Jesse Powell

Earth, our wonderful planet that nourishes humanity and keeps us alive as we hurtle through space, is in danger. Without Spaceship Earth, humans would just be tiny particles of cosmic dust drifting aimlessly through the universe. The danger we face? The Sixth Mass Extinction. Over the last Billion years, Earth has experienced 5 Mass Extinctions caused by enormous asteroid impacts, massive volcanic eruptions, and other events. Each of the 5 extinctions wiped out most of Earth's life forms, leaving only a small fraction that survived. The 5th Extinction 60 million years ago, caused by an asteroid 10 miles in diameter impacting the Earth, wiped out the dinosaurs, leaving our ancestors, a few small mammals, to take over the planet. The Sixth Extinction, if it occurs, will be very different. Instead of some natural event, humans will be the cause. It is inevitable if we keep burning fossil fuels, dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The planet is already warming, sea levels rising, droughts and crop failures, deadly heat waves, etc. By 2100 we will be deep into the Sixth Extinction and Billions of humans will die. Spaceship Earth describes 3 new critical technologies that can prevent the 6th Extinction, provided we implement them. The first technology is beamed clean energy to Earth from Space Solar Power Satellites in orbit. Using StarTram Maglev to launch payloads into orbit at 1/100th the cost of rockets. Beamed solar power is unlimited, 24/7, and much cheaper that power from fossil fuels. The second is desalination of hundreds of billions of gallons of very low cost fresh water using ocean thermal energy to evaporate sea water. The ICE/DESAL process can provide ample fresh water for food crops and people in drought areas. The third is an economically practical system that can remove Billions of tons of carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere and bury it underground, preventing global warming and the 6th Mass Extinction.

Many millions of years ago, humanity's distant ancestors crawled out of Earth's oceans, evolving to become our present amazing civilization. The Ice World Cometh describeshow humanity will soon go back to the oceans, creating an even more wondrous World. Building large thermally insulated ice islands, we will live on beautiful very low cost floating ocean cities, able to go anywhere in the World. Ice Islandswill generate clean cheap, renewable electric power and fresh water for everybody on Earth. For those who choose to remain on land, insulated high coastal ice barrierswill protect them from rising sea levels and hurricanes. The Ice World Cometh describes how large ice structures will be built, how they will be thermally insulated, how muchthey will cost, and their many application

Just when the hustlers of Philadelphia thought it was safe to come out and play... While others struggled and some submitted to the jack-boy lifestyle, a blue that no one saw coming struck the city hard Kira, Shay, Ferno and Ace were all used to taking lives, while the infamous jack-boy, Tommy Gun, was the cause of them all. When they all thought life couldn't get any better and they would be forever down in the gutter, the return of a notorious empire put them back on their feet. As Joker-Sam and Jester fight for their parent's revenge and position, they create a new Cardholder Counsel and begin to take back the streets. Welcome to The Cardholder Corporation

Silent Earth describes what humanity must do to prevent global catastrophe from our massive consumption of fossil fuels. Silent Earth warns, if we do not soon transition to non-fossil energy sources, Earth will pass the Trigger Point where global warming will runaway, even if we stop using fossil fuels. There are immense amounts of carbon - much more than now in the atmosphere - stored as decomposing organic matter in the warming Arctic permafrost and barely stable frozen methane hydrates in the warming ocean beds. At the Trigger Point, the process will become self-sustaining and global temperatures will increase exponentially, even if humanity stops consuming fossil fuels. The environmental effects will be catastrophic When will this Trigger Point happen? We don't know. Sadly, nobody is trying to find out. Most likely, humanity won't know until after it happens. Our only hope is to transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources, and be more energy efficient, as soon as possible. So far, there has been some limited efforts to transition to non-fossil energy sources and to increase energy efficiencyFossil fuels power our electricity, transport, industries, homes, and commerce. The ONLY way to stop using fossil fuels is to develop and implement new and practical non-fossil energy sources that are cheaper both in investment and operation, than fossil fuels. Otherwise, people and nations will continue to burn fossil fuels. Human civilization, and very possibly humanity itself, is not survivable, if we continue to burn fossil fuels. Silent Earth reviews the non-fossil energy possibilities? and finds most alternatives are not practical to reach the scale required. For example: Nuclear? It would take 6,500 reactors, each 1,000 megawatt capacity to supply 54,000 million Megawatt hours in 2050 AD. And more than double that amount to supply our other energy needs for transport, industrial purposes, etc. Today, we have 437 reactors in the World. We would have to build 600 reactors every year. Would the public accept that? Probably not. Clearly, new technologies are required. Silent Earth, describes how Superconducting Maglev, a new transport technology, can enable passenger, truck, and logistics transport at much lower cost and much greater energy efficiency, can store very large amounts of electrical energy at very low cost to meet time varying energy demands, and launch space solar satellites into orbit that can beam down electric power 24/7 to any spot on Earth at very low cost. Low-cost power beamed from space can be used to manufacture a wide range of products, including hydrocarbon fuels for transport and other applications, using the decades old Fischer-Tropsch process. Combining carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere with hydrogen generated by electrolyzing water: gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, and other hydrocarbons can be manufactured at acceptable cost. Superconducting Maglev was invented 50 years ago by Gordon Danby and the author, James Powell, when they were scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, located on Long Island, New York. Gordon Danby, James Powell and their colleagues have continued working on Maglev to evolve Maglev to a 2nd Generation transport system that can transport trucks and freight as well as passengers on 300 mph networks, that can be built at lower cost than other high speed surface transport and also perform 2 new applications - storage of electric energy from intermittent renewable energy sources, like windmills and ground solar farms at very low cost, and launch payloads into orbit at 1/100th the cost of chemical rockets making it possible to create very cheap solar electricity the foundation of the future world economy.

Unlike most investors, who live in fear of failure, Scott Fearon actively seeks it out. He has earned millions of dollars for his hedge fund over the last thirty years shorting the stocks of businesses he believed were on their way to bankruptcy. In Dead Companies Walking, Fearon describes his methods for spotting these doomed businesses, and how they can be extremely profitable investments. In his experience, corporate managers routinely commit six common mistakes that can derail even the most promising companies: they learn from only the recent past; they rely too heavily on a formula for success; they misunderstand their target customers; they fall victim to the magical storytelling of a mania; they fail to adapt to tectonic shifts in their industry; and they are physically or emotionally removed from their companies' operations. Fearon has interviewed thousands of executives across America, many of whom, unknowingly, were headed toward bankruptcy - from the Texas oil barons of the 80s to the tech wunderkinds of the late 90s to the flush real estate developers of the mid-2000s. Here, he explores recent examples like JC Penney, Herbalife and Blockbuster Entertainment to help investors better predict the next booms and busts--and come out on top.