Al Fin: "Cowboy Commentary", aka "Eat your veggies" The Flag banner is posted in order to defy those who would make patriotic symbols illegal or disreputable.
Too much, or too little aggression? That's the question. Is there a Goldilocks in the House?
End update of 3/7/24 post
After answering a number of questions from a British reporterette, MTG came back with a bit of rudeness of her own. The British reporterette was rude, but was this a good idea for MTG to retaliate? What can we learn from this?
Consider the reports have that Biden wants to get under Trump's skin, and this is something he expects will help him win an election. It's a variation upon the Bentsen-Quayle angle, as far as I can tell. To recall that 1988 debate tactic, Bentsen was losing the debate when he decided to get rude with Quayle. Quayle couldn't respond to it, and ended up looking weak. Contrast that with MTG here. Now that MTG has been equally rude, the response to it will be shock and outrage at MTG's lack of good manners.
The left is always at war with "We the People". It is well to understand their tactics and be able to counter them forcefully, but without incurring any type of backlash. What could have MTG have done differently? Well, don't get mad nor exasperated. Just brush it off, but don't fail to respond. For example, this woman was talking about conspiracy theories, and then asked about Jewish lasers. That's when MTG got exasperated. She could have reponded that she doesn't have any tin hats for you today, or something like that. Dish it back out, but keep it as cordial as possible. It would be a challenge, but the left wants to pick a fight, and then blame you for getting mad. Don't let them have what they want.
🚨🌎 “Why don’t you go & talk about Jewish Space Lasers & why don’t you f**k off”
WOW - listen to MTG tell former BBC News Anchor Emily Maitlis exactly where to go
Legacy media is dead - millions realise they’ve been relentlessly LIED too over all the major issues for years now pic.twitter.com/xTcnbnqcR2
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) March 6, 2024
In that Goodfellas movie, there was a scene in which Ray Liotta's character says what's in the title here. But I won't link it or embed it. Just use your imagination and/or memory. Not necessarily in that order.
Surgeon reveals which body part is a sign of a bigger penis https://t.co/NJBx38lJXQ via @MailOnline Comment: Is there something wrong with this picture? Or is it a joke?
Maybe you can get through this video without getting cross-eyed. Good luck. This makes two things I've seen today that I might feel sorry about seeing. :-)
What's the point of all this? Only that I learned something from watching this. If you feel that you learn something, that is an admission of ignorance. A display of humility, if you will. This is humbling because I thought incorrectly about something with respect to eclipses. In other words, I could be wrong. What a revelation. /irony
The pinkos might want to read it in order to see what their enemies are up to. The others need to read it because nobody seems to know what's really going on, and this might help. Maybe.
By the way, I wanted to share this on X, but it won't let me sign in. So I had to do it the old fashioned way. Ha, ha.
I didn't get this guy at one time, but this clarifies things a bit. So I don't have a problem with him now.
To elaborate on that isn't necessary for ME, but it might be useful if you were to dig a little deeper on your own. That is, if you haven't done that already.
Kinda like Jane Fonda at the anti-Aircraft battery during the Vietnam "conflict". Treason is defined in the CONUS, but nobody will be convicted of it because "reasons".
A financial collapse could be dead ahead. Maybe the Eclipse meant something after all? Maybe the song should have been "Total Eclipse of the Buck". I'm sure government can find a solution to this problem. /sarc
I hope my point was not taken to mean to blow off the video mentioned. But man! Keep it simple! People need to be spoon fed, or so it seems. A long video or movie will not be watched in its entirety.
I could make a series of what I consider to be the most cogent points. But a point may not be cogent for everybody. So how do you make that list?
Al Fin's blog has more info about the video, if you'd like to check it out. Maybe it might be helpful. However, the usual brand of Idiocracy types don't bother to read, anyway. Getting them to watch a video may become the next big challenge. And so it goes.
I agree, but it is too long for me. I watched about half of it. I could say don't waste your time, but who knows. Maybe some people will be persuaded by it. To me, the best approach is the shortest. While keeping it short, mention also that these people are wasting your time as well as your money. I'm talking about the "climate deniers" too!
end update of to last post of 3/24/24:
3/24/24:
Let's get to the heart of greenhouse gas theory, shall we? The contention is that by capturing energy within itself ( that'd be the electrons, I suppose), it will re-radiate that energy back into the environment. This will cause all the heat that will melt all the glaciers and cause us all to die. ( not that this would actually happen, but it is more dramatic to say "die" )
It has to be the electrons, because the nucleus will mean the entire molecule itself, since 99.9% of the mass is in the nucleus. Actually, electrons mass out at 1/2000th of what a proton does. So, an electron is more like .05% of the mass of the molecule ( or less since we are not counting the neutrons, which mass out as much as a proton--make that about .025% ).
Anyway, the infrared waves are captured by the tiny electron, and the tiny electron re-radiates it back out to the environment. With so little mass, it doesn't seem plausible. That's putting it mildly. Maybe a mite can lift an elephant, but I am skeptical.
As stated before, it's the mass, not the gas. Electrons cannot store that much heat because they don't have the mass.
end 3/24/23 update, the most recent update prior to this one is of 12/5/23, and follows:
12/5/23: Update to yesterday's post:
From the part below, where the amount of CO2 in terms of mass was calculated to be about 1 mole in a 5 gallon can:
and the mass of that was 44 g, then what would be the mass in terms of the actual amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 400 parts per million? Easy calculation. Divide 400 by a million, and multiplying it by 44 grams, yielding an incredibly small amount of mass. But that should be expected.
Punching the numbers in the calculator gives 0.0176 grams. That's less than 2% of 1 gram. All of that is going to melt all the glaciers and cause sea levels to rise? Puh leeze. By the way, that's how much in that 5 gallon container. Scape off a piece of paint, and you'd probably get more mass.
The implication is that any heating since 1948 is caused by human activity---thus it's the carbon dioxide. That merits another discussion, so here goes.
As mentioned on this here blog, it's not the gas, it is the mass. Gases doesn't mass out for much either. Let's take one mole of carbon dioxide. At standard temperature and pressure, one mole equals about a 5 gallon container.
A mole of substance is its atomic weight in grams. Since carbon dioxide atomic weight is 44g/mole, a 5 gallon container filled with carbon dioxide would have a weight ( other than the container itself ) of about 44 grams.
That much isn't much. It's about an ounce and a half. That much mass isn't going to heat things up very much, now would it? Fill it up with boiling water, and it will do some damage if you poured it on something alive. But at 212 degrees, 5 gallons containerful of carbon dioxide won't be much more than a puff of air. Not likely to cause too much damage, and by the time it contacted the living thing, it will have cooled down a lot!
That's true because of the nature of gases. Gases are the least dense state of matter. For those in Rio Linda, that means that the 5 gallon empty tank ( full of carbon dioxide ) doesn't weigh much. Well, duh.
That's pure carbon dioxide, too. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is 400 parts per million. That's 400 divided by a million. For 5 gallon container, that's 44 g times 400 divided by a million. The warmists want you to believe that this will melt all the ice in Greenland and such.
I was going to do an altogether new post here, but since I had written this one a short time ago, why not do an update? Anyway, I think this video will show that there isn't a sign from GOD here. These have been predicted from eons ago, and can be predicted well into the future. A sign from GOD ought to be at least somewhat unpredictable, yes? Or no?
end totally useless update:
That week there was a total eclipse. This was what I was doing back then.
I put a window unit in after this experiment. I put a watt meter on it and the ac pulled about 400 watts. Interesting.
the most recent post follows below:
Originally posted on 8.13.17, updated on, 8.23.17
Today, I worked on my "climate control device". That is to say, my "coffin", or to put it yet another way, my hidey hole.
No, I didn't make it small. Yes, I am thinking of doing that. Really small. Like 72 cubic feet. Do you realize the opportunity here? Well, look at this from the BTU calculator.
So, worst case scenario is only 516 watts per hour. Best case scenario is only 147 watts. Alright. That the ticket.
Now, to get my lazy butt actually working on it.
Meanwhile, I cleaned up the Coleman cooler, and cut away some unnecessary hosing. All in a day's work.
By the way, I may be able to upgrade the system with the batteries I have. Some ideas include using the existing battery outside, and putting in a cut out switch. A cut out switch will allow the solar panel to charge it during the daytime, and the grid to recharge it at night. Also, I have a battery that can run a 12 volt fan. I would have to purchase that.
Now I can waste time and money on something else... Just kidding.
the original post follows:
My van has an issue that I tried to address today. Actually, there are several issues, but this one needed attention.
The problem was with a terminal connector on the battery. It didn't tighten up like it should, and the reason why was that the thing was using a connector intended for the positive terminal, but was on the negative terminal. The negative terminal is smaller, and I didn't know that. How many people know that? Evidently, whoever put this terminal connector on didn't know that. It was somewhat loose because it was as tight as it could get. The thing could tighten no further. It wasn't designed for negative terminals.
It had to be replaced. So, I bought a universal connector. It tightens alright, but the thing is too dang complex to put together. I did get it together after a lot of cussing. I think the van is okay, but it isn't an ideal fix. We'll see.
Besides that, I am still fooling around with my solar panel. I am considering another battery for it, because it is putting out enough juice to charge more than one battery. Since money is tight these days, I have to consider things carefully when I am considering a purchase.
My little hidey hole, which is my bedroom, needs better insulation. That's another little piddling project I have been working on. My hidey hole is quite comfortable on a hot day. Everybody around here may wonder if I am ever coming out of my hidey hole. It is very nice in here. It is too hot out there.
So, the hidey hole gets a lot of attention. It isn't perfect, but it is getting better. It can be improved even more so that I can make a true "coffin" arrangement, that will minimize energy use. If I were to make a "coffin", it would be about two feet tall, by six feet long, and three feet wide. That is 36 cubic feet. About one tenth of the current cubic feet of the hidey hole.
The Butt head calculator says I need about 562 watts for my hidey hole, which I think is a low ball number. It is low ball if my insulation is "normal". Nearly 1200 if it is poor. It may be poor, but I think that it cannot be made much better, although I will try. At peak hour yesterday, I think this a/c was pulling about that much.
The coffin arrangement can improve that to only 332 watts. Personally, I do not think that it would take that much. My frozen ice thingy works better than that, I would guesstimate.
I'm sure everyone thinks I am going Howard Hughes with all this reclusiveness and everything. But I like to piddle around with this stuff and my hidey hole is doing aok.
In case you were wondering, the hidey hole does not work for nuclear fallout. If that happens, I am sol.
Update:
Because of CRS, I thought I would make a note of something today. Seems like it is about 7 pm when the solar panel cannot run devices and keep charging the battery at the same time. That is almost eight hours that it can do this. It is not an exact number, so don't quote me on it. If I didn't make a note of it, it would turn into something else.
Also, a crazy notion is going through my head. I may want to make a "coffin" after all. But all this costs money, and I don't have it. That's why it is crazy.
Democrats love their cookie cutter "solutions". It's the kind of tool for a uniform type of problem. It's not a specialized tool for a multi-faceted problem.
A search for cookie cutter government on YouTube yielded a video about immigration policy. During the discussion, the talk moved into a critique of "over-generalization". That must have been the sign of the cookie cutter mentality.
One size does not fit all. One tool does not work for all situations. Perhaps over-generalization leads to these cookie cutter "solutions" that do not work.
One thing DOES work though. Policy doesn't have to work. But winning elections allows you to set policies, even when the policies are bad. Democrats are bad at policy. But they seem to win elections.
Can the GOP figure that out? They haven't been doing it since the New Deal. Some folks think the GOP is learning. We'll see. We get a lot of bad policy. It shouldn't happen that way in a truly democratic society. However, we don't seem to have accountability. Where's the connections between policy and accountability for their outcomes? If that's missing, how can there be a true democracy?
There's a problem, and that problem seems to be more in line of $$$$$ than in what they're purportedly trying to accomplish.
That allows me to segue into a book I read back in the seventies, which discusses fundraising. It was called the Laws of Money. One thing I remembered about it was if you're doing the right things, the money will take care of itself.
Focus Fusion must be doing something wrong because money is now their biggest problems. No bucks, no Buck Rogers. How do you get the bucks?
That's a good question. A good question is one that there's no easy nor quick answer. That may not be the dictionary definition, but it is a simple one that I think is useful.
I think if your product will yield lower prices for energy, then that is what you should be selling. Not something like climate change. Those people are already rolling in the dough. You need to compete with THEM. That doesn't sound promising.
Focus Fusion is going after the little guy investor with these stock splits. But the big boys see that as a red flag. If you won't get the big bucks by appealing to the little guy, and the little guy has no money, then you've got a problem all right.
If they little guys won't organize for their own benefit, then they'll lose by default. What the little guy has is strength in numbers. A few bucks here and there will do wonders. A hundred bucks a share isn't that much. But the little guys aren't showing up for this dance. How do you get them to show up? Good question.
end update of 4/10/24, the most recent update of 2/18/24 is directly below:
2/18/24:
Focus Fusion announced a 10 for 1 stock split. The idea was to make each share more affordable. They are waiting for new electrodes, and the p-B-11 shots --that may demonstrate feasibility--- could be coming soon. Okay, no comment on that one.
This update shows that Lerner may be immersed too much in the totally fouled-up pop culture. Not sure that they should be doing that, and it would be extraordinarily ironic if they should succeed. The genius is not in the culture, it is in doing something unique that has never been done before. Let's hope that this works. My interest is in seeing that a 90% reduction in the cost of energy. The popular culture angle does not interest me.
end update: the original post of 3/15/20 is below:
LPPFusion Briefs the Nuclear Industry Council's Summit
New Podcast Series on Cosmic Connection
Wefunder Campaign Ends—Over $600,000 Raised
Thanks to all of you for a second successful Wefunder campaign. We raised $605,000 from 292 investors living in 22 countries. All 133 slots for new non-accredited investors were filled. For accredited investors, we will be continuing fundraising directly through ourwebsite. During the campaign, which began Nov.15, 2019 and ended March 1, 2020, we also raised $80,000 through our Reg D. offering. We are still aiming to raise an additional $400,000 in the next two months to fully fund our goals for 2020 and early 2021. Investments can still be made by accredited investors directly to LPPFusion, following instructions on our website.
During the campaign, the LPPFusion staff, coordinated by Director of Communications Ivy Karamitsos, posted dozens ofupdates, on the Wefunder website. Many will be of interest to the readers of this report. We especially call attention to our updates on thefusion transformation, the dangerousgrowth of charcoal use, and our "discovery" of an old video of FF-1'svery first shots.
COVID-19 and Fusion
Like the rest of the world, we are focused right now on the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19. Rightly so, because this pandemic could kill millions. We at LPPFusion are taking what precautions we can. We will not participate in conferences, most of which are being cancelled in any case. We are disinfecting and practicing social distancing.
At first glance, this viral threat does not seem to have much to do with the long-term energy crisis the world faces, but in fact there are several important connections. First, the short-term threat of COVID-19 and the long-term threat of fossil fuels both endanger the lives and health of millions of people worldwide. While a pandemic like that in 1918 could kill millions, we know that air pollution due to fossil fuel consumption will kill over 7 million people in this year alone.
Second, the fossil fuel crisis actually makes COVID-19 worse. Medical studies have shown that high levels of air pollution, almost entirely due to fossil fuel combustion, weaken the lungs of both older and very young people, making them more vulnerable to pneumonia. This may be part of the reason that COVID-19 mortality rates are higher in the heavily industrialized—and heavily polluted—city of Wuhan, where the virus originated, than elsewhere.
In addition, the economic costs of high-priced fossil fuels divert trillions of dollars annually from the health expenditures needed to maintain the population and to prepare for epidemics. WHO has expressed deep concern for the spread of COVID-19 in Africa, where medical facilities are totally inadequate. Africa right now spends more on oil consumption alone than on health care. In the United States, despite high expenditures on health care, hospital beds per capita have been cut in half over the past four decades.
Last, and most important, both threats require crash research and production programs, coordinated by the world's major governments, which are not yet taking place. Leading health organizations like the WHO and CDC have warned that quarantines are unlikely to stop a disease as infectious as COVID-19. While the low infection rates in warm climates like Singapore give some hope that the disease may slow dramatically as spring arrives, it is also likely to roar back in the fall. The best way to stop such a virus is with a vaccine. But no government has yet initiated the sort of large-scale crash program that could develop a vaccine in time to help this year.
Worse, no government has tried to prepare for such an outbreak by building up the emergency capacity to both develop and mass-produce a vaccine in the case of a deadly outbreak. Nor have most governments, emphatically including that of the US, where our lab is located, built up significant reserves of medical equipment. It is not as if COVID-19 came out of the blue. This is the third coronavirus, along with SARS and MERS, to threaten a pandemic, and scientists have known of the threat for decades. But the crash program of research and production needed to develop an emergency response never occurred. Such a program is urgently needed right now.
To give a concrete example, for the 10% of coronavirus patients who get critically ill, ventilators to assist their breathing are the only way to preserve life. In the United States, health experts estimate that the need for ventilators may run into the millions at the height of the pandemic. But only 70,000 of these complex machines are available in the entire US. A crash production program, coordinated by the Federal government, might just possibly be able to produce machines that could save millions of lives. But nothing of the sort is being done. Indeed, where we are located there are no plans at the national, state, county or local level for what happens when the ventilators and intensive care units are all fully occupied. Unfortunately, the US government has not even been able to organize the sort of mass testing that has slowed the virus in South Korea. There is not even discussion of the national mobilization required.
A crash program for fusion research is also exactly what is needed to end the crisis of fossil fuel production as rapidly as possible. Only fusion energy can provide the cheap, clean, safe and inexhaustible energy needed to replace fossil fuels entirely. That would clean up the air and free up trillions of dollars for health care, and emergency reserves, among other critical needs. LPPFusion has long advocated an international government crash program to fund research for all possible routes to fusion.
Our Plan to Get to Net...Energy
During the Wefunder campaign, people have asked us: how can we expect to go rapidly from where we are to net energy—when we get more energy out of the device than we put in? We gave them an explanation. Since many people have told us how useful this information is, we are featuring it in this report. The information will remain available on our website.
Phase 1: Research to Achieve Net Energy Production in a Laboratory Device
Right now, our task in 2020 is to move our fusion yield up from the one quarter of a joule (J) we have achieved to the 30,000 J we need to get more energy out of the device than we put into it. This sounds like a huge jump. But it is feasible. Let's do the numbers!
First, we are talking about a very small amount of energy in total. Our goal of 30 kJ (30,000 J) per shot is less than the energy you get from eating 3 pistachios.
Second, we are a lot closer than any other private fusion effort. TAE, our closest rival, has to increase their yield a thousand times more than we do.
Third, our process gives us a lot of leverage to convert small gains in compression to large gains in yield. Our device produces a tiny ball of ultra-hot plasma called a "plasmoid". We have already gotten this plasmoid to the more than 2 BILLION degrees temperature we need. But we have to make it denser. Fortunately for every factor of two we improve the compression, and thus decrease the plasmoid radius, we get a factor of four increase in density. For every factor of four increase in density, we get a factor of 16 increase in fusion yield. In mathematical terms, yield goes up as the compression ratio to the fourth power.
To get better compression, we first have to achieve a high degree of symmetry, so that the filaments of current in our machine arrive together at the same point at the same time, so that they will twist up tightly into the plasmoid (see our video). The better the symmetry, the smaller the plasmoid, the more the density. We need to make sure the electrodes are clean of any metal specks and we have to get rid of any remaining oscillations in our current. We need to optimize the amount of gas, the mixture of gases and the magnetic field that gives our plasma an initial small twist. Each of these steps will only improve the compression by 15-20%, but together they will more than double the compression—shrinking the plasmoid by a factor of a bit more than 2, increasing yield by about a factor of 25 to 10 J. These are the steps we are working on right now.
Next, during the summer of this year, we intend to install new switches that are twice as small and twice as numerous as our present switches. This will allow us to initially increase the electric current in our device by about 40%. We get leverage with that as well, increasing yield by a factor of 4 to 40 J.
We will then turn on the full power of our capacitor bank, going up from eight capacitors to twelve and from 40 kV to 45 kV. That will increase our current and compression by more than 60% and our yield by 8 to about 300 J.
Then we will take the biggest step—changing the fuel in our vacuum chamber from deuterium to our final fuel—pB11, hydrogen-boron. We'll start mixing in a bit, but we hope by around the end of the year to be running with pure B11. Once we have optimized it, we expect to get a four-fold boost in yield because this fuel burns twice as fast as deuterium; a 3-fold boost in yield because each reaction produces three times more energy than deuterium. In addition, we'll get 40% better compression, giving another 4-fold boost in yield. Finally, our confinement time will increase 4-fold because much of the fusion energy we produce will be initially recycled back into the magnetic field that holds the plasmoid together. That gives us another 4-fold boost in yield. So, switching from deuterium to pB11 will altogether give us 2x3x4x4 or nearly 100 times the yield. This will therefore bring us all the way up to the 30 kJ we need.
To summarize:
A 3-fold increase in compression will give us a 75-fold increase in yield
A 2-fold increase in current will give us a 16-fold increase in yield
Switching to pB11 fuel will give us a 100-fold increase in yield
¼ Jx75x16x100 = 30 kJ. This is how we can make a huge jump—in not too many steps.
Phase 2. Developing a Working Prototype Generator Ready for Manufacture
In Phase 2, we will develop the Focus Fusion device as a repetitively pulsed generator, pulsing up to a few hundred times a second, develop the conversion devices to convert the ion beams and X-rays to electricity, and perfect the cooling system and general electrical control system. We will also optimize the fusion energy generation efficiency. At the end of Phase 2, which we estimate will take another 3-4 years, we plan to have the world's first functioning fusion generator producing 5 MW of net electricity. It will be ready for mass production. We estimate the budget for this phase to be about $100 million, to be raised from a combination of government and private sources.
Phase 3: Commercialization
We believe that the fastest and lowest-risk method of g
People on the so-called right like to pick on Sunny Hostin on the View. What she said yesterday about climate change is a case in point. The only thing about what she said that might have some merit is this: she said that "something was going on". Yep. I think so. Something is going on alright.
So this poem came to mind again.
I think the thing that might do us in is this mania for artificial intelligence. It's kind of a Terminator type scenario that I'm thinking of. People are relying too much on machines to do our thinking for us. What could go wrong. Plenty. Anyway, here's the poem.
4/9/24:
Looking over today's news and recollection of the most recent news gives me the kind of dread expressed in Second Coming . Mostly, I fear that people have abandoned all sense of reason. In such a circumstance were to become the norm, something dire must occur to break the impasse.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Talking over old times with Wishbone, and he says there was an eclipse back in the 70's. I didn't remember it. I looked it up, and there was no total eclipse visible from Texas back then, so it must have been a partial eclipse.
There were a lot of interesting songs back in those days. Lots of interesting songs Here's one of them:
end update of post from 9/3/23:
Been watching this series of videos by Bruce Gore. It's about the Book of Revelation. This latest one covers the letters to the
Churches. Gore then says something like this song.
So I looked up the song, and searched for some deeper meaning to it. I decided that it all of the meaning may depend on who it is that's doing the knocking.
Another song could come to mind, but this one should suffice for now. Anyone knocking at your door? Who could it be?
The Wings song isn't about that, so there's no deeper meaning that I can find. You have to look deeper elsewhere.
It came, it bored, it went. We got some darkness, as advertised. Some yahoos out there made noise, the dogs barked, and it was over. Whoop, de, doo!
Your previously scheduled blogging will re-commence soon. I feel a little overwhelmed at the moment.
end update of yesterday's post of 4/7/24
The best caution is to not view it directly at all. As for me, I'm in the region of totality, and I'm definitely opting out of it entirely. The eclipse has no bearing on anything at all, as far as I'm concerned. Better to avoid the risk of self-injury, and to skip it altogether.
I was going to post this exact same thing as a new post. Not that everything in that post would have been in this post as updated, but the general idea of an "X" factor definitely was the idea.
I would add another idea that hasn't caught on. That idea would be the Stirling Engine in automobiles. For some strange reason, they have not been adopted, but the Stirling Engine can be made to work just fine, and there's evidence to prove it. But DO note that nobody in the automotive industry is interested in it. Why not?
Until Elon Musk jumped into the automotive field with his battery powered cars, there was a decided reluctance to use them. In my opinion, batteries are too heavy for cars, but that hasn't stopped it from making a big splash. The enthusiasm is wearing off, however. I wouldn't throw out the battery in cars, but it might happen.
The best use for Stirling Engines would be in a hybrid, and the best use for batteries would be in a hybrid. Just my opinion, but my opinion is not just my opinion. Yet nobody that I know of in the automotive space is going to go this direction. It may take the "X" factor to bring that about. But who knows how long that will take?
end update of post dated 7/27/12:
When probing the reasons for why great ideas don't take hold, one may want to consider the NFL draft. Each year, the National Football League holds a draft in order to select the most promising young players to develop into the next stars in the American game known as football. The success in the draft is a key determinant in a team's success. Millions of dollars are spent evaluating prospects. Despite all this probing and measuring of talent, the process is hardly foolproof. There some elusive factor in success which is not so easy to probe and measure. It is this elusive quality that often gets missed during this expensive process. As a consequence, many prized prospects don't make it, and some players become superstars, but are initially overlooked in this process. It is this elusive quality that could be seen as an X factor-- an unknown and unpredictable quality that can go undetected. It is a distinctly human element seen not only in sports, but in life in general.
So, when asking why the LFTR hasn't been adopted, this can be a reason given. It is like the NFL draft. Sometimes the best players get by the evaluation process. Sometimes a highly touted player doesn't succeed as expected. The same can be true for ideas. The liquid thorium reactor may well be a superstar that has gotten overlooked. It's failure to get noticed should not be seen as a failure of an idea, but instead, it is the failure of those who evaluate ideas to see the potential in it.
Back to the NFL draft, there's a player right here in Houston that wasn't even drafted. Arian Foster is now considered to be one of the best running backs in the league. He has made All Pro two years in a row. But this same team spent a number one pick in the draft for David Carr, who never made it as a great quarterback in the league. Other examples are Tom Brady of the New England Patriots. He was drafted in the sixth round, but should have been rated much higher. He will be in the Hall of Fame some day. Clearly, the process to pick the best players failed--- and you can't blame the team. It failed Houston with Carr and failed again in the case of Arian Foster.
Besides the NFL, are there other examples in life where a highly rated person or idea fails, or an underdog succeeds surprisingly? Consider presidential politics. Harry Truman v. Thomas Dewey in 1948 could be an example. In sports, perhaps the 1969 New York Mets could be another. Or the 1980's Olympics, where the American hockey team beat the Soviet Union team.
In studying the idea of the LFTR, one can be amazed at the continual failure for good and accurate information to be communicated to the public. The public is misled on the risks of nuclear power, as it can be seen in previousposts. The public is also misled about the ability of solar and wind to provide the necessary amount of energy needed to power an advanced technological society. Consequently, billions of dollars are wasted on solar projects like Solyndra, yet LFTR technology goes begging for money needed to complete the commercialization of LFTR technology. It is not the amount of money that gets spent, but the quality of thinking behind the spending of the money. How can the public make the best possible political decisions when there is so much false and misleading information being put out? Success in evaluation is difficult even with the best possible information, as can be seen with the NFL.
Besides false information, there could also be the hostility of the incumbency. The Tiberius Syndrome comes to mind. During the Roman Empire, the Emperor Tiberius had a man beheaded for bringing him an idea on how to commercially mine aluminum. Tiberius saw the new metal as a threat to his interests. The superiority of the invention was not in question. Clearly, under some circumstances such as this, a superior idea does not get adopted. The commercialization of aluminum had to wait for 2000 years.
So, if it isn't just simple human error, it could actually be something more serious, like outright hostility. In either case, it is the human element that leads to a failure--- not the idea itself. Even with an active means of finding the best possible outcome, like drafting the best possible athletes for a professional football team, you could still go wrong. But life is not just a game. It could be a matter of life and death. We have to do better than the Romans, unless we want to be like the Romans.
