ozarque's Journal

Comment on solar power developments....
Back on November 15th -- at http://ozarque.livejournal.com/468958.html -- I posted this item:

"I went to Google this morning looking for some links to articles about the Nanosolar Powersheet -- which was designated as 'Innovation of the Year' in the current issue of Popular Science -- and to articles about Frank Pringle's microwave process for turning trash into oil, also discussed in that issue. There were links, but every one of them I clicked on sent my browser into frenzied tremors and discombobulations, ending with a total crash. Apparently there are very large numbers of people all trying to read those same articles ... something I should have guessed when I saw that the sites offering information included BoingBoing and Digg and TechnoPundit. Which should mean that all of you already have heard lots about Nanosolar Powersheets and Frank Pringle's new gizmo, without any need for nudgings from me.

Very interesting and encouraging developments. I think. If you have comments, I'd be interested."

I'm posting this again because

dteleki has now sent me a detailed two-part comment about it that you might want to see. [There's only one other comment there (thank you,

pqdudda); you'll have no trouble finding

dteleki's.] And because it's now possible to go to online articles about Nanosolar Powersheets without getting your browser tied in intricate knots.

I stay interested in solar power -- and any other alternative power technology that seems both promising and potentially affordable -- because the water at my place comes from a 185-feet-deep well that runs, at the moment, on electric power. And I cannot help thinking how unspeakably stupid I'm going to feel if the electric grid goes down and we haven't yet set up any alternative way to run that well.

When we first moved here a quarter-century ago -- and long before we invested in the generator that now, provided gasoline is available, will give us electric power for 24 hours or so -- I was complaining to a visiting neighbor about how difficult it was to manage when we had a power outage and couldn't run the well. And she looked at me as if I was the city-est person she'd encountered lately and said, "Well, CHILD! The RIVer's right THERE!" Which is of course true, and that river is full of water, and I'd be deeply grateful for it if I had no other water source. But we share that river's water with the local cattle, and using it for household purposes wouldn't be a simple matter. Not to mention the fact that if the electric grid goes down an awful lot of other people who don't have wells will be needing the water from that river too.

I'm like everybody else [almost everybody else]; I keep putting off doing something about an alternative power source for that well because I feel as though I can't afford to spend the money. I think that's foolish, and that I need to change my ways. Still .... it's complicated.

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Nonfiction online: "How Verbal Self-Defense Works" at http://people.howstuffworks.com/vsd.htm ; "Why Are Old Women Older Than Old Men And How Can We Fix That?" at http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/articlesElginOld.html ; Religious Language Newsletter archive at http://www.forlovingkindness.org . Fiction online: "We Have Always Spoken Panglish" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Story-Panglish.html ; "What The EPA Don't Know Won't Hurt Them" at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/stories/epa.htm ; "Weather Bulletin" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/Weather.html ; "A Quorum Of Grandmothers" at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/QuorumOfGrandmothers.html ; The Communipaths at http://www.jackiepowers.com/SuzetteHadenElgin/TheCommunipaths.html . More stuff at http://www.sfwa.org/members/elgin/SiteMap.html ; LiveJournal blog index at http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=ozarque .