lunedì, marzo 30, 2009
la reincarnazione di escher
stavo cazzengiando sul web 2.0, e sono capitato sulla pagina di questo artista svedese, chiamato Erik Johansson. le sue composizioni, un misto di proprie fotografie e fotomontaggi, sono geniali. alcune mi ricordano di escher, altre dali'. altre come quella dell'ikea sono molto ironiche. anche l'arte nell'epoca digitale evolve.
venerdì, marzo 27, 2009
le professioni del futuro
Nel momento di crisi economica, e dei licenziamenti, siamo chiamati a reinventarci in nuove professioni a cui non avevamo pensato prima. Dopo un po' di ragionamenti, sono arrivato a stilare un elenco di nuove figure professionali e mestieri, di cui ci sara' sicuramente bisogno in futuro:
- scrivere email per persone pseudooccupate. diciamo la verita': scrivere email e' una grossa seccatura. perche devo perdere delle ore, quando un altro puo' gestire le mie caselle di posta? basta che mi dia una telefonata ogni due ore e in minuto gli dico cosa deve scrivere nelle email.
- inventare nuove forme di energia verde. ad esempio ho appena inventato un nuovo caricabatteria per iphone and ipod che va a getto di pipi'. praticamente e' una sorta di dinamo azionata da una ventolina che si muove colpita dal getto di pipi'.
- aprire un posto che e' meta' ristorante vegetariano meta' bar aperitivi. Il ristorante vegetariano e' un chick magnet, un santuario per ogni gruppo di ragazze alla 'sex in the city'. I maschietti italici invece hanno bisogno di 2-3 aperitivi prima di fare la prima mossa o iniziare una conversazione con le tipe. Se mescoliamo i due locali, avremo un ottimo posto per fare incontrare persone che cercano l'anima gemella.
- scrivere blog assurdi, e far soldi col merchandising: tipo vendendo asciugamani gialli.
- sfruttare la popolarita' di un altro che ti assomiglia. ho scoperto di essere il sosia di un famoso wedding planner. stavo pensavo di fare delle comparsate nei vari matrimoni che non si possono permettere il vero wedding planner. alla stessa maniera ci si puo' mascherare da persone famose o investire su chirurgie plastiche, per fare le serate nelle varie discoteche fingendosi di essere altre persone.
- scrivere email per persone pseudooccupate. diciamo la verita': scrivere email e' una grossa seccatura. perche devo perdere delle ore, quando un altro puo' gestire le mie caselle di posta? basta che mi dia una telefonata ogni due ore e in minuto gli dico cosa deve scrivere nelle email.
- inventare nuove forme di energia verde. ad esempio ho appena inventato un nuovo caricabatteria per iphone and ipod che va a getto di pipi'. praticamente e' una sorta di dinamo azionata da una ventolina che si muove colpita dal getto di pipi'.
- aprire un posto che e' meta' ristorante vegetariano meta' bar aperitivi. Il ristorante vegetariano e' un chick magnet, un santuario per ogni gruppo di ragazze alla 'sex in the city'. I maschietti italici invece hanno bisogno di 2-3 aperitivi prima di fare la prima mossa o iniziare una conversazione con le tipe. Se mescoliamo i due locali, avremo un ottimo posto per fare incontrare persone che cercano l'anima gemella.
- scrivere blog assurdi, e far soldi col merchandising: tipo vendendo asciugamani gialli.
- sfruttare la popolarita' di un altro che ti assomiglia. ho scoperto di essere il sosia di un famoso wedding planner. stavo pensavo di fare delle comparsate nei vari matrimoni che non si possono permettere il vero wedding planner. alla stessa maniera ci si puo' mascherare da persone famose o investire su chirurgie plastiche, per fare le serate nelle varie discoteche fingendosi di essere altre persone.
martedì, marzo 24, 2009
apparizione su "the sartorialist"
Quanto sono fierce! Ma vieni! Diverse persone mi hanno segnalato la mia apparizione- in quanto persona superstilish- su uno dei blog piu' famosi al mondo, chiamato the sartorialist. sapevo che un giorno ci sarei arrivato anch'io!!!
Comunque ora cerco l'IP address di quel commentatore a cui ricordo il mitico Gargamella dei puffi, e gli buco le gomme della macchina...
Comunque ora cerco l'IP address di quel commentatore a cui ricordo il mitico Gargamella dei puffi, e gli buco le gomme della macchina...
lunedì, marzo 23, 2009
ossigenazione
L'over flusso di ossigeno che arrivava dall'oceano stamattina deve avermi di nuovo impomato il cervello. Finalmente dopo un bel po' di tempo -passato ossessivamente su fb a insultare ed essere insultato nei vari gruppi contro il nucleare in un mega spettacolo trash- mi sono sentito di nuovo creativo, con la testa che comiciava a moversi ancora con idee nuove. Mentre camminavo per prendere il pulmann mi sono messo a pensare al ruolo dello scienziato nella societa' contemporanea. La conclusione, non tanto creativa di per se', e' stata che lo scienziato e' un idolo, una sorte di supertstar, un gallo. Sono arrivato in ufficio che gia' la mia creativita' straripava con una teoria su come avviene la neutralizzazione di un beam in un plasma. Ne ho parlato con j. che pero' essendo oramai piu'burocrate che scienziato deve aver assorbito il 2%. questo burocrati scientifici sono degli sfigati. Ho cercato di parlare della mia teoria col mio boss, che mi ha prima passato in dribbling dicendomi che erano le solite menate (e non capisco cosa dici), e poi mi confessato che la figlia di 10 anni potrebbe essere lesbo. Li', ho pensato che anche lui e' un po' creativo in fondo in fondo, visto che ha una figlia lesbo. Alla fine ho deciso di affogare la creativita' in un piatto di kimchi fried rice. domani mi faccio un altro giro di ossigeno oceanico, chissa' che trip mi fara' fare :-D
sabato, marzo 21, 2009
ricordi elettorali: l'uomo decente
mi sono sorpreso a ridere, pensando a una battutta di mccain in uno dei suoi comizi elettorali. un'invasata fra la folla dei repubbplicani comincia a urlare che obama e' un terrorista pericoloso. Fra gli applausi scroscianti che osannano l'intervento della donna, il mitico mccain chiede silenzio e sbotta: 'No ma'am, no ma'am, Obama is decent man, Obama is a very decent man'. 'Decent man' e' una definizone che dovrei usare piu' spesso perche' mi fa davvero ridere...
venerdì, marzo 20, 2009
i tacchini selvatici di berkeley
Ogni laboratorio nazionale che si rispetti ha il suo animale caratteristico. A los alamos, ricordo gli alci e i cervi alla mattina presto sulle strade, ad Argonne ricordo i mitici cervi biachi che assomigliano piu' a delle capre. Poteva il lab di Berkeley essere da meno? No, anzi li batte tutti in fatto di animali curiosi. No l'animale strano non sono io. A parte i tantissimi cervi che girovagano e non hanno paura degli uomini, ho visto per la prima volta i procioni o come li chiamano qua rancoons. L'animale piu' presente pero' e' il tacchino selvatico. Girano quasi sempre in gruppi, e molte volte li si vede accovacciati e appesi sugli alberi di eucalipto. Sono comunque abbastanza grossi (ben piu' di una gallina) e mi sorprende che siano in grado di volare.
giovedì, marzo 19, 2009
il futuro dell'energia
Ho avuto la fortuna di incontrare questo professore intervistato sul giornale Forbes. Ho avuto anche la fortuna di scambiare una serie di email sulla convenienza/efficienza delle macchine ibride. Vi riporto un articolo con considerazioni sul futuro dell'energia che trovo sagge e competenti.
A Berkeley professor dares to debunk the popular wisdom about the future of energy.
In his driveway in the heart of ultraliberal Berkeley, Calif. Professor Richard A. Muller has an unsurprising possession: a hybrid-electric Toyota Prius. What's surprising is his motivation for owning it. "It doesn't save me money," he explains. "It doesn't help slow global warming. I just love the technology."
It's a measure of how popular this physicist's lectures are that he can get away with such unpopular views. Surrounded by tree-hugging academics at UC, Berkeley, he dares to argue that coal and nuclear fission are good sources of energy. Hydrogen- and electric-powered cars won't do much to save either our atmosphere or our balance of trade, he says; solar panels on residential rooftops make no economic sense; those environmental preachers Al Gore and Thomas Friedman are exaggerating the effects of global warming.
Muller, 65, named a MacArthur "genius" in 1982, teaches a course called "Physics for Future Presidents," voted best class at Berkeley in 2008. Since 2000 it has grown from 54 students to 500, with a 100-person waiting list. Last year he put out a book with the same title (for a general audience). Over the past eight years he's attracted attention in public policy circles with his efforts to inject scientific understanding into the debates about terrorism, nuclear power, energy and global warming.
Muller concedes that the Earth is getting warmer and that this is worrisome. He agrees with studies that show global temperatures have increased roughly two degrees Fahrenheit over the last century and that carbon dioxide levels have risen 36% over the same period. But he says a vast amount of misinformation has been spread by scientifically uninformed folk: "deniers" on the one hand and "exaggerators" like Gore and Friedman on the other. "No one actually pays attention to the IPCC," he sighs, referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists, diplomats and politicians who have come to a consensus on the science.
The misinformation spread by the exaggerators, says Muller, includes the panic Al Gore creates in his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore shows the U.S. being flooded as the oceans rise. The more likely scenario, says Muller, is a 12-inch rise in sea levels over the next 100 years (his source: the IPCC). Another fallacy in Gore's film has to do with the bears. "Those polar bears that can't find the ice? There's no record of that," sniffs Muller.
Muller's gripe about Tom Friedman is his claim that global warming has caused an increase in hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. That's because we're looking harder for such storms and finding more, says Muller. "There is compelling evidence that the rate of such storms has been slowly going down," he says.
Muller's chief concern is the U.S.' lack of understanding about the science behind important policy issues. This conviction stems partly from the 34 years he spent as an adviser to the U.S. government on national security issues. "I was painfully aware that scientific issues were not understood by top officials," he says. "So many important issues have a high-tech angle to them."
The U.S. hasn't fired up a new nuclear power plant since 1996, and Muller lays the blame in part on irrational worries about radiation. "We need to educate the public. Nuclear is not as dangerous as they think it is," he says. For starters, the public doesn't understand that a certain amount of radioactivity is normal. Denver has 50% more radioactivity than the average U.S. city because of the granite in the rocks there, he says. Yet the cancer rate in Denver is lower than in the rest of the country.
"We assuage public fears by passing ridiculously low limits on radioactivity," he says, but adds that low levels of radioactivity do concern him. Radioactivity levels are likely to be lower at Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, than in Denver, but Muller says that hasn't calmed the public's fears about storing waste at Yucca.
Clean coal is yet another promising source of energy, says Muller. In this process, now under development, the carbon dioxide created by coal combustion is captured and pumped deep into the ground. In early 2008 the U.S. government canceled plans to build a 275-megawatt clean-coal plant because of cost overruns, but Muller says it can be built. The developing world will continue to use coal because it's cheap; Muller says clean coal will be necessary to control the carbon emissions.
Muller's bad news on photovoltaics: "The only way to break even on solar rooftop panels is through the subsidies." He is more optimistic about the future of concentrated solar power, in which a lens focuses the sun on a solar cell; the cost of that can be brought down to $1 per peak watt, he says. He concedes that a new genre of solar cells using ultrathin layers of copper, indium, gallium and selenide might change the picture for residential solar.
Muller is skeptical about battery-powered cars. "Electric vehicles are good for wealthy people," he says. People who think they are saving money by converting to electric or plug-in hybrid cars are not taking into account the cost of replacing batteries, he says.
Over the next several decades the biggest contributors to global warming will be China, India and Russia, as their economies grow and industrial production increases. If we really want to slow down global warming, we have to invest in, or invent, technology that's cheap enough to be deployed in China. "Anything that does not address China and India is a feel-good solution," he says.
Muller grew up in New York City's South Bronx. He studied physics at Columbia University and got his Ph.D. under the tutelage of Luis Alvarez, a UC, Berkeley professor and Nobel laureate in physics whose investigations included X-raying the pyramids and deciphering what killed the dinosaurs.
As physicists go, Muller is quite the Renaissance man. He began working in particle physics and spent time investigating ice ages. He has a controversial theory about a star he calls Nemesis that he says is orbiting the sun at a distance of a few light years. On the walls of his book-filled home hang photographs he has taken of wildlife during his world travels, including a gorilla in Rwanda and a lion cub in Kenya. He whips out his iPhone to show a visitor a video of how he came within a few feet of gorillas. The animals appear to ignore the tourists.
Muller's peers are happy to take him on in the great policy debates. John Harte, a physicist who teaches in UC, Berkeley's Energy & Resources Group, declares that the economics of both clean coal and nuclear power are doubtful enough to make solar, wind and geothermal generation well worth pursuing instead. Franklin Orr, director of Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy, agrees with Muller that there is room for nuclear and possibly clean coal (if nuclear waste storage and carbon capture can be solved) but doesn't agree with him that Al Gore and Tom Friedman are overstating the risks of global warming. Orr notes that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dissolving in the ocean, changing the acidity and affecting the coral reefs.
Felix Kramer, founder of California Cars Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes plug-in hybrids, says Muller's math is faulty when it comes to the lifetime of electric batteries. He says the batteries in the Tesla, an all-electric sports car, should last about as long as the car--between 100,000 and 200,000 miles.
Muller says, "If Obama got strongly behind nuclear, then it could move much faster." He doesn't believe we need to choose between nuclear and solar: "This is an example of the 'green bickering' that I deplore: 'I am cleaner than thou.' We need all [those sources of energy]." He agrees with Orr that the CO2 dissolving in the oceans is a problem, and he addresses it in his book. "I consider this to be potentially a bigger problem than global warming," Muller says. But he is surprised that Orr doesn't see Gore and Friedman's exaggerations. "Certainly he would agree that Gore and Friedman are making claims that are way beyond those in the consensus of the IPCC. Maybe he is not part of the consensus."
Answering Kramer, Muller cites recent research by Consumer Reports showing that converting to plug-in hybrids costs $10,000, but the batteries have to be replaced at the end of three years.
Muller insists that he doesn't aim to tell anyone--future President or not--what to do about energy policy, or anything else. In all his years advising government, he says, "the most valuable thing I taught them was how to understand the issues so they could see the conclusion themselves, and then convince other people."
A Berkeley professor dares to debunk the popular wisdom about the future of energy.
In his driveway in the heart of ultraliberal Berkeley, Calif. Professor Richard A. Muller has an unsurprising possession: a hybrid-electric Toyota Prius. What's surprising is his motivation for owning it. "It doesn't save me money," he explains. "It doesn't help slow global warming. I just love the technology."
It's a measure of how popular this physicist's lectures are that he can get away with such unpopular views. Surrounded by tree-hugging academics at UC, Berkeley, he dares to argue that coal and nuclear fission are good sources of energy. Hydrogen- and electric-powered cars won't do much to save either our atmosphere or our balance of trade, he says; solar panels on residential rooftops make no economic sense; those environmental preachers Al Gore and Thomas Friedman are exaggerating the effects of global warming.
Muller, 65, named a MacArthur "genius" in 1982, teaches a course called "Physics for Future Presidents," voted best class at Berkeley in 2008. Since 2000 it has grown from 54 students to 500, with a 100-person waiting list. Last year he put out a book with the same title (for a general audience). Over the past eight years he's attracted attention in public policy circles with his efforts to inject scientific understanding into the debates about terrorism, nuclear power, energy and global warming.
Muller concedes that the Earth is getting warmer and that this is worrisome. He agrees with studies that show global temperatures have increased roughly two degrees Fahrenheit over the last century and that carbon dioxide levels have risen 36% over the same period. But he says a vast amount of misinformation has been spread by scientifically uninformed folk: "deniers" on the one hand and "exaggerators" like Gore and Friedman on the other. "No one actually pays attention to the IPCC," he sighs, referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists, diplomats and politicians who have come to a consensus on the science.
The misinformation spread by the exaggerators, says Muller, includes the panic Al Gore creates in his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth. Gore shows the U.S. being flooded as the oceans rise. The more likely scenario, says Muller, is a 12-inch rise in sea levels over the next 100 years (his source: the IPCC). Another fallacy in Gore's film has to do with the bears. "Those polar bears that can't find the ice? There's no record of that," sniffs Muller.
Muller's gripe about Tom Friedman is his claim that global warming has caused an increase in hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. That's because we're looking harder for such storms and finding more, says Muller. "There is compelling evidence that the rate of such storms has been slowly going down," he says.
Muller's chief concern is the U.S.' lack of understanding about the science behind important policy issues. This conviction stems partly from the 34 years he spent as an adviser to the U.S. government on national security issues. "I was painfully aware that scientific issues were not understood by top officials," he says. "So many important issues have a high-tech angle to them."
The U.S. hasn't fired up a new nuclear power plant since 1996, and Muller lays the blame in part on irrational worries about radiation. "We need to educate the public. Nuclear is not as dangerous as they think it is," he says. For starters, the public doesn't understand that a certain amount of radioactivity is normal. Denver has 50% more radioactivity than the average U.S. city because of the granite in the rocks there, he says. Yet the cancer rate in Denver is lower than in the rest of the country.
"We assuage public fears by passing ridiculously low limits on radioactivity," he says, but adds that low levels of radioactivity do concern him. Radioactivity levels are likely to be lower at Yucca Mountain, the proposed nuclear waste storage site in Nevada, than in Denver, but Muller says that hasn't calmed the public's fears about storing waste at Yucca.
Clean coal is yet another promising source of energy, says Muller. In this process, now under development, the carbon dioxide created by coal combustion is captured and pumped deep into the ground. In early 2008 the U.S. government canceled plans to build a 275-megawatt clean-coal plant because of cost overruns, but Muller says it can be built. The developing world will continue to use coal because it's cheap; Muller says clean coal will be necessary to control the carbon emissions.
Muller's bad news on photovoltaics: "The only way to break even on solar rooftop panels is through the subsidies." He is more optimistic about the future of concentrated solar power, in which a lens focuses the sun on a solar cell; the cost of that can be brought down to $1 per peak watt, he says. He concedes that a new genre of solar cells using ultrathin layers of copper, indium, gallium and selenide might change the picture for residential solar.
Muller is skeptical about battery-powered cars. "Electric vehicles are good for wealthy people," he says. People who think they are saving money by converting to electric or plug-in hybrid cars are not taking into account the cost of replacing batteries, he says.
Over the next several decades the biggest contributors to global warming will be China, India and Russia, as their economies grow and industrial production increases. If we really want to slow down global warming, we have to invest in, or invent, technology that's cheap enough to be deployed in China. "Anything that does not address China and India is a feel-good solution," he says.
Muller grew up in New York City's South Bronx. He studied physics at Columbia University and got his Ph.D. under the tutelage of Luis Alvarez, a UC, Berkeley professor and Nobel laureate in physics whose investigations included X-raying the pyramids and deciphering what killed the dinosaurs.
As physicists go, Muller is quite the Renaissance man. He began working in particle physics and spent time investigating ice ages. He has a controversial theory about a star he calls Nemesis that he says is orbiting the sun at a distance of a few light years. On the walls of his book-filled home hang photographs he has taken of wildlife during his world travels, including a gorilla in Rwanda and a lion cub in Kenya. He whips out his iPhone to show a visitor a video of how he came within a few feet of gorillas. The animals appear to ignore the tourists.
Muller's peers are happy to take him on in the great policy debates. John Harte, a physicist who teaches in UC, Berkeley's Energy & Resources Group, declares that the economics of both clean coal and nuclear power are doubtful enough to make solar, wind and geothermal generation well worth pursuing instead. Franklin Orr, director of Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy, agrees with Muller that there is room for nuclear and possibly clean coal (if nuclear waste storage and carbon capture can be solved) but doesn't agree with him that Al Gore and Tom Friedman are overstating the risks of global warming. Orr notes that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is dissolving in the ocean, changing the acidity and affecting the coral reefs.
Felix Kramer, founder of California Cars Initiative, a nonprofit that promotes plug-in hybrids, says Muller's math is faulty when it comes to the lifetime of electric batteries. He says the batteries in the Tesla, an all-electric sports car, should last about as long as the car--between 100,000 and 200,000 miles.
Muller says, "If Obama got strongly behind nuclear, then it could move much faster." He doesn't believe we need to choose between nuclear and solar: "This is an example of the 'green bickering' that I deplore: 'I am cleaner than thou.' We need all [those sources of energy]." He agrees with Orr that the CO2 dissolving in the oceans is a problem, and he addresses it in his book. "I consider this to be potentially a bigger problem than global warming," Muller says. But he is surprised that Orr doesn't see Gore and Friedman's exaggerations. "Certainly he would agree that Gore and Friedman are making claims that are way beyond those in the consensus of the IPCC. Maybe he is not part of the consensus."
Answering Kramer, Muller cites recent research by Consumer Reports showing that converting to plug-in hybrids costs $10,000, but the batteries have to be replaced at the end of three years.
Muller insists that he doesn't aim to tell anyone--future President or not--what to do about energy policy, or anything else. In all his years advising government, he says, "the most valuable thing I taught them was how to understand the issues so they could see the conclusion themselves, and then convince other people."
martedì, marzo 10, 2009
C'e' molta crisi
La crisi in america e' giorno dopo giorno sempre piu' evidente. Ad esempio in Champaign, i nuovi negozi, tipo urban outfitters, non riescono a essere in attivo e sono costretti a chiudere. Il mitico bar "Giuliani" ahime' ha chiuso i battenti anche lui ;-(. I miei amici scherzano sul fatto che Giuliani abbia chiuso appena dopo che mi sono trasferito in Berkeley togliendo la maggior parte delle sue entrate :-D
Anche a Berkeley un paio di ristoranti sono stati chiusi. Tuttavia quelli chiusi sono stati rimpiazzati subito da altri, e in piu' sono fioriti i nuovi "stimulus package" menu, che prendono il nome dalle serie di misure economiche di obama per risollevare l'economia in US. Soprattutto i ristoranti piu' costosi offrono menu' tutto compreso pari a 25 dollari. Tuttavia 25 dollari sono sempre tanti quindi bisognera' vedere far un paio di settimane come vanno le cose.
Anche a Berkeley un paio di ristoranti sono stati chiusi. Tuttavia quelli chiusi sono stati rimpiazzati subito da altri, e in piu' sono fioriti i nuovi "stimulus package" menu, che prendono il nome dalle serie di misure economiche di obama per risollevare l'economia in US. Soprattutto i ristoranti piu' costosi offrono menu' tutto compreso pari a 25 dollari. Tuttavia 25 dollari sono sempre tanti quindi bisognera' vedere far un paio di settimane come vanno le cose.
Iscriviti a:
Post (Atom)