Solar & Wind Power in Germany

At the end of 2012, Germany had approximately 400 MW of solar power capacity per million people. The United States produces about 25 MW of solar power per million people.
Germany set a new world record in July of 2013, producing 5.1 terawatt-hours from direct solar. Germany’s world wind power record of 5 TWh was set in January earlier this year.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

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When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




Solar FREAKIN’ Roadways

This is probably the biggest acquisquishin’ candidate we’ve ever seen. Just think about the number of J.P Morgan wannabe’s that would like to see this initiative die a premature and speedy death. The inquest report would likely mention the usual suspects such as public utilities, the energy monopolies, even the pollution remediation industry. Talk about making them irrelevant!

Solar Roadways are built from energy producing solar panels that fit together like puzzle pieces. They would also glow for a variety of purposes including lane markings warning signs.  They’re ridiculously expensive, unless of course you compare them to the cost of building and maintaining the tar and chip pavement we use today. Suppose we consider upgrading the transportation infrastructure at each maintenance interval? As each cost justification is built, based upon site specific criteria, we could roll out new highways and byways that precisely fit local requirements.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




House Optimized for Ideal Solar Gain

This house on Barcelona’s waterfront, uses time-tested passive solar techniques, but it takes a high-tech leap forward using digital design and digital fabrication techniques to make it completely optimized for ideal solar gain.
With its jagged cantilevers jutting out at odd angles across most of the facade (except the North corner), Solar House 2.0 looks, and acts, like few other buildings. Thanks to digital design, the building’s structure was mathematically adjusted so that every point of the building was adapted to the exact conditions of the exterior.
Software also played a lead role in the building’s construction. Relying on 3D milling the Solar House designers employed a CNC (computer numerical control) wood router- the building’s individual pieces could be completely customized, creating the totally irregular patterns not possible (or affordable) with older, mass production techniques.
Solar House 2.0 was completely prefabricated so when the pieces arrived at the site, it took the team just 2 weeks to erect the 154-square-meter (1,658 sq ft) building. The building’s plans are open source and available to anyone who wants to build their own solar house, solar office or solar tower, but completely-customized to their location.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

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“The foxes have holes, and the birds of heaven have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head,” and so it is today for many of his followers. Despite all the warnings about the snares laid by moneylenders, despite the fact that gage mort is literally translated as a pledge to give up one’s life, millions have lost their homes through mortgage exploits, and their quality of life through the service of debt.

Find Out How to Get Your Life Back!




The Wind Belt Blows Turbines Away!

The Windbelt is a small-scale wind turbine that can generate 40 milliwatts in 10-mph winds and only costs a couple of dollars. Working in Haiti, Shawn Frayne, a 28-year-old inventor based in Mountain View, California, saw the need for small-scale wind power to juice LED lamps and radios in the homes of the poor. Conventional wind turbines don’t scale down well — there’s too much friction in the gearbox and other components. “With rotary power, there’s nothing out there that generates under 50 watts,” Frayne says. So he took a new tack, studying the way vibrations caused by the wind led to the collapse in 1940 of Washington’s Tacoma Narrows Bridge (aka Galloping Gertie).

Frayne’s device, which he calls a Windbelt, is a taut membrane fitted with a pair of magnets that oscillate between metal coils. Prototypes have generated 40 milliwatts in 10-mph slivers of wind, making his device 10 to 30 times as efficient as the best micro-turbines. Frayne envisions the Windbelt costing a few dollars and replacing kerosene lamps in Haitian homes. “Kerosene is smoky and it’s a fire hazard,” says Peter Haas, founder of the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, which helps people in developing countries to get environmentally sound access to clean water, sanitation and energy. “If Shawn’s innovation breaks, locals can fix it. If a solar panel breaks, the family is out a panel.”

Frayne hopes to help fund third-world distribution of his Windbelt with revenue from first-world applications—such as replacing the batteries used to power temperature and humidity sensors in buildings. “There’s not a huge amount of innovation being done for people making $2 to $4 per day,” Haas says. “Shawn’s work is definitely needed.”

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




Three Models of Microfinancing

The Disruptive Influence of Microfinancing

Ten percent of the world has access to traditional banking. And traditional banks often refuse to finance low-income or unemployed entrepreneurs, no matter how viable their ideas are.

Now, enabled by the spread of mobile technology and wireless internet access, microfinancing organizations are attempting to eradicate this problem through small loans given to impoverished people who need the finances to become self-sufficient.

In the past 30 years, microfinance loans have brought banking to more than half a billion people, and that number is growing even more rapidly today. Startups, nonprofits, big companies—they’re all jumping on the opportunity to alleviate poverty throughout the world with three primary models for microfinancing.

  • Collective repayment: The Grameen Bank model originally used group-lending, or microcredit, in which small groups of community members were bound to borrowers by a moral guarantee in lieu of the collateral required by traditional banks. This model of social responsibility worked well in Bangladesh, and many countries localize the model to fit their ethics and needs.
  • Micro-banks and microfinance institutions: For-profit models include rural micro-banks that vary depending on the community and location. One example is India’s ICICI Bank, which has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia that provide microcredit and microfinance loans. Micro-banks also exist in the U.S., and have a hard time competing here because of major competition. But in developing countries, they can fare well as the only option. Other microfinance institutions include schools, nonprofits, and agencies.
  • Peer-to-peer lending: Nonprofit organizations like Zidisha and Kiva are examples of peer-to-peer lending. Zidisha is a database of borrowers that lenders speak with directly. No one censors the information or requests. Kiva, on the other hand, uses microfinance institutions on the ground to take care of the loan requests, though they have just launched the Zip model, which is more direct. They also censor and edit borrowers’ descriptions on the website for clarity.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




3d Printing with Carbon Fiber

Material scientists are now using the technology to create new super strong materials that may be used one day in building lightweight, yet powerful, structures. MarkForged announced that it had created a carbon fiber 3D printer.

Germany’s Karlsruhe Institute of Technology revealed that is has invented a new material that’s lighter than water, yet stronger than steel. It achieved this by using a 3D printer to create a material similar to bone. The researchers used 3D laser lithography – a kind of 3D printing that creates objects out of light sensitive resin. This technology allowed the team to create a porous material like that seen in bone where the space in between the solids is small enough to make a difference in weight, but not enough to affect its strength.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




Completely New Means of Generating Electricity

In this device, the humidity-driven flexing of a spore-covered piece of latex rubber (right) drives the movement of a magnet, which produces electricity. A device built on similar principles could function as a humidity-driven electrical generator. Image Credit: Xi Chen/Columbia University
In this device, the humidity-driven flexing of a spore-covered piece of latex rubber (right) drives the movement of a magnet, which produces electricity. A device built on similar principles could function as a humidity-driven electrical generator.
Image Credit: Xi Chen/Columbia University

A new means of generating electricity, one that utilizes bacteria to harness the energy of evaporating water, has been created by researchers from the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

The method could potentially be used to capture the energy released by ponds, harbors, and other bodies of water when the Sun warms them (causing evaporation), according to the researchers.

The newly created prototype generators work by harnessing the movement of a sheet of rubber that’s coated on one side with bacterial spores. As the sheet dries out, it bends, and as the humidity rises, it straightens out — the energy of these movements is then captured and used to drive a generator.

A soil bacterium called Bacillus subtilis wrinkles as it dries out like a grape becoming a raisin, forming a tough, dormant spore. Unlike raisins, which cannot re-form into grapes, spores can take on water and almost immediately restore themselves to their original shape.

Simply increasing the humidity from that of a dry, sunny day to a humid, misty one enabled the flexible, spore-coated plank to generate 1000 times as much force as human muscle, and at least 10 times as much as other materials engineers currently use to build actuators.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




New Life for Nitinol

Nickel titanium, also known as nitinol, is a metal alloy of nickel and titanium, where the two elements are present in roughly equal atomic percentages.

Nitinol alloys exhibit two closely related and unique properties: shape memory and superelasticity (also called pseudoelasticity). Shape memory is the ability of nitinol to undergo deformation at one temperature, then recover its original, undeformed shape upon heating above its “transformation temperature”. Superelasticity occurs at a narrow temperature range just above its transformation temperature; in this case, no heating is necessary to cause the undeformed shape to recover, and the material exhibits enormous elasticity, some 10-30 times that of ordinary metal.

Commercialized nitinol in the form of Flexinol® Actuator Wire can flex and contract when a specific amount of heat or current is applied to it and is made specifically for linear actuators to replace small motors or solenoids thanks to shape memory and a change between the wires weaker, low temperature form (martensitic) and its stronger, high temperature form (austenite).

When the Flexinol® is in its martensitic form, it can be formed and bent into different shapes. However, when an electrical current of ~200mA is applied to the wire, or is heated to ~100C it reverts to austenite form and recovers its previous shape with great force. Additionally, you can anneal it at ~500C (use an industrial furnace or simply a lighter) to whatever shape you would want, next once that current or heat is applied it will return to that new shape.

Consider the Source

 Consider the First Source!

abstract-rainbow

When we align our objectives with the Divine will, when we strive for the attainment of a worthy goal, when we begin our work with a well defined plan, and when we have ability to work together with others effectively, we have already achieved the trajectory for success. For we know that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Learn how to enjoy boundless opportunity and unlimited progress!




3D Printing – The First Snort is Free

It’s been selling all of us overpriced ink and toner for decades now, while basically giving its printers away. It plans to do the same thing with 3D printers by making them compatible only with proprietary spools and filaments. HP recently told the press that it has already developed a special polymer that its 3D printer prototype uses. If you want to use a Hewlett Packard 3D printer, you will have to buy and use that polymer. HP will then be able to own the market by dropping the price of its printers. The industry will hate it and stockholders will love it. People will buy the printer if it’s easy to use.

This approach contrasts with the home based recycling model pioneered by Filabot. This crowd financed effort will help all of us to recycle whatever plastic is laying around, for unending creativity, while greatly reducing the municipal waste stream.

This is another one of those opportunities for Consumer Sovereignty assert itself, to come of age and open the so-called free marketplace for real.




Shedding Retardant Forces

Thomas Jefferson said it best.

We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

Today we should be asking,

  • What is the regimen?
  • What motivates it?
  • What will our future be like if the regimen has its way with us?

A regimen is a regulated system of rule and control imposed by a regime. In Jefferson’s day, the incumbent regime was aligned with forces that established and maintained the institution of slavery. Jefferson, himself a slave owner, was also a force for change, an advocate for the emancipation of slaves. He was well ahead of his time, for that particular form of slavery wound have to wait upon the Lincoln administration to effect positive change.
The actual chains of slavery were readily apparent to the progressives of Lincoln’s time and place. Today, in backwards nations, such slavery still exists. In modern states, the illusion of freedom masks the sophistries of those who would enslave the masses. These regimes conduct convincing campaignes targeting the most persuadable among us. Aligning one’s-self with powerful interests is seen by many as the safe course.
2008 clearly demonstrated to the cognizant, that unbridled self-interest invariably destroys even that which it seeks to maintain. This has been proven, throughout history, as the most self-serving eliminate all threats to their positions of dominance and prominence. The barbarous ancestors Jefferson spoke of lacked compassion. Their modus-operandi was one of unmitigated selfishness.
The  contrast between the mammon serving and the humanity serving is clearly illustrated through the disruprive influence of altruism. When Jesus overturned the money tables in the temple courts, those who had entrenched themselves behind political, financial, and ecclesiastical power began to plot his death. The character assassination of Jesus persists, even today, within factions that are threatened by the values he represents.
The enslaving practices of those who organize themselves for the exploitation of other human beings are highly prevalent. The wage slave is allowed to maintain the illusion of freedom. When such an individual begins to taste true liberty, there is a melavolent force ready to apply a variety of innovation retardants, thereby extinguishing any spark of creativity that might serve to emancipate us from our undersized coats.
With such powerful forces arrayed against them, natural farmers have a tough row to hoe. Unsuspecting planters are inundated with seed for plants that go sterile and can only be fed with fertilizers provided by the same seller. In the United States, no provision is made in the food labeling system for identifying non genetically modified food products
The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is impotent when it comes to exercising regulatory authority over those large agri-business concerns that own and operate a great number of politicians. Incoherent statements such as: “There is no material difference between genetically engineered foods and their natural counterparts.” The inclusion of genes from other species in every single cell in the genetically modified organism doesn’t amount to a “material difference” in their way of thinking.
Now the agency will not allow producers, on their own initiative, to label foods as non-genetically engineered. To appease their Agribusiness masters, the FDA will not make an issue of whether or not any particular food is fit for human consumprion. The fact that it contains genes from other species is not a factor to be considered. The fact that such organisms grow at an greatly increased rate doesn’t matter.  The fact that these foods haven’t been tested on the public doesn’t matter. The fact that they haven’t been independently tested doesn’t matter.
Thomas Jefferson also said:

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.

At the nexus of the co-dependency relationship between the food and pharmaceutical industries is the FDA. Alzheimers, auto-immune disease, coronary artery disease, diabeties,  obeisity, strokes and a variety of other ailments have all increased under the reign of this, severly compromised, if not worthless, federal administration.
Benjamin Rush, another prophetic signator to the Declaration of Independence, put it this way:

Unless we put medical freedom into the consitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship.

Indeed, the disease care industry has done precisely that, just as surely as integrity challenged politicians have allowed financial services interests to masquerade as the health care industry. From the beginning, financiers have only been interested in providing services that can be meted out or metered.
In 1892, Nikola Tesla said:

Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. Throughout space there is energy.

Tesla was a man who died broke and alone alhough his lifetime body of work was highly valued. Upon his death on January 7th, 1943, the U.S. government moved into his lab and apartment confiscating all of his scientific research. This was the closing scene  that began with attacks by J.P. Morgan and other “captains of industry.” To this day little, if any, of Tesla’s research has been made public, Freedom of Information Act notwithstanding.
Let’s take a look at what Nikola Tesla has actually given to the world.
1. Alternating Current — The war between the vision of Edison and the vision of Tesla, for how electricity would be produced and distributed, is better known as the GE-Westinghouse feud of 1893.  It was the culmination of over a decade of shady business deals, stolen ideas, and patent suppression that Edison and his moneyed interests wielded over Tesla and his inventions. Despite all the money, deception and political prostitution, Tesla’s system provides power generation and distribution to North America.
2. Light — Tesla developed and used florescent bulbs in his lab some 40 years before industry “invented” them. At the World’s Fair, Tesla took glass tubes and bent them into famous scientists’ names, in effect creating the first neon signs. However, it is his Tesla Coil that might be the most impressive, and controversial. The Tesla Coil is certainly something that big industry would have liked to suppress: the concept that the Earth itself is a magnet that can generate electricity (electromagnetism) utilizing frequencies as a transmitter. All that is needed on the other end is the receiver — much like a radio.
3. X-rays — Electromagnetic and ionizing radiation was heavily researched in the late 1800s, but Tesla researched the entire gamut. This was a transformative invention of which Tesla played a central role. X-rays, like so many of Tesla’s contributions, stemmed from his belief that everything we need to understand the universe is virtually around us at all times, but we need to use our minds to develop real-world devices to augment our innate perception of existence.
4. Radio — Guglielmo Marconi was initially credited, and most believe him to be the inventor of radio to this day. However, the Supreme Court overturned Marconi’s patent in 1943, when it was proven that Tesla invented the radio years previous to Marconi. Radio signals are just another frequency that needs a transmitter and receiver, which Tesla also demonstrated in 1893 during a presentation before The National Electric Light Association. In 1897 Tesla applied for two patents US 645576, and US 649621. In 1904, however, The U.S. Patent Office reversed its decision, awarding Marconi a patent for the invention of radio, possibly influenced by Marconi’s financial backers in the States, who included Thomas Edison and Andrew Carnegie. This also allowed the U.S. government (among others) to avoid having to pay the royalties that were being claimed by Tesla.
5. Remote Control — This invention was a natural outcropping of radio. Patent No. 613809 was the first remote controlled model boat, demonstrated in 1898. Utilizing several large batteries; radio signals controlled switches, which then energized the boat’s propeller, rudder, and scaled-down running lights. While this exact technology was not widely used for some time, we now can see the power that was appropriated by the military in its pursuit of remote controlled war. Radio controlled tanks were introduced by the Germans in WWII, and developments in this realm have since slid quickly away from the direction of human freedom.
6. Electric Motor — Tesla’s invention of the electric motor has finally been popularized by a car brandishing his name. Tesla’s invention of a motor with rotating magnetic fields could have freed mankind much sooner from the stranglehold of Big Oil. However, his invention in 1930 succumbed to the economic crisis and the world war that followed. Nevertheless, this invention has fundamentally changed the landscape of what we now take for granted: industrial fans, household applicances, water pumps, machine tools, power tools, disk drives, electric wristwatches and compressors.
7. Robotics — Tesla’s scientific mind led him to the idea that all living beings are merely driven by external impulses. He stated: “I have by every thought and act of mine, demonstrated, and does so daily, to my absolute satisfaction that I am an automaton endowed with power of movement, which merely responds to external stimuli.” Thus, the concept of the robot was born. However, an element of the human remained present, as Tesla asserted that these human replicas should have limitations — namely growth and propagation. His visions for a future filled with intelligent cars, robotic human companions, and the use of sensors, and autonomous systems are detailed in a must-read entry in the Serbian Journal of Electrical Engineering, 2006.
8. Laser — Tesla’s invention of the laser may be one of the best examples of the good and evil bound up together within the mind of man. Lasers have transformed surgical applications in an undeniably beneficial way, and they have given rise to much of our current digital media. From Reagan’s “Star Wars” laser defense system to today’s Orwellian “non-lethal” weapons’ arsenal, which includes laser rifles and directed energy “death rays,” there is great potential for development in both directions.
9 and 10. Wireless Communications and Limitless Free Energy — These two are inextricably linked, as they were the last straw for the power elite — what good is energy if it can’t be metered and controlled? Free? Never. J.P. Morgan backed Tesla with $150,000 to build a tower that would use the natural frequencies of our universe to transmit data, including a wide range of information communicated through images, voice messages, and text. This represented the world’s first wireless communications, but it also meant that aside from the cost of the tower itself, the universe was filled with free energy that could be utilized to form a world wide web connecting all people in all places, as well as allow people to harness the free energy around them. Essentially, the 0’s and 1’s of the universe are embedded in the fabric of existence for each of us to access as needed. Nikola Tesla was dedicated to empowering the individual to receive and transmit this data virtually free of charge.
Tesla had perhaps thousands of other ideas and inventions that remain unreleased. A look at his hundreds of patents shows a glimpse of the scope he intended to offer. The release of Nikola Tesla’s technical and scientific research — specifically his research into harnessing electricity from the ionosphere at a facility called Wardenclyffe — is a necessary step toward true freedom of information. Add your voice by sharing this information with as many people as possible.
Consider the Source

Consider the First Source!

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word choreographed an assembly of amino acids into an exquisite array of specific proteins. Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.” In so doing God demonstrated a penchant for genomic writing, preceeded by an amazing series of prebiotic events, in a highly orchestrated presentation of evolutionary overcontrol.

More about God’s Handiwork!