In terms of untapped mineral reserves, The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is arguably the richest country in the world, with its estimated $24 trillion worth of natural resources. The DRC is a country of superlatives, with vast reserves of coltan, gold, cassiterite, and tin mined in eastern Congo, and reserves of diamonds, copper, […]
One piece of technology that could have the biggest influence over the electricity market in the coming decades is already in almost every Americans’ pocket. Rechargeable energy storage (in the form of your cell phone’s Li-ion battery in your pocket) is changing a major fundamental aspect of the electric grid: That electricity is perishable and […]
What can possibly compare to the joys, frustrations and, above all, costs of home renovation? How about the discovery of an ancient underground city after knocking down one of your home’s walls? Archaeologists think there may be hundreds of underground cities in Cappadocia (central Turkey), but only six excavated. Our lucky homeowner discovered Derinkuyu (which translates as “deep […]
The term “power plant” often evokes images of giant nuclear cooling towers or massive fossil fuel smoke stacks reaching skyward. People’s thoughts tend towards massive infrastructure projects that produce energy for entire cities in a single location. As was touched on in Part 1 of this series (The Grid), as the electric industry evolved from […]
Etgar Keret has been called the “hippest Israeli writer,” but I think he is Israel’s sorriest writer. This may come as a surprise. For a long time he has been the darling of the European literati, a sweetheart of American Jewish audiences, and a favorite of students of Hebrew everywhere. His language is easy to […]
In the Mormon temple ceremony, Joseph Smith put forward a bold vision of what it means to be human: Men and women are gods in the making. Properly schooled and empowered, they can become anything, or, rather, everything, they can imagine. Smith’s vision for society was no less radical: With his fellow saints, he would […]
When a fellow mathematician asked the uncommonly brilliant John Nash how he could believe he was being recruited by aliens, Nash replied, “Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously.” How about Joseph Smith? Was he a crook, madman, […]
Why believe in the first place? How could an educated, otherwise skeptical person with a sense of humor believe in angels bearing golden plates? How could someone like Mormon genius, polymath, and liberal social critic Hugh Nibley, my intellectual mentor until I found unbelief in Berkeley, believe the story of Joseph Smith, and not just […]
Thirty-one years ago this month, I sat down one Saturday afternoon as a faithful Latter-day Saint to read the Book of Mormon. When I got up a few hours later, I was an unbeliever, and not just in Mormonism. That afternoon I became a born-again atheist. I am an atheist still. But that afternoon also […]
Our nation’s electric grid system remains much the same as when it was first invented and installed, 140 years ago. That many soon change.
