Category Archives: What to Watch

What to Watch 15: Fusion and the Cold War

The Tsar Bomba, Largest Man-Made Explosion Ever, October 1961, Discovery Channel

  • Hiroshima, Japan, WW2: 16,000 tons of TNT equivalent
  • Nagasaki, Japan, WW2: 22,000 tons of TNT equivalent
  • Tsar Bomba device: 50,000,000 tons of TNT equivalent: more than 2,000 times the explosive energy of each of the bombs that leveled 2 entire cities in Japan in 1945.

Cuban Missile Crisis 1 by Extra Credits History

Cuban Missile Crisis 2 by Extra Credits History

Cuban Missile Crisis 3 by Extra Credits History

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Website, English
Click here for WTW 14 Fusion as an Energy Source.
Click here to search “fusion” on this site.

What to Watch 14: Fusion Energy, 16 Minutes

1. Fusion Explained in a Nutshell by Kurzgesagt

2. JET, Joint European Torus, largest magnetic confinement fusion reactor.

  • JET is the current record holder for controlled fusion energy production by most measures. The record was set in 1997. See video.
  • Located in Oxfordshire, UK.
  • Annual budget 2014-2018 = 145.6 million euros ~ $175 million per year. Source.
  • Video is from 2014.

3. National Ignition Facility, was the largest effort at inertial based fusion.

  • The fusion ignition effort ended in April 2014, but is still one HUGE laser. Do not point this laser at your eye.
  • Located in California, USA.
  • NIF total cost was ~$3.5 billion. Source.
  • Video is from 2009.

4. More References

 

Click here for the historical context of fusion, fusion in the Cold War.

Click here to search fusion on this site.

What to Watch 13: Cryptocurrency 2, the Blockchain in Society and Pop Culture, 22 Minutes

The Blockchain in Society, We’ve Stopped Trusting Institutions and Started Trusting Strangers, Rachel Botsman on TED, June 2016

Blockchain in Pop Culture, Lovesong for Satoshi Nakamoto Whitepaper by “Bitcoin Girl” Naomi Brockwell, November 2015

Of Note

My Personal Conclusion on Cryptocurrency (For Now)

The idea behind Bitcoin is that you do not have to trust banking institutions. The transactions are verified by the technology / other users. I researched signing up for Bitcoin, and decided not to. The problem I found was in order to access the blockchain and “own” Bitcoin, you need a computer program to do it. The computer program is written by a coder and I am not going to take the time to understand the code. Therefore, instead of trusting an institution, I am trusting the coder who is the middleman who wrote the code. I actually trust both the banks and the coders (with a little research), but I do not have a reason to switch. The only advantage I see is that there is no tax trail, but I am not paying taxes on these transactions anyway. I don’t need a brand new currency in my life. Sticking with PayPal, Venmo, TransferWise, and dollars, for now!

What to Watch 12: More Drones, History and Future of Drones, 29 Minutes

The videos in this post (click here) best explain the entropy concept.
For more posts related to entropy, select the entropy tag.

Entropy

As you see this technology progress, it is natural to think, “Oh, we are so smart now, we know how to make tiny drones fly.” Alternatively, consider our (humanity’s) success within the concept of entropy. The law of entropy (Second Law of Thermodynamics) states that all systems tend toward disorder, and that energy is required for complexity to develop. Applying this broadly, improved drone flight is complexity. In order for drones to improve, energy must be applied in the form of human thought, manufacture, etcetera. Also, at the drone level, the drone must have energy on board both to fly and to power the tiny computers to control itself. Controlled flight is complex! Put this way, it is not that we are so smart to make these drones, or that the drones are so smart to control themselves. We have the excess energy to dedicate to engineers and academics to think about this complex stuff, and the drones have great modern batteries to deliver energy to efficient tiny computers to fly in totally cool complex ways!

1970s: The CIA’s Insectothopter, The CIA’s Own Channel on YouTube

Notice that battery life (lack of energy) was a major limiting factor.

2014: In What to Watch 2, I Recommended this Drone TED Talk

Notice that some of the flight control computing was being done on computers in the room, not on board the drones themselves. Energy is a factor here as much as or more than the size and weight of the processors. Computing all of the complex control on-board the drones would consume more power. The battery would be larger and heavier, and/or drain faster. Energy!

~2016?: Drone Swarm Dropped from F-18s

There is not a whole lot to see in the video, but it looks real to me.

2018: 8 January, Bellagio Hotel, Las Vegas by Intel, posted by LV Sun

This was the best drone show video I could find. How appropriate that it’s in Vegas. US’s gambling capital => $$$ => energy => spectacularly complex drone show!

The lights in Vegas have always impressed me. Walk through any normal US city with a normal number of lights, and at any given time, you can find some lights that are burned out within sight. Now try that walking around Vegas with 100s of times as many lights as a normal city and you will go hours without finding a single burned out light. The energy being expended in Vegas is spectacular. (Do they have an ordinance or something? If so, expensive to maintain.)

20__, Future (…?): Dramatization of the Potential of Weapon Drones

This video is a dramatization, but it’s not that we don’t know how, we’re smart enough, … we just need a better battery.

What to Watch Must Watch: Amazon HQ2

Must Watch! Rob Morris, More Freedom Foundation, Amazon HQ2 Is A Scam, Feb 2018

Also: Beware the Tech Utopians

Click here for The Big Five, my post comparing the sizes of Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook to size the size of the US government.
  • $142.57 billion = Amazon’s annual revenue, ~ 2.7x the annual revenue of the city of New York.
  • $53.0 billion = city of New York’s annual tax revenue. (from NYC.gov)

Amazon’s latest post regarding the “competition.”

All Nate TV, click here.

What to Watch 10: Reflection and Rob Morris’ More Freedom Foundation

Nielsen Survey, Reflection on Television
The Ultimate Commuter Bike
To Blog or not to Blog

Rob Morris’ More Freedom Foundation, selected videos

3 Reasons Saudi Arabia Is More Dangerous Than Iran, Oct 2017

How the Reformation Started the Modern World, Jun 2017

9/11: The Shocking Truth, Apr 2017

3 More Reasons Putin Will Never Touch Estonia, Mar 2017