Daily Archives: November 14, 2008

Crowdsourcing can produce new ideas, but run them by legal first…

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Chris Masse at Midas Oracle links to “How Companies Are Using IT To Spot Innovative Ideas,” an article at Information Week. Among the examples cited:

…Starbucks uses the same voting platform, at MyStarbucksIdea.com, and took an online suggestion posted Oct. 7 by BillMac to offer a free cup of coffee Nov. 4 to anyone in the United States who voted.

As it turned out, at least in some jurisdictions it is illegal to offer inducements to vote and Starbucks decided to offer a free cup of coffee to anyone who asked for one on Election Day.

Here’s the Georgia state law:

“Any person who gives or receives, or offers to give or receive, or participates in the giving or receiving of money or gifts for the purpose of registering as a voter, voting, or voting for a particular candidate in any primary or election shall be guilty of a felony.” [Via the Christian Science Monitor.]

Pop Sci debunking recycling myths

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Lynne Kiesling

Opinions and analyses on recycling abound, from “it reduces our resource use and conserves landfill capacity” to “processing recycling uses more energy than not, and is therefore wasteful and inefficient”. Of course there’s some truth in these opposing views, and a case-by-case analysis is usually necessary to determine, on balance, the net effect of recycling.

Here’s a nice little Popular Science article that discusses five of these “recycling myths”. It provides a concise summary of some of the energy and economics aspects of recycling.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, I think … it’s been a long week!

The first battery in the country capable of storing wind energy?

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Michael Giberson

From the Star-Tribune in Minnesota, “Xcel looks to harness wind energy for use even when there’s no wind “:

Next spring Xcel Energy Inc., the state of Minnesota and a Virginia-based technology firm will test the first battery in the country capable of storing wind energy.

Well, that’s a bit wrong. Any battery is capable of storing wind energy. I can store wind energy on my laptop battery if I happened to be plugged into an outlet at a time when local wind power projects are producing. The problem isn’t storing electrical energy per se, but doing it economically.

When it is fully charged, the massive sodium-sulfur battery — which weighs about 80 tons — can store 7.2 megawatt-hours of electricity. That’s enough to power 500 homes for about seven hours. It will cost more than $5.4 million to buy and install the battery and analyze its performance. …

Xcel, which invested $3.6 million in the project, expects the battery “to become very important to both us and our customers,” [Xcel Chairman and CEO Dick ] Kelly said.

The article doesn’t say where the other $1.8 million is coming from, but the subtitle notes, “the project … also includes the state and a tech firm,” so maybe it is partly state tax dollars and partly entrepreneurial investment.

If you aren’t reading Bailout Sleuth daily, you should

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Lynne Kiesling

Chris Carey’s work at Bailout Sleuth is supremely important for holding the federal government accountable for its decisions and actions with respect to their financial bailout plans. He’s carrying our water.

Especially after yesterday’s change of federal strategy, much commented on elsewhere. I think Katharine Mangu-Ward sums it up pretty well at Reason when she notes that yesterday even those who had high hopes for the federal government’s bailout plans “figured out that the bailout wasn’t going to be a smooth transition to economic health guided by a selfless, rational public servant.”

If you aren’t reading Bailout Sleuth daily, you should

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Lynne Kiesling

Chris Carey’s work at Bailout Sleuth is supremely important for holding the federal government accountable for its decisions and actions with respect to their financial bailout plans. He’s carrying our water.

Especially after yesterday’s change of federal strategy, much commented on elsewhere. I think Katharine Mangu-Ward sums it up pretty well at Reason when she notes that yesterday even those who had high hopes for the federal government’s bailout plans “figured out that the bailout wasn’t going to be a smooth transition to economic health guided by a selfless, rational public servant.”

This week in 1856: Bessemer becomes man of steel

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Lynne Kiesling

[Yes, I am truly in real-world issue avoidance mode ...]

I love the occasional Wired articles on technology history, and this one is near and dear to my heart … on 11 November 1856, Henry Bessemer received a U.S. patent for his steel production technology. The article also gives appropriate credit to American William Kelly for having created a similar technology slightly earlier. The Bessemer-Kelly steel production technology was a major, major inflection point in economic history; it made economical the large-scale production of consistent-quality steel, which had physical properties that made it extremely useful in a lot of applications where iron was not.

Steel was huge. Today only two of the original Bessemer converters in the U.S. still exist, one of which is installed as a fountain at Station Square in Pittsburgh:


[image courtesy of Wikimedia]

Music is heart-healthy!

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Lynne Kiesling

Due in part to my trying to process everything that’s going on in the economy right now, and in part to my being in denial about some of it, my morning attention is drawn to this item: listening to your favorite music is good for your heart. In my case I suspected as much, because I am, ummmm, an active listener: whenever possible I sing along and dance and air drum in a fairly cardiovascular way. But this paper suggests that it’s not just getting your heart rate up; it’s also the feeling of joy leading to expanded blood flow. Last night provided me with a good data point on this hypothesis (OK, this is really just a current news hook to tell you about a show I went to last night).

My friend Geoff Manne was in town for the Property Rights and Innovation conference at the NU Searle Center yesterday and today, and at which I presented this preliminary and incomplete paper on layered entry barriers in retail electricity markets. Geoff’s a great enabler; the intersection of our musical tastes is sufficient to lead to valuable cross-pollination (most of it in my direction), so when he said that he wanted to see Centro-Matic at the Hideout while he was here, of course I said yes. Centro-Matic is a good indie-rock band from Denton, Texas, in the same rough musical area as Okkervil River, whom we’ve enjoyed live and to whom we are listening quite a bit lately. And the Hideout is a Chicago institution, so we look for excuses to go there.*

In brief, it was a good show, solid, well-done music at the alt country-rock interface. Lots of jangly guitar. The drummer was fun to watch, and I may actually steal one of his fills. One of the guys was swapping among bass, violin, keyboard, and synth, as well as singing backing vocals; very impressive. The Centro-Matic guys also play with two other folks as South San Gabriel, where they play their quieter, more mellow compositions. We were really enjoying their layered guitar with the pedal steel guitar, and how the drummer used maracas and brushes to give solid, soft percussion. If you like bands at the alt country-rock interface, check these guys out.

But then at the end they really endeared themselves to me in the encore, by doing a fabulous cover of the English Beat’s “Save It For Later”, which is one of my favorite.songs.ever. So I got to sing and dance and air drum, leading to a full-spectrum heart-healthy musical evening.

* Seriously, if you like music and you are ever in Chicago and have a free evening, it’s well worth going to the Hideout, even if you have never heard of the band or aren’t sure if you like the band’s genre. The Hideout is a true gem.