On the PBS show "Nova" tonight...

At 1:02 AM +0000 4/25/07, Xenophile wrote:
>they did a show on solar power.

Sheesh.

I got curious enough about this to torrent it down, and I just finished
watching it.

It wasn't about solar power. It was about solar power politics, mostly.
Subsidizing substandard technology "until the technology matures",
hysterical hortatorations about hypothetical hotness, and all that rot.
And, while we're at it, let's paint a halo round the head of every picture
of His Jimmy-ness, not to mention One More Recitation of the Gospel
According to Saint Avory, speaking of iguanas, and "lizarding".

Sheesh.

"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our
desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."
-- Jonathan Swift

BTW, notice that they did talk about the only *working* solar technology,
viz, the boil-the-oil plant that's been chugging away in Nevada somewhere.

Speaking of which, and dragging the the topic of this micro-rant back to
space settlement, it was my understanding that Glaser, O'Neill, et al.,
were mostly talking about boiling stuff with mirrors for electricity
anyway, weren't they?

Finally, I think that whatever power that's generated in space will be used
up there, because it'll be too wasteful to send it downstairs. After all,
you can *build* stuff up there with it. Or extract stuff, or grow stuff, or
whatever.

Cheers,
RAH

--
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'