Economics – Page 41 – a sibilant intake of breath

Open thread: thorium-fueled nuclear reactors

Whenever the many problems with nuclear power are raised, there are people who suggest that everything could be fixed with a substantial technical change: moving to generation IV reactors, for instance, or the ever-elusive fusion possibility.

Another common suggestion is that using thorium for reactor fuel could limit concerns about proliferation, as well as (modest) concerns about uranium availability.

I have read a lot of contradictory things on the subject of thorium, so it seems useful to have a thread tracking information on the issue.

Weight and flying

Apparently, cutting one kilogram from the weight of a commercial airliner saves about $2,200 in lifetime fuel costs. By contrast, putting a single kilogram of cargo into space costs $25,000 (a bit of a drag for those with aspirations of asteroid mining).

WGS 2014

I photographed this year’s Walter Gordon Symposium.

Divest U of T speech

Anyone can now watch the formal presentation of the Toronto350.org divestment brief to President Gertler.

Shortly, we will be sharing this link with all the university officials who we invited to the event but who were unable to attend.

Brief formally presented

Yesterday night, Toronto350.org formally presented our fossil fuel divestment brief to a representative of the Office of the President at the University of Toronto. I have a few photos of the event.

The lecture was recorded from a couple of different angles, and we will but putting together a good quality video soon.

Lascaris on divestment

Dimitri Lascaris – the laywer who will be delivering the Toronto350.org fossil fuel divestment lecture to President Gertler on Thursday – was interviewed on the Green Majority radio program.

Divestment Meme Party

As part of campus engagement, Toronto350.org organized a divestment dance party tonight. I have some photos on Flickr.

Automation and the jobs of the future

A recent article in The Economist discussed the likely impacts of technological development on jobs, with an emphasis on which jobs are especially vulnerable to being replaced with hardware or software automation.

The article included a chart listing some of the jobs projected to be most and least vulnerable, respectively:

Some bad news for both people working for telemarketing firms and everyone with a telephone is that the telemarketers of the future are expected to be robots.

More disruptive, in terms of people’s career planning, is the set of presently white collar jobs potentially at risk to automation: accountants and auditors, technical writers, and real estate agents are all identified as being at risk. Pharmacists can probably be added to that list.

For now, dentists, athletic trainers, and clergy remain safe from being replaced by software or robots.

Pushing back against internet surveillance

An international effort is being made today to fight back against internet surveillance.

If you wish to take part, I suggest doing so by downloading a version of the GNU Privacy Guard for your operating system, in order to encrypt your emails. Gpg4Win is for Windows, while GPGTools is for Mac OS.

Downloading the TOR Browser Bundle is also a good idea.

Lastly, you may want to learn how to use your operating system’s built-in disk encryption: BitLocker for Windows and FileVault for Mac OS.

None of this is likely to protect you from the NSA / CSEC / GCHQ, but it will make ubiquitous surveillance a bit harder to enforce.

350.org paying more attention to Canada

350.org is looking to hire a Canadian organizer. I hope some exceptionally qualified and energetic candidates apply.

As a decision gets made one way or another on the Keystone XL pipeline, attention will shift toward other ways of keeping as much as possible of Canada’s massive stock of fossil fuels safely underground.