Monday, 18 August 2014

By on August 18th, 2014 in science kits

09:48 – Six more kits to ship so far this morning, plus whatever orders come in today before the mailman shows up.

Our component inventory system is starting to break down, as it always does this time of year. The problem is that we have so many different things going on at once that updating component inventories sometimes gets deferred or overlooked completely.


54 Comments and discussion on "Monday, 18 August 2014"

  1. Chad says:

    Got this on my Facebook newsfeed today from an old friend that runs with the tinfoil hat crowd. Thought I’d share…

    “What if I told you that the version of history you were taught in school was heavily revised to favor your own nations agenda while hiding its crimes. And in doing so fostered an unrealistic sense of false patriotism used to manufacture your allegiance to a corporate entity masquerading as your government.”

  2. Chuck W says:

    Wait. Lemme put on my tin hat and see if I can tune in that channel.

    I did learn a little about history while living in Europe that I have since confirmed with a little research of my own. Many things that I was taught in school as invented in America, were actually invented in Europe, years before the so-called world-leading invention in the US. That includes radio, telephone, television, and the automobile.

  3. dkreck says:

    Well Chuck some of the sources in Europe might have been a little partial too. Marconi invented the radio and Farnsworth the TV but it took RCA to make them huge successes.
    I remember when in high school we ad a Soviet encyclopedia donated to our library. Turns out Russians invented everything.

  4. brad says:

    @Chad: Of course it was. Did anyone not know that “victors write the history books”?

    For an easy example, take Chuck’s of inventions. The French claim a Frenchman invented the telephone. The Italians know it was an Italian. It is apparently one of those inventions whose time was ripe, and it more or less simultaneously appears in lots of places. The same for aircraft, cars, and piles of other things – but no country ever seems to mention the other claimants.

    For more serious examples, consider WWII. The fire bombing of Dresden was a deliberate attack on a civilian populace. Any way you look at it, it was a serious war crime. If concentration camp guards are responsible for what happened in their camps, then certainly the air crews should have been prosecuted for deliberately setting fire to an entire city. We needn’t even mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    Farther back, the Civil War was entirely about the evil that was slavery. Politics, hunger for power, filthy lucre – none of those played any role at all, at least according to the standard history books.

    I don’t mean to pick on the US. There are likely examples for any country that ever existed, because by existing, it “won” some conflict in the past. The bad guys are always on the other side. The winning side always paints itself as the rescuing hero, the knight in shining armor.

  5. OFD says:

    There it is.

    But that tinfoil hat guy on FaceCrack is not entirely wrong, either.

  6. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    And we all know that Sherlock Holmes at 221B Baker Street in London invented the telephone, and spoke the first words ever transmitted telephonically: “Watson, come here. I need you.”

  7. Chuck W says:

    That is why I am looking for my tin hat. It has so many channels.

  8. Lynn McGuire says:

    You yankees had better be laying up supplies and heating materials for this winter, looks like it is going to be a doosey:
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2727734/Wet-cold-bank-holiday-way-forecasters-warn-two-weeks-bad-weather-ahead.html

    Hey OFD, is your four wheel drive truck resurrectable? The Saab ain’t gonna make it through the snow drifts in your neck of the woods.

    I used to have a Volkswagen rabbit when I lived out in west Texas. That car used the oil pan to bash its way through the ice in the center of the lane. Not advised.

    Got the song from the great southern philosopher going through my mind this morning, “don’t ask me no questions and I won’t tell you no lies”.

  9. Lynn McGuire says:

    For more serious examples, consider WWII. The fire bombing of Dresden was a deliberate attack on a civilian populace. Any way you look at it, it was a serious war crime. If concentration camp guards are responsible for what happened in their camps, then certainly the air crews should have been prosecuted for deliberately setting fire to an entire city. We needn’t even mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    You forgot the firebombing of Tokyo which put the firebombing of Dresden to shame.

    War is war. Just wait for WWIII. I expect battlefield nukes to be traded like candy outside the Pik-n-Pak.

  10. Ray Thompson says:

    Turns out Russians invented everything.

    And to think I thought it was Al Gore.

    Farther back, the Civil War was entirely about the evil that was slavery.

    The conflict was about states rights and the northern states trying to tell the southern states how to operate along with the North wanting access to southern supplies. Slavery was just a side option to get people riled up

  11. OFD says:

    “Hey OFD, is your four wheel drive truck resurrectable? The Saab ain’t gonna make it through the snow drifts in your neck of the woods.”

    Not unless we wanna spend about five-grand on the body and undercarriage and half a dozen other issues. It’s already gone; farmed out to a farm for really basic truck and tractor duty. Nope, the Saab ain’t gonna cut it in a typical VT wintuh.

    I have another coupla interviews coming up this week so I need a paying gig and then we’ll get another 4x truck.

    We also have a town meeting hearing to go to across the street tomorrow night in regard to actually legally zoning this burg to village status. We will be asking some questions. Like how to put a damper on the local yokel drag-racing assholes in the summers if the village wants to have nice young couples with their baby strollers in the park behind us and on the newly constructed bay-side walking/bike path. Like maybe putting in a couple of crosswalks, a couple of speed bumps, and enforcing the effing speed zones of 35 MPH on the shore road and 10 MPH on this street, both currently total effing jokes.

  12. Lynn McGuire says:

    Got a new Samsung Galaxy S5 last Friday to replace my Motorola Bionic. So far, it is OK, not great. Screen is awesome. The messaging app keyboard is a lot easier to use. I miss the ability to put contacts on one of the windows. I also miss the “droid, droid, droid” when somebody called me. The wife does not miss that at all.

    Speaking of the five windows, the blatant advertising on the second window is just wrong. I have no clue what the “magazine” is but it needs to go away NOW.

  13. Chad says:

    I think in both Dresden and Tokyo what you have is a force that just refuses to surrender despite the fact they’ve already lost the war. Now, combine that with the Allied Forces who were just war weary and generally pissed off that they’ve spent a couple good years of their life traipsing through Europe getting shot at. That’s a recipe for disaster. It doesn’t make it right, but also remember, part of the psychology of war at the time was to dehumanize the enemy. That way killing them didn’t take such an emotional toll. In their minds at the time, they didn’t kill women and children. They killed monsters who breed more monsters who will shoot bullets at them and their friends and prolong a war that prevents them from being with their families.

  14. Miles_Teg says:

    What happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not a war crime. Both were legitimate military targets (with lots of civilians mixed in – just like many other places on both sides.)

    Brad, how would you have ended WWII? Starving them out would have worked, eventually. The cost would have been, literally, many millions of Japanese and other Asian lives. An invasion? Millions of casualties. And let’s not forget who started the war.

  15. CowboySlim says:

    “Got this on my Facebook newsfeed today from an old friend that runs with the tinfoil hat crowd. Thought I’d share…”

    Who, me….
    http://zapatopi.net/afdb/

  16. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Well, if you were going to prosecute WWII allied bomber crews for war crimes at Dresden, you might as well have prosecuted all of them. My dad didn’t firebomb Dresden, but he did fly a bunch of missions where the targets were factories, oil refineries, and so on.

    British bomber crews flew at night, and their CEP was something like 15 miles. American bomber crews flew during the day, and had the Norden bomb-sight, which allowed them to put a bomb in a pickle barrel. As long as the pickle barrel was at least one mile in diameter. Then, of course, there were the random drops, where the bomber had been damaged or separated from its box. They dropped their bombs without any consideration for what was under them at the time.

    You know that over the course of the war, probably every allied bomber crew dropped bombs on civilian targets, intentionally or unintentionally. Homes, civilian shelters, schools, hospitals, orphanages. Was every crewman a war criminal as well?

    Then there’s the issue of firebombing versus HE bombing. Is it a war crime to drop firebombs on civilians, but not HE? What about when civilians were mixed in with military targets? I’ve had this discussion several times, in detail, with Jerry Pournelle, who seems to think that Dresden, Tokyo, etc. were prosecutable atrocities. I disagree, vehemently. It was the Axis powers who first targeted civilians intentionally and on a major scale (think Rotterdam and Nanking). In doing so, they declared open season on their own civilians. And, as far as firebombing/nuking the Japanese, the question becomes “war crimes on what basis?” Certainly not under the Geneva Conventions, with which the Japanese did not comply and under which they had zero protection.

  17. OFD says:

    Mrs. OFD is getting a new phone herself via FedEx/Verizon today or tomorrow; she cracked the face of her Droid and made it mostly unusable a while back so they’re sending her an iPhone 5 free of charge, thanks to some kind of account finagling with Princess’s lost phone, etc., etc. (they both lose and break phones regularly; I keep the same ones for YEARS.). Unadvertised Verizon deal; they’re making room for the new iPhone 6’s. When my contract expires, I’m probably gonna get a Droid next time; I am not digging all of Apple’s snaking proprietary connections, updates and hassles. Just keeping the iTunes account stuff squared away is a major PITA.

    On Dresden, Cologne, and Tokyo; the Allies’ public had also had a bellyful by then of German and Japanese atrocities against defenseless populations; throw in the Blitz and Pearl Harbor and the regimes had plenty of support for pulverizing the enemy homelands. I won’t pretend to second-guess the decisions made by my parents’ and grandparents’ generations now; they seriously believed they had to stop those enemies once and for all.

    Then, of course, after the way, they became our bosom buddies and we repaired damage and sent them zillions to get back on their feet and become industrial powerhouses against our former allies, the Soviets. Now our deadly enemies.

    Does this begin to sound a lot like Oceania and Europa and so forth in Orwell? Vietnam is now also our pal. But let’s have our One-Minute-Hate over ISIS or North Korea or the Taliban, etc., etc. And let’s have a more or less continuous political and social atmosphere of nationwide fear and loathing and give our rulers whatever they need to “protect” us indefinitely in what William Arkin calls our “forever war.”

    http://www.amazon.com/American-Coup-Government-Destroying-Constitution/dp/0316251240/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408381273&sr=1-2

  18. MrAtoz says:

    Just keeping the iTunes account stuff squared away is a major PITA.

    Yes, plenty of annoyances with iTunes on PC. On my Mac, it is pretty good. I easily backup, restore, update all my iDevices. With Calibre and iBooks I’m squared away.

    I retired my MotoX and got the latest iPhone a few months ago. I guess I’m an Apple snob. Sniff.

  19. MrAtoz says:

    Quick idea for comment by the engineers out there:

    Build a nuke plant in NV next to Lake Mead. Use the lake for the cooling water. Once the plant is on line, back off on the hydro to help fill the lake back up.

    Ignore libtard restrictions on nuke power when commenting.

    Thanks.

  20. MrAtoz says:

    Now that it appears the cop spray and prayed the kid in MO, the Guard is out, will the poop hit the fan even more? I’m guessing the actual trial (if it comes civil/criminal) will go the same way as Zimmerman. I would not want to pick that jury.

  21. pcb_duffer says:

    I’m not an engineer; neither do I play one on television. But I don’t think hydroelectric power generation is the problem. They store the water, stack it up, let it fall over a turbine, and then it goes on downstream, but they don’t actually consume very much. My understanding of the ‘water crisis’ out there is that there are just too many farms growing too many crops that consume too much water. Additionally, there are too many people living in the desert – Phoenix, Las Vegas, the whole SoCal megalopolis.

  22. brad says:

    @Miles/@RBT: I’m not actually arguing against Hiroshima, or Dresden, or any of the others. Trying to put rules onto warfare is difficult, because either side will do whatever it takes to win – otherwise it isn’t really a war, but just some sort of armed spat.

    I just meant to point out a couple of things that are asymmetrical in the history books. After a war, the losers get prosecuted for war crimes, whereas the winners write themselves as heroes into the history books. Had Germany and Japan won, anyone associated with Tokyo, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been prosecuted, whereas the concentration camps would be on the books as an unpleasant but necessary measure.

    That’s not good or bad, it’s just human nature…

  23. ech says:

    Once the plant is on line, back off on the hydro to help fill the lake back up.

    Don’t know if that will work. There is a minimum outflow from the lake that has to be done in order to supply California with their share of the water from the river.

  24. Chuck W says:

    Just keeping the iTunes account stuff squared away is a major PITA.

    Which is why I never adopted iTunes in the first place. I knew it would be a bitch outside the Mac.

    I miss the ability to put contacts on one of the windows.

    Can’t you do that with the S5? I just upgraded to Kit-Kat from Jellybean after the Bluetooth in my S3 went flakey. K-K comes with 2 windows, although I have not played with it yet.

  25. Lynn McGuire says:

    I miss the ability to put contacts on one of the windows.

    Can’t you do that with the S5? I just upgraded to Kit-Kat from Jellybean after the Bluetooth in my S3 went flakey. K-K comes with 2 windows, although I have not played with it yet.

    I just figured it out. Copy to the home window is the last item on the individual contacts settings.

    I figure out how to get rid of the weird magazine ad on the first home window. Now I need to get rid of the Amazon ad on the third home window.

  26. Lynn McGuire says:

    Build a nuke plant in NV next to Lake Mead. Use the lake for the cooling water. Once the plant is on line, back off on the hydro to help fill the lake back up.

    The heat from the nuclear power plant will cause more water to evaporate so the water savings might be nil. Building a steam condenser using air coolers might work better but they have air leakage problems.

    The nuclear power plant can also use brackish water for cooling so if you have salt water lakes in the vicinity then that might be good.

    I know that you said ignore the political effects of building nuclear power plants but the 20 to 30 year building cycle of them cannot be ignored. There are five nuclear power plants being built in the USA right now.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_the_United_States

    Watts Bar 2 was approved in the early 1980s though. Nice of a monster nuclear reactor vessel:
    http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-System-tests-under-way-at-Watts-Bar-2-1308144.html

    BTW OFD, Vermont Yankee is being retired in December. There goes 35% of the electricity used in Vermont. Hope you don’t freeze in the dark in January!

  27. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I have to wonder if those new nuke plants will be white elephants by the time they come on-stream. Solar technology is improving constantly and the price is dropping precipitously. Even counting installation/inverter/battery/maintenance/depreciation costs and not counting tax credits, in many places solar is now competitive with utility power. And not just in LV, either. That’s the case in some cloudy northern climes as well.

    The technology is improving fast enough, efficiency is getting better all the time, and I suspect installation cost is going to plummet as well because it’ll no longer make sense to having panels track the sun. Who cares about angle of incidence if you have really cheap, really efficient panels. You just cover your whole roof with them.

  28. Chad says:

    I was discussing solar power with a coworker the other day. He said he looked into it 2 years ago and it wasn’t cost effective. With the cost of the panels and installation it would take something like 50 years for an ROI on solar panels one could easily place on a residential roof. He said the salesman grudgingly agreed and said the problem was that electricity is just too damn cheap in Nebraska and the state doesn’t have a lot of tax incentives for it. I haven’t independently confirmed any of that.

  29. Lynn McGuire says:

    There are two types of electric power generation, base load and peaking. Nuclear is base load and runs 24×7. In fact, it can take from three days to two weeks to get a base load power plant online and up to full load (nuclear, coal, lignite, natural gas). I am ignoring hydro since we do not have much hydro in the south.

    Peaking is power plants that can get online within 30 minutes and to full load within another 30 minutes. The operating cost of peaking power is 2X to 10X that of base load power cost. This is what solar is competing with and I totally agree with you.

    The problem with solar is that it does not work at all or very well during weather disturbances such as rain, snow, extreme clouds, etc. If you cannot see the sun, the panels probably cannot either. But peaking power is still required during these events and the utility has to purchase and maintain equipment for producing that peaking power. Also the fuel storage can be critical and difficult to store such as natural gas or diesel.

    The electric utility that I used to work at burned 330,000 barrels of diesel and fuel oil in 1989. In one day. In the winter. It was -4 F in Dallas. When it gets that cold in Texas, people run electric heat day and night since the heat pumps do not work very well at that temperature. We were even running our black start diesels (locomotive engines at 2 MW each) for power.

    Of course, that was an extreme event but the electric utility is still obligated to serve. I am not sure what percentage of usage that solar can serve for peaking power but I know that it is less than 100%. Maybe even as low as 50%.

    Of course, a lot offgrid people use their solar panels to crack water and produce hydrogen for power generation later. That is some fairly expensive storage and equipment (hydrogen fuel cell).

  30. OFD says:

    “BTW OFD, Vermont Yankee is being retired in December. There goes 35% of the electricity used in Vermont. Hope you don’t freeze in the dark in January!”

    The VT Yankee saga is a long and painful one to read; boiled down to its essence it’s been about one group of Prog anti-nuke types screeching constantly for decades versus an incompetent management/ownership team running the plant and making themselves look foolish constantly for decades in the media. A couple of minor mishaps and maintenance issues became like unto Hiroshima and Chernobyl in the media here and now they all cackle ecstatically that the wicked witch is dead. So the state gets a huge portion of its power from Hydro-Quebec now. And no, we won’t freeze in the dark here at Chez OFD; we have a kick-ass woodstove, oil heat for backup, and plenty of candles, lanterns, wicks, matches, flashlights, batteries, battery chargers, lamp oil, etc. Plus long undies and blankets. And we go out a lot in the cold and snow and ice anyway and love it. Keeps the riff-raff the hell away.

    If we could get some solar power going here relatively inexpensively in the next few years, I’d rather have that and panels on the roof than have to mess around with a generator and gasoline storage. The side of our roof facing the street gets sun all day when the sun is shining, but that’s another issue; we have a LOT of days in the cold months with not much sun. So I’ll be doing some research on this as prices may or may not come down enough.

  31. Lynn McGuire says:

    One of the funniest things in the “Buying Alaska” tv show is the number of times they go look at a remote, off-grid home in the winter and see the solar panels with eight inches of snow on them. Apparently it is quite a problem in the winter time when you get six to twenty feet of snow a year.

    And then the number of batteries that they have inside the house so that they do not freeze. But I imagine that they do off-gas a mostly hydrogen gas. Not something I want inside my home. Sounds … flammable.

  32. MrAtoz says:

    Thanks for the nuke input. I’m looking for jobs for my kids when they get eng degrees.

    Holder on the way to Ferguson. What a joke. What’s he going to do? March with the Black Panthers? Take over the whole investigation? The Gov of MO should be having shits. He should go there and tell Holder to fuck off.

  33. OFD says:

    We don’t get that much snow here but there is enough to cover the roof and whatever is up there. So there is that to consider.

    Holder may not get the reception he thinks he’s gonna get; the rioters have been very angry at him, Obummer and that generation of rayciss demagogues ’cause they ain’t done enough to give them everything they want. They’ve been pretty vocally profane about it, too. Probably more mad at them then the cop by now. And the deceased was apparently shot six times, twice in the head, so that’s a problem for the cop/police department right there. Spray and pray, indeed. If it’s a citizen protecting his home who does that, you can be sure he’ll be arrested and jailed and tried for it.

  34. Lynn McGuire says:

    I was taught that if two in the chest does not stop the advancing person then take a head shot. The person might have body armor, be on drugs masking body damage, etc.

    I was also taught that a head shot is a guaranteed serious investigation of the scene with probable arrest no matter what the circumstances. Gun seizure, felony charges, civil lawsuit, etc.

    I also know that when I went in the fun house, I immediately forgot all my training for two shots in the chest for the first target and shot the gun in the hand about 4 or 5 times. Then the instructor behind yelled two in the chest and I complied. I am amazed that he did not yell “idiot!”. Then he yelled, “he is not going down, HEAD!”, which I complied again.

    When I went in the next room then I did the two in the chest action for the first person and two in the chest for the second person. All in all, went through a mag and a half (with 6 out of 14 left in my first mag). So, I sprayed and prayed all over the place, especially in the first room.

  35. Lynn McGuire says:

    Thanks for the nuke input. I’m looking for jobs for my kids when they get eng degrees.

    Make them join the Navy after they get their degrees. A friend of mine was an engineering officer on the Enterprise for four years and then on a nuclear cruiser for two years. He then hated nukes so bad then he became a regular engineer. When I last saw him he was a commander ? in naval reserves and fighting his weight to stay in.

    If they want to make good money, Chemical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering. If they want to make awesome money then Petroleum Engineering. Very competitive though.

  36. medium wave says:

    Maybe Holder could swing by Chi-town on his way to Ferguson:

    Seven Killed, 29 Wounded In City Shootings Over Weekend

  37. SteveF says:

    I was also taught that a head shot is a guaranteed serious investigation of the scene with probable arrest no matter what the circumstances.

    Unless those circumstances include “GTFO without being identified”. Problematic for a uniformed cop in a cop car, I’ll admit.

    My thought on the Ferguson incident: practically everyone involved was and is wrong. Punk-ass-criminal thug, panicky or murderous cop, mob of animals braying for loot and vengeance, scumbags in DC looking to further destroy the country. So far as I know the medical examiner did nothing worth criticism, but that’s about the only exception I see.

  38. SteveF says:

    Son#1 is about to start senior year in ChemE. Just finished a summer internship with 3M in Minneapolis-St Paul. Got a job offer (contingent on graduation, of course) for more than his mother is making. (If she gets her next promotion, assuming a position ever opens up, that will no longer be true. But she has a couple decades of work experience and he’s obviously just starting out.)

    Son#2 is about to start sophomore year in as-yet-undifferentiated engineering, but had to think long and hard about going back. Not because he’s flunking out but because the Navy has been recruiting him really hard to join their nuke operator program. $50k sign-up bonus, two years of training (including a stint just up the road from here, by chance), then (I think) a five-year commitment. He had to think really hard to turn that down.

    As I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t really mind helping them with their tuition so long as they’re in worthwhile majors, with “worthwhile” defined as “will let you earn a good living”. So far it seems to be working out.

  39. Lynn McGuire says:

    Unless those circumstances include “GTFO without being identified”. Problematic for a uniformed cop in a cop car, I’ll admit.

    Our senior range instructor said always assume that a camera is recording you nowadays. He also said that if you are approached by someone who is scaring you then throw your hands in the air and yell, “stop, stop, stop”. If they keep on advancing then shoot them if you cannot escape.

  40. SteveF says:

    That’s a reasonable assumption, but there are countermeasures. Broad-brimmed hat*. Preferably a broad-brimmed hat with strobing IR LEDs.**

    I’ll admit I seldom do this myself. I hate wearing a hat. Should get over it, but haven’t yet.

    * Make sure you have a bunch, in different styles, in your closet so you can ditch one if needed.

    ** Yes, there are IR filters for cameras, but I think they are not in common use. I’m not sure if that’s because the typical federal grant-driven procurement cycle is long, because the filters interfere with clarity, or some other reason. It’s also possible my info is out of date and many cameras in public areas can’t be blinded with IR strobes.

  41. Lynn McGuire says:

    “DOJ: Over 40 FBI Agents Investigating in Ferguson”
    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/08/18/DOJ-Over-40-FBI-Agents-Investigating-in-Ferguson

    Are you kidding me, over 40 federal agents investigating this nightmare? This is crazy. The cop had better lawyer up big time as they need something to justify all this manpower. Uh oh, those big time lawyers require big money up front, uh oh. I would be surprised if the cop is making more than $35K/year. He should have lots of money for a lawyer.

    Oh wait, I keep on forgetting, we are living in Heinlein’s crazy years. Only a couple of more years until the prophet takes over the USA.

  42. OFD says:

    Wait–I thought The Prophet, many blessings be upon him, had already taken over the USA…

    Saw on FaceCrack just now that others besides me are predicting Obummer will somehow snag a third term; one look at both the Dem and Repub contender lineups and one might heartily wish he DOES get the third term; the devil we know theory being operative here…

    The nooz cycle right now is all over Ferguson but heavy stuff is going down in Iraq and Ukraine, too; one wonders what really serious shenanigans are being worked on Wall Street and with the banksters and finance wizards…

    Engineering? R U serious? Get into high finance and banking; that’s where the big money is. Why fuss with blueprints and diagrams and oil fields when you can tweak some pooter systems software and make a few phone calls.

    Job phone screen in the AM and then a different interview Wednesday…

    IT gigs seem to be picking up again for some reason around here…

  43. Miles_Teg says:

    Nuclear power from thorium looks promising from a safety point of view, but at the moment it isn’t that feasible financially. I’m surprised our host thinks solar is/might become feasible. I thought it was just your typical green/left wing nutcase obsession.

    What about wind power?

    I hope the people who shut down Vt Yankee volunteer to be the first to freeze to death when the power goes off… 🙂

  44. MrAtoz says:

    Ruh Roh! This is not looking good in Ferguson.

    More than a dozen witnesses have backed up the account of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the controversial shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, police sources reportedly told St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Christine Byers.

    I hope there is at least a couple of black people who say that.

  45. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I’m surprised our host thinks solar is/might become feasible. I thought it was just your typical green/left wing nutcase obsession.

    I’m about as far from green/left wing as you can get.

    What makes me think that solar has a big future is the rapidly declining cost and rapidly increasing efficiency of solar cells. Insolation provides up to a kilowatt per square meter, and new generations of solar cells are capable of capturing and converting an increasingly high percentage of that to usable electric power.

    As Lynn points out, there are issues that need to be dealt with, but none of them are showstoppers. Engineering can deal with all of them. I foresee a day not too far off–probably 30 years or less–when our electrical grid will distribute power from millions of residential and business producers and traditional power plants will no longer be needed to cover base load. That role will be filled by excess capacity in all those millions of homes and businesses, both by direct output and stored output.

  46. Chuck W says:

    Now I need to get rid of the Amazon ad on the third home window.

    I use AdBlock. It works on most things. Works on everything if you are willing to root the phone, but people tell me about ads they see on the Internet and their phone, however, I never know what they are talking about, because I do not see any.

  47. Miles_Teg says:

    I’ve been hearing down here from fairly reputable sources that power companies over-invested in poles and wires (over-invested because less electricity is flying around the grid and more is being generated where it is used: individual homes.) It also doesn’t help that a number of aluminium smelters have closed up shop.

    I’m paying about 1/3 more per Kw in Adelaide than I was in Canberra. And it used to be official state government policy to have cheap power.

    A few years ago solar panels for homes were hugely subsidized by government. The government started reducing the subsidies when so many people took up the offer, and also started feeding electricity into the grid at hugely boosted prices.

  48. Lynn McGuire says:

    I foresee a day not too far off–probably 30 years or less–when our electrical grid will distribute power from millions of residential and business producers and traditional power plants will no longer be needed to cover base load. That role will be filled by excess capacity in all those millions of homes and businesses, both by direct output and stored output.

    The grid will have to be totally rebuilt in order for that to happen. The grid is only designed for one way distribution of power. From large power generators to you. To be able to force power back into the system is tricky since small generators are typically single phase and power distribution / transmission systems are three phase. You need a three phase inverter or a motor-generator set in order to convert from single phase to three phase is just the first problem. There are several other problems.

  49. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Yep, but as I said they’re just engineering problems. Engineers figure shit like this out. It’s what they do.

  50. Ray Thompson says:

    To be able to force power back into the system is tricky since small generators are typically single phase and power distribution / transmission systems are three phase.

    Homes and small businesses only use one of the phases referenced to ground. To attach a single phase system back into a three phase system you only attach to one of the phases. It is still 60 cycle so sending power back into the grid should not be a problem.

    My brother in Victorville CA has solar panels on his roof that many times generate more power than he can use. The excess is sent back into the grid without any difficulties as he is only sending power on a single phase. The distribution system to the area where he lives has three phase at the pole. His transformer is only attached to a single phase.

    The problem would become more of an issue at the main distribution (receiving) point where the amount of power on the phases is not balanced if that is even a problem. With a few thousand homes at any one time one of the phases would always be slightly out of balance but averaged out it may not be an issue.

  51. Chad says:

    It seems excess power could be best spent producing hydrogen from water and storing it rather than sending it back to the grid. That way you have a sufficient supply of hydrogen for power generation in inclement weather, at night, or during especially high usage. It seems more prudent to store all of your excess power than to sell it to the power company. Granted, I’m sure there are all sorts of hurdles to overcome to make residential hydrogen production and storage feasible.

  52. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    There are two major problems with storing hydrogen, both related to the fact that it’s a very light and very small molecule. The very small part means it’s very difficult to contain hydrogen without it leaking. The very light part means that it’s not very volume efficient. At STP, one mole of molecular hydrogen gas occupies 22.4 liters of volume, but weighs only 2 grams. There’s not all that much heat value in 2 grams of hydrogen. If you compress it to, say, 10 atmospheres (~147 psi), that 2 grams of hydrogen still occupies 2.24 liters, so it takes a pretty big pressure vessel to contain enough hydrogen to be useful.

  53. Miles_Teg says:

    If I generate power at home and want to feed it back into the grid is it easy to synchronize the phase/s of my power with the phase/s of the grid?

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