I found your post comments while searching Google. Very relevant especially as this is not an issue which a lot of peaople are conversant with.

You might want to check out http://wwww.redrok.com for homegrown CSP thermal units. Another good thing to see a system for under $1000: http://www.harbornet.com/sunflower/. It a little outdated website, but Doug Wood is still very active in the scene and just needs to update his website. I believe he now suggests CPV (concentrated PhotoVoltaics) - but do it yourself for huge savings and a fun project. Just make sure you keep those PV cells cold cold cold or you can burn up the costliest part of the system in less than a minutes (depending on how many suns you concentrate).

Interestingly, your point only validates the fact that the most promising technologies get the least amount of lime-light.

Ahhh not exactly…

Nanosolar is CIGS, not CdTe as you have claimed; VERY big difference. First Solar produces CdTe fyi at [MFG COST] 1.48/watt; Nanaosolar claims to be able to produce [MFGR] at about 60 cents per watt, and the nanosolar product is expected to be about 10-11% efficient vs 8.5-9.5 for First Solar.

Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin..

You cannot promote peace because peace is not something that you make. Rather it is something you experience … kind of like charity, or an emotion. It is the ends, not the means to the ends. In other words, at best you can only promote a moral approach to life that will result in peace - but that isn’t even the most important dynamic about peace.

The most important dynamic about experiencing peace is that it depends solely on yourself. As long as you look to others to make you peaceful you will always be disappointed, and that is why the Palestinian people will never be at peace. That is precisely why the whole Middle East region has been a war zone for as long as time has existed. That is also the primary reason why even without Israel’s existence the prospects for peace over there is so bleak.

We all have a moral imperative - and it is personally from following that imperative where inner peace results, and so I can no more bestow peace upon the Palestinian than I can force him to bestow peace upon me. It can only come from within. My moral imperative is that I pay penance where penance is due. As an American I believe that to be true with regard to the debt we owe to the American Indian - which debt I believe is fairly compensated with programs already in place. We also owe debt to the African American - which I also believe is being fairly compensated, or at least we’re working toward it (incidentally, I see no such programs in any other country). In both those cases I think that the programs can and occasionally have had a deleterious effect on those peoples, and so we constantly need to re-evaluate the situation. At some point I also believe that penance or debt is paid, though for inner peace it is necessary to err on the side of safety.

I also feel this debt to the millions of Jews that were slaughtered which slaughter could have been greatly reduced were it not for good old American bigotry. Although I find your claims of the genocide as instigated by Jews ludicrous, even if they were true my moral imperative would still be unchanged because my imperative is based on what I owe, not on what others deserve. Whether the Jews deserve it or not is not the issue for peace enabling activities. I am further convinced that world peace can only be experienced in this manner. Palestinian efforts that expect peace to come from without (instead of within) based on policies of aggression have always failed and they will always fail.

Admittedly, the US has done a lot of damage in a lot of places and it has resulted in many undeserved deaths, but as I mentioned above I know of no other country that makes a greater effort to voluntarily pay a penance for such wrongdoings. Even in the event of Flight 655 that you mentioned, Iran dropped the incident after reparations were made (Dec 12, 2006 international court).

I am also confident that the only hope for middle-east peace is that the various ethnic and religious groups also follow life-promoting moral imperatives. Instead we observe imperatives based on self-serving principles that have little regard for the lives of others - whether that be a suicide bomber or the women and children they target.

Though doubtlessly, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still - and I’m sure I haven’t even been successful in my effort to convince you of your cognitive error. I only hope that others who read this, being an objective third party, could see the error and choose for themselves a “what penances do I owe” approach that will result in their own peace and ultimately influence the peace of those around them.