The image above is a screenshot from the film Office Space. If you work in a large, soulless corporation, it’s a film you can’t miss. The scene above is perhaps, one of the funniest I’ve seen in a movie where the fax machine that torments the entire office staff is taken out into a field and beaten to pieces by angry employees. You can watch the clip below, I think you have to have seen the relentless torment this machine caused to be able to fully appreciate the release created by its demise. But nevertheless, without context it might still be funny too…
One of the more interesting things I’ve learned over the past month is the difference in conversion rates that focused content brings. On this blog, the topics are all over the place and while I’m prohibited to share actual data, I can characterize the conversation rates around here as being very low, in the less than 1% range.
Since converting the Renewable Energy Journal to a monetized platform I’ve been able to benchmark focused content that appears there (energy, renewable, geothermal, and conservation topics) vs. the pot pourri over here. The average conversion rate overall is 5 to 12 times better on the focused content over the same time period. That is very interesting indeed as a learning mechanism to better gain benefit from the traffic through these sites.
What to expect going forward? Well, since there seem to be a number of topics I write about, look for a dedicated site for each in due course, but I’ll still aggregate them here for convenience. If you’re only interested in one topic, then you the reader can determine if you’d like to read the single topic site or stay here for the melange of things covered. Hopefully, this will give you more choices while increasing the financial return from the investment in time.
Stirling engine manufacturer Infinia closed a $50M series B investment with a veritable who’s who of funders including: Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures, Bill Gross’ Idealab and Paul Allen’s Vulcan Capital. The firm intends to use the funding to accelerate the productization of their stirling engines attached to generators for use in large scale solar thermal installations.
So what is a stirling engine anyway? It’s a loose piston setup that works on temperature differential between the two sides of the piston. Just like a regular piston engine, that reciprocating stroke can be transformed into rotation with torque. The novel approach in this case is to concentrate the sun’s heat and use that to generate the heat differential required to make the engine run. These engines have been around since the early 1800’s when Robert Stirling advanced the concept. See the illustration to the right from the Infinia website.
Infinia Unit Components
Each unit is rated at just over 3kw AC and are projected to list at around $20,000 per unit. It is believed that standard automotive parts manufacturing techniques can be used to fabricate the Infinia units. Operational costs associated with the units is believed to be low as stirling engines are low friction devices with relatively few moving parts and very loose tolerances used in design and assembly. As with all technologies, the cost should come down as the volume goes up.
Now that the pejorative title has attracted you perhaps because you think atheism is wrong from a religious perspective or maybe you’re an atheist expecting some religion-based diatribe on the evils of atheism, I’ll ask you to read on because this statement comes from neither perspective.
The first draft of this entry had an extensive first-person narrative of a recent event that seemed to be the catalyst for this entry. Suffice to say, I’ll record it at some point but I’ll summarize by saying it was an instance of aggressive panhandling for jesus. This event sparked an emotional response from me that I was unprepared for when being damned to hell by the panhandler when he asked if I was “saved.” Normally, I would have replied atheist. But in a flash of, perhaps, insight? It occurred to me that while being an atheist (one who does not believe in god) is completely valid, a notion of atheism is not the answer.
Here’s the reasoning behind that statement. Do you believe in the Tooth Fairy? How about the boogeyman? Unicorns? Compassionate Conservatism? (couldn’t resist, sorry) Dragons? The Great Pumpkin? Or, the piece de resistance, Santa Claus? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you don’t believe any of these myths, though they are pervasive in our societies and perfectly normal to really, deeply believe as children. At some point, it becomes clear to children that the wool is being pulled over their eyes and the belief stops. When children come to this conclusion, are they penalized for the discovery? To the children than ban together to form clubs of anti-Santa-ism? Are the anti-Santa-ites individually? Of course not, they’ve simply grown up and recognized the reality of the situation.
That’s because it is simply rational to not believe the myths when sufficient observable evidence appears to make a judgment. As humans, we work under this assumption in virtually every aspect of our lives except one, religion. To be fair, most people simply have no chance. They’re indoctrinated into a particular sect of a particular religion at birth and are so steeped in the myth and so consistently and constantly reminded of the validity of the myth it never occurs to question what’s happening until much later in life. In fact, this practice is brainwashing and it’s an abhorrent practice that is akin to child abuse, but that’s another entry.
Getting back to the thesis at hand, the notion that there is an “atheism” is like establishing the “anti-flat-earth society” – it doesn’t make sense. There is no national movement, there is no membership, there are no dues, and there is no hierarchy. I believe we would advance rational thought as a practice simply by treating religion like any other myth. The antidote for belief is rational thought made on the basis of observation, hypothesis, and testing.
The intent of this entry is not to convert people of myth, that’s ultimately up to them as individuals. This is more to convert people of thought to ditch the label atheism and simply revert to rational thought as the distinction between themselves and people of myths. After all, when there is a label it makes it easier to lump people into a category and spread false information about them. How many of you believe Hitler was an atheist after all? I bet many do because that’s what you were taught. He was a staunch Catholic and his secret police, the SS, had “god with us” as a patch sewn into their uniforms.
The punch line to this entry? Debunk any myth you like and believe what you like. But if you happen to fall into the side of the argument that says there is no god, you might think twice about saying you’re an atheist because it’s simply another “church” so to speak and will ultimately be treated that way. It’s fine to not believe, but it’s much more effective to be for something, like “rational thought” than against something, like gods and churches.
In closing this morning’s sermon, I leave you with a cartoon from the book of humor:
