Month: February 2009

India has a lot of people to educate. It is trying to work out ways of automating the process. One of those ways is the design of a $20 (US) laptop called the Sakshat. The Sakshat is planned to boost distance learning so as to allow India to meet its vast educational requirements: It has…

India thinks it needs a $20 laptop to educate its population. India is planning to produce a laptop computer for the knockdown price of about $20, having come up with the Tata Nano, the world’s cheapest car at about $2,000. The project, backed by New Delhi, would considerably undercut the so-called “$100 laptop”, otherwise known…

President Present is running into resistance from the Pentagon over has troop withdrawal plans. The Times reported that Odierno had “developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable” and had suggested in an interview “it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be…

Commenter windmill at Talk Polywell has brought to my attention an interesting power supply company Diversified Technologies Inc. Here are a couple of short (under 10 pages) papers that explain the technology. Solid State High Voltage DC Power Distribution & Control [pdf] Here is the key point from the above [pdf]. The largest cost components…

Now that things are finally winding down and my long trip back to Ann Arbor is looming ahead, I’ve been checking the omens and portents, because more than anything else, I want to avoid driving in snow or ice. Yesterday was Groundhog Day, and an exceptionally vicious one: Staten Island’s famous groundhog, Charles G. Hogg,…

The CHANGElings are out in force and full of HOPE. Finally the politicians are going to listen. Our Politician In Chief says so. “I will open the doors of government and ask you to be involved in our own democracy again. Well Mr. President Present (or absent as the case may be) we live in…

The groundhog has spoken.

It looks like the solar bubble is about to burst. Bringing an end to eight consecutive years of growth, global revenue for photovoltaic (PV) panels is expected to drop by nearly 20 per cent in 2009, as a massive oversupply causes prices to decline. Worldwide revenue from shipments of panels will decline to $12.9 billion…

We are at the point right now where the increased money supply looks like an increase in real demand. In 12 to 18 months price inflation will kick in. Then all hell will break loose. Had the money supply been increased by giving the money to profitable producers a lot of the damage would have…

First a couple of books mentioned in the video: Atlas Shrugged and The Road to Serfdom Stephen Moore, who you saw in the video, started the ruckus with the article in the Wall Street Journal called Atlas Shrugged’: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years. Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato…

American Superconductor is making 100 superconducting generator sets for China. DEVENS, Mass. –Jan. 22, 2009–American Superconductor Corporation, a leading energy technologies company, today announced that it has received a multi-million-dollar order for 100 sets of its wind turbine core electrical components from China’s CSR Zhuzhou Electric Locomotive Research Institute Co.(CSR-ZELRI), Ltd. The company will use…