"That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." - Aldous Huxley
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written by American author L. Frank Baum. The book was illustrated by William Wallace Denslow and he fought fiercely for his share of the royalties from the book and the stage play. The royalties allowed him to buy an island in Bermuda, Bluck's Island. He then crowned himself King Denslow the First.
A scandal in South Korea about bribery and faked safety tests for critical plant equipment in the nuclear power industry is growing. Bribery and personal loyalty seem to be rampant among suppliers and safety testing companies.
Germany leads the world both in installed solar generation and in closing nuclear plants. The closure of nuclear plants means Germany needs base-load generation that operates during all hours. And so new coal plants are surging in Germany--10 plants totaling 11,000 megawatts. Why is Germany investing so heavily in new coal plants and not natural gas units? There is no shale gas in Europe and so natural gas is expensive there. In fact, gas regularly costs about $10 for a thousand cubic feet across Europe, while last week gas cost about $3.30 in the United States. This creates a competitive advantage in the U.S. and manufacturing will move here as a result.
Who is....Ronnie Biggs?
Batteries have a mix of energy and power. Power is the rate at which energy is consumed, expressed in watts or kilowatts, energy is the amount of power consumed, expressed in watt-hours or kilowatt-hours. Batteries can be classified by their recommended discharge times which are typically measured in seconds, minutes or hours. Energy batteries like lithium-ion are typically used in applications where an electrical device like a computer, cell phone or EV needs a steady energy output to perform its function and the battery is big enough to run the device for one to five hours. Power batteries are typically used in applications where an electrical device like a starter motor, heavy truck or grid installation needs short bursts of power to perform its function and the battery is only big enough to run the device 15 to 60 minutes. Supercapacitors and flywheels typically can't run a device for more than a few minutes.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that forty percent of the world's population is at risk for dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever syndrome, and dengue shock syndrome. There are no approved antivirals or vaccines for the treatment or prevention of dengue fever. Dengue virus is a member of the Flaviviridae family, which are enveloped, positive-sense RNA viruses whose human pathogens also include West Nile virus, yellow fever virus, Japanese encephalitis virus and tick-borne encephalitis virus, among others. Dengue virus may be transmitted via the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is found in tropical and sub-tropical regions around the world. The Honduran government has declared a state of emergency after an increase in dengue cases.
There are 13,828 cases in the country.
Colony
Collapse Disorder has destroyed 10 million beehives in 6 years.
Scientists at the University of Maryland and the US Department of
Agriculture have identified a witch’s brew of pesticides and fungicides
contaminating pollen that bees collect to feed their hives. A parasite
called Nosema Ceranae
and pesticides that weaken bees ability to withstand the parasite are
now the leading suspect. The bad news is that this latest research does
not identify just one pesticide as the problem but suggests a "brew" of
pesticides that combine with the parasite is devastating bee colonies.
Golden Oldies:
China loves wine, but not to drink. They launder money through the industry, a report said. (Quartz, South China Morning Post)
What
is "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero,
Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten?"
It is an anagram of....."To be or not to be: that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the
mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.."
The World Bank and European Investment Blank have decided to not fund coal plants. None-the-less,"Coal
is now used to generate 40 percent of the world’s electricity, and its
use has grown more than 50 percent in the past decade, according to
EIA."(Bloomberg)
At
the peak of their power, up to 10 percent of Japan’s population was
samurai. Because of their large numbers and long influence in Japan’s
history, every single Japanese person living today is said to have at
least some samurai blood in them. While not common, women were allowed
samurai training and were called “Onna-Bugeisha." When remains from the site of the Battle of Senbon Matsubaru in 1580 were DNA-tested, 35 out of 105 bodies were female. Research on other sites has yielded similar results.
Analyst David Whiston at Morningstar Inc. in Chicago said that Johnson Controls is in the process of expanding its production capacity worldwide, an
investment of $520 million, to meet growing demand. The company is forecasting
50 million start-stop vehicles worldwide by 2017, up from 11 million last year.
Hot water freezes faster than cold water. It is not fully understood why. The effect, now known as the Mpemba
effect, was first noted in the 4th century BC by Aristotle, and many
scientists have noted the same phenomenon in the centuries since
Aristotle’s time. It was dubbed the Mpemba effect in the 1960s when schoolboy Erasto Mpemba
from Tanzania claimed in his science class that ice cream would freeze
faster if it was heated first before being put in the freezer. The
laughter ended only when a school inspector tried the experiment himself
and vindicated him. (One theory is that the hot water melts the frost
in the freezer--frost being an insulator--where the cold water does
not.)
In
Federalist No. 57, the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution, James
Madison, explained that the new nation would remain free only as long
as lawmakers had to live by the same laws they imposed on the public.
adiaphorous \ad-ee-AF-er-uhs\, adjective: Doing neither good nor harm, as a medicine. Adiaphorous is derived from the Greek, adiaphoros, meaning 'indifferent.'
A Hunger Games-themed summer camp that culminates in a tournament at which children fight to the "death"--flag capturing, actually-- has opened in Florida.
Duke
Energy has cancelled the building of Levy County, Florida nuclear
units. The price tag had reached $24.7 billion for 2,200 megawatts.
Everyone is upset that Duke has been billing its customers for the unstarted
project but the real story is the incredible cost. $24.7 billion for
2,200 megawatts works out to an astonishing $11 per watt or 11 times the
construction cost of gas plants and nearly 6 times the construction
costs of wind or solar farms. Nuclear may be simply too expensive a
source of power in this country.
Margaret Eby of New York's Daily News
deon writer Flannery O'Connor's pet peacocks: "When she was five years
old, she taught a pair of chickens to walk backwards, attracting the
attention of Britain's Pathe news. Over her life, she cared for ducks,
swans, and guinea hens, but the peacocks became her crowning
achievement. From the peahen and peacock pair that she purchased by mail
order in 1952 flourished a cackling crowd of peafowl. They snacked on
the fig trees out back, pecked at the roses, and trailed their long,
dazzling tails through the red Georgia dirt."
No comments:
Post a Comment