James Burke : Connections, Episode 10, "Yesterday, Tomorrow and You", 3 of 5 (CC)

[Ishkur23]

Technological progress is not about inventing new things, it's about making new inventions accessible. Edison understood this, Ford understood this, and Jobs understood this. Cars and computers were originally complicated contraptions understood only by students and hobbyists. Today they are life-changing tools brought to the bidding of the public's average intelligence through push-button simplicity.

[Kurtlane]

"The medical profession talks mumbo-jumbo because it needs to be exact."

Well, I took pharmacy courses,and was required to buy a special book of medical jargon. It was full of real mumbo-jumbo, nothing to do with exact. Terms like "stat" - for "right away." Or "LOL" - for "little old lady." Lots of terms had several meanings that could be confused with disastrous results.

(cont.)

[Kurtlane]

The name of that book was (the best I can remember): "Medical jargon fast speaking at the price of clarity and exactness."

So much for being exact.

To be sure, there are lots of cases where the jargon needs to be there. But there are also plenty where it deliberately serves to isolate the "elect specialists" fro the rest of us and to allow a mafia to flourish.

[Kurtlane]

There was a funny story in that book: a man went to a doctor, complaining of some problem in his ear. The doctor examined him and wrote a prescription for some drops to be put in his ear. He wrote r.ear (for right ear) on the prescription. The pharmacist read these as one word. The surprised patient was told he had to use the drops on his bottom.

Supposed to be a true story.

[victorialucas38]

I'm sure that power station is the same one featured in the 1976 Tom Baker 'Dr Who' story, 'The Hand of Fear'.

[madmax200769]

This episode, (in fact the whole series) has a fair bit of relevance to Nassim Taleb's concept of "fragility" esp. at 4m40s

[AntiMusick]

4:20 Next Years Model

[summer20105707]

Great show. Excellent.

[Grak70]

This part of the episode is prophetic regarding the growing know-nothing populist movement.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Hmm... there is some truth in that statement.

[TheLastBrainLeft]

@Grak70 I think it's more applicable to the climate change controversy. Millions of people argue it day in and day out, with very few people actually understanding the issues involved. They simply accept that whatever their "experts" say is absolute truth, even if they themselves cannot understand it.

Besides, a know-nothing populist movement is responsible for the current White House resident.

[ryoushii]

@TheLastBrainLeft I love it when someone prattles on without the slightest sense of self-knowledge. We are near the peak oil production estimates, which even big oil acknowledges. You talk about "experts" on climate when what you really mean is bought and paid for shills of the fossil fuel industry and a hand full of crackpots. You are what you think others are - a scientific illiterate who follows the witchdoctors who make you feel all warm and fuzzy and not responsible.

[mercer240]

@Grak70 there are and always will be luddites and fill-in-the-blank fundamentalists.

[riverlioness]

@mercer240

....There will always be souless bureaucrats, as well.

[painxtreme]

@Grak70 Now, that is a really salient point, cheers!

[Grak70]

@painxtreme I take back what I said on the other video. I'm glad to find out you're not just trolling me. :-)

[painxtreme]

@Grak70 ummmmm dang it, I also take back the response I made before i read this....Im the one with egg on his face....yucky me.

[somnolent49]

@Scott, it takes on the order of millions of years, given known rates of sedimentation. If you want to know more, just google "how long does it take for oil to be created", and check out the first link.

That's why nobody who knows anything about oil or geology seriously proposes waiting around for plants to turn into more oil. It is many orders of magnititude more efficient for us to simply come up with processes to make it ourselves.

[dibaumann]

"cleft stick"?

[greymattersblog]

The UK expression "in a cleft stick" means a position where both advance and retreat are impossible. It comes from the way rattlesnakes are trapped, with a stick that's been cleaved at the end, so as to pin down the snake. The snake can't advance or retreat, as he's caught in a cleft stick.

[ScottfromTexas]

Thanks! Great contribution. I would expect the definition would have been derived from the military, however, like "Pyrrhic victory."

[painxtreme]

@greymattersblog Love UK idioms, they and some Southern Expressions in the US paint an immediate with such a wry wit.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Thanks! I always meant to check out the etymology (is that the right word for a phrase?) of that saying but never did!

- JBW

P.S. I love etymology online. That's the best version of "k-web" there is! Just look up say... "frank" (as in honest) for instance - which I did the other day, which is why I mentioned it!

I assumed it would be like:

"kin »» kind == same"

But it's nothing of the sort!

I now know why and where "France" came from! And it's an ugly story ;)

[ScottfromTexas]

I'm missing something - "k-web"?

[JamesBurkeWeb]

The knowledge web project. There's a link to it on the main page and there used to be a little video about it on the main page but unfortunately it is no longer possible to put textual information in any visible area onscreen so you have to hunt down the link somewhere on the left hand side.

[dibaumann]

"kleft schtick"?

[dibaumann]

4:00 "And that puts us, in various kinds of (incomprehensible to me)" What do you say there? "...various kinds of cat's dick."? Is it some sort of English saying?

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Try turning on the captions! "Cleft stick"

[kevinamuir]

Fascinating line at 3:24... "In the same period, American women spent the same amount of money on cosmetics." Makes you think...

[JamesBurkeWeb]

I little less shouting please. Those are laudable goals to be sure, but try to tone down the name-calling, bursts of laughter, profanities and all-caps ranting.

If you have something substantial to offer, then by all means, please contribute.

[AntiMusick]

No more nuclear power...

research and invest in to Wave Generation Power and install them on offshore platforms and coastal breakwaters.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Unfortnately there's simply too much "virtually free" oil around ;)

- JBW

[AntiMusick]

with the Peak oil having peaked now is the time.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

I hear that phrase a lot these days... it requires context. The US had Peak oil in the 60s or something, other countries at different times. World peak oil is anyone's guess. There's more actual oil in the Canadian tar-sands right now than all of the middle east's most optimistic estimates combined. Problem is though, it's not cheap. Costs $30 a barrel to extract and little infrastructure to move it. I met a guy works up there. Pipelines being built as we speak, costs reducing rapidly.

- JBW

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Not that I disagree! I hope I'm not giving the impression that I disagree with the idea of a (very rapid) shift to renewable energy. I only mean to say that to do so is expensive and, generally, people don't like to part with their money (particularly poor people with babies to feed, and especially rich people - who by their very nature tend to be highly avaricious and risk-averse).

- JBW

[AntiMusick]

It's not like Wave Generation Power is anything that new... it's even older than steam power. But today there are a half a dozen companies who for over a decade have been developing different ways of harnessing power from the ocean waves.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Right. Well I would have to be an expert engineer to pose and answer all the questions, but I think a few would be along these lines:

A) What would be the cost of producing an entire power plant at sea (I am assuming generators would have to be at the energy source).

B) How would this energy be transfered back onland (ie. a cabling network)?

C) What would the cost and reliability of said plant and distribution network need to be in order that it be more profitable than oil?

- JBW

[AntiMusick]

it would be more profitable than oil because the motion of the waves never stop if it's placed in the right spot.

[ScottfromTexas]

I'm for solar energy. The solar energy that was trapped by chlorophyll and concentrated in the ground. Oil. BTW how do you know oil isn't regenerating? Somehow the process the created it just suddenly stopped? Just a thought.

[AntiMusick]

the natural process takes a long time, people are consuming it faster that it's created in nature.

[ScottfromTexas]

I don't think anyone knows how long this process takes.

[AntiMusick]

I think some scientists do know... I know this because I know a scientist who is working for Exxon studying ways to speed up the process in a lab.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Well then obviously he doesn't know! At least he doesn't know what the maximum is or else there'd be nothing to study.

[Grak70]

Therefore because you think that, nobody DOES know?

[tompintodotcom]

A question about renewable power sources such as wind and water... In small scales they work well without direct negative impacts on the environment, but what happens on large scales if an increasing population refuses to conserve? On large scales, will these systems start causing environmental damage by reducing the energy within the wind and water? Will locales downwind or downstream or downshore have microclimate change? Is it no matter how hard we try we are back to the start?

[JamesBurkeWeb]

Very important questions which I am unfortunately not qualified to answer.

However, I think it's worth mentioning, that the ultimate source of all this energy (the Sun) imparts only a minute fraction of it's energy on Earth. This energy winds up as wind, or water waves, or plants and animals and so on. So I guess that the place engineers should be looking at is how to get at solar energy efficiently (ie. converted to mechanical energy), and then how to dump the resulting entropy extra-terra.

[JamesBurkeWeb]

There's something I should add to my last response because I keep falling into the same trap as everyone else. There's a tacit assumption in your question and my response which is this: "The current, or near-current, global climate condition is optimal". I don't know if that's true. Perhaps the best situation is not the current, or 100 years ago, or 10000. When we can manage global climate conditions to near-perfect accuracy what would we choose as the best? That question needs to be asked too.

[kevinamuir]

Wave Generation Power is a great example of how misleading "free" power can be. Thanks to Newton we know that power is neither created nor destroyed, but converted. Ergo we take the energy out of the waves to produce electrical power. What does that do to the environment? What long term ramifications are there to the wildlife in the water, or the shore that the waves were once crashing on? The same thing can be said for wind, or solar power.

[AntiMusick]

thats why wave generation stations are place where man has all ready altered the environment like harbors and bays.

[ScottfromTexas]

No Peak oil - the US has more reserves than all of OPEC.

[Grak70]

Which must be why we fight wars over other people's oil instead of pumping our own. Come on. Be reasonable.

[TheLastBrainLeft]

@Grak70 I wasn't aware of any oil in Afghanistan and Israel.

[TheLastBrainLeft]

@AntiMusick We are no where near "peak oil". That's the Big Lie.

[AntiMusick]

@TheLastBrainLeft as BP says "Who Cares!?"

[ScottfromTexas]

Seems like it would affect wildlife too much for what power you actually get.

[AntiMusick]

Next Years Model!