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138 comments on DrumBeat: October 7, 2007

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theantidoomer on October 7, 2007 - 3:03pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

Funds co. to turn microorganisms into petroleum

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1036459

If LS9 can find a way to mass-produce the biotech fuels, it could be a “breakthrough” energy product that wouldn’t require an entirely new infrastructure for storing and delivering petroleum products across the country. “I’m very optimistic about the company,” said the Cambridge-based Berry, who played a crucial role in helping to find a way to alter microorganisms so they could effectively become little petroleum factories. If everything works, LS9 could conceivably commercialize some of its products by 2010, he said.

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redcoltken on October 7, 2007 - 3:37pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If everything works, LS9 could....

Desperate Optimism ?

Not that I don't want it to work...

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greenish on October 7, 2007 - 3:51pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

“I’m very optimistic about the company,” said the Cambridge-based Berry"

All those who understand how and why to write a puffed press release take one step forward. Now all those who don't, put a bag over your head.

So lets see, this guy, whose income is based on people investing, thinks it's conceivable that by 2010 he might have product. OK, but it is also 'conceivable' that he will be eaten by his cannibalistic neighbors out of general annoyance. Yet does that make the Boston Herald? Not until after it happens, and not even then if the neighbors keep it to themselves.

Isn't it nice to live in a world where happy happy press releases make instant news, and the paper never runs stories on the 'breakthroughs' from 3 years ago which have quietly failed?

Oh alt energy, how I love you so. Tonite I shall dream of little petroleum factories in lieu of sugarplums.

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theantidoomer on October 7, 2007 - 3:56pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

http://www.flagshipventures.com/

Yet they work with many reputable companies such as bristol myers squibb (on the NYSE)......

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greenish on October 7, 2007 - 4:21pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

They work with reputable companies? Well why didn't you say so.

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greenish on October 7, 2007 - 3:57pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

And seriously, where does the energy come from? Presumably solar, which means photosynthesis, which presumably means biodiesel from algae, which is hardly a new idea.

I used to have a bunch of Harvard/Cambridge geneticists working for me. They often write a heck of a press release, but then they wander off and do something else. Short attention span, and once they make the news they get other offers for tenure elsewhere. Academia nuts.

I'm just saying...

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PaulS on October 7, 2007 - 5:04pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

If LS9 can find a way to mass-produce the biotech fuels, it could be a “breakthrough” energy product...

And if I can find a way to do practical, cheap tabletop fusion, it could be a breakthrough...

And if I can find a way to make 50%-efficient solar cells as cheap and easy to apply as paint, it could be a breakthrough...

And if I can find a way to make a warp engine that harvests the karma of the universe and converts it to cheap electricity, it could be a breakthrough...

And if I can find a way to make wishes automatically become accomplishments, it could be a breakthrough...

You know, I don't much like the hard-doomer view, because I think there's a good chance we can do better. But when all you can give me are wishful if only could's, you aren't helping...

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joule on October 7, 2007 - 6:29pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

The first thing that makes me highly skeptical of this whole thing is that it is being touting by some Harvard/Cambridge people. Based on my direct experience with this bunch, it is the kiss of death for any practical, economically viable innovation.

These are high-powered academics, whose main goal is to promote new technology for its own sake and thus advance their own academic status.

Generally, their measure of success is in terms of more government grants, more graduate students to keep occupied, and more papers to present at important international conferences where they and their ilk can wank each other. If they had to build something with their own investment and try to make it succeed in the real world, they would be scared silly.

I have seen more effort wasted on what were clearly and intuitively obvious futile efforts doomed from the start due to unfixable fatal flaws merely for the sake of appearing to be 'at the cutting edge of technology' and thus garner status amongst one's academic peers.

I would put many of these carbon dioxide sequestration proposals smack in the middle of this category of nowhere projects. Since the mid 1970s I have seen perhaps a hundred news releases of incredible technological breaktrhoughs using 'all manner of superbugs' that might work fine in the test tube but then get mugged once introduced into the real world.

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greenish on October 7, 2007 - 7:17pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Ha, I love it. And I can tell that indeed you HAVE had experience with this bunch. I couldn't believe how shallow these folks could be. You take some unknown schlubs and make 'em famous by hiring them onto a hot project, get them in Nature, Newsweek, Time, etc; and then they undercut you for grant money and put out feelers to other universities while ignoring the work that got them in the papers to begin with, so you have to hire different ones. Rinse. Repeat. Then for the next ten years you have to deal with confidential inquiries from wealthy foundations considering giving them awards for the project they screwed up.

Be very afraid.....

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joule on October 7, 2007 - 7:55pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Yes, you appear to have a very good feel for how this whole process works. Concrete, real-world results don't matter, but what does is the perception that all these super intelligent people are doing all these super creative things.

And if you should think that I am being far too curmudgeonly about the whole thing, then I invite you or anyone else, to go back about a decade or so to the popular magazines and observe those articles to the effect: Twenty young people who are on the road to make a big difference. And then just track what became of those Twenty Young Hot Shits. In general, the answer is.... usuallly nothing.

Unfortunately, real innovation usually comes not from some well-publicized academic super-star, but rather from the compuslive, socially inept nerd with a near psychotic drive to keep on going, even when any sane person tells him it's futile.

The first person to come to mind is Chester Carlson, the father of Xerography. He had kept at it for well over twenty years before there was even a slim hope of success. And when success and fabulous wealth came his way, he was very humble about it and lived way below his means. However he did leave huge endowments to worthy causes. Truly a person to admire.

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greenish on October 7, 2007 - 8:34pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Unfortunately, real innovation usually comes not from some well-publicized academic super-star, but rather from the compulsive, socially inept nerd with a near psychotic drive to keep on going, even when any sane person tells him it's futile.

Yep, that's me.

Look upon my works, ye mighty...

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Bitteroldcoot on October 7, 2007 - 9:25pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Sad but true. My obsessive nature just won't let me give up on a problem. At night or during the weekend, I just can't turn off my mind, it keeps going back to work on the problem of the moment. I often wake up the next morning with the solution.

My employer has gotten so much more from me, than they ever paid for.

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joule on October 7, 2007 - 9:31pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Well bless you, and continue to do your thing with full vigor, whatever the hell it may be.

As someone famous once said (perhaps Salvador Dali?), no lazy artist ever made a a masterpiece.

Bringing forth something new and something that will TAKE, requires an extraordinary amount of drive and unshakeable faith that it WILL come to pass.

I am an amateur student of the history of technology, and I've observed again and again that some of these people who've made the important innovatons may have been literally crazy.

But if such is true for art, why shouldn't it be for technology?

When you get right down to it, large bureaucratic entities seldom innovate ANYTHING. In fact, they tend to be anti-innovative.

So, let us not look to Ivy League academia to find 'the solution', but rather to those on the fringes who have a genuine gut feel for the problem and are willing to grunt out a solution, even if it takes years of poverty to do so.

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Leanan on October 8, 2007 - 7:10am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

There was a fascinating book a few years ago. I can't remember the exact title or who wrote it. It something like "The Origins of Genius," and was written by a Harvard academic. I believe he was a winner of a MacArthur Genius Award himself, and he studied other 20th century "geniuses" with an eye to what makes a genius.

He found that geniuses don't come from the elite. The elite wants to preserve the status quo, and have no incentive to think outside the box. Geniuses generally don't come from the very poor or the hinterlands, either. There may be geniuses there, but they don't have access to the resources needed to manifest their genius.

Instead, he found geniuses often hail from the middle class in large cities. They are often on the fringes, socially. (From minority groups, etc.) They have incentive to shake up the current social order, and also have access to education and other resources, and to the people in power who can make things happen.

Call it the "Avis effect." They're not quite on top, so they try harder. ;-)

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DIYer on October 7, 2007 - 9:41pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

While you're out, bring me a few trillion cubic meters of methane from Triton, woulja?

Just don't spill any of it in the atmosphere. It's a worse GHG than CO2 or so I've heard.

| The problem will solve itself.
|  But not in a nice way.

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