Fight (For) The Power

[flwyd]

Iraqis offer U.S. blackout tips.

I'm an advocate of alternative energy. I don't have some utopian vision where everything runs on renewable energy and there aren't any problems. But if we can get any significant amount of energy from, say, solar and wind power, we should. If buildings had solar panels on their roofs, they could produce some fraction of the energy they consume and even feed it back (and get paid!) when the building isn't in use. Such decentralized power generation could (I think) help soften the blow from centralized failures.

I'm not an electrical engineer, and I don't know if something like this would've helped yesterday's blackout at all, but it seems like a good time to bring it up. The front range and southwest have a lot of sun and wind that's being underutilized. We could bring in some revenue and maybe reduce the impact of coal mining, oil imports, and pollution.

Yay for alternative energy.

(This post may not be very good. I'm a little tired and not very coherent. But I just wanted to show my Boulder stripes.)

Comments

[hattrickflyer.livejournal.com]

Let me be the first Republican to agree with you!

[adrukor.livejournal.com]

I am sorry, this is not even remotely related to your post, but I was curious if you could help me out, since you seem to be pretty into Computer Science.

I am familiar with Algebra, Calculus, and a little it of Trig. I was wondering, what form of math is most involved and/or related to Computer Science? If you could recommend anything to me, that would be great, because I'd like to start studying A.S.A.P., this way I can be semi-ahead of the game.

Thanks!

[flwyd.livejournal.com]

It depends significantly on what you're programming. This summer I've used a bunch of Calc III and applied geometry because I was working with map projections. However, the most generally useful math for Computer Science is math logic. This includes both boolean logic -- programming is full of AND, OR, NOT, and the like -- and more formal math logic like Gödel's Theorem and formal language theory. Linear Algebra is also used a lot, solving systems of equations with lots of variables.

CU requires Calc I to take Data Structures and Calc II to take Algorithms, but I don't think you actually use much from Calculus in those courses.