General

The Fight Is Over

She lived three years longer than she was supposed to, and then even after being given two days, she lasted a little more. But Cathy is gone now (I assume that she never considered cryonics). But not gone for good. Gone for no reason at all, really. But as someone once said, with all the people she touched and influenced for the better, she left a wake of good in her life whose waves will probably continue to spread for years and decades. Maia seems to have been strong throughout, and she will perhaps be Cathy’s greatest legacy.

For those who didn’t know her, Moxie has perhaps the best picture of her as we knew her recently. And improbably, of all people, Susan Estrich has some touching thoughts of her own. Being on the wrong end of the country now, I regret not being able to attend the service on Friday (though I’ll be in Phoenix, which is a lot closer), and to celebrate her life with mutual friends, who were legion.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the obit from her nemesis, the LA Times.

Economics

Carbon LOX Stock and Barrel

Clean coal which was a $10 billion subsidy issue in the last election is developing. It involves capturing carbon dioxide by first burning it with liquid oxygen. Buy LOX stock. I like Air Liquide. There are two technologies: one rich: they inject steam, use heat to split off the oxygen to burn the coal and use the hydrogen to generate more electricity. The other lean: just use more LOX.

Both are idiotic from an economic standpoint. To add a hydrogen system and make the coal crazy hot enough to split water will use a lot of LOX at $1/gallon or so. Clean coal is an attempt to minimize the carbon output per electricity instead of the carbon output per money. Better than producing 1,000,000 barrels of CO2 via clean coal, would be to generate 3,000,000 barrels of carbon dioxide enriched air. Underground storage of air is a lot cheaper than buying hundreds-of-dollars-a-ton of LOX to burn $20/ton coal. We ought to be able to achieve sequestration for under $5/ton of CO2. And the plant modification is low-tech. Just direct the exhaust into a pipeline to inject it into the ground.

General

Mysterious Motherboard

Patricia’s computer needs more memory. It’s got half a gig, but it’s being brought to its knees. The board’s about four or five years old (I think it’s running a 1.8 MHz Athlon). It’s got an extra DIMM slot, but I don’t know how big a stick it can take. I can’t find the mobo manual, but I figured I could find one on line. The only identifier I can see on it says “Micro-Star Model MS-5390.” But when I do a search on that, I come up empty. I assume that it’s an MSI, but that model number doesn’t seem to exist in their data base. Anyone have any idea what’s going on? What are the chances that a board of that vintage can’t handle a gigbyte stick? I don’t want to go out and buy one unless I know it will work. On the other hand, just adding another half a gig would probably solve her problem.

[Update in the late afternoon]

Well, after reviewing the options (buying half a gig for sixty bucks or a full gig for a hundred and ten) and realizing that the memory I was buying would probably be useless on the next upgrade, I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade now. Athlon 64 and a gig of DDR2 for ~$250. I can use the other mobo for a development linux box.

Science And Society

Missed Opportunity

Al Gore is going to testify on global warming today, in about half an hour. Bjorn Lomborg will be on the second panel. Unfortunately, they won’t be debating each other, which is something I’d pay to watch. I think that Gore would get eviscerated.

[Going to check the schedule]

It’s going to be carried on CSPAN3, if you don’t have the bandwidth.

[Checking DirecTV schedule]

Dang. I only get CSPAN and CSPAN2.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!