FuturePundit blogs about projections for $2 a watt photovoltaics by 2010, which would be a reduction in cost of about half from today's prices.

The interesting thing in this post for me is a link to an Earth Policy Institute page which shows an exponential decline in photovoltaic prices over the last 33 years, from $100 per watt in 1975 to $4 a watt today.





That's a highly encouraging long term trend. It reflects a "cut the price in half" time of about 5 years, which bodes very well in the long term.

Lots more stats available at the Earth Policy Institute Solar Power Indicators page.

mez

Labels: energy, environment, solar

- posted by Ramez Naam @ 1:36 PM |

The cover story of this month’s Scientific American is a proposal to build out solar power in the US to supply 70% of the country’s electrical needs by 2050. It looks like a pretty doable plan, actually, requiring no technological advances in solar power beyond what’s projected between here and 2020. The price tag the authors estimate is $420 Billion, which works out to $10B a year, or about ½ of 1% of the US federal budget.

Article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Sidebar with a quick summary of the plan:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=us-plan-for-2050

Labels: energy, environment, solar

- posted by Ramez Naam @ 1:26 PM |

At Foo Camp I did a 5 minute "learn to meditate" session for about 50 people. It was fun despite being a really noisy environment (due to a session next door, mostly). A lot of people came up later and gave me positive feedback.

I don't meditate all the time. I go through on/off cycles of a few months. When I am doing it, I think I'm both happier and more functional. It really increases my sense of mental well being. I feel more 'clear', like I'm more able to process information, focus on a task, perceive important patterns, see the outcomes I want, respond emotionally in the ways that I want, and so on.

That dovetails with a large body of research saying that even a few minutes of meditation reduces stress, boosts immune function, increases perceived well being, stimulates learning, and improves attention and memory.

The meditation technique I presented at Foo was basically a simplified version of Anapana meditation, a form taught directly by the Buddha.

Here are the steps:


1. Sit Comfortably

2. Close Your Eyes

3. Become Aware of Your Breathing

4. Allow it to Slow and Deepen

5. Let Your Breath Become the Center of Your Attention

6. When Your Mind Wanders -> Smile, Bring it Back To Your Breath




That's it. Pretty simple. The imporant thing is not knowing these steps, though: it's doing it.

Meditation skill, in my experience, is like a muscle - it gets stronger when exercised. When I first tried meditating, I had a tough time going more than about a minute, and my mind was racing constantly. After a week or two of meditating once a day I could do it for five minutes. Another month or two and I could meditate for a whole 20 minutes.

So if you try, just do it, and enjoy it, and don't get discouraged.

As someone once told me: There's no such thing as a bad meditation. If you meditate, and you find your mind constantly racing or wandering, that's just a sign that you really needed that meditation session.

-mez
- posted by Ramez Naam @ 10:07 PM |

This past weekend I was at FOO Camp which was fabulous. My head is still spinning from all the great information, ideas, and people.

My talks from this year and last year are online:

2007:

When Everything Becomes Information: The Convergence of Matter, Life, and Media

Learn to Meditate in 5 Minutes

2006:

The Wired Brain: Implanting and Interfacing Computers With Your Head (This is actually a version of the talk I gave at Transvision 2004, but which is very similar).
- posted by Ramez Naam @ 12:05 PM |

James Hughes's Citizen Cyborg gets a fantastic review over at Boing Boing. I couldn't agree more!
- posted by Ramez Naam @ 10:33 PM |

One of the most common questions I get is "how did you write this book?". (The most common is actually "how did you get it published?", but more on that later.)

Steven Johnson has a thoughtful post on the writing side, or specifically, how writing a book and writing a blog are different, and why he has kept the two separate.

My own thought is that two of the keys to writing are persistence and discipline - taking the time out of each day to put some more words down. That's something that authors and bloggers have in common. But in other ways the two are very different. Blogging is instant gratification - people see what you write immediately and you may get feedback immediately. It's also a short attention span audience - people follow links from one blog to another, or skim a long list of posts in their aggregator. Book writing is the other side of those coins.

For myself, while writing More Than Human it was a bit of a struggle to focus on the longer term writing project with the lure of blogging or perhaps posting to an email list, but in the end it payed off.
- posted by Ramez Naam @ 2:50 PM |

I was interviewed this morning on San Diego's NPR station KPBS. The host, Tom Fudge, had clearly read the book and had great questions. So did the callers. You can listen to the interview online.

And as a nice bonus, I got a brief review in gizmodo today.
- posted by Ramez Naam @ 9:43 PM |

In the April issue of Scientific American, the Editors Recommend section features both More Than Human and James Hughes's excellent Cyborg Democracy.

- posted by Ramez Naam @ 4:00 PM |

Betterhumans quotes a recent survey which shows that 41% of women undergoing infertility treatments would select the sex of their child if possible.

Interestingly enough:

Contradicting fears that such sex selection would cause gender imbalance, the
survey found that women with no children would choose baby girls and boys in
approximately equal numbers.

Furthermore, women with only daughters wanted to
select a male child while women with only sons wanted to select a female child.

- posted by Ramez Naam @ 7:24 AM |