Trip home friday night was a real treat.
Not least of which was the fault of the weather, but additiinally, wingnuthead was at Argonne talking about eliminating the need for fossil fuels by developing teh awesome new batteries!
I wonder if somewhere in the dim recesses of his awareness there is any clue as to the fact that a battery is a storage device for energy, and not an energy source? That the energy must come from somewhere, and unless you plan on damming every trickle of water on earth and covering the whole fucking planet with wind farms and solar reflectors that energy will be coming from fossil fuels?
Naaa, as Theodoric of York was wont to say.
Also, if i haven’t recently, let me re-reccomend Henry Ford’s “My Life and Work”. Henry, in his forties, was already doing the things W Edwards Deming would later make famous- in Japan. When Deming sought to make the US profitable by the same methods Ford had espoused half a century earlier, he was driven out by the labor unions who liked things just as they are, and he was sent to Japan to help rebuild the ravaged country postwar. Emperor Hirohito eventually made him a hero of Japan, where the Deming award is still a sought after prize in all Japanese industry. Yes, that same emperor Hirohito who was our enemy during WWII and continued to be the emperor of Japan until 1989. How many people even KNOW that?
Anyway, we think of manufacturing differently these days, to our Great Detriment. Ford had it right, and it was by God working. We could all learn a lesson from him, and I cannot reccomend the book enough. Spend $8 and buy it on Amazon, or read it at Amazon or Gutenberg for free online or on a kindle, but READ it. His take on government, on unions, on banking is for the most part spot on, and I realized asI was highlighting the salient bits that I had highlighted almost the entire book.
11 comments Og | Uncategorized
Yep. Henry and some of the other “robber Barons” where pretty sharp guys.
Unions had there place as they made for a slightly safer work environment. They have long since out lived their usefulness when they can affect elections.
Got to go do something for the wife…back soon
I am convinced that hatred for all humanity (the ultimate genocide) will need to be literally pouring from the mouths of Bummer and his backers before even a small majority will comprehend that all policy prescriptions are aimed at obliterating population. There will always be a large number who will be driven to an early grave and not acknowledge this is the case or figure the development is a good idea and their number would never be called.
Make energy harder and harder to obtain and the outcome is inevitable.
The problem is not that real technological solutions are not available, it is the fear that humanity will continue to actually progress and prosper if those solutions are not obstructed.
Lack of faith that the future can be bright and unlimited has engendered this postmodernist nihilism. Its adherents are the ones who have gained power by pretending they really like the common man.
A post about the brilliance of Ford, and Deming proving Ford was right only indirectly makes the same point. Better to be as explicit on the subject as possible. Unless, of course, you’re paranoid of being called paranoid. Well, then, never mind. :)
If memory serves (and we are talking 20-30 years back now, damn, I can’t be that old…anyhow…) We were taught about Dr. Deming in the training received when becoming a QAR (Quality Assurance Rep). I found it interesting at the time, and still do now, that we in the Navy had been embracing Deming for sometime, while the civilians were doing little but pointing and laughing.
I knew about Deming but I studied Japan in both undergrad and grad school :) Also because the department I worked for at IUPUI was at the time forced to work to TQM, which was a total crock in our line of work.
While I am far from convinced of the abiogenic hypothesis, I would like to see Schmaht people stop talking about fossil fuels and start talking about hydrocarbon fuels, which is — whether or not your hydrocarbon comes from dead dinosaurs — more accurate a description and also permits freer thinking about the matter.
It should come as a small surprise that, since hydrogen and carbon are, if not THE most abundant elements, certainly AMONG the most abundant.
It stands to reason, therefore, that this insistence on so-called “fossil” fuels’ being the sole source of hydrocarbon fuels is limiting and counterproductive.
Just a thought for your Daily Dialectic.
M
A little more blood-letting should remove those bad humours..
A little blood-letting should remove those bad humours..
I read the Ford book many years ago. I had forgotten about it until you mentioned it. A great read.
I just jumped over and added it for free to my Kindle. The notion his book would be going gratis would piss old Henry off to no end.
Actually, I bet it wouldn’t. Apparently he gave copies away, trying to clue people into the fact that industry could work.
Great tip, Og. I’m only a few pages into it and he’s already tearing apart the so-called reformers. This book reads like it was written today, warning of ol’ Jug Ears and his ilk.
Downloaded; will start on it when get the backlog cut down some.
One of my favorite arguments: “Yeah, your electric car will be wonderful, except WHERE DO YOU PLAN TO GET ALL THE ENERGY TO RECHARGE ALL OF THEM? Especially since you and your lord Obama want to keep shutting generators down?”
I have yet to get an answer other than “Charge them at night when there’s excess capacity!” They don’t like it when I point out that
A: If you do that, there’s no more excess, you’re still short, and
B: THEN where does the stuff come from?