Extremely sad news was reported from the San Francisco Zoo last night. One of the five tigers at the Zoo escaped and killed one visitor and badly injured two others. Officials are not yet certain how the tiger escaped or how long it was on the loose. When officers responded, the animal and its victims were found by the Terrace Cafe (for those of you who have been to the zoo, this is the cafe by the Little Puffer train station and the bear exhibits.)

This same tiger was involved a little over a year ago in the mauling of a zoo keeper which resulted in upgrades to the cat house. Tatiana was shot dead by responding police officers on the scene and the zoo is closed today.

This incident hits close to home for me because I take my daughter to this zoo at least two times a month…I’m not sure how this will affect our future visit schedule. Sad for the victims, their families, the zoo, and the tiger.

Norad has teamed up with Google to track Santa in real-time. My daughter loves it! Santa was last seen captured on video over the pyramids in Egypt. Check out the Norad Santa site for the latest information. Here’s a screenshot:

HT: Laughing Squid

Photo Credit: The Plugin Site
I’ll be back posting in a couple of days, for now, sayonara and have a great holiday!

Last week, much ink (pun intended) was spilled regarding Nanosolar’s announcements regarding their new printed solar cell technology. The first 3 panels were presented one to stay at company HQ, one to the San Jose tech museum, and one to be auctioned by eBay (not!, read the blog on that story…)

We’ve been a bit bearish on photovoltaic solar for two primary reasons: cost and capacity. If the breakthroughs claimed by Nanosolar prove out in practice (there is precious little technical information available about the printed solar cells performance) then it’s possible the cost aspect of our bearish outlook has been cracked. The pricing places these panels in the capital cost class of plain coal (as opposed to “clean coal”) and natural gas fired technologies. That is significant.

The capacity aspect is still problematic, here in North America around 40 degrees north, one can expect an average capacity factor in a good solar location to come out at 24%; peaking at ~36% in the summer and bottoming out at ~12% in the winter. When looking at solar relative to fossil fuels, hydro, nuclear, and geothermal, all baseload technologies, this aspect is still a barrier. However, at the new price point, the major advantage solar pv has is in small, distributed installations which are impractical for the baseload technologies and that advantage can now be maximized.

The missing link is the technical details. State-of-the-art pv loses around 1% efficiency per year of use, is that true of Nanosolar? What is the conversion efficiency? Silicon-based pv cells have gone north of 40% in the lab and are commercially available around ~20%. Thin film cells check in around 10%. Based on what has been disclosed about the technology it’s likely to be closer to thin film than silicon in efficiency. Until these details become clear and the breakthrough can be judged publicly against known technology, it’s exciting potential. We’ll be anxiously waiting to see the details.

Candidates and their opponents are becoming ever more creative in their approach to disseminating (dis)information. Here’s an example from an anti-Romney site, RomneyFacts.com:

Now, I would think the candidates would realize that the everything they’ve ever said has the potential to be recorded these days and is accessible, so reconciling a position changes like Governor Romney has had on abortion are going to be problematic.

To be fair, here’s the anti-Hillary Clinton site, StopHerNow.com. It’s a slightly different take mixing humor in with the message. On balance, I believe the anti-Hillary approach will be more “viral” taking on the overtones of humor while spreading the intended message. Here’s a screenshot: