Bloom Energy Hype

There has been quite a bit of hub-ub about Bloom energy. Probably overly hyped. People have been making SOFC fuel cells for years. I don't know why he thinks he can make them so cheap.

If you want to see Blooms patents, everything is online:

http://tinyurl.com/BloomEnergyPatent

Posner off his Rocker

I usually enjoy reading the Posner-Becker blog for its great analysis of current events. But a recent post has really amazed me in its stupidity. The article is generally ok, but Posner makes two extremely ridiculous arguments.

First, Posner rants about how American's health care system is a result of "a large 'underclass' (corresponding to the residents of our inner cities) that is poor and has a very high murder rate and high infant mortality and a high incidence of AIDS and other diseases." As a federal judge, you would think that Posner would support his argument with some facts. As it turns out less than a quarter of the United State's poor live in cities. Most live in rural areas. Look a bit harder before blaming America's health problems on the urban areas.

Posner's next argument is that Europeans expect worse medical care than Americans because they are more "fatalistic." Posner has no idea what he is talking about and is totally speculating. Well I thought I would add my own counter-speculation... American's are far more religious than Europeans and are much more likely to accept their "fate" and refuse further medical procedures than Europeans. Because Europeans are less devout they are are more likely to do a rational analysis of their medical situation. Also, Europeans are on average more educated and are probably more informed of their medical options. Of course my facts (at least pertaining to the second paragraph) are just as unsubstantiated as Posners.

Iqbal Strikes Orly Tatz!

Last May the Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision Ashcroft v. Iqbal. The case concerned Iqbal who was the unwitting victim of the post-9/11 round-up of suspected terrorists. Even though there was little evidence that Iqbal was a terrorist, the government used a variety harsh interrogation tactics on him and kept him in jail for many months. Iqbal sued the government and the case went to the supreme court. The court threw out Iqbal's case. What was special in this case is that they threw out the case at a very early stage of the litigation, at the pleading stage. Previously, it was very easy to get passed the pleading stage.

Now, the holding in Ashcroft v. Iqbal has now been used against Orly Tatz, who claimed that Barack Obama was not born in the United States and therefore is ineligible to be President. Citing Iqbal, the court said that "To state a claim upon which relief may be granted, Plaintiff must allege sufficient facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face."

It will be interesting to see if this holds up on appeal.

Is the ABA biased or are republicans?

A recent newstory by the New York Times questions the ABA's neutrality on advising the president on the qualifiactions of federal judges. The story brings to light evidence that the ABA is more likely to favor judges nominated by democratic presidents than republican presidents. It then goes on to make the claim that the ABA favors liberal judges over conservative judges.

The New York Time's logic is flawed and they ommit several other considerations which may also account for the disparity. Below are several other reasons why the ABA may favor judges by democratic presidents rather than republican presidents.

• Republicans are more likely to nominate right-wing judges than democrats are to pick left-wing judges

Republicans have been in power longer than democrats and they may feel that it may be easier to push more ideological candidates through Congress than democrats. Furthermore, there is something about the liberal-tone which is more concilatory. Democrats are therefore more likely to pick centrist judges than extreme ones.

• Ideologically liberal judges are, on average, more qualified than ideologically conservative judges.

Law professors tend to be liberal. It is clear that they have a strong influence on their students. There are probably more liberal lawyers than conservative ones. Therefore there is probably a larger candidate pool to choose from for democratic judges, and thus better qualified judges.

• The ideals of the ABA are better matched to liberals.

The ABA highly value equal protection and compassion, ideals that are much more associated with liberal values than conservative ones.

The New York Times article jumps over all of these other factors. The reporting reeks of bias.

Conficker Day is Coming

On April 1, 2009 the Conficker virus will activate and start unleashing its malware on the internet. The virus is already running on over ten million computers, silently awaiting orders. No one knows what those new orders will be, but it can potentially be devastating. Some have hypothesized that Conficker could launch a national cyber-attack or even take down the entire internet.

Up until today, Conficker has been undetectable by anti-malware software and it seems unlikely that a mainstream fix will be available before April 1st. The virus is incredibly powerful: it uses multiple attacks to infect a computer, a genious encryption system to protect itself, and a p2p network to spread its malicous code. Read more about this amazing worm here, and hope that on April 1st the internet keeps on running.

I had the right idea....

In a very strange coincidence, Carnegie Mellon released a report last month that basically did the same analysis that I did in my previous post (with significantly more robust analysis). They basically came up with the same conclusion... that the Volt won't really save you money. Without too much explanation, they took it further doubting that the Volt will significantly reduce emissions too. Read the paper. When you're done, read GM's response.

How the Chevy Volt doesn't save you money

Everyone discusses the MPG of cars and for good enough reason. If you're interested in reducing our dependence on foreign oil then you want to reduce the number of gallons you use. However the MPG metric breaks down when you try to compare normal gasoline cars with electric vehicles (like the forthcoming Chevy Volt). A much more relevant metric is Miles per Dollar rather than Miles per Gallon.

So lets work out the Miles per Dollar for a standard car and also for the Chevy Volt. First we have to make some assumptions about gasoline cars. Lets say gas costs $1.95 a gallon. Lets also assume that your average sedan gets about 27 miles per gallon.

Now we have to make some assumptions about the cost of electricity and figure out how much the Volt uses. According to wikipedia, the Volt uses only electricity for its first 40 miles. To run those first 40 miles, it uses up 8kWH of electricity. Depending on where you live, electricity in the US costs as little as 6 cents/kWH in places like Washington and Idaho and up to 17 cents/kWH in New York and California. After the first 40 miles, the Volt operates like a normal car running at 50MPG.

I'll omit the math, but we get the following result:
Normal Sedan MP$: 13.8 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt first 40 miles MP$ (cheap electricty): 83 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt first 40 miles MP$ (expensive electricty): 29 miles per dollar
Chevy Volt after 40 miles MP$: 26 miles per dollar

So depending on where you live and how much you drive, the Volt will be anywhere from 100% to 500% cheaper to run compared to an average Sedan.

That sounds a whole lot cheaper, right! Wrong! To see why, we have to take the calculation a step further.

Suppose you drive 50 miles round trip to work every day and you live in a state with average gas prices, like Texas. In your sedan the daily commute should cost you about $3.61. But in a Volt it will only cost $1.19. Thats a savings of $2.42 every day. Now say you're a workaholic and you make trips like this 7 days a week for 52 weeks a year. Thats a yearly mileage of 18,200 miles, which is pretty high for most people. Driving a Volt you'll get a savings of $881.28 per year! But lets assume that GM engineers are even better than we expect and instead of saving $881.28 a year, we actually save $1000 a year.

Still with me? Good.

Now here comes the big question: much more do you think the Volt costs compared to a similar gasoline car? Lets compare it to a Chevy Malibu which gets about 27MPG and costs about $22,000. The final sticker price on the Volt is not set yet, but everyone says GM wants to get it down to around $32,000 (thats including all of the tax breaks). But lets give GM some credit (even though they're already getting enough from our government!) and assume that in a couple of years they will be able to bring it down further to $28,000.

So a Volt will certainly cost at least $6,000 more than a Malibu. Suppose that instead of putting that six grand into your car, you have the option of putting it into savings earning 5% interest. Therefore, in order for the Chevy Volt to win out over the Malibu, you will have to drive the Volt for ten years!

Thats right. If you want to make back your initial investment in a Volt, you have to drive the car for ten years!

Unfortunatly, GM says that the Volt battery is only expected to last ten years.

There are plenty of reasons to buy a Volt, but saving money isn't one of them.