Virtual Ecomonies

This article in the New York Times Magazine is an interesting look into "gold farming" where players of the game World of Warcraft gather gold and other valuables in the game which are then bought by other players too impatient to earn it themselves, creating real value for virtual goods. As a result people are playing video games for a living in China. An entire industry has grown up around playing online games to harvest gold. This article discusses how this affects the gaming community at large and also describes a variety of tactics that have been employed to make a living playing video games. Interesting reading. Enjoy!

The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer

Quick link

Here's an interesting article from Scientific American: "Can Climate Intervention Turn Down the Heat?" Some researchers from Carnegie Mellon created a climate model of Earth and observed the affects of global warming in over time. They then introduced climate intervention techniques such as satellites supporting mirrors or particles dispersed in the sky to reflect the sun's rays.
They made the assumption that whatever intervention technique was chosen the affect would be uniform across the globe. That seems like an unrealistic assumption, but without that assumption it would've been pretty hard to model, so I can understand why they did it. Anyway, read the article for their interesting results.

The future

A theory I've had for a while is that in the future we will mine the garbage dumps of today. All of the materials that we throw away today will become more and more scarce in the future. Eventually we'll pull all of the concentrated resources out of the planet. There will be higher concentrations of precious metals in our garbage dumps, than in the ground. As these resources become more scarce they will become more expensive. Eventually it will become cheaper to mine resources from garbage dumps of the past, than from standard ore deposits. I've been thinking this for a long time, and it's good to read an interesting article on the subject. Read this article. It's a photo-essay documenting electronics waste recycling in China. It's mostly pictures but there are some words mixed in, including:

Computers are much more than just wires and plastic; they are also a source of highly valuable metals, including gold, copper, and aluminum. One ton of computer scrap contains more gold than 17 tons of gold ore. Circuit boards can be 40 times richer in copper than typical copper ore. For this reason, workers in e-waste dumps in the southern Chinese city of Guiyu carefully sort the computers’ hardware and melt down the most valuable parts.

Mars

This article talks a little bit about exploration on Mars. It's pretty amazing. Three years after both Spirit and Opportunity completed their primary mission, they continue to make new and interesting discoveries. One of Spirit's six wheels no longer turns. As it drags that wheel it churns the soil yielding some exciting discoveries including further signs of ancient water possibly existing on Mars. It's a quick read, and it's pretty impressive to realize that these rovers are still being driven around remotely, on another planet, three years after their planned usefulness. Amazing.

Laughing is better than crying

Every once in a while the onion delivers up a great article. Check this one out:

Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc.

"In an attempt to increase public support of whatever the fuck it is he thinks he's doing, President Bush trotted out the same old whoop-de-do you've heard over and over at a solemn-yet-resolute speech attended by soldiers, or religious leaders, or firemen, or some mix of ethnic-looking people from one of those countries."

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/middle_east_conflict_intensifies

An end to oil?

Whilst in beautiful Utah this spring I bumped into an old friend from college. She's living in Boulder working on a PhD in Geophysics, after becoming disillusioned by her job working for an oil company. It was fun to catch up and talk. At some point during the day of climbing she mentioned this crazy woman named Leslie that would climb at Rifle. Leslie would use aid-climbing gear to work on sport routes by herself since no one would belay her for the length of time she needed to work on the moves -lashing herself to these routes for days and constantly telling everyone about the progress that she was (not) making towards sending the route. But apparently, she pales in comparison to the man who has a crush on her. The man who invented the electric windmill car. The man that could bring an end to oil. That's all they would tell me. He has a crush on Leslie, and he invented the electric windmill car. Google it. Actually, don't Google it. I've done that for you. Here, just click this: http://www.inventor-warp-speed.com/ and then after that, you'll probably want to know what the hell is going on.

This article from Total Drek really gives you a nice tour of Greg's website and offers up some interesting excerpts. It's a good introduction to Greg, and a nice article overall, but I have to disagree with some of their conclusions as to the feasibility of an electric windmill car. I think they've missed an important facet. First of all, as Total Drek stated details are "sketchy". I agree with them having completed my own research on the topic and come up with little information. Though, I should state that by "research" I mean: "downloaded one of Greg's 30 minute poems that Total Drek recommended and iTunes happened to start playing it randomly while I was out getting a burrito." I got back just in time for Greg to talk a little bit about the electric windmill car, his love for Leslie and an accident at a construction site. From what I could gather it's obvious that Greg lives a very special life. He is closely monitored by the government (and Leslie (maybe)) via hidden cameras. All of his life is recorded on video tape by the government, and this is part of what makes his claims to the electric windmill car so bullet-proof. When he invented the electric windmill car, he ran home and told it to the hidden camera behind his mirror. So, the government observers have a copy of the video tape of him inventing the electric windmill car. That proves it. I'm not sure what "it" is, but I'm sure you can define "it" in a way that makes the preceding sentence true.

So anyway, I listened to about 6 minutes of the tail end of his poem, flipped through a few links on his webpage and decided I was qualified to write this article. Details are sketchy. Details are sketchy, but I agree with Total Drek when they say:

"The basic idea appears to be that as the car drives, the windmills will turn, generating electricity to recharge the batteries. Thus, one need only charge the car once and it will be able to drive forever more with the assistance of its windmills."

And I agree with them again when they say:

"[Y]ou will have to spend power to get power out of the windmills, and the amount you spend will exceed the amount recovered by the windmills because of friction. So, far from eliminating our need for fossil fuel, the electric windmill car would actually increase it."

But, does that really mean that an electric windmill car is impossible? I think we're both missing something. Greg is special, and he knows special things that we can't know. Maybe, due to some weird synergistic twelfth dimensional coupling affect, when you put windmills on cars friction "flows" "backwards". Maybe if the wind blows on the car while it's parked, and the windmills have some method of efficiently storing that wind energy it could power the car. I'm pretty sure that's impossible, but hey, Greg knows a lot of things I don't. Maybe these windmills run on sunlight? It's gotta work somehow! I mean, look at the energy and passion that he's put into the webpage, into his poems. That electric windmill car has got to be real in some sense of the word. Greg knows things that we don't. What a crazy world.

Joe's Valley Photos

Joe's Valley Photos are posted on my flickr page now. They've actually been up for a couple days but I'm just now getting around to mentioning it. It's funny, I went to Joe's Valley to go bouldering but I have no good pictures of Joe's Valley, or of bouldering. When I was there the weather was great the rock was fun, and there were lots of folks to talk to. So I didn't really take any pictures. Plus, I'd seen so many pictures of Joe's before I left that I felt like taking pictures of people bouldering wouldn't be original enough. So, I didn't take any pictures till I hurt my finger in the Triassics. I decided to just walk around and take pictures.
I also took some pictures from the car while driving out and back. Most of them were crap, but, a couple turned out. They're on Flickr. Someday soon I'll put up the whole story.

April 1st

Google TiSP is a new service from Google that allows for free internet access through your home's plumbing. Seems like you'd still need to be in a large municipal area. I don't think this would work for people with septic systems. The graphic alone is pretty funny. Check out the PHD with the snorkel in the sewer connecting your flushed cable for you. Awesome. I Hope someone I know goes for this!

Slightly Injured, not in the dessert

Yesterday and the night before there were massive snow storms in Joe's Valley. I woke up to 2 inches of fresh snow on my tent. The boulders of the right fork were covered. I thought maybe the south facing, lower elevation of New Joe's might provide some solace. No such luck. Ended up driving through a near white out to the Triassic, an area near the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry just outside of Elmo. The weather there was perfect! What a difference a 45 minute drive can make. Unfortunately I grabbed a weird pocket a little bit too hard and really tore a pulley tendon in my right middle finger. So, today I drove back to Salt Lake City to hang out with Mike and Cheryl and get some other stuff done.

I didn't bring the cable to connect my camera to the computer so photos of the trip will have to wait. When they're on the web I'll let you know.

Speaking of that, I finally posted the first couple sections of stories from the Nepal trip back in 1999. They're pretty rough right now, but at least they're up. Check them out if you're interested.

Alive in the dessert

Hey Folks, really short post here. I'm at the Orangeville (Utah) public library taking a rest day. I survivde the drive out to Utah and am having a wonderful time. I'll be back in the bay area on Saturday night. See some of you then perhaps.