Merry Christmas Everyone

Merry Christmas Everyone!!
I hope everyone has a good holiday season and a Happy New Year.
In case anyone reading this finds themselves wondering what Christmas is about, please continue reading. All will become clear.1 And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. 2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.) 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn. 8 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.From the Gospel according to Luke, Chapter 2, Verses 1-14 (King James Version).
I encourage you all to read the rest of the story. If you don’t happen to have a Bible, you can find it online here:
This will be my last blog post till after Christmas. Tune in again next week for another thrilling installment of The View From the Bottom!

Merry Christmas!

King James Bible Version Online – KJV Bible Study Tools

We don't have any Answers....YET!

I’m going to expound one more time on this subject, then move on to something else. Environmental and economic issues are enormous, extremely complicated matters.  I don’t care who you are, you can not accurately predict the long term effects of any process, system, product, chemical, or anything else a human does.  Just look at the ads for all the new drugs that you see on TV.  Most of them boil down to “if you survive the taking the first dose, this drug may help your problem.”  Twenty years from now, when your ears turn green and your left foot falls off, we’ll have come up with a therapy for that and a new drug that will cause other problems.

So what do we do?  Should we find a transportation fuel that doesn’t involve oil?  Absolutely.  Everything on this planet that is not alive and growing is finite.  This is a closed system folks.  We will run out of oil at some point.  Today, next week or a century from now, no one knows, but it will happen.  Is our global climate changing?  Of course it is.  It always has. Are our cars causing it? Who knows?  Archeology and paleontology have proven that the climate has changed many times in the life of this rock we live on.  In relative terms, humans have been on earth a very short period of time.  For many thousands of years, the science and technology of humans was centered on either hunting, gathering, farming, or war with other humans.  Early man had no way to record temperatures even after written language came along.  If he was uncomfortably cold, he put on more clothing and built a bigger fire.  If he was hot, he  removed some clothing and that was about it. Galileo came up with the first instrument resembling a thermometer in 1593 and it wasn’t until 1714 that man had a reliable mercury thermometer, thanks to Gabriel Fahrenheit.  Real science as we know it today has only been in existence for a century or so.  A century, by comparison, is a blink of an eye. From what is regarded as the modern age, the first division in the past is known as the Pleistocene period, and starts roughly 12,000 years ago, and stretches back two and half million years.  Now, if the divisions on the scientist’s calendar cover such enormous spans of time, how can anybody cite a few decades of records as a trend?  The next division on this chart, starts at the 2 ½ million year ago mark, and extends some 18 million years farther into the past.  If you look at this chart, which covers some two billion years of earth’s history, you will see that the normal condition of the earth is much hotter than it is now.  In fact, there are only 3 rather brief periods in the entire charted time that the earth has been as cool as it is now.  If you’d like to see the chart I’m talking about, it’s located here:  http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm

Seems to me that if this chart is correct, we are not on the verge of a man-made crisis, but a return to “status quo” by mother earth.  That is not to say that it won’t be problem.  This chart shows the current age at an average temperature of 11 or 12°C, or roughly 51 to 52°F.  There are millions and millions of years represented on this chart where the average temperature is above 17°C (62.6°F) ranging up to 25°C (77°F). If that happens, the doom and gloom predictions of coastal flooding will become a reality.   During the Eocene period, some 38 million years ago, palm trees grew in Alaska and alligators lived in swamps near the North Pole. If it gets that warm again, there’ll be no need to worry about the Panama Canal, the land bridge from North to South America will be under water. Needless to say, all that valuable coastal property that everyone loves today won’t have much resale value.  All the apocalyptic television writers and followers of Al Gore would have you believe that we are going to wake up some morning just to learn that the top of the Empire State Building is now 10 feet below the surface and that the end of the world has come. That may happen, but you and I won’t live to see it. And it won’t be sudden.  Sea levels will rise, useable land masses will get smaller and there will have to be a fundamental shift in how and where people live.

The question remains though as to whether man is causing the calamity.  I don’t think so, but I think we are contributing to it.  A return to the “hot box” the dinosaurs knew is inevitable. Our use of fossil fuels and subsequent release of greenhouse gasses may serve to hasten it along, but I don’t believe it is the cause.  It has all happened before, and it will all happen again.

In the mean time, we can find or create other energy sources.  We can improve how we consume them. Let’s put these magnificent brains to work and find something.  The guy from Dyson Vacuum cleaners says that they try to fix the obvious problems that others ignore or words to that effect.  Come on folks, the automobile is more than a century old and it still uses a piston engine?  Surely we can beat that.  Everyone thinks that nuclear technology is so advanced, but when it comes right down to it, we split an atom to release all that energy, and the best we can do is use it to boil water to turn a steam turbine!  We must be better than that.

America has led the way since her creation in industry, medicine, science…everything.  Of late we’ve become obsessed with improving the conveniences of life instead of life itself.  Look at how televisions and telephones have changed just in the last 20 years.  We have surround sound and LED displays in our cars. We have different temperature zones in our cars.  Satellite navigation because we can’t find our way to the office and back, heated seats, all that, and yet, the technology that moves it down the road is much the same as it was a century ago. Oh yes, it’s much improved…more horsepower, all sorts of emission controls, computer intervention in almost every facet of its operation. But its principle remains unchanged.  Inject some mixture of gasoline and air, compress that mixture, ignite it with an electric spark, and allow the resultant explosion to push a piston down to turn a shaft, that makes the wheels go round.  We’ve been happy with that for a good long time, but it’s past time to move on.  Lets find a better way to get there folks. Lets look forward, not backward. Bicycles are great, but they won’t fix the problem anymore than using CF or LED lights instead of incandescent bulbs.  Forward…kick that American spirit in gear and fix this.

What IS the answer?

Just watched a program on TV about Alaska and the effects climate change is having on the wildlife there.  Still beating the global warming drum, these folks are, and there is no doubt in my mind that the climate is changing.  There is lots and lots of photographic evidence of where glaciers have melted.  Whole valleys that 50 or 100 years ago were full of ice that are now down to bare rock. Can’t argue that, it is obvious that its gone.  What gets me is that all these scientists are saying that every single person on earth contributes to global warming, so every single person has to contribute to fixing it.

Ok, so what would they have us do?  I agree that we all waste a lot of energy and water.  We can make conscious efforts to turn off lights, not leave the water running while we brush our teeth, etc.  That will make us aware of the problem, but it won’t fix it.  “Stop driving those polluting SUV’s!”….Ok, what do you do with it?  Trade it in for what…a Prius?  Manufacturing the battery bank for one hybrid or  “all electric” car does far more damage to the environment than a full size pickup will do burning gasoline or diesel over its lifetime, but you never hear about that.  You will never see any serious push by government entities to switch to an alternate “clean” fuel until a reliable way can be established to tax it.   What?  What does that have to do with anything you say?  Think about it folks…the biggest portion of the price of a gallon of gasoline is the various city, county, state, and federal taxes.  Until a method comes along to tax cars by the miles they are driven, governments are not going to give up their cash cow.   Think about the economic impact it would have if someone came up with a little black box you could attach under the hood and instantly double the fuel economy of any engine.  That would be great, right?  Except that it would have the instant effect of cutting tax revenue generated by “per gallon” sales in half as well.  Who cares, right?  Just be that much less that the politicians can’t waste or steal.  Sorry folks, it don’t work that way.  They will continue to waste and steal, but you won’t get your roads built and maintained, they’ll have to cut back on traffic safety programs and even fire and police protection.  Everything that lives off these tax revenues will suffer, except the waste and theft.

Back to the point of this bit however…what to do about climate change.  Do we suddenly reject all technology, go back to subsistence farming and hunting and gathering? Some of us can do that, but billions of people will starve trying to live that way. Inner city folks can’t farm, and there’s nothing to hunt or gather, so that won’t work.  Most of us can’t live within walking distance of where we work.  Round here, and throughout most of the south, public transportation is limited, so that’s out.  Agriculture makes up a big part of the south’s economy, as well as the Midwest and western states. That means trucks, tractors and other large equipment.  Farmers are just like everyone else…it makes no sense to have a several special purpose vehicles.  You know, a truck to use on the farm, but a little bitty car to run to town in.  You buy one pickup truck that will do it all.  We all gotta have heat in the winter, and most of us think that air conditioning in summer is a necessity. So what do we do?  The inner city folks are dependent on the farmers for food, so that means lots of trucks to bring food to the stores, and cars to get to the stores.  And of course, they will have to have jobs in offices and factories to make the money to pay for the food, so they are pretty well stuck.  These offices and factories will use lights and water and all sorts of chemicals and things, so what do we do?

You can’t let people starve to death.  Can we be more conservative?  Sure, we can and should.  Can we all just give up modern life and go back to being cavemen?  Of course not.  Wouldn’t even if we could.  We got all sorts of folks pointing out the problem.  How about some real solutions?

Biofuels aren't the answer, but they can help

Sometimes I have to wonder what, or even if people are thinking.   Everybody, myself included, decries using foreign oil, but nobody wants to use our own oil.  With our economy so dependent on something someone else owns, we’ve set ourselves up for disaster.  Yet we refuse to develop our own oil fields for whatever reason.  I guess we are saving them for a time when everyone else runs out.  Sure, deep water drilling is dangerous.  Everything to do with oil is dangerous.  We need something new…a new fuel source.

Some run to battery power.  Electric cars are the way.  If you are looking to reduce damage to the earth, electric cars are far more damaging to the earth than oil.  Lithium mining is probably the most damaging to the earth thing that humans do, save maybe nuclear weapons testing.  Others will suggest ethanol.  Great idea, in that it is renewable, doesn’t damage the earth much, is safe to handle and transport (well, at least as safe as gasoline) and all that.  The naysayers cry that it reduces our food supply, drives up feed costs for farmers and causes widespread starvation.  That’s assuming that the ethanol has to be made from corn. Still others rightly so say that not all cars can burn ethanol without damage to the engine. This is true, but fixable.  Change out the gaskets and a few other parts, and while you’re at it do a ring and valve job and you practically have a new engine.  Having to do this is interesting, because every major car company in the world already makes the cars that are ready for ethanol.  Have since the 80’s…they sell them in South America.  Most of the cars in South America already run either on E85, or  pure ethanol.  So why haven’t they been doing that here?  You can probably figure that out.  If not, I will put forth a theory later.

Let’s talk about the food thing for a minute.  Using ethanol for fuel would have very little impact on food prices if you make ethanol out of sugar instead of corn.  Where would we get the sugar, you ask?  Simple…sugar beets.  A crop not commonly grown in this country anymore, but would not be hard to get started in most states.  What I’m about to tell you is simply information easily gathered from various agricultural websites. I do not profess that it is the absolute truth, nor to I claim to be an expert on any of these matters.  I’m just a guy with an idea that if put in practice could help with our dependency on foreign oil, create a few jobs, and actually improve the environment.

Just for discussion purposes, let us assume that a mere 300,000 acres of beets were planted. This number, by the way, is the approximate amount of land wasted on growing tobacco in this country, but that’s a whole different topic.  Most of the government and agricultural websites I visited say that you can expect a yield of between 12 and 25 tons of beets per acre per year.  They go on to say that a large portion of the beet’s weight is sugar, and that it’s common for the extraction process to recover 10-20% of the total weight in sugar.  To make it simple, 100 pounds of beets will give you 10-20 pounds of sugar, which will yield 1 to 1.5 gallons of fuel grade ethanol.  Put another way, if we assume a 15 ton per acre (or 30,000 pounds) yield, you can get approximately 3000 pounds of sugar, which in turn would yield 300 gallons of ethanol per acre. Back to our 300,000 acres above, that’s 90,000,000 gallons of fuel.

What impact would this have?  A barrel of crude oil (42 gallons) will yield approximately 20 gallons of gasoline or roughly 2 gallons of oil per gallon of gasoline. Our 300,000 acres of beets would save something between 4-4 ½ million barrels of oil.  Granted, that’s not a huge contribution, but these numbers are just an example. Added to that, the pulp left over from extracting the sugar and the “tops” as they are called, the green leafy part above the ground are excellent ingredients for animal feeds and organic fertilizer.  This could help bring feed costs down and make food more affordable.

It is estimated by some of the naysayers that if all the fallow farmland in the United States were converted to growing various biofuels, that realistically we would only gain 8-14 % of our total energy needs.  Ok, so it’s not a magic bullet, but why not do it?  What would we have to lose? That would be 8-14% that we didn’t buy from overseas, it would keep our farmers working, keep Americans employed.  Nearly any car can handle up to about a 25% gasoline/ethanol blend.  Just to make sure, keep the mix at 10-15%, and no one should have a problem with it. 

Biofuels like ethanol and bio-diesel are certainly not the be all and end all for our fuel needs.  They can provide some relief both environmentally and economically at a time when we desperately need both.

So, why not?

Superman has it easy...try being Santa

Ever wonder what it takes for a mild mannered, ordinary guy to turn into a super-hero?  We’ve all seen what Batman goes through.  Takes  millions of dollars and the backing of a huge development corporation. Poor Spiderman, had to get bit by a radioactive brown recluse.  Superman was born that way and has it easy.  He wears a leotard under his clothes and strips in phone booths.  There’s one super hero who’s never had much documentation up till now, at least in how he transforms.  We all know him, we all love him….he’s……Santa Claus!  What’s this?  You don’t think Santa is a super hero?  He’s had to battle the weather (he does live at the North Pole, you know), Martians, Godzilla, and Billy Bob Thorton.  He gets all over the world in one night, eats tons of cookies, drinks truck loads of milk and still gets down chimneys.  If that ain’t superhero stuff, I don’t know what is.  Today, we go behind the scenes to see what it takes for the man in red to get prepared for the task.    First up, the Elves:

   

The Elves are the real heros that make it all possible.

And  of course every operation has a few  trainees or in this case….Elflettes:

Gotta have a planning session for any successful operation.

Construction begins:

And finally, the finished product:

Trust me folks…Superman has it easy. 

Mom always said be safe, pay attention, look both ways....sound advice always!

Today’s blog post won’t be about any world events or goofy politicians.   Influenced by a relative’s accident this morning, I’m gonna talk about safety, particularly concerning how to stay safe around machinery. 

The term “machinery” can apply to many things.  To most people it conjures up images of factories, or large bits of farm equipment. All true and applicable, but keep in mind that this also includes car engines, home appliances, lawn and garden tools, and even bicycles and exercise equipment. The simplest definition of machine is “any mechanical or electrical device that transmits or modifies energy to perform or assist in the performance of human tasks”.  A lever is the simplest machine known to man.  With the right lever, you can move about anything.  When you add the power of belts and pulleys, you can create machines that move either themselves, other things or both.  The power in even the simplest machines can be staggering, and in modern ones, there is almost no limit to the work that can be done with them.

By the same token, once set in motion, it’s very difficult to stop one.  Take for instance a car engine.  In most cases, we never think about what’s going on under the hood.  We turn the key, go where we need to go, and turn it off.  Some of us never even look under the hood.  If you do venture under there, beware, danger lurks all around. These troubled economic times are bringing out the good old American “do it yourself” attitude again and while this is in my opinion a good thing there are hazards under  the hood that you should be aware of.  Automotive engineers never give any thought to the safety and well being of the poor mechanic that has to work on this marvelous creation.  Well, I shouldn’t say that, they do shroud the engine fan, making it difficult to come in contact with it. But there are near razor sharp edges all over the place, and very little room to work making it easy to skin knuckles and cut yourself. Most of these injuries will be relatively minor and some antiseptic and a bandaid will take care of most of the damage you may inflict on yourself.  However, the very nature of what this modern marvel does requires that a great many pulleys and belts be exposed while the engine is running.  This is not usually a problem, since the hood is closed during normal operation.  Once in a while, however, there are certain repairs and adjustments that must be made while the engine is running and this puts the person working on it at considerable risk.  A split second of not being aware of where your hands are and you can find yourself on the way to the emergency room.  The accident I mentioned above…poor guy got two fingers caught in the fan belt.  This resulted in a partial amputation of those two fingers.  Extremely painful, and expensive to say the least.  It will take a long time for him to get used to those two fingers being an inch shorter, but at least he will recover and get on with his life.

Belts and pulleys are found on all sorts of stuff, and every single one of them demands your respect and undivided attention when working around them, especially if they are in motion.  Remove or secure loose clothing (sleeves, shirt tails, long hair, etc) before starting the job. Arrange your tools so that they are easy to reach, or in a place that requires you to step away from the moving parts to retrieve them. Please make certain that you are aware of where your hands and all other parts are.  Don’t reach across a moving pulley, and don’t let yourself  get off balance and fall near one.   And never, ever reach through a belt or chain that is moving or could be energized some way.  If you do any of these things, you quite possibly will sustain permanent disfiguring or dismembering injuries.  Chains and sprockets are even more unforgiving. Stop the machine before attempting to retrieve dropped tools or parts. One final bit of advice…never wear gloves around moving pulleys or belts.  Gloves are a bad idea around any rotating parts…spindles, shafts, pulleys, sprockets, axles, anything like that.   Be aware of where you are and what you are doing at all times while working on these machines and you’ll walk away with all your parts.  Get careless, inattentive, or clumsy, and you risk losing them.

Crazy News

You can hear a lot of crazy stuff if you listen.   I don’t mean some nut job mumbling to himself in the mall or something like that, I’m talking about stuff that will actually get on the news.  Government officials, reporters, people getting interviewed, even business press releases, that sort of thing.

Take for instance this past week a man in Philadelphia who offered an ounce of marijuana as a reward for information leading to the recovery of his stolen laptop. When this didn’t get an response, he upped it to  “a fabulous drug stash”.  Neither he nor the police have any leads in the case.  Oh, what about the drugs you ask?  The article goes on to say that the guy was just trying to get attention to the cause, and that he didn’t seriously offer any drugs.  You can read about it here if you wish:  Drugs as reward for stolen laptop.

And of course you got all the craziness surrounding the Wikileaks thing.  There’s no way for the general public to ever know what that’s all about. The truth is out there….somewhere.  No need to post a link for this, it’s on every news site on the web, knock yourself out.

About the stupidest thing I’ve heard today though comes from somewhere besides Washington DC if you can believe that. No, really!!  You can read about this here:  Shark Attack.   This comes from the Middle East…Egypt to be precise.  Seems that an Egyptian government official, whose name I can neither spell nor pronounce has pointed a finger at Israel in what, if true, could be the most amazing bit of animal training ever achieved.  It seems that there are a number of Red Sea beaches that have been closed for several days due to shark attacks.  Such attacks are reportedly very rare at these particular locations and have resulted in the death of one swimmer and a number of others severely injured.  This is of course a terrible tragedy, but to make it worse, Egyptian officials apparently believe that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad is somehow responsible for making these sharks attack these tourists.  Dogs have been trained for millennia to be weapons, as have horses and a few other animals.  There are those who believe that our own Navy has experimented with using dolphins for nefarious purposes, but this takes the cake folks. Training fish to attack people?  Come on…you can’t be serious.  I am no shark expert by any stretch of the imagination but from what I’ve been able to gather, sharks are not deep thinkers.  Eat, mate, swim…that’s about it.  The decision making process is pretty well limited to fight or flight, and “is that something to eat”.  Fight or flight depends on what it is and how many of them there are, and the eating question is usually determined by biting the object in question.  If it tastes good, it gets eaten, if not, spit it out and look for something else.  The mating question is even simpler…if she doesn’t bite me, mate with her.  That’s about it folks.  You are not gonna train a shark to attack tourists.  They just ain’t that smart.

Trained attack sharks…right.