Dana Blankenhorn

Quantum Dot Reality

In my online novel The Duke of Oil, I'm taking some liberties with the science of quantum dots. (Illustration from NASA.)

It's true that Professor Michael Wong and his team at Rice have made an important breakthrough in the production of quantum dots, but it's not true that we're about to see a flood of cheap, highly efficient solar panels, powered by dots, on the market any time soon.

One reason for this is that quantum dots, like Buckytubes (called carbon nanotubes by non-Rice people) are useful in many other applications, besides solar panels.

In fact, solar panels are a sort of low-end use, dependent on mass production of a particular type of dot, made of cadmium selenide. In his research at Rice, Wong made two breakthroughs in the recipe for these dots.

First, he used a cheaper, safer catalyst,  cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (it's sometimes used in high-grade shampoos), rather than the caustic alkylphosphonic acids (used in flame retardants) previously used. Second, 90% of the dots created by his method were tetrapods, with four molecular "legs" reaching into the solution. These happen to be the most efficient types of dots for use in solar panels.

While some quantum dots have photovoltaic properties, most scientific work with them over the last decade has been in medicine, where they can be used as chemical sensors in medical tests.

The Duke of Oil - Chapter 12

The following is a work of fiction. Here is the Table of Contents, which is updated as new chapters are written.

It is the third in a series of sci-fi novels of the type known as alternate history. What's different is that this series takes place in our time, with characters familiar in your real life.

The first book in the series, The Chinese Century, was written late 2004. Its table of contents is here. The second,  The American Diaspora, was written in 2005. The table of contents for that book is here.

This Week's Clue: Parti le Confédéré

Following is the essay you can designate as Volume 10, Number 26  of This Week's Clue, based on the e-mail newsletter I have produced since March, 1997. It would be the issue of July 2.

Enjoy.

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It is very seldom that national parties collapse. The most recent such event I can recall is the collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party in Canada,  which ceased to exist as a national force in 1993. A successor party finally came to power last year.

Usually, failed national parties go through a long period of reform and come back wearing new clothes. This is what Labour did under Tony Blair. It's what the nation's Conservatives are now trying to do under David Cameron.

But can that happen when the party in question finds itself isolated to a regional base, more important to an ethnic base? That's what is happening to the Republican Party, which is devolving into something like Canada's Parti Quebecois, only based in the old Southern Confederacy. (To the right, that party's favorite for the Presidency.)

In the Midwest, farmers are abandoning Republicanism. The Mountain West is suddenly friendly toward Democrats. The Midwest sees Republicans on the run in most every state. The party is nearly extinct in the Northeast. On the West Coast, only Alaska remains GOP country, and that party may soon be speaking from inside a jail cell. Republicans who succeed outside the Confederacy  (like Arnold Schwarzenegger) do so only by leaning into the prevailing Democratic thesis, accepting its premises and seeking moderation.

But in the old Confederacy, and especially in the Deep South, where I live, the Republican Party is advancing across a broad front. In Georgia's 10th CD, for instance, Democrats didn't even make the run-off. Mississippi is now seen as a model for Republican governance, a model Louisiana seems anxious to emulate. In Florida and Tennessee, the Republican Party is strong, in South Carolina and Texas it's dominant, and everywhere else in the South it is competitive.

Outside the old Confederacy, this is just not the case. And one can argue that some of the party's dominance in the South is attributable to Washington largesse, largesse you can expect to be pulled by a future Democratic government.

This is the bargain Nixon made. This is the final nail in the coffin of the Nixon Thesis. And there's a reason for it.

Race.

Computers Haven't Changed Much

Since the dawn of the PC age it's amazing how little computing has changed. (Picture from Hal Licino. Thanks to Grungy.)

We work with bigger files. We can access big files remotely. We do TV and radio and film. But the basic computing paradigm remains that of the Dynabook, first conceived by Alan Kay in the 1970s. The rest is bells and whistles and details.

In terms of my own personal productivity, the best portable machine I ever had was my TRS-80 Model 100. Wikipedia says this is the last computer for which Bill Gates personally wrote firmware, and he did good. The TRS-80 was light, just four pounds, it ran for hours on batteries, it stored up to 16 pages of notes (more with a 32K memory expansion), and its 300 baud modem let you move those files fairly quickly (given their size).

The "Immigration" Debate

I have seldom gotten involved in what is called the "immigration" debate because my views are so outside the mainstream. (Picture from Investor's Business Daily.)

Not being a politician, and not being on the Teevee, I can state the obvious point famous people ignore. Which is there are two immigration debates.

There is a general debate, about how many new people should come in, which ones, under what circumstances, how do we enforce it and all the rest.

Then there's the racial debate. Here it involves Mexicans. In Europe it's Muslims.

These debates are quite similar, in that they involve a complex mix of anger and guilt over how the parts of the world involved interact. For Europeans, there's the colonial experience, the Palestinian issue, oil, and terrorism. For Americans, there is our history regarding Mexico as a country, and indigenous people in general.

Because when you look in the Mestizo face of what we might call the average Mexican-American worker, that is what you are looking at. Indigenous, native American heritage, the people who were here for thousands of years before the Great Nations of Europe settled on the shore.

Now I want to further subdivide this issue, separating the issue of Mexico from that of  race to tell you an even harder truth. Mexico has a race problem, too. Mexico consists of a small elite, mostly of European heritage, a modest middle class, and a vast underclass, most of whom are indigenous. The rape of the west which marked our 19th century is still going on in Mexico, only there it is the rape of the south, including Chiapas, Guerrero and Oaxaca, where there is an ongoing insurgency.

Waiting for Capitulation

Capitulation is a fascinating word, one which has many similar meanings in different contexts.

• In business, it's the point where the sellers stop holding out for a "soft landing" and accept the deep "haircuts" their stupidity merits.
• In war, it's the surrender. On V-E day we wept and prayed. On V-J day we wept and prayed some more. On both sides.
• In law enforcement, it's the point where the accused accepts their punishment, as Paris Hilton did once she hit jail for the second time. Only at this point should mitigation be considered. (Scooter Libby, I'm looking at you.)
• In psychiatry, it's that vital moment when the patient surrenders their trips, whether those trips involve rage, drugs, violence, or the repeated cycle of letting themselves get beaten up. Only when you accept your helplessness in the face of these trips can you begin to master them.

It's this last which is the real key to the whole thing.

New Honda Fuel Cell Car Drops The Water

Honda is bringing out a new car powered by fuel cells.

It's just a "concept" car, called the FCX. But inside a very ordinary body is a very efficient design, which turns 60% of the energy produced by its fuel cell into power. That's three times what a car engine can do.

In the new car Honda has also tweaked the fuel cell design. But not in a good way.

The previous version placed the hydrogen and water produced in the reaction next to one another, so the water could be drained. The new version stacks things horizontally, dumping water as the car moves. Environmentally this sucks, because you can change an area's climate (from dry to wet), and because you're unable to get the water into the water system, where it belongs.

Googlization and the Threat to Capitalism

Having lived through the dot-boom and the dot-bomb, I was not entirely surprised to learn that Nintendo is now worth nearly the same as Sony. (For a short time it ran higher, leading to silly headlines.)

I'm no fan of Sony management, and haven't been for some time, but this strikes me as a tipping point.  It means the assumptions of the dot-boom now extend all around the world.

Stock prices have never really recovered from the dot-boom. Because stocks are so easy to buy and sell, the public market now puts a higher premium on short-term profit over marketable assets. This did not change with the bust. It has instead become conventional wisdom.

The result of this trend (call it the Googlization of stock values) is that real assets are devalued in the market. (Picture from Small Unmarked Bills.) Sales, employees, buildings, factories -- they no longer mean what they once did, in terms of stock valuation, because the stock market has become a fashion market. What have you done for me lately, what are you going to do for me in the next quarter or two, is all that counts, because I assume that I can always get out fast if you disappoint me.

That Impotent Feeling

Reading liberal blogs these days I frequently get a sense of rage and impotence. (The still is from the 1979 motion picture Norma Rae.)

• Stories about the Emperor Dick seem to be ignored, or edited so as to appear benign, while instead they jump up-and-down condemning John Edwards' charity.
• Hating Michael Moore has become the new national obsession.
• The odds in radio are totally stacked against us, and even when right-wing hacks get no rating, they stay on the air.
• All the foolishness which led to the Great Depression has been put back in place, and no one seems to care. In fact, all policy begins to look like a bridge to the 19th century.
  
• Exclusives which highlight the systematic, banal evil of our actions are systematically ignored.
• Neither Democrats in Congress nor those running for President seem to catch the people's urgency to get out of Iraq.

Seasons of Love

The lovely bride is in Texas today, with our son John, so I thought I would tell you a story.

It’s a pretty common story. It’s the story available to each one  of us, whether we are rich or poor, whatever our color, and whatever our hearts may demand of us.

It’s the smallest story someone can tell us, and the biggest one we’ll ever live through.

It is, of course, a love story.

And I grant she'd tell it differently than I do. We are all, each one of us, the only true witnesses to anything.

But here's what I remember of it.