — men made into machines, serving a purpose which although ‘good’ in an abstract sense has, for its accomplishment, employed what I regard as the greatest evil imaginable: the placing on what was a free man who laughed and cried and made mistakes and wandered off into foolishness and play a restriction that limits him, despite what he may imagine or think, to the fulfilling of an aim outside of his own personal — however puny — destiny. As if, so to speak, history has made him into its instrument. History, and men skilled in — and trained in — the use of manipulative techniques, equipped with devices, ideologically oriented, themselves, in such as way that the use of these devices strikes them as a necessary or at least desirable method of bringing about some ultimately desired goal.
I think, at this point, of Tom Paine’s comment about or another party of the Europe of his time: ‘They admired the feathers and forgot the dying bird.’ And it is the ‘dying bird’ that I am concerned with. The dying — and yet, I think, beginning once again to revive in the hearts of the new generation of kids coming into maturity — the dying bird of authentic humanness.”
Tags: Philip K. Dick
It’s always curious to me that negotiators, whether politicians or the opposing sides of sports leagues, so often delay working on an agreement in earnest until they place themselves under severe time constraints, which would seem to be the worst time for those in disagreement to reach a compromise. The reliably lucid James Surowiecki explains why negotiations go bonkers under time pressure, in his article on the debt-ceiling debacle in the New Yorker.
“You might think that there are benefits to putting negotiators under the gun. But, as the Dutch psychologist Carsten de Dreu has shown, time pressure tends to close minds, not open them. Under time pressure, negotiators tend to rely more on stereotypes and cognitive shortcuts. They don’t consider as wide a range of alternatives, and are more likely to jump to conclusions based on scanty evidence. Time pressure also reduces the chances that an agreement will be what psychologists call ‘integrative’—taking everyone’s interests and values into account.
In fact, by turning dealmaking into a game of chicken, the debt ceiling favors fanaticism. As the economist Thomas Schelling showed many years ago, ‘It does not always help to be, or to be believed to be, fully rational, coolheaded, and in control of oneself’ when it comes to brinksmanship.”
••••••••••
A dramatic interpretation of the American economy, with Slim Pickens in the role of John Boehner:
Tags: Carsten de Dreu, James Surowiecki
That’s a lot of lost luggage. (Thanks Reddit.)
I didn’t know there were Flappers in Moscow, Idaho, in 1922, but this classic photograph is proof positive. As is often the case with fashions that shock, there was an underlying message of social rebellion woven into the fabric of the style. In this case, the risqué clothes were about women trying to establish an identity that didn’t require being housebound in a housecaot. An excerpt from a 1922 New York Times article about the Flapper craze that looks at how one young woman didn’t really care if hemlines grew longer as long as she could work:
“One of the emancipated ones, with a Knickerbocker grandmother and much family oposition behind her ‘adventures into the open,’ in telling of her struggle for freedom, said:
‘I worked during the war, of course–every one did. And I decided then that never again would I be content to sit at home and do nothing but go to parties. It was hard work at first to get my people to understand how I felt about it. But I finally succeeded. I’ve been here two years. Now I want a better job. I want more money and I think I’m worth it. Jobs are awfully hard to get, though. I do not want my friends to help me if I can manage to get a better position without their assistance.
‘Several of my friends have gone to work because they were so bored at home. One of them is a saleswoman in a smart costume shop. She’s been having lots of fun with some of the snobbish friends of her rich family connections. These snobbish ones haven’t gotten used to the ‘working girl’ idea yet.
‘No, I don’t think I shall give up working when I marry. It seems to me that you understand the ‘tired business man’ much better when you have been a ‘tired business woman.’ It’s not very easy being at a desk all day. I certainly wouldn’t expect my husband to take me to late parties every night, which seems to be what wives who have never worked seem to expect.'”
••••••••••
A trip to the inventors’ convention with that flapper, Betty Boop:
Just before assuming control of the News of the World, which recently assumed control of him.
Tags: Rupert Murdoch
"Synthetic telepathy, as the technology is called, is getting closer to battlefield reality." (Image by PaulWicks.)
Discover has an article by Adam Piore about the U.S. military’s plans to develop a thought-helmet which would allow soldiers to wordlessly communicate with one another in the battlefield through synthetic telepathy. An excerpt:
“The mind reader is Gerwin Schalk, a 39-year-old biomedical scientist and a leading expert on brain-computer interfaces at the New York State Department of Health’s Wads worth Center at Albany Medical College. The Austrian-born Schalk, along with a handful of other researchers, is part of a $6.3 million U.S. Army project to establish the basic science required to build a thought helmet—a device that can detect and transmit the unspoken speech of soldiers, allowing them to communicate with one another silently.
As improbable as it sounds, synthetic telepathy, as the technology is called, is getting closer to battlefield reality. Within a decade Special Forces could creep into the caves of Tora Bora to snatch Al Qaeda operatives, communicating and coordinating without hand signals or whispered words. Or a platoon of infantrymen could telepathically call in a helicopter to whisk away their wounded in the midst of a deafening firefight, where intelligible speech would be impossible above the din of explosions.”
••••••••••
More about the brain-computer interface from the good people at IntendiX:
Tags: Adam Piore, Gerwin Schalk
"No President in history has ever gotten a shoe thrown at him."
george bush matrix the shoe (man,queens,bk)
I have the original Newspaper of George bush getting a shoe thrown at him from an angry Iraqi. I have this with both New York Daily news and post.
Great collectors item. No President in history has ever gotten a shoe thrown at him. LIMITED TIME OFFER!! MUST BUY NOW!!
Tags: George W. Buch
Solar cells. (Image by Georg Slickers.)
In “10 Technologies That Will Change The World In The Next 10 Years,” an article by Julie Bort on CIO, one number jumped out at me. Is it really possible that a city with one million inhabitants will be built somewhere in the world every month over the next two decades? Seems high, but I could be wrong. In any event, we should be expanding our use of solar power as fast as possible. An excerpt:
“No. 6: The power of power
The human population also continues to grow, and [Cisco’s Chief Futurist Dave] Evans estimates that a city with 1 million inhabitants will be built every month over the next two decades. More efficient methods to power those cities are becoming a necessity, particularly solar energy.
‘Solar alone can meet our energy needs. In fact, to address today’s global demand for energy, 25 solar super sites — each consisting of 36 square miles — could be erected. Compare this to the 170,000 square kilometers of forest area destroyed each year,’ says Evans. Such a solar farm could be completed in just three years.
Technologies to make this more economically pragmatic are on their way. In June, Oregon State University researchers showed off a novel, relatively affordable, low-impact method to ‘print’ solar cells using an inkjet printer.”
Related post:
Tags: Dave Evans, Julie Bort