Comments on: T. Boone or not T. Boone

By: pdaly

pdaly — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:51:08 +0000

Dymaxion was a term Buckminster Fuller applied to cars and apparently houses and bathrooms, too.

Dymaxion Bathrooms are to be equipped with “Fog Gun” hot water vapor showers that use only a cup of water to clean hygienically without soap. Remarking that “Nature had designed humans to separate urine and excrement. Both are valuable chemistry, and should be collected for further use,” Bucky specified a waterless “Packaging Toilet” that deftly shrink-wrapped the stuff for pickup for later composting. (Ordinary toilets use approximately 2000 gallons of pure drinking water per year to flush - and waste - one human’s “exhaust” that, if dried out, would scarcely fill two 5-gallon pails.)

See Buckminster Fuller Institute

Not sure if this could be applied to car design…or to modern gardening (although it is done in developing countries and the human waste is responsible for spreading hepatitis A among other intestinal infections to the unfortunate diners who ingest the harvested raw food).

By: pdaly

pdaly — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:34:48 +0000

Does compressed natural gas stay compressed after a car crash?
Not sure I like the idea of that kind of stuff on the road either.

Corn crops as an alternate source of fuel sounded great until I heard that our aquifers in the midwest would dry up watering the corn crops. Without water, we have about 7 days to live.

Hope there is success with battery technology.

By: pdaly

pdaly — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:27:14 +0000

nice post, bmaz and comments everyone.

I guess I came along too late to meet the guy in person, but I know where to go to see him now.
He’s buried in Cambridge, MA (he did get around!) at the Mount Auburn Cemetery.

I’ll make a special trip this weekend to introduce myself and send him your well wishes.
I assume he is buried under a geodesic dome?

By: gmoke

gmoke — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 05:23:20 +0000

Pickens made it clear on The Daily Show that he is talking about natural gas for trucks and maybe fleet vehicles. That may be a good idea. Methane management is extremely important but I don’t think Pickens is thinking of it that way. He also does not address the fact that natural gas in combined cycle power plants have much higher efficiencies than in any vehicle.

A lower energy alternative to freight transport is rail and water. Flex fuel vehicles are also a good idea.

By: spoonful

spoonful — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 02:54:51 +0000

The more windmills the better. It doesn’t matter if they’re owned by T Boone, the govt. or Bruno Sanmartino. Not sure about LNG in my car though.

By: CasualObserver

CasualObserver — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:49:11 +0000

EV-1–that’s it.

The car has only three characters and I still messed it up.

That’s talent.

By: gryphon

gryphon — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:57:26 +0000

The problem with T. Boone Pickens is he is a crook. A smart crook (that’s the dangerous kind). He can see the end of the gravy train, and would liek to take this opportunity to get the government to foot the majority of the bill for his new gravy train (e.g. the power transmission lines), while keeping the ability to bill us for the power. There is no reason why the wind power generators should not be wholely/partly owned government monopolies. Power production/transmission is just too important to be placed in teh hands of private enterprise … just ask Grandma Milly.

By: DWBartoo

DWBartoo — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:14:15 +0000

Leen you are a very lucky person, indeed.

And both you and bmaz had the wisdom to appreciate such ‘good fortune’.

Thanks for sharing.

Fuller’s notions of synergy must be expanded upon, ‘comprehensively’, it is to be hoped.

I alwasys appreciated the far-ranging aspects of his thinking, his unwillingness to pretend that things were in separate, distant and distinct, ditches with no relation to other ditches …

By: Leen

Leen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:10:56 +0000

I was always hoping that when one has the good fortune to be in the presence of geniuses like Bucky or others that one might absorb some of their intellect, brilliant understanding and foresight through osmosis. I read several of Bucky’s books but had to read them at least twice.

I agree that we need to take what Pickens and others are willing to do NOW and move forward. But so difficult to think of the lives that would have been saved in the years that we have used our military to protect access to resources if only we had followed the lead of folks like Bucky, Carter years ago… lives would have been saved.

Better late than never

By: bmaz

bmaz — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:50:57 +0000

You know, maybe as a concept it had some value. I dunno. I have a hard time getting to that point, because a production vehicle is a car first and foremost. To me, driving and evaluating the thing, as a car, it was a total pile of mushy worthless junk. The Volt is what the EV-1 needed to be before going into production. I mean, seriously, when the damn thing is so lame that it is only usable in the southwest because the batteries that weren’t worth squat here, basically didn’t work at all in colder climes. Well, anyway, enough of that; water under the bridge. Now the Volt, that is truly exciting; it should be everything the EV-1 was not.