Trade winds
Wind power has come of age. But to make the most of it, electrical grids will have to be overhauled.
On a ridge near Toledo in Castile-La Mancha stands a row of white wind-mills. Literary buffs, even if they have never been to Spain, will recognize them as the ferocious giants attacked by Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes’s fictional 17th-century hero. These days, however, they are dwarfed by legions of modern wind turbines that grind out not flour but power, helping to make Spain one of the leading producers of wind-based electricity in Europe.
Does this amount to tilting at wind-mills? There is no doubt that Spain’s wind turbines would not have been built without assistance from the highly visible hand of a government that wanted to prove its green credentials. But wind power is no illusion. World capacity is growing at 30% a year and will exceed 100 gigawatts this year. Victor Abate, General Electric’s vice-president of renewables, is so convinced that that by 2012 half of the new generating capacity built in America will be wind-powered that he is basing his business plan on that assumption.
Wind currently provides only about 1% of America’s electricity, but by 2020 that figure may have risen to 15%. The one part of the United States that has something approximating a proper free market in electricity, Texas, is also keener than any other state on deploying the turbines. In May, T. Boone Pickens, one of the state’s most famous oil tycoons, announced a deal with GE to build a one-gigawatt wind farm—the world’s largest—at a cost of $2 billion.
What was once a greener-than-thou toy has thus become a real business (GE alone expects to sell $6 billion-worth of turbines this year)—and one with many advantages. For example, as Lester Brown, the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a think-tank in Washington, DC, points out, a farmer in Iowa who gives up a tenth of a hectare (a quarter of an acre) of land to a turbine might earn $10,000 a year from it (about 3% of the value of the electricity it produces). Planted with maize, the same land would yield a mere $300-worth of bioethanol.
Moreover, wind farms can be built piecemeal, unlike most power stations. A half-finished coal-fired or nuclear power plant is a useless waste of money, but a half-finished wind farm is simply a wind farm half the size originally intended—and one that has been providing revenue since the first turbine was completed.
One consequence of this rapidly growing market is a virtuous circle of technological improvement that is pushing wind-generated electricity closer and closer to solving Google’s cheaper-than-coal equation. The first turbines were cobbled together from components intended for ships. Now the engineers are borrowing from aircraft design, using sophisticated composite materials and equally sophisticated variable-geometry blades to make those blades as long as possible (bigger is better with turbine technology) and as smart as possible (a blade that can flex when the wind blows too strongly, and thus “spill” part of that wind, is able to turn when other, lesser turbines would have to be shut down for their own safety). The theoretical maximum efficiency of a turbine, worked out in the early 20th century by Albert Betz, is 59.3%. Modern turbines get surprisingly close to that, being about 50% efficient.
They are also more reliable than their predecessors. According to Mr. Abate, when GE entered the turbine business in 2002 the average turbine was out of commission 15% of the time. Now its downtime is less than 3%. As a result, the cost of the energy cranked out by these turbines has come down to about 8 cents a kilowatthour (kwh) and is still falling.
That makes wind power competitive with electricity generated by burning natural gas. Coal power is still cheaper, at about 5 cents a kwh. But according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), that would rise to 8 cents if the CO2 from coal-fired power stations had to be captured and stored underground—or, for that matter, if a carbon tax of $30 a tonne were imposed.
The power companies that buy the turbines are also getting smarter. They employ teams of meteorologists to scour the world for the best places to put turbines. It is not just a question of when the wind blows, but also of how powerfully. A difference of as little as one or two kilometers (one mile) an hour in average wind speed can have a significant effect on electrical output. And another lot of meteorologists sit in the control centers, making detailed forecasts a day or two ahead to help a company manage its power load. For one problem with wind is that if it stops blowing, the turbines stop turning. After cutting costs, that is the second great challenge of the spread of wind power.
The third is that people do not necessarily live where the wind blows. Indeed, they often avoid living in such places. Solving these problems, though, is a task not for the mechanical engineers who build the turbines but for the electrical engineers who link them to places where power is wanted. That means electricity grids are about to become bigger and smarter.
Bigger means transcontinental, at least for people like Vinod Khosla. His analogy is America’s interstate highway system, built after the second world war. The new grids would use direct, rather than alternating, current. AC was adopted as standard over a century ago, when the electrical world was rather different. But DC is better suited to transporting power over long distances. Less power is lost, even on land. And DC cables can also be laid on the seabed (the presence of all that water would dissipate an AC current very quickly). In the right geographical circumstances that eliminate both the difficulty of obtaining wayleaves to cross private land and the not-in-backyard objections that power lines are ugly. Indeed, there is already a plan to use underwater cables to ship windpower from Maine to Boston in this way.
Rewiring the planet
As it happens, Europe already has the embryo of a DC grid. It links Scandinavia, northern Germany and the Netherlands, and there is talk of extending it across the North Sea to the British Isles, another notoriously windy part of Europe. By connecting distant points, this grid not only delivers power to market, it also allows the system some slack. It matters less that the wind does not blow all the time because it blows at different times in different places. The grid also permits surplus power to be used to pump water uphill in Norwegian hydroelectric plants (a system known as pumped storage), ready for use when demand spikes.
Smart grids, however, would help to smooth out such spikes in the first place. The ability to accommodate inherently intermittent sources such as wind is only one of several reasons for wanting to do this, but it is an important one.
A smart grid will constantly monitor its load and (this is the smart bit) take particular consumers offline, with their prior agreement and in exchange for a lower price, if that load surges beyond a preset level. For this purpose, a consumer may not necessarily be the same as a customer. The grid’s software would be able to identify particular circuits, or even particular appliances, in a home, office or factory. Their owners would decide in what circumstances they should shut down or boost up, and the smart grid’s software would then do the job. Water heaters and air-conditioners might stock up on heat or cold in anticipation of such shutdowns. Fridges would know how long they could manage without power before they had to switch on again.
Reducing spikes in demand that way will cut the need for what are known in the industry as “peakers”—small power plants such as pumped-storage systems that exist solely to deal with such spikes. Parts of America’s existing dumb and fragmentary electricity grid are so vulnerable to load variations that their owners think they may be able to cope with no more than about 2% of intermittent wind power. Clearly peaks will never be eliminated entirely. However, Mr. Abate reckons that a combination of smart grids and gas-fired peakers should push the potential for wind power up a long way.
To prove the point, GE is collaborating with the government of Hawaii, a state which is served by a series of small, isolated grids highly vulnerable to disruption. The firm’s engineers reckon that clever grid management will allow up to 30% of local power to come from wind without any blackouts. If that improvement can be translated to the grids on the mainland, wind’s future looks assured.
2008年8月8日 星期五
2008年8月6日 星期三
some talks
Several days ago, our boss talked with us about why the booming price of petroleum makes the market index turn green (or red in Taiwan). He said the petroleum should be replaced by nuclear energy someday, since nuclear energy is much cleaner than the energy from oil-burning. And higher price of oil would lead those developed countries devote themselves to develop green energy. Therefore, the market just reflects the trend and that's why the index turns green.
Seems reasonable, hum? But why the nuclear energy? He said it would produce enough power to supply all human need in a small volume or mass. And better, it produces no carbon-dioxide that causes greenhouse effect. Seems great, doesn't it? But my dear boss, can you tell me how to deal with the nuclear/radioacitve wastes? You said the nuclear waste can be "burn into ash" but how? You answered grossly. We all know the nuclear fission is a physical chain-reaction, and this would lead to materials with radiation. Radioactive wastes are waste types containing radioactive chemical elements that do not have a practical purpose. As the article I typed from the Economist mentioned, none knows how to deal with the nuclear waste.
If we human embrace the nuclear energy without the ability to deal with its waste, what's the future we or our heirs will take? Hope not the title of that article--life after death--describe.
dyc
-----------------
An article practiced in English may have lots of faults. But I just try not to forget too much vocabulary as possible since there isn't too much chance to use English.
Seems reasonable, hum? But why the nuclear energy? He said it would produce enough power to supply all human need in a small volume or mass. And better, it produces no carbon-dioxide that causes greenhouse effect. Seems great, doesn't it? But my dear boss, can you tell me how to deal with the nuclear/radioacitve wastes? You said the nuclear waste can be "burn into ash" but how? You answered grossly. We all know the nuclear fission is a physical chain-reaction, and this would lead to materials with radiation. Radioactive wastes are waste types containing radioactive chemical elements that do not have a practical purpose. As the article I typed from the Economist mentioned, none knows how to deal with the nuclear waste.
If we human embrace the nuclear energy without the ability to deal with its waste, what's the future we or our heirs will take? Hope not the title of that article--life after death--describe.
dyc
-----------------
An article practiced in English may have lots of faults. But I just try not to forget too much vocabulary as possible since there isn't too much chance to use English.
Part of The future of energy -- The Economist June 21st-27th 2008
Life after death
Nuclear power is clean, but can it overcome its image problem?
If you want to make an environmentalist squirm, mention nuclear power. Atomic energy was the green movement’s darkest nightmare: the child of mass destruction, the spawner of waste that will remain dangerous for millennia, the ultimate victory of pitiless technology over frail humanity. And not even cheap. Well, times change. The followers fo Rachel Carson and the Club of Rome in the 1960s and 1970s had not heard of the greenhouse effect, but today’s greens have. And they know that nuclear reactors are the one proven way to make carbon-dioxide-free electricity in large and reliable quantities that does not depend (as hydroelectric and geothermal energy do) on the luck of the geographical draw. What a dilemma for a thoughtful tree-hugger.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, faces no such dilemma, though. He is such a convert to the nuclear cause that he now chooses to consult for it.
Cynics take him to task for that, but he makes no apology. His view of the world, shared by James Lovelock, the inventor of Gaia (the idea that the Earth itself has some of the characteristics of a living organism), is that nuclear power—which already provides 15% of the world’s electricity—is the only possible way out of climate change. Mr. Lovelock thinks it is probably too late anyway, and that Gaia will shake herself and be rid of the plague of humans that now infest her skin. Mr. Moore thinks she can be persuaded not to, if nuclear power is applied in even larger doses.
Given the widespread concern about nuclear energy, how can that be done? Partly, the answer comes, by shifting priorities (for today’s youth, climate change is what global nuclear warfare was for the baby-boomers). Partly by the fading of memories: the accident at Three Mile Island, which ended America’s nuclear dreams, took place nearly three decades ago, and even the Soviet disaster at Chernobyl is more than two decades past. And partly by redefining “cheap”. The Electric Power Research Institute, an American industry body, puts he cost of nuclear electricity at 6.5 cents a kwh. Not cheaper than coal’s 5 cents, but cheaper than coal that has had a price put on its carbon emissions. The time, then, is ripe for a rethink.
Ernest Moniz, a MIT’s leading energy guru and himself a nuclear physicist, agrees. He thinks that, on the technical side at least, the key to a nuclear revival is to go from a craft-based approach, in which each reactor is a bespoke thing of beauty, to a manufacturing approach, in which modules of components are made in factories an simply bolted together on site.
The other modern desideratum, he believes, is “passive safety”. This seems to be the same as what engineers used to call “fail-safe”, but perhaps the marketing department no longer approves of the word “fail” getting anywhere near a reactor. What it means is that safety measures kick in automatically in an emergency rather than having to be activated. That can be something as simple as configuring the control rods that regulate the speed of a reaction so that they drop by gravity rather than having to be inserted.
Both Dr Moniz’s preconditions are beginning to be met. The world’s three largest nuclear-reactor firms are hoping for sales of reactors whose designs have been upgraded to be more “bolt-together” and passively safe than their predecessors. According to CERA there are plans in America alone to build 14 AP 1000 Westinghouse reactors, six General Electric economic simplified boiling-water reactors, two or more GE advanced boiling-water reactors and seven of the French firm Areva’s latest design, the European pressurized reactor.
New generation
Indeed, the idea of modularity can be taken even further. Toshiba, a large Japanese engineering firm, is planning something known as nuclear batteries: factory-made sealed units with an output of 10 megawatts and a lifetime of 15-30 years. When they stop working, you simply send them back to the factory for disposal.
The acme of modular, factory-built, passively safe reactor design, however, is found in South Africa. People there have been experimenting with so-called pebble-bed reactor for decades. They hope to start building one for real in 2010. A pebble-bed reactor is fuelled by small spheres that are, in essence, tiny reactors in their own right. They are made of uranium oxide (the fuel) and graphite (a substance that slows down the flying neutrons that cause nuclear fission). Pile enough pebbles together and a chain reaction will start. Nor is any complicated pipework required to extract the heat. All you need do is run an inert gas such as helium through the pebbles and it will collect the heart for you.
The design also looks like the ultimate in passive safety because a phenomenon called Doppler broadening, which changes the speeds of the neutrons and makes them less likely to cause fission, shuts it down automatically if it overheats—though critics argue that the graphite in the pebbles is a fire hazard, and that helium is so leaky that there is a risk of air getting into the system and starting a fire.
None of these ideas deals with the question of nuclear waste. But that is largely a political problem, not a technical one. Though it sounds like a cop-out, the best answer really is to bury the stuff for the time being. That should be done in places where it can easily be recovered for reprocessing one day when technology has caught up. But it is also worth nothing that buried, unprocessed waste cannot be used to make bombs.
Nuclear power is clean, but can it overcome its image problem?
If you want to make an environmentalist squirm, mention nuclear power. Atomic energy was the green movement’s darkest nightmare: the child of mass destruction, the spawner of waste that will remain dangerous for millennia, the ultimate victory of pitiless technology over frail humanity. And not even cheap. Well, times change. The followers fo Rachel Carson and the Club of Rome in the 1960s and 1970s had not heard of the greenhouse effect, but today’s greens have. And they know that nuclear reactors are the one proven way to make carbon-dioxide-free electricity in large and reliable quantities that does not depend (as hydroelectric and geothermal energy do) on the luck of the geographical draw. What a dilemma for a thoughtful tree-hugger.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace, faces no such dilemma, though. He is such a convert to the nuclear cause that he now chooses to consult for it.
Cynics take him to task for that, but he makes no apology. His view of the world, shared by James Lovelock, the inventor of Gaia (the idea that the Earth itself has some of the characteristics of a living organism), is that nuclear power—which already provides 15% of the world’s electricity—is the only possible way out of climate change. Mr. Lovelock thinks it is probably too late anyway, and that Gaia will shake herself and be rid of the plague of humans that now infest her skin. Mr. Moore thinks she can be persuaded not to, if nuclear power is applied in even larger doses.
Given the widespread concern about nuclear energy, how can that be done? Partly, the answer comes, by shifting priorities (for today’s youth, climate change is what global nuclear warfare was for the baby-boomers). Partly by the fading of memories: the accident at Three Mile Island, which ended America’s nuclear dreams, took place nearly three decades ago, and even the Soviet disaster at Chernobyl is more than two decades past. And partly by redefining “cheap”. The Electric Power Research Institute, an American industry body, puts he cost of nuclear electricity at 6.5 cents a kwh. Not cheaper than coal’s 5 cents, but cheaper than coal that has had a price put on its carbon emissions. The time, then, is ripe for a rethink.
Ernest Moniz, a MIT’s leading energy guru and himself a nuclear physicist, agrees. He thinks that, on the technical side at least, the key to a nuclear revival is to go from a craft-based approach, in which each reactor is a bespoke thing of beauty, to a manufacturing approach, in which modules of components are made in factories an simply bolted together on site.
The other modern desideratum, he believes, is “passive safety”. This seems to be the same as what engineers used to call “fail-safe”, but perhaps the marketing department no longer approves of the word “fail” getting anywhere near a reactor. What it means is that safety measures kick in automatically in an emergency rather than having to be activated. That can be something as simple as configuring the control rods that regulate the speed of a reaction so that they drop by gravity rather than having to be inserted.
Both Dr Moniz’s preconditions are beginning to be met. The world’s three largest nuclear-reactor firms are hoping for sales of reactors whose designs have been upgraded to be more “bolt-together” and passively safe than their predecessors. According to CERA there are plans in America alone to build 14 AP 1000 Westinghouse reactors, six General Electric economic simplified boiling-water reactors, two or more GE advanced boiling-water reactors and seven of the French firm Areva’s latest design, the European pressurized reactor.
New generation
Indeed, the idea of modularity can be taken even further. Toshiba, a large Japanese engineering firm, is planning something known as nuclear batteries: factory-made sealed units with an output of 10 megawatts and a lifetime of 15-30 years. When they stop working, you simply send them back to the factory for disposal.
The acme of modular, factory-built, passively safe reactor design, however, is found in South Africa. People there have been experimenting with so-called pebble-bed reactor for decades. They hope to start building one for real in 2010. A pebble-bed reactor is fuelled by small spheres that are, in essence, tiny reactors in their own right. They are made of uranium oxide (the fuel) and graphite (a substance that slows down the flying neutrons that cause nuclear fission). Pile enough pebbles together and a chain reaction will start. Nor is any complicated pipework required to extract the heat. All you need do is run an inert gas such as helium through the pebbles and it will collect the heart for you.
The design also looks like the ultimate in passive safety because a phenomenon called Doppler broadening, which changes the speeds of the neutrons and makes them less likely to cause fission, shuts it down automatically if it overheats—though critics argue that the graphite in the pebbles is a fire hazard, and that helium is so leaky that there is a risk of air getting into the system and starting a fire.
None of these ideas deals with the question of nuclear waste. But that is largely a political problem, not a technical one. Though it sounds like a cop-out, the best answer really is to bury the stuff for the time being. That should be done in places where it can easily be recovered for reprocessing one day when technology has caught up. But it is also worth nothing that buried, unprocessed waste cannot be used to make bombs.
2008年8月5日 星期二
漸漸
易遊網賣機票 廈門算國內我們的政府可以儘可能的「模糊」自己的立場，別說國外的商業機構常常把Taiwan, a province of China當做他們服務選單的一個選項，台灣人抗議歸抗議，那些機構可是說他們是依照ISO認證或者是聯合國所公佈的國家/地區名單來做事的呢！
中華民國的政府搞不清楚他現在所在的土地是台灣，還以為他是秋海棠(做夢ing)，清醒的也要催眠，耐何不只阿兜阿醒著，人家中華人民共和國也是睜大著眼，張大著口，準備把海翁吞下…就看這隻海翁是要睡著被吞，還是要醒來逃跑…
好啦~~現在沒有理由怪外國人不知道台灣/中華民國是什麼東西了！連服務自家人為主，得跟各個國家航空業和代表處打交道的旅遊業者，都開始「未考慮」「國家 」主權了，那，還有誰有需要去考慮？
讓我覺的好笑的是，他們的公關說這樣是讓要經由小三通路線的遊客比較方便訂位，那以台灣人現在去日本玩的數量，是不是也應該把日本的各大機場名字從國際機票的分際改到國內機票的領域？這樣要去玩的旅客才「方便」訂位啊！畢竟，天下一家嘛~~
中華民國政府可以自己把頭埋在沙裏說，中華民國是一個國家並且與中華人民共和國共享「一中各表」的想法，問題是，這是人家中華人民共和國要你中華民國入殼的方法，畢竟，世界上大部分的國家是與中華人民共和國有正式的邦交而不是和中華民國有正式的邦交。
中華民國儘可以抱著為數不多的邦交國，不過，中華人民共和國的經濟，在中華民國和世界其他國家的幫助下，(有問題的)飛快成長，政府資金多多，要拿金錢和經濟割肉飼虎日漸衰弱的中華民國比砸錢給那些小國，誰砸的贏？中華民國還可以抱著那些邦交國多久？尤其，新部長還「外交休兵」的情況下？
中華民國政府自己模糊了中華民國和中華人民共和國之間國家和國家的關係，那麼，能怪一個旅行社為了賺錢而做出這種自動融入中華人民共和國而成為其成員的行為嗎？
如果有人要說這只是個案，那麼，有句成語叫「見微知著」，還有另一句叫「防微杜漸」。看到事情有不對勁，如果還不處理，那麼等到「四面楚歌」，再來無顏面對江東父老時，也只能說「晚了」。
我是不贊同甚至譴責這種行為的，可是當一個國家的中央政府都是模模糊糊，不但不說明而且還由欲併吞的國家來表達雙方立場時，漸漸的這個國家的外交就不需存在，漸漸的這個國家軍事也不需存在，漸漸的這個國家的中央政府也就可以改為欲併吞國的地方政府了…！
而這，應該就是所謂的「終極統一」吧~~只是消失的是「中華民國」，而被現在的政府所討厭的名詞「台灣」依舊存在著，不只是地理上，還有行政名辭，畢竟，中華人民共和國政府，不可能讓個中華民國省存在啊！
到時，中華民國消失，台灣不是一個國家，而是另一個國家的邊陲行政區域；而那個國家是怎麼對待他的邊陲領域的呢？
dyc
2008年7月28日 星期一
2008年7月27日 星期日
2008年7月23日 星期三
隱藏的邏輯
The Social Atom by Mark Buchanan
隱藏的邏輯--掌握群眾行為的不敗公式 葉偉文譯
why the rich get richer, cheaters get caught, and your neighbor usually looks like you
Ø 重要的是模式，不是人
鑽石之所以亮晶晶，並不是組成鑽石的碳原子都亮晶晶的，
而是因為碳原子的特殊排列方式。
個體單元並不重要，重要的是結構模式。人也一樣。
嘲笑對於進步的期望，是最愚昧的，
只凸顯了精神的貧乏與心靈的無知。
--梅達華(Peter Medawar, 1915-1987)，1960諾貝爾生理醫學獎得主
Ø 為什麼個人的行為無法預測
人是「忘恩負義的兩足動物」，如果他的生活都被事先安排得好好的，
他也會想立刻去破壞它，只為了證明自己的能力。
只要有人，政治這玩意兒早晚會出現。
--恩岑柏格(Hans Magnus Enzensberger)，德國詩人、作家
Ø 我們是摩登原始人
理不理性都沒什麼關係，因為除了理性之外，我們還可以靠著其他方式來做決策，
而且和靠著理性所做的決策選擇一樣好，甚至更好。
文化思想的歷史……是一個不斷改變的模式，不受束縛的偉大理念，
無一避免地轉變成令人窒息的桎梏，最後走向自我瓦解。
--以撒．柏林(Isaiah Berlin)，英國思想家
Ø 洞悉市場的走向
根據適應性原則設計出來的市場模型，現在已成為非常有用的工具，
不但可以拿來預測市場，還可以預測在不尋常的狀況下，市場會發生什麼變化。
人在複雜或不確定的情況下，如何進行推理？
現代心理學告訴我們，人類的邏輯推理能力只算得上是中等程度，而且僅只做了適度運用。
不過我們辨認模式或配合模式的能力卻超強，這在演化上顯然是非常有利的行為。
我們習慣在複雜的問題裡尋找模式。
--布萊恩．亞瑟(Brian Arthur)，經濟學家
Ø 企鵝法則
我們事實上有點像企鵝；缺乏資訊的時候，我們會觀察別人，盡量蒐集片段的資料。
模仿是一種「社會學習」，使我們在很多情況下變得更聰明。
一般人缺乏獨立的意見。他並不想去研究或深思，構成自己的意見，
只是急於得知鄰居的意見，然後盲目跟從。
--馬克．吐溫(Mark Twain)
Ø 合作是上策
賽局理論推測，在這種情況下，自私自利的人永遠不會合作；
然而，在各種類似的情況下，人們確實會經常合作。這是怎麼做到的呢？
人應該是朋友的朋友，以禮物回報禮物。
對別人的微笑答以微笑，而以謊言對付別人的欺瞞。
--《埃達》(Edda)，十三世紀的古冰島文學作品
Ø 為何人喜歡劃分敵我？
我們很多人好像以一種情緒的方式來過濾事實，
以便保護並支持與自己切身相關的團體。這項本能從何而來？
科學最偉大的力量，在於能透過殘酷的客觀性，
向我們揭露出我們預料不到的真理。
--拉福林(Robert Laughlin)，1998諾貝爾物理獎得主
Ø 為什麼有錢人越來越有錢？
拿一張只有0.1毫米厚的薄紙，假設你可以把這張紙對摺25次，
每次對摺後厚度都加倍，最後的厚度會是多少？
一般人可以分成兩類：認為科學是無所不能的人，
以及害怕科學將會無所不能的人。
--雷伊(Dixy Lee Ray)，美國牧師
Ø 未來是可預期的
誰說我們束手無策，非要受制於非預期的後果不可？
我們現在有機會做得比以前更好。
如果每個人都變得科學化了，那麼神職人員和上帝就沒得混了。
訓條：科學是被禁止的，完全不被允許。
科學是最初的罪，是所有罪行的種子，是一種原罪。
--尼采
dyc
隱藏的邏輯--掌握群眾行為的不敗公式 葉偉文譯
why the rich get richer, cheaters get caught, and your neighbor usually looks like you
Ø 重要的是模式，不是人
鑽石之所以亮晶晶，並不是組成鑽石的碳原子都亮晶晶的，
而是因為碳原子的特殊排列方式。
個體單元並不重要，重要的是結構模式。人也一樣。
嘲笑對於進步的期望，是最愚昧的，
只凸顯了精神的貧乏與心靈的無知。
--梅達華(Peter Medawar, 1915-1987)，1960諾貝爾生理醫學獎得主
Ø 為什麼個人的行為無法預測
人是「忘恩負義的兩足動物」，如果他的生活都被事先安排得好好的，
他也會想立刻去破壞它，只為了證明自己的能力。
只要有人，政治這玩意兒早晚會出現。
--恩岑柏格(Hans Magnus Enzensberger)，德國詩人、作家
Ø 我們是摩登原始人
理不理性都沒什麼關係，因為除了理性之外，我們還可以靠著其他方式來做決策，
而且和靠著理性所做的決策選擇一樣好，甚至更好。
文化思想的歷史……是一個不斷改變的模式，不受束縛的偉大理念，
無一避免地轉變成令人窒息的桎梏，最後走向自我瓦解。
--以撒．柏林(Isaiah Berlin)，英國思想家
Ø 洞悉市場的走向
根據適應性原則設計出來的市場模型，現在已成為非常有用的工具，
不但可以拿來預測市場，還可以預測在不尋常的狀況下，市場會發生什麼變化。
人在複雜或不確定的情況下，如何進行推理？
現代心理學告訴我們，人類的邏輯推理能力只算得上是中等程度，而且僅只做了適度運用。
不過我們辨認模式或配合模式的能力卻超強，這在演化上顯然是非常有利的行為。
我們習慣在複雜的問題裡尋找模式。
--布萊恩．亞瑟(Brian Arthur)，經濟學家
Ø 企鵝法則
我們事實上有點像企鵝；缺乏資訊的時候，我們會觀察別人，盡量蒐集片段的資料。
模仿是一種「社會學習」，使我們在很多情況下變得更聰明。
一般人缺乏獨立的意見。他並不想去研究或深思，構成自己的意見，
只是急於得知鄰居的意見，然後盲目跟從。
--馬克．吐溫(Mark Twain)
Ø 合作是上策
賽局理論推測，在這種情況下，自私自利的人永遠不會合作；
然而，在各種類似的情況下，人們確實會經常合作。這是怎麼做到的呢？
人應該是朋友的朋友，以禮物回報禮物。
對別人的微笑答以微笑，而以謊言對付別人的欺瞞。
--《埃達》(Edda)，十三世紀的古冰島文學作品
Ø 為何人喜歡劃分敵我？
我們很多人好像以一種情緒的方式來過濾事實，
以便保護並支持與自己切身相關的團體。這項本能從何而來？
科學最偉大的力量，在於能透過殘酷的客觀性，
向我們揭露出我們預料不到的真理。
--拉福林(Robert Laughlin)，1998諾貝爾物理獎得主
Ø 為什麼有錢人越來越有錢？
拿一張只有0.1毫米厚的薄紙，假設你可以把這張紙對摺25次，
每次對摺後厚度都加倍，最後的厚度會是多少？
一般人可以分成兩類：認為科學是無所不能的人，
以及害怕科學將會無所不能的人。
--雷伊(Dixy Lee Ray)，美國牧師
Ø 未來是可預期的
誰說我們束手無策，非要受制於非預期的後果不可？
我們現在有機會做得比以前更好。
如果每個人都變得科學化了，那麼神職人員和上帝就沒得混了。
訓條：科學是被禁止的，完全不被允許。
科學是最初的罪，是所有罪行的種子，是一種原罪。
--尼采
dyc
2008年7月17日 星期四
2008年7月10日 星期四
生命的長度vs環境的變遷
日前看到北極冰山於今年九月有暫時消融的情形，先不提北極熊沒浮板用的問題，對人類而言算是地球暖化進展的一個里程碑吧~~
如果2050年的地球生活的方式像某個power point上所揭示的，那人生命的長短有什麼意義呢？對我來說，如果沒有意外的話，我是不會留下我的後代的…我現在的生命，除了盡我的社會責任外，並不需要對太遙遠的未來環境所負責…問題是，在我將遇到的未來上，地球的暖化，會造成這顆人類賴以生存的星球多大的浩劫呢？
冰山的消融，冰河的消失，雪線的上升，在在都在說著淡水/食用水逐漸的減少(流到海裏就成鹹水，除非使用昂貴的海水淡化系統，不過量產後，或許會比較便宜？)…我們現在一個人平均一天用多少水呢？不用平均值，自己一天用多少的水呢？喝2000cc的水，總不是用鹽水洗澡，上廁所沖水 、洗手，洗菜、煮菜、洗碗盤…更別提洗衣服所用掉的水量，這個地球，還能任我們蹂躪多久？
淡水的消失，只是其中一項，森林的砍伐，資源的破壞、濫用，再加上資本主義無止盡的鼓勵消費/浪費，快速的汰舊換新，一直都在顯示著資源的消耗…你/妳多久買一件衣服呢？一件衣服穿多久？你/妳的電子產品在你/妳身邊的壽命有多長？手機多久換一隻？我們每個人每個月製造多少不易處理的圾垃呢？
當這些圾垃用另一種方式圍繞在我們的周邊時，我們卻渴求著健康長壽…結果，我們浪費更多的資源來求著健康、求著長壽，加速地球資源的消失…當地球不再是我們現在的樣子時，我們還會希望長壽嗎？當每天只能喝著固定配給的水，只能用潔顏油之類的清潔用油來清理自己時，我們這些用慣水的人，能「享受」用「油」的快樂嗎？這種時候的長壽是種懲罰吧！
在這個大家都以己身利益為重的時代，地球的命運要有所改變是有困難的…畢竟綠能太花錢，已開發國家還在試，開發中國家、未開發國家更不可能花大錢來做這種短期投資報酬率不高的產品/機制。或許，有人說地球搞爛了，我們還有外太空，問題是，外太空中，目前哪裏能讓人生存？太空船上嗎？雖說地球也沒多大，環遊一下只要80天，但是環遊太空船，我想應該會更短，而美麗的星空，在太空船上觀看的話，也只是一望無際的黑，與無數發光的小點所組成(看久，會膩吧~)…
我不會留下我的後代，所以，我不用考慮我後代可能會受什麼苦…我的基因的劫難，就到我為止…留下後代的人類們，如果不能多為他們的後代想想，並且好好的愛護地球，那麼，說再多的愛小孩，也只是個美麗而無用的承諾罷了。
dyc
冰山的消融，冰河的消失，雪線的上升，在在都在說著淡水/食用水逐漸的減少(流到海裏就成鹹水，除非使用昂貴的海水淡化系統，不過量產後，或許會比較便宜？)…我們現在一個人平均一天用多少水呢？不用平均值，自己一天用多少的水呢？喝2000cc的水，總不是用鹽水洗澡，上廁所沖水 、洗手，洗菜、煮菜、洗碗盤…更別提洗衣服所用掉的水量，這個地球，還能任我們蹂躪多久？
淡水的消失，只是其中一項，森林的砍伐，資源的破壞、濫用，再加上資本主義無止盡的鼓勵消費/浪費，快速的汰舊換新，一直都在顯示著資源的消耗…你/妳多久買一件衣服呢？一件衣服穿多久？你/妳的電子產品在你/妳身邊的壽命有多長？手機多久換一隻？我們每個人每個月製造多少不易處理的圾垃呢？
當這些圾垃用另一種方式圍繞在我們的周邊時，我們卻渴求著健康長壽…結果，我們浪費更多的資源來求著健康、求著長壽，加速地球資源的消失…當地球不再是我們現在的樣子時，我們還會希望長壽嗎？當每天只能喝著固定配給的水，只能用潔顏油之類的清潔用油來清理自己時，我們這些用慣水的人，能「享受」用「油」的快樂嗎？這種時候的長壽是種懲罰吧！
在這個大家都以己身利益為重的時代，地球的命運要有所改變是有困難的…畢竟綠能太花錢，已開發國家還在試，開發中國家、未開發國家更不可能花大錢來做這種短期投資報酬率不高的產品/機制。或許，有人說地球搞爛了，我們還有外太空，問題是，外太空中，目前哪裏能讓人生存？太空船上嗎？雖說地球也沒多大，環遊一下只要80天，但是環遊太空船，我想應該會更短，而美麗的星空，在太空船上觀看的話，也只是一望無際的黑，與無數發光的小點所組成(看久，會膩吧~)…
我不會留下我的後代，所以，我不用考慮我後代可能會受什麼苦…我的基因的劫難，就到我為止…留下後代的人類們，如果不能多為他們的後代想想，並且好好的愛護地球，那麼，說再多的愛小孩，也只是個美麗而無用的承諾罷了。
dyc
訂閱：
意見 (Atom)