David Bottomley's Blog

Like it or not, in the very near future we'll be sharing the road with self-driving cars, and in some states they are already on the road.  I for one welcome this revolution.  The primary reason is safety, but there are other benefits as well.  Initially, most self driving car systems including systems designed by Tesla, GM, and Google (Waymo) all require a human driver to be available for 'standby' ready to take over driving if the automated systems detect an obstacle of situation that they can't negotiate, but in the not too distant future, you'll be able to sit back and relax as any other passenger.  As unsettling as it might sound for some people, self driving cars (as currently tested) are approximately 10 times safer than even the safest human drivers, and 40 times safer than new or inexperienced drivers, in terms of at-fault accidents.  Where automated vehicles really shine though is their amazing ability to drive defensively.  That is, their ab...

For many years now, the future of energy production has been quite steadily moving toward distributed generation.  Solar power, with increasingly more efficient panels for decreasing cost per watt, is at the forefront of this revolution.  Traditionally, most states have adopted what is called net metering, which simply means that your electric meter runs backwards when a customer generates more power than they are using.  In effect, they are providing power back into the electric grid and powering nearby homes.  This saves the utilities from spending millions to build expensive 'peak load' natural gas power plants that are spun up only when the demand is at it's highest and beyond the capacity of it's more traditional plants such as coal or nuclear, which often corresponds to the sunniest times when cooling demand is at it's peak.  It also saves utilities in that they don't have to spend millions more to upgrade the expensive distribution system to get that...

They're calling it Generation Z.  Those born between roughly 1995 and 2010 are the most conservative generation in over 70 years, and the largest generation in terms of numbers.  They are about to become the next large voting demographic, replacing millennials, and they will have an obvious impact on the result of elections for a long time to come. They care about societal issues, but they have little faith in government to get things done.  They believe, according to those who have studied them, in entrepreneurship, work, innovation, and fiscal conservatism.  They are fierce supporters of individualism and the personal freedoms enshrined by the Constitution.  According to Goldman Sachs, "A recent Harvard Business Review article suggested that nearly 70% of Gen-Z teens were 'self-employed' (e.g., teaching piano lessons, selling goods on eBay) vs. just 12% that held a 'traditional' teen job (e.g., waiting tables)" They have never been without the Inte...

We are living in a world that, only in the last few years, since roughly 2008, there are now more people living in urban environments rather than rural ones.  In my view this is alarming because it means that the population is becoming even more disconnected from the reality of existence than has historically been the case.  We as a society have now become more dependent upon one another than ever before in history.  As recently as a couple hundred years ago, or just a handful of generations, if you wanted to eat chicken, you raised them, grew them, slaughtered them, cooked them and ate them.  Your chickens laid eggs, you milked your cows, you hunted and raised a garden.  You chopped firewood to provide for your own heat, and you grew cotton, dried it, spun it, and wove it to create clothing.  You built your home out of trees and logs that you cut and fashioned with basic tools and your own bare hands.  You might gain the help of your family or your ch...

There is a grave threat to our survival that is very rarely mentioned by the media, and thus far has garnered very little action by the government or private actors.  A Commission to Congress has said that it is likely to kill 90% of the US population within a year of it happening.  NASA says that it is inevitable and that it will very likely happen in our lifetimes. This threat can be natural, in the form of a large solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME), or it can be man-made, in the form of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).  These occur when a large electromagnetic field impacts the Earth’s atmosphere.  Energetic particles, such as gamma rays interact with the atmosphere, creating positive ions and Compton electrons which generates a geomagnetic storm, or a disruption in the Earth’s magnetic field. In 1859, a massive CME called the Carrington Event occured.  The sun ejected plasma, and its associated magnetic field which was hurled directly at the ...

It is critical that we understand the basic economic mechanisms that dictate our daily lives so that we understand what is really going on around us, and why we are standing on a house of cards.  Let's start out with some very basic definitions.   Wealth is the accumulated value of the sum of your time and freedom.  In other words, when you decide to sacrifice some of your time and/or freedom to benefit others in society, you are rewarded with money, which you can then use to purchase time and freedom from others, i.e. goods or services.  Those goods were produced through the expenditure of someone's time to obtain or refine resources.  For example, mining ore takes someone's time.  Refining that ore into stronger materials takes someone else's time.  Refining that into something useful, such as a sword, takes yet more time and skills.  When you trade your money for a good such as a sword, you are paying for all of the time that went into the ...

There have always been those throughout society who have put a premium on the readiness of themselves and their families to be as prepared as practically possible for disaster.  Some are called preppers, some are called survivalists, some are simply Boy Scouts whose motto is 'be prepared.'  The reality is that the world is a hostile place.  Earthquakes, tornadoes, riots, flooding, ice storms, blizzards, CME / EMP, terrorist attacks, pandemics, financial collapse - these are just a very small handful of the threats we face and their likelihood is much higher than you might think- all you have to do is take a look at history to come to that conclusion.  While you cannot plan for every eventuality, there are a number of things you can do to mitigate issues that may arise and ensure that you and your family have a fighting chance to survive the disaster.  If you love your family, and you're not doing anything realistic to prepare, there really is no excuse for what ...