Turning heat to electricity

Turning heat to electricity

Sunday Silliness - Loneliness :o)

If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, you're not alone. And yet you are alone. So very alone.

Spaghetti Friday :o)

We had an awesome day on Thursday over at Beth's sisters place.  Good food, good family, and good Rock Band.  Does it get any better than that?

Yesterday, the plan of the day was for my folks, and stepbrother "JimBo" [who I had not seen in 28 years until two months ago] and his wife, to come over to Nutwood for dinner and some fun.

The menu was Ken's Special Spaghetti :o)  This was a standing request from my Stepdad.  About seven years ago, my folks came and visited us for a week.  During that trip, one of the meals I made was spaghetti.  It is pretty basic, ground beef, garlic, onions, tomatoe paste/sauce/diced, and a mix of spices.  I think it it the spices, simmered for 4-5 hours, that really give it its great taste.  Note, this is NOT a vegan sauce :o)

I started the sauce at 1:30, and we eat about 6:30, so it was in fine form.  We also discovered an electric garlic baker a few years ago [we used an oven based Terra Cotta baker for about four years], and we had what we consider the bestest garlic bread ever, french bread - baked in the oven with olive oil - then fresh baked garlic spread on it.  And its Healthy Too :o)  The best compliment is when you are asked for a "doggie bag", and my folks took enough with them for another meal. 

Before dinner, we played Rock Band.  After some switching around, we settled in with JimBo singing, Beth on lead guitar [She ROCKS \m/], JimBo's wife on base, and me on drums.  We played for about an hour, and it was fun.  After dinner, we decided to do Wii bowling.  JimBo ended up winning the day, and I am pleased to say that the TV is still intact.  My folks are not really in a condition to play, but they enjoyed watching [evidence is that my stepdad stayed awake past 9:00 PM]

All in all, a great visit.  Love Thanksgiving, spending quality time with family.

Science Scene - Energy Outlook :o)

Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth will remain flat/negative for 2009 with only China and India having postive growth.  This starts to change in 2010 and 2011, with worldwide growth to be on the order of 2% for 2010 and 3% for 2011. 

While electricity demand is lower in 2009, and not expected to reach 2008 levels until 2011, the forecast from there has a steeper slope than previous growth.  New forms of electricity use will outstrip energy efficiency gains (just think about flat screen TV's, DVR's, gadget rechargers, and such). 

So, what are our options for meeting this increased electrical demand?  Even if solar power costs were halved, the cost still would not reach the cost of combined cycle gas turbines or wind energy.   It turns out that the real solution in the short term may rest with bio-mass (wood chips, wood pellets, etc.), which is projected to be a quarter of the cost of solar, and on par with combined cycle gas and less than half of wind energy projected costs.

A wildcard in this mix is shale gas fields, the technology for retrieving the gas is not yet proven, but the potential is huge.  Bottom line, natural gas will be with us for a long time, and there will be wind and solar, but they will not be the silver bullet.  I expect that clean coal and nuclear power will fill out the mix.

Science Scene - PlantBottle, Thanks Coca-Cola

The Coca-Cola cursive logo is the most recognized consumer brand in the world, and now, in some places, it will have a little green stamp on it, symbolizing not only that company’s sustainability efforts, but the degree to which green thinking has penetrated the corporate mindset.

The Coca-Cola Company dubs the new packaging PlantBottle, and boasts that it is the first-to-market plant based PET plastic bottle in the industry. PlantBottle is already on the shelves in eco-conscious Denmark (in time for Copenhagen) and will be introduced in Canada in December, and San Francisco, LA and Seattle in January.

The beverage company aims to produce 2 billion PlantBottles by the end of 2010, “a first step towards achieving the Company’s vision of bringing to market plastic bottles that are made with 100 percent renewable raw materials and are still fully recyclable,” according to a press release.
PlantBottle packaging is currently made through a process that turns sugar cane and molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into a key component for PET plastic. The sugar cane being used comes from predominantly rain-fed crops that were processed into ethanol, not refined sugar. Ultimately, the Company’s goal is to use non-food, plant-based waste, such as wood chips or wheat stalks, to produce recyclable PET plastic bottles.  The bottles do not use 100 percent plant material because the material can not handle hot or carbonated beverages.

For the full article, at triplepundit, click here.

Happy Thanksgiving :o)

Thanksgiving is one of the few truly secular, nondenominational holidays on the US calendar (the Fourth of July is another). We celebrate with a long weekend, a big meal with family and friends (on the menu: foods that reflect the tastes and colors of the autumn harvest, such as roast turkey, pumpkin pie, cranberry sauce and candied yams), and football. It kicks off the holiday season and is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. We're taught that Thanksgiving came about when pilgrims gave thanks to God for a bountiful harvest. We vaguely mumble thanks for the food on our table, the roof over our head and the loved ones around us.

Thanksgiving is a celebration of successful production. The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.   This country was mostly uninhabited and wild when our forefathers began to develop the land and build spectacular cities, shaping what is now the wealthiest nation in the world. It's the American spirit to overcome challenges, create great achievements, and enjoy prosperity. We uniquely recognize that production leads to wealth and that we must dedicate ourselves to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

But surely there is something more to celebrate, something more sacred about this holiday. What should we really be celebrating on Thanksgiving?

I think that the reason that this Holiday has become so ingrained is that there is special meaning, a meaning that is best understood by family, and that is relishing the fact that you care and are cared for. Being with your family while great food is being served is something that is memorable and full of encouragement. Sitting at the dinner table with relatives you haven't seen recently, how good does that make you feel? Thanksgiving is a time for thanking those you love and being close to them.  It is a holiday that simply makes us happy and filled with glee knowing we are loved.
One thing that makes me appreciate this holiday is that everyone is included, if you have no family, if you are homeless, you are given the chance to celebrate it at a center especially made for troubled times. It shows that people care and people truly believe in this never ending special holiday.  For a few years, when I did not have anyone to share this holiday with, I was at the homeless shelter, helping serve up some warm thoughts and some good food.

Now, before our meal, we offer our thoughts and prayers to those that cannot be with us on this day.  For me, while I contemplate this, I focus on the reason I am grateful that the person is in my life, not the reason that they are not present.

May you and yours have a wonderful day today, full of love and appreciation.

Philosophical Phun - Classical Logic :o)

Today, logic is both a branch of mathematics and a branch of philosophy. In most large universities, both departments offer sequences of courses in logic, and there is usually a lot of overlap between them. Formal languages, deductive systems, and model-theoretic semantics are mathematical objects and, as such, the logician is interested in their mathematical properties and relations. Soundness, completeness, and most of the other results reported below are typical examples. Philosophically, logic is the study of correct reasoning. Reasoning is an epistemic, mental activity. This raises questions concerning the philosophical relevance of the mathematical aspects of logic. How do deducibility and validity, as properties of formal languages--sets of strings on a fixed alphabet--relate to correct reasoning? What do the mathematical results reported below have to do with the original philosophical issue? This is an instance of the philosophical problem of explaining how mathematics applies to non-mathematical reality.

When mathematicians and many philosophers reason, they occasionally invoke formulas in a formal language to help disambiguate, or otherwise clarify what they mean. In other words, sometimes formulas in a formal language are used in ordinary reasoning. This suggests that one might think of a formal language as an addendum to a natural language. What do deducibility and validity, as sharply defined on the addendum, tell us about correct reasoning in general?

As an engineer by training, this one hits pretty close to home.  What do you find relevant, and more importantly, WHY ???

TMI for You :o)

No, this entry is not about personal or too much information.  It is about Three Mile Island (TMI), a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania (for you youngsters, site of the one and only nuclear accident in the US, circa 1979).

I know that yesterday, when I stopped by my folks place, they had been watching CNN and asked if I had heard about the "event" at Three Mile Island".  I indicated I had (we had a summary sent to management explaining the details), and gave them the scoop.  Below is the official release that came out today.  For reference, a routine chest x-ray is about 10 mrem per film. Smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes daily exposes the individual to about 1300 mrem per year. 

TWELVE WORKERS AT THREE MILE ISLAND-1 WERE CONTAMINATED NOVEMBER 21 with "detectable" but small amounts of radiation, Exelon Nuclear said in a November 23 statement. The radioactive particles were confined to the containment building and posed no threat to workers or the public, it said. About 150 workers at the reactor were sent home the afternoon of November 21 "when monitors detected small amounts of airborne radiological contamination inside the containment building" at a temporary opening cut in the building to allow new steam generators to be installed, the company said. The contamination "was caused by a change in air pressure inside the containment building that dislodged small irradiated particles in the reactor piping system," it said. The highest estimated dose to a worker was 38.4 millirem, less than 1% of the annual federal occupational exposure limit of 5,000 millirem, the company said. Work has now resumed at the unit, which has been shut since October 26 for refueling and maintenance. Exelon Nuclear spokesman Ralph DeSantis said November 23 that the event will extend the outage schedule, but declined to say when Three Mile Island-1 is expected to return to service. NRC Region I spokeswoman Diane Screnci said November 23 that the event had "no effect on public health and safety." A health physicist and a manager from the agency's regional office were on site November 22 and 23 "to independently review and confirm the company's technical assessment" of the event, Screnci said.

Watch how you steer: don't veer for deer!

They’re out there. In the woods and on the roads as well. While hunters are gearing up to find that big buck, motorists around our plant, our state, and many parts of the nation are trying hard to avoid them.


I know that I have had some harrowing near misses during my 45 minute daily drive to work, and about five years ago, hit a deer and did $4,000 damage to my then Explorer.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration there are about 1.5 million car accidents with deer each year that result in $1 billion in vehicle damage, about 150 human fatalities, and over 10,000 personal injuries. The actual numbers are most likely higher because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's figures for deer accidents rely on inconsistent state reporting. There is no standard reporting of deer accidents in the country yet, and a “reportable deer accident” varies significantly between states.

However, in an insurance claim statistics study, the top ten states for deer accidents were listed. According to this study, Pennsylvania drivers experience more deer collisions than any other state with Michigan following close behind. The number of accidents increases with the deer migrating and mating season which occurs between the months of October and December.

The worst states for deer collisions based on total number of claims filed with one of the countries largest auto insurers are:

1. Pennsylvania
2. Michigan
3. Illinois
4. Ohio
5. Georgia
6. Minnesota
7. Virginia
8. Indiana
9. Texas
10. Wisconsin

Tips to avoid deer accidents:

Be attentive when driving, especially at dusk. Slow down.

Use high-beam headlights when driving in deer territory to increase your vision as well as your time to react to a deer hiding on the roadside who decides to jump in front of your car.

The use of car-mounted “deer whistles” actually has minimal effect on deer and may result in drivers being less aware. You need to continually be on your guard.

If a collision with a deer is unavoidable, it is always best not to swerve to avoid it. Brake and hold the wheel straight. Turning the wheel to avoid the deer may result in a worse accident with another car, or cause the car to spin out of control resulting a in much more serious crash.

Go Green At Thanksgiving :o)

Thanksgiving is generally about three things: tradition, food and family (in no particular order). All of which can make it seem like a tough time to go green.


But look at it another way: new traditions need to start sometime, so what better day than Thanksgiving? Try going green (or greener) this year by incorporating some eco-friendly changes to your holiday shopping, food, decorations and travel with our easy — and fun — tips.

Yum…Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, Stuffing and More

First up: the meal. Make your holiday a little more Earth friendly by choosing an eco-theme for your feast, like one of our four outlined below — it's a fun way to start a new tradition with an environmental impact.

•The Locavore: Eat Local and In Season
This means doing as much of your Thanksgiving Day shopping as possible at local farmers markets and farms — for food items like eggs, milk, veggies, turkey, potatoes, pie fillings and more. The eco-benefits of eating locally? Food grown or raised in your region has fewer food miles, meaning the carbon emissions associated with local foods are smaller. The plus for you is that local fruits and veggies usually taste better because they've been picked at the peak of freshness, rather than produce shipped from thousands of miles away that had to be picked before ripening.  What about the turkey, you say? There's a growing number of small farms that sell turkeys directly to the public. Localharvest.org has a searchable map so you can hone in on foods sustainably grown and raised near you.

•The Tree-Hugger: Shop Organic
The benefits to your health might not be proven yet, but there's no doubt that organic agriculture is better for the landscape — fewer pesticides and other toxic chemicals seeping into soil and running off into rivers and lakes.  When it comes to turkey, pasture-raised, organic turkeys are the way to go. Or consider buying a heritage turkey this year, defined as centuries-old breeds of turkeys that need to be raised over longer periods of time (unlike the sped-up rearing process of today's breeds).

•The White Rabbit: Go Vegetarian
Eating vegetarian has been touted as one of the best ways to help save the planet. Conventional meat production is a major cause of deforestation and global greenhouse gas emissions — more so than the transportation sector, according to a 2006 study from The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
 
We are going to Beth's sisters house, spending our time with family.  So we will not be doing any cooking.  How about you???