Zero Oil, One Club

Backup Power Request for Quote!

2012-01-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

I give up! I wanted a fuel cell (supposedly $5K in 2001 but $56K recently) but the recent ice storm is one multi-day power outage too many for us.

What I really want: backup power as a service! The agreement:

* You keep our power on
* no more noise than 65 dB at 7 meters
* no more pollution than allowed by California CARB
* you own the equipment & do all maintenance (oil changes, etc.)
* Fuel is (probably) propane as we have a 500 gal tank, but if you
have some exotic technology?
* I pay you $X per month forever

If you don't want to do that, I want a generator and transfer switch meeting the above noise/emissions parameters installed ASAP. Please send a quote!

Heuristics and irrationality

2012-01-07T18:18:00.000-08:00

Choose quickly: a free $10 Amazon gift card or a $20 gift card for $7?

And: a ball and a bat together cost $1.10, and the bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The first example is from Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and the second from Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow.

I thoroughly enjoyed both of these but found the latter a deeper, richer book. Kahneman has a different, more humane take on 'irrationality' and describes it more as a set of heuristics that work well most of the time and in most situations ... but not for all examples.

Anyone interested in how his or her mind works ... or how the mind of the boss or your spouse or your child's mind works ... will get a bang out of both of these, I think. Happy and rational reading!

ECat technology defended below!

2011-12-31T19:25:00.000-08:00

Don't miss the comment below the previous post!

A critical look at ECat

2011-12-26T20:31:00.000-08:00

I found this LENR blog with a reference to a posting that is highly critical of Andrea Rossi's claims
about ECat.

I should have looked at this source before getting excited about it, I guess; looks pretty damning.

Scott McCloud

2011-12-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

I had seen McCloud's Understanding Comics when it came out, but not being into comics I never read it. But this video shows him to be a fascinating character; I highly recommend it!

I'm not interested in foie gras, but ...

2011-12-17T22:38:00.000-08:00

I first came across This American Life shortly after their initial Poultry Slam, but this latest version really hit me in the head. Don't miss the last segment on natural production of foie gras without force-feeding the geese -- fascinating!

New website for cold fusion product purveyor

2011-11-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

The website is here. The one mentioned in the previous post is by another guy who said Rossi had withdrawn approval for the site he developed. See the site for details.

A 1 MW heat plant based on 'cold fusion' -- now on sale!

2011-11-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd have seen something in the mainstream media on this subject by now, but I only just found a note in a techincal magazine I get, Network World.

This Italian researcher, Andrea Rossi, has come up with a (relatively) low-temp fusion reactor system that he's bundled into a product now for sale: a 1 MW heat-producing plant. A 5-kW home version is supposed to be available by 2013.

Detail on his website ... oh baby!

Tech talk videos from the University of Washington

2011-11-11T21:31:00.000-08:00

I'm currently in graduate school at the University of Washington, enrolled in their Professional Master's Program in Computer Science.

One program requirement is for us participants to attend seminars (or watch the archives of such
seminars on the Internet). I've now seen 62 of the 64 required by the program, and here are my few favorites:

Sex, Lies and Video Games: The Truth about Females and Computing by Dr. Maria Klawe
Robotic Cars: Challenges and Perspectives by Dr. Sebastian Thrun
On the Cruelty of Really Teaching Computer Science Redux by Dr. Owen Astrachan
Never Work for a Stanford Student Again, by Glenn Kelman

Not to say there isn't a lot more valuable stuff in this archive (all open to the public), but these four are the ones that I just found particularly fun to watch.

Options Trading Bibliography and Web Site

2011-11-11T21:06:00.000-08:00

I've been mostly trading options, after an initial bit of trend following during the big uptrend
of 2009.

There are a couple of beginner's options trading books who both have fervent adherents and
detractors:

Options Demystified, by Thomas McCafferty
Options Made Easy, by Guy Cohen

Try both of these and go with the one you like best.

Here are a list of the books I've found most helpful.

Volatile Markets Made Easy, by Guy Cohen
Protective Options Strategies, by Ernie Zerenner and Michael Chupka
Profiting with Iron Condor Options, byt Michael Hanania Benklifa

The strategies described in the Cohen and Zerenner/Chupka books can be used in any type market; the Iron Condor strategy is best suited to calmer and less volatile markets than we've had lately.

Ernie Zerenner and cohorts also run a web site called Power Options that I find worth the price ($80/month). It has features to search for (potentially) profitable strategies for you and do the calculations and profit/loss graphs, etc. (accurately). It even has a feature to 'one click trade' connecting to your brokerage, if you use one of the ones they support.

Here's wishing you happy and profitable trading ...

Beginning Traders: Reading List and A couple of Brokerages

2011-11-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

If you're just getting ready to trade, here are two books I'd fervently suggest you start with before you actually start trading:

Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van K. Tharp. If there's a flaw in this book, it's that he makes trading look too easy. But he's excellent on 'position sizing', which is the sizing of each trade to make sure your maximum loss is something manageable (like 1 or 2% of your total trading account).

Trading for a Living, by Dr. Alexander Elder. This gentleman gives you more of an idea what you're up against when you start to trade (the whole world!) and is not just a trader but a psychologist. His analysis of the reason that paper trading isn't really such good practice for real trading is particularly fascinating.

That being said, it's helpful to learn the mechanics of trading before risking real money. For that reason, most online brokerages will let you paper trade (some call it virtual trading) to see how their systems work. But once again, you won't see how your internal systems work until you are risking real money on a trade.

Two brokerages I have used are OptionsXpress and ThinkOrSwim. Each will allow paper/virtual trading. But beware: OptionsXpress's 'profit/loss calculator' is not always accurate; I'm not sure about ThinkOrSwim, but I think it's more accurate in this respect. If you don't like either of these, the "woods are full of them." Try another!

Aspiring traders: Background Bibliography

2011-11-11T19:49:00.000-08:00

I started trading during the 2008 financial crisis, as I was tired of being just a cork in the financial ocean. I've discussed this with several people and have promised to put a list of books to read up for general perusal. This first list is background, focussing not on the nuts and bolts of trading but the financial system in general and some larger than life (successful and unsuccessful) traders.

Here's the list:

When Genius Failed: The Fall of Long Term Capital Management, by Roger Lowenstein
Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Nassim Taleb
The Big Short by Michael Lewis
The Quants by Scott Patterson
The Myth of the Rational Market, by Justin Fox

As well as giving a sense of how the financial markets function (and blow up!) these are all enjoyable reads as well.

Premium burgers worth trying around Seattle

2011-01-31T14:42:00.000-08:00

I was discussing burgers with some friends this weekend and promised them a summary of my favorites, so here it is!

First on the list is the Metropolitan Grill's Works Burger (or probably any other burger on their menu). It's Wagyu (American Kobe) beef and they will generally cook it to order (i.e. medium rare to rare for me). $14.

Close seconds: The Islander on Mercer Island, Sullivan's Steakhouse downtown Seattle (only $9 -- see previous post), JaK's Grill (Issaquah, Laurelhurst, West Seattle).

Also possibly worthwhile, though each of these had at the time I last tried them some spice that I didn't like: The Capital Grille and Von's (both downtown Seattle). CG's tasted oniony, Von's like a rusty nail (to me, anyway), but seemed otherwise good if you like those particular spices.

Bon apetit!

Steven Pinker

2011-01-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

I first came across this gentleman via a video on swearing that I found on C-SPAN2. (This one is on YouTube also now.)

I read his book The Blank Slate (which was terrific!) after seeing this video.

Enjoy!

Dan Gilbert

2011-01-02T22:09:00.000-08:00

I read Dr. Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness shortly after it came out in 2006 and have just come across this video of him discussing some of his research. I greatly enjoyed both! Check out the video for some amazing counterintuitive findings in happiness research.

Another downtown burger worth a try

2011-01-02T11:03:00.000-08:00

Sullivan's Steakhouse is now in Seattle at the former location of the old Union Square Grill at 621 Union. I consider it my responsibility to society to try every steakhouse burger in the area, and this one was a pleasant surprise!

It's only $9 (versus $14 for the Metropolitan Grill's "Works Burger") but they (mostly) cook it the way I want (medium rare) without any wrangling, which has been difficult to find in the "toxic e. coli" era in which we live.

Anyway, it's been a pleasant surprise ... give it a try when you're downtown.

High-tech hookah: nicotine without tar!

2011-01-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

If there's a smoker in your life that you want to keep alive, this may be the trick. A Stanford company called Ploom is selling a "clean vapor technology" smoking kit for what looks to be about the same price as cigarettes.

You may have to get this trans-shipped to some states; Washington State doesn't allow shipment of any tobacco products directly in to consumers.

Superwindows on the cheap

2011-01-02T10:51:00.000-08:00

Our neighbor turned us on to these window inserts. Looks like a way to get superwindow-type energy savings for a fraction of the price. We'll probably try this soon but I would be interested in hearing from anyone else who's used these.

Installing FLTK on Mac OS X

2010-10-09T17:19:00.000-07:00

(Posted for my grad school class at the U. of Washington):

Hi All,

If you want to use your Mac for the Impressionist project, here are some notes of what I had to do:

(1) Download & unzip the 1.1.9 source

(2) Install 'macports' (www.macports.org) if you haven't already. Note that the FLTK docs say something about 'darwinports', which is the old name.

(3) Change path to include /opt/local/bin (where macports 'port' command is installed).

(4) install the prerequisites for FLTK:

sudo port install zlib
sudo port install libpng
sudo port install jpeg

(5) Use these configuration options for FLTK:

./configure --enable-threads --with-archflags='-arch i386'

(6) make

This should build FLTK and there are some test programs that come out in sudirectory 'test'.

UPDATE: Verizon late voice mails SF area too!

2010-08-08T21:13:00.000-07:00

I posted a question to the SF area Craigslist about late Verizon voice mail indications, and it's happening there too!

If Verizon can't handle a 1-bit information indicator any more quickly than that, why would anybody trust them with even a phone call? Sheesh.

No longer 50 years away?

2010-08-07T19:07:00.000-07:00

I've been reading for decades that nuclear fusion was the energy source of the future -- and always would be! But a recent result indicates that the future may be closer than we thought: by 2020?

Wouldn't it be lovely? But I still think solar fuel looks like a more quickly achievable technical breakthrough. Let a hundred flowers bloom!

Why I ditched Verizon in 2003 and they're STILL BROKEN!

2010-07-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

(I just emailed this to David Pogue of the NY TImes after reading his generally glowing

review of the Droid X phone from Verizon:)

Dear Mr. Pogue:

I'm a regular reader of your column and always enjoy it.

I'm writing today after reading your review of the Droid X.

If I could get it from Sprint, my current vendor, I'd be interested. But Verizon, at least in the

Seattle area, somehow can not deliver a 1-bit 'you have voicemail' indicator

to a phone in a timely matter (delay can be anywhere from several hours to almost

a day, maybe longer!) and this has been going on around here since AT LEAST 2003!

I don't know if this is just a Seattle problem, but when the Verizon rep just shrugged when I

complained about this in 2003 after making an unnecessary 40-mile round trip after a delayed

customer voice mail, I ditched them. I just had a report from a friend here who's a Verizon user

that THIS IS STILL HAPPENING IN 2010!

I'd like to see a column about this if it's happening anywhere else; if it's not happening anywhere

else the network engineering chief here should be fired!

=======

Actually the management should probably be fired; I bet some engineers have been jumping up

and down about this for years.

-----

First experience with Haskell and the kindness of strangers on IRC

2010-06-21T22:13:00.001-07:00

I am working this summer on a project with Haskell, the quasi-fabulous functional language. I haven't actually got to working with the language itself yet as I stumbled getting the right version built. The project I am working on requires an unreleased version of Haskell and I must have goofed in building it.

Fortunately there is the #haskell IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. The folks there steered me in the right direction (my build was hosed and I am starting again from scratch). And I found out about ERC, an excellent Emacs IRC client that I wish I'd known about before!

Modern Job hunting hacks

2010-06-18T22:16:00.000-07:00

Here are my hard-earned job hunting tips I've accumulated from 30 years of searching for jobs:

(1) CUSTOMIZE EACH RESUME TO THE POSITION! Unfortunately MS Word is usually required so after years of resistance I finally converted my resume to that system. I use a table on the front page (email me for an example) with "Your Requirements" / "My Experience" giving phrases from the ad along with what I can do to address the stated requirements. This format does two things for you:

gets past resume scanners looking for words that appeared in the ad, which you will have put all of iin your resume's page
is psychologically compelling for the hiring people ("well, everything we said we wanted is right here ...")

(2) Be flexible especially in "bonus points" ... If you know nothing about Perl, you obviously don't want to spin yourself as a super Perl hacker for a job that requires that. But if Perl i is listed under bonus points, study Perl for a bit, write a few simple Perl scripts and put "brief experience with Perl" in your "my experience" box opposite the Perl requirement!

(3) Put a resume up with all relevant experience on both dice.com and monster.com. Set both of these to 'private', meaning email will come from dice/monster and not from recruiters directly, making it much easier to keep overzealous spam filters from screening out your job offers.

(4) MAKE SOME CHANGE TO EACH RESUME ONCE PER WEEK! This blasts the resume out to a bunch of recruiters whenever the change is made. I discovered this by accident when making substantive changes, but the change does not have to be anything significant.

(5) remove all references to the date you graduated from college and any other clue to your age from your resume. If you're not 50, you will be at some point and you can nip age discrimination by not leaking your age more than absolutely required. Also don't put more than the last 15 years (maximum 20 if you have something especially relevant 19 years ago) of experience on your resume.

(6) Network like crazy! Go especially to local users groups for the technology you're interested in; if you want to get a job programming Python, hit the local Python users group every month and get to know the people there.

(7) Get business cards from Vistaprint or some other online business card purveyor. Get one for every subspecialty you have; if you're both a systems admin and a programmer, get a different card for each that makes you look like that specialty.

(8) Surf http://www.indeed.com, which searches all of Dice, Monster, local jobs boards, and several others. Also scan your local Craigslist tech

jobs section regularly, which indeed.com does not cover.

That's about the size of it ... questions? Don't hesitate. And good luck!

Stupid street crime in Fremont leads to fabulous auto glass company

2010-06-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

I stopped on Thursday night in front of our office in Fremont to take care of a quick errand in the office; I was in there no more that 15 minutes.

When I got back down to the street, I noticed this fabric grocery bag I'd left lying on the front seat of the car now sitting next to the sidewalk. "Huh ... did I get distracted and drop the thing?"

Nope, some miscreant(s) had broken the driver's side front window of the old (1999 Ford Escort) and more significantly alarmless car I was driving just to get this bag. When seeing what was in it (a pair of old shoes, a towel, and two bottles of iced tea), he/they tossed it aside.

I couldn't believe it! I regularly remove my iPod, cell phone, and anything else that looks "valuable" from a visible spot in the car, but after this incident I will have to look at "value" with new eyes.

I expected a day without this car while it was fixed and probably a $500 or $600 bill (as our insurance is $1000 deductible), but I was pointed toward All Star Auto Glass.

They quoted me $198.12 and said "we can have a guy there between 1 and 5 today." Well, OK! The guy showed up at 2 saying "this will take about 30 minutes" and got the (beautiful) job done in about that time.

I'm not planning any more broken windows anytime soon, but these guys certainly get my next call when I do need that service! Disclaimer: just a satisfied customer ... I have no other affiliation with them although I would be tempted to buy their stock!

Ooma phone: ditch phone bills!

2010-06-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

My wife and I tried Vonage when service was first available so were skittish about internet telephony. But this Ooma phone looked too good to pass up: no phone bills after you buy the equipment!

We tried it for about 4 months and then cancelled our Qwest line, transferringour number to the Ooma phone ... and then started having what seemed like the same trouble we'd had with Vonage before cancelling them: intermittent cut-outs of voice traffic, it seemed.

But ... even though the main phone user in our house, lovely Kate, was complaining about Ooma, I began to notice that I could still send a fax now and then without much trouble, that callers could leave messages ...

It turned out that the problem wasn't Ooma at all, but the extremely well used cordless phone that lovely Kate had used until its microphone died. ("I can hear them but they can't hear me.") We changed out that phone for its barely-used twin Uniden, and voila! Ooma is back and working fine!

We do pay them $10/month for an extra service that gives us a second line (not that we ever need that) and some other call manipulation stuff that we do like, like block lists and the ability to simultaneously ring a cell phone, etc.

Overall: highly recommended. And I have no relation to Ooma other than a satisfied customer.

A stake through the heart of peak oil?

2010-06-07T21:37:00.000-07:00

I subscribe to Technology Review in which appeared the most interesting

article on energy I've seen in a recent issue. They're calling it Solar Fuel, and it looks to me to be the best medium-term candidate for getting us out of our oil trap.

As I write this, the gulf is awash in oil and even if we're not running out of it

wouldn't we rather have a solar-fueled desert installation making our diesel fuel?

Steakhouse update

2010-06-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

Since my last posting, we've tried both steakhouses mentioned in the
previous post and one not mentioned.

John Howie Steakhouse was excellent and worth the $162 (dinner/dessert/
wine for 2 including tax & tip).

We had a Groupon coupon for 21 Central, which reduced its price ... but
we weren't very impressed anyhow. It was OK, just not up to Daniel's and
John Howie.

One other excellent steak I've had the past few months was at The Hunt
Club in the Sorrento Hotel in Seattle. For a dine around Seattle promotion they were on the list of 3-course $30 meals, and one of the meals included an 8-ounce tenderloin. Delicious!

Our next outing: back to Daniel's to cash a $50 coupon they send for your birthday every year. Sign up the next time you're
in there! (Disclaimer: I'm just a satisfied customer; no interest in Daniel's or any other of Schwartz Brother's properties.

Favorite Seattle Steakhouses & new ones to try

2010-01-10T19:09:00.000-08:00

I just made the acquaintance of David Robins via the University of Washington class we were both taking this past quarter. We also seem to share dietary proclivities and I promised to post a note on my favorite Seattle-area steakhouses.

My current favorite is the Capital Grille in Seattle. My wife and I first stumbled into the Minneapolis version of this restaurant and had a marvelous meal. The first visit we made was marred by goofy service, but that's been fixed and the steak has always been my favorite.

A very close second is Daniel's Broiler. I've never had a bad meal at one of these; the Bellevue location is especially nice.

Others I like: Jak's Grill (though the Issaquah location can be too noisy for my wife and me at dinner), The Metropolitan Grill ... Morton's is also good, and deserves an extra mention for booking us
a reservation at Daniel's in Bellevue when we couldn't get across the bridge to their restaurant due to a traffic jam.

Ones I want to try next: John Howie's in Bellevue and 21 Central in Kirkland.

Bon apetit!

Nissan Leaf: very pretty but ...

2010-01-08T22:14:00.000-08:00

I had a chance in December during that 11-degree week we had here in the foothills east of Seattle to visit the Nissan tent at Seattle Center to see the Leaf, their electric car to be introduced later this year.

Since they said they had only two available (one in the US and one in Japan), nobody even got to sit in it, much less test drive one. Supposedly they'll be back in the spring after more are available for a tour with test drives.

Still ... I live far enough in the boonies (7.5 miles S of the S edge of Issaquah WA) and work in the city (center of the Universe, Fremont area of Seattle) and mostly take the bus from Issaquah ... I still don't know if I want a car with only a 100-mile (claimed) range. I also live at 600 feet; is the range claimed only for level driving? I asked the representative at the show what about 15-degree weather's effect on the Leaf's batteries? She said that only a below-zero (F) temperature would cause a significant drop-off in range.

I'll try a test-drive when I can get one, but a plug-in hybrid (maybe even a Volt) seems a more reasonable choice for me.

Peak oil not quite yet and natural gas a cushion

2009-10-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

I haven't been updating this blog for quite a while but I certainly was surprised

that the price of oil crashed so hard last year and I wish I had started

trend following before then!

I still think that oil will be getting short of supply in the next few years, but the

recent huge discoveries of natural gas should be an alternate energy

source that we can rely on as oil declines and before solar hydrogen and other

long-term technologies take hold.

I'm also interested in the electric cars coming out in 2010, especially the

Nissan, Mini and Aptera models. (Anybody reading this who's test-driven

an Aptera, please post!)

Restaurant Review: The Capital Grille, Seattle

2008-03-29T22:22:00.001-07:00

My Lovely Wife and I stumbled into the Minneapolis incarnation of this steakhouse chain and had a lovely evening. The food was excellent and the service understated and effective, and we happened in on a night when a string quartet was playing selections from Baroque (my L.W.'s favorite) to the Beatles.

We were thus very interested when we heard that a Seattle Capital Grille had opened and tried it earlier this month.

The food was excellent, even better than I remember from Minneapolis. I had a very flavorful tenderloin prepared perfectly and L.W.'s salmon was also delicious.

The service, however ... was fawning and incompetent. I don't like being fawned over when they know how to do it, much less to come back to the table from washing my hands to find the waiter trying but failing to refold my napkin on the table. I stood there for seconds until he finally got it the way he wanted it and left; I don't think he ever noticed me.

They do have a slick "free" valet parking service, some kind of parking help probably being necessary on the busy stretch of 4th Avenue downtown Seattle where they are. Free in quotes because I couldn't see not leaving a tip, of course.

We'll go back in a few months to see if the service has improved ... the food was enough of a draw that I'll have to try it again.

The Capital Grille, Seattle, 1501 4th Ave at University. 206-382-0900. Reservations available on Opentable, my favorite way to make restaurant reservations.

Update: Precision Class Starts May 1 2008

2008-03-26T20:37:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

I finally am scheduling the Precision class I mentioned earlier. Class will
be 8 Thursdays beginning May 1 (no class June 12 as I'll be out of town),
location TBD (probably Issaquah or Redmond (WA))library according to
student locations.

The fee is $20, with all proceeds split between a local food bank and the
ACBL program to encourage junior bridge.

Want to know more? Call me 425-369-8286 or email me!

A note on audiobooks and Catherine Asaro

2008-02-15T22:26:00.000-08:00

I had started to post this list of books for my friend Jeffy a few months back but got distracted and didn't get it done.

I have been audiobooking (mostly via Audible and Ipod) for a couple of years now. I always thought that since I'm such a reader I wouldn't get much out of listening to a book being read.

Instead I find that it's a different experience, and valuable in that I find myself
willing to audiobook books that I never get around to reading. Also I find that I
respond more emotionally to audiobooks than to reading the same book. I thus speculated that if I responded to an audiobook it would be likely that my Lovely Wife Kate would enjoy reading the book. And it has worked out that way.

I came across Catherine Asaro in going through Nebula winners. I started with her Primary Inversion and progressed through other "Skolian Empire" works The Radiant Seas, The Last Hawk, Ascendant Sun, and The Quantum Rose (which won the 2001 Nebula), all in audiobook form, and I enjoyed all of them.

I bought Kate these for Christmas (2007) and she's been devouring them. Success!

I also enjoyed audiobooking another Nebula winner, Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio, and reading its sequel Darwin's Children. The two books are on Kate's stack to try next. I'm not sure she'll like them as much as she's liked Asaro, but I'm hopeful.

You've no doubt noticed that I use 'audiobook' as a verb. I just don't see another way to do it ... I "listened to" that book? That doesn't capture it!

Peak oil: a movie, 2 websites, a disaster preparedness diary

2008-02-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

I am visiting my aunt in Virginia this weekend and took the opportunity
to watch A Crude Awakening ... Nothing much new here for anybody who's read several of the books on this subject, but well done and possibly a good whack on the side of the head for anybody you can't get to read a book. Mentions the 1970's gas lines as a warmup for what's coming next, which I think hasn't been done enough. Mentions but soft-pedals the reduction in our ability to support the current 6.x billion without oil; it's realistically downbeat but not a dieoff clone.

One of the talking heads in the movie runs a website Life after the oil crash, where I found a republication of an outstanding disaster preparedness blog posting by a guy who calls himself AlphaGeek ... the original being better formatted and more readable than the republication. Originally posted in the wake
of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and with some broken merchandise links, but
still oh-so-relevant. Not particularly peak-oil related, but there are plenty
of other disasters to prepare for ... and in any event my view of the peak oil
phenomenon is that it's likely to be a fraying of the fabric of industrial
civilization that makes us poorer and makes disasters and disruptions much
more likely over time rather than being a Katrina-like disaster itself.

Finally, a site with stunning graphs of the oil peak, as well as a lot of
other relevant info ...

Precision Class: let me know if you're interested!

2008-01-10T19:45:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

I'm planning to teach a class on the Precision system (see 'about one club' below)
sometime soon and would like to know if you're interested. I probably will teach either at Eastside Bridge Center in Redmond (though I don't have their permission yet, so this is entirely speculative at this point) or nearby, possibly in a meeting room at the
Redmond library.

If you're interested please email me or call me: 425-369-8286 and I'll try to schedule the class starting in February or early March 2008.

About 'one club'

2007-11-25T22:36:00.000-08:00

I've recently (the last 2.5 years or so) resumed playing contract bridge,
a game to which I was introduced at age 8 or so by my mother. I've played
now and then over the years, but had never tried duplicate bridge, the form
played in bridge clubs and in tournaments, until 2003.

As you may know, a hand of contract bridge begins with an auction in which
the 4 players compete to name a trump suit. There are only a very few legal
words that can be used for these bids. There are therefore many different systems
for assigning a particular meaning to a particular bid.

The bidding system most often taught to beginners in the U.S. and elsewhere and
thus the system known by most of the players one encounters in the U.S. is called
"Standard American", or SAYC, for Standard American Yellow Card.

This system is rather "intuitive" in that one is supposed generally to "bid what
one has" -- clubs if you have clubs, etc., with few artificial bids (for example,
a bid of 3 clubs meanning a good hand in spades to go with partner's spades).

The problem with SAYC is that it's less descriptive and has more "holes" (situations in which there's no good bid) in it than do more sophisticated systems. The most popular extension of SAYC is called 2/1.

2/1 can and does work for players who adopt it, but I prefer a different system
based on an artificial strong one club bid. Typically this system is known as Precision; the variant I've been playing with various partners around Seattle and suburbs is abstracted from a book called Precision Today by David Berkowitz and Bret Manley and is described here.

The Precision advantages:

(1) strong hands come up more often (16+ HCP) than
in 2/1 or SAYC, which typically use an artificial strong 2 clubs at 21 or 22+ HCP.
There's nothing like looking into your hand with 16 points and hearing partner open 1 club -- you know immediately you should very likely be in a small slam. This is much harder to figure out in those other systems.

(2) You can often arrive at a lower-level contract than you could with 2/1:

Opener: 1 club (16+)
Responder: 1 diamond (artificial negative, 0-7 pts.)
Opener: 1 heart (5+ hearts, natural)
Responder: pass

Often you have to get to the 2 level with this sort of hand in the other systems.

(3) Lower-level club players (199ers & below) sometimes find Precision intimidating,
and even higher-level players sometimes find it difficult to defend against.

(4) Finally, all "one-level bids" (1 diamond, 1 heart, 1 spade, 2 clubs) show
a limited range of 11-15 HCP. You don't have to do extra bidding to figure out
what partner has when she opens 1 heart.

I've bought probably 10 copies of the Precision Today book and have been greatly
enjoying playing it with various partners. If you're reading this and would be interested in a Precision class I would possibly be interested in putting one together to teach in Bellevue or Issaquah ... let me know!

A couple of hopeful energy technologies

2007-10-07T13:00:00.000-07:00

I first read about EESTOR in MIT Technology Review several months ago under the headline "Too Good to Be True"? They claim to have an "ultracapacitor" technology that will make batteries obsolete.

A less exotic but still exciting battery breakthrough is from Firefly Energy.
They claim to have swapped out most of the lead in lead-acid batteries for
a carbon foam, which is of course much, much lighter.

It seems that either one of these could make electric cars practical, at last.

The Peak Oil Bibliography

2007-10-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

Here's a selection of some books I've read on the Peak Oil hypothesis.
The common thread in these books is that soon if not already we will,
instead of pumping more and more oil, "peak" and start pumping less.
The predictions on the ramifications of this vary all over the map, from
moderate but annoying economic dislocation to the collapse of
industrial society.

My personal view is that it's going to be somewhere between these
extremes, but that we will be poorer as a society for the period between
the oil peak and whatever time the next energy breakthrough(s) come
online (fusion, ultracheap solar, or more likely some combination of various
technologies along with extreme efficiency improvements).

The books (and a couple of videsos):

The Empty Tank by Jeremy Leggett -- if you want to read only one book
on this issue, I'd suggest this one. All of these books tell similar stories on the
geology, but this one spins what looks to me to be the most likely economic
scenario: market panic. His suggestions on "What Can We Do About It?" run
toward the hopeful, also.

Other books and videos, from restrained to hysterical:

Out of Gas by David Goodstein

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler -- Kunstler is a critic of suburbia and suggests that peak oil is going to make the suburbs "the new slums."

Robert Newman's History of Oil (A comedy routine with a real bite on YouTube)

Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World by Richard Heinberg -- Heinberg especially seems to be looking forward to the collapse of society, for some reason.

http://www.dieoff.org
If you're getting too cheerful, for some reason, try this one.

Since I keep emailing this stuff ...

2007-10-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

I must have emailed my peak oil bibliography and bridge links 15 or 20 times, so I am posting them here now for quick reference and updating.

I have resisted blogging up until this point since I didn't get to doing this until it seems that everybody and his dog now have a blog. But one too many "here's the peak oil and bridge email again" has pushed me over the edge!

Just to clarify: I don't think we'll have 'zero oil', just that the energy markets are set to become
considerably more expensive and chaotic than they are now, and as I write oil sits at $81/barrel.

As for 'one club', that refers to my preferred bidding system in contract bridge, typically referred to as Precision.

I have other interests (computer science, literature, golf ...) that may also appear here as I
think of things.

I will update the content here not necessarily frequently, but as new news items on the subjects here come up.