Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Something more mundane please... energy

What seems very clear is that if there is any chance of a transformation of the current economic atmosphere, is that it exists in the realization of a viable new means to generate energy.

Was watching something on public television about 'clean coal'. The majority of the electricity in the USA (and therefore likely the world) is generated by steam turbines where the heat for the steam comes from burning coal.

The thing that is interesting about 'clean coal' is that the technology seems to be capable of removing the greenhouse gasses from the coal burning process, but that the engineers thereof have not come up with a very viable way to *dispose* of the removed greenhouse gasses. They are talking about some wild crap where they pump it into the ground.

Now, at the same time, there are schemes for producing biodiesel by using algae. The oil from algae, more specifically. Algae is chock full of oil, it seems. It can also be 'tweaked' in a way that causes it to generate hydrogen, instead of oxygen. Algae needs a) nutrients b) carbon dioxide and c) water in order to grow, and it can be fresh or salt water.

So, clearly, the CO2 from clean coal could conceivably be used to grow algae, and thus produce biodiesel and biogenerated hydrogen.

Wouldn't that be something?

Saturday, October 18, 2008

expression

When I write, I try to let the words come 'naturally' and not think too much about what I will say next. Words are not very good complete expressions. There is a lot I need to express. So much comes out when you would like it not to, impressions and feelings come to the surface... "feelings" is not a very good word, neither is "emotions". More like psychico-emotive disruptions, or psychical vibrations... but that sounds ... "new age"....and so you have to write everything in "quote marks".

To experience psychico-emotive disruptions, where your interior self demands some expression, this is I think what I'm talking about.

There is likely a much better language than english for these sorts of things. "Angst", that is a good word, it sounds like it means, but then it's gotten stereotyped. Essentially, one's sorrow demands one's attention, one's perception of things not lovely interrupts one's need, not need-- one's societal obligation-- to continue in sanguinuity.

And so expression occurs. I cannot put it together in a blog.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Blogging is stupid. But, *how* stupid....?

I could write a lot of things that would be heartfelt, but which would not be good reading. I could write a lot of things that would be interesting, but likely not to you. I could express opinions, but nothing particularly original. I could start a lot of sentences with "I".

And so can you. As a matter of fact, so could everybody else with an internet connection. And you know what? They do. YES! it's true.

"It's" is the way to say "it is" with a contraction. The possessive for it is "its". The quote marks around those items indicate that I am isolating them from their more normal usage, and referring to them as objects of discussion.

I have a facebook account. I don't know why, exactly, but I do. However, I have found it's amusing. One thing that makes it amusing is that people have become my "friend" for no apparent reason. On myspace, it's apparent that people are trying to collect friends. On facebook, it is less apparent, because many of the people on facebook *actually know each other in real life*. YES! it's true. But also there are just people who pick off random friends.

Subsequently, somehow, a high school student has made me her friend. So I get these sporadic, inane updates on her activities and moods.

Now I see why older people say all the things about high school kids that they said when I was a high school kid. "Why do you have to have your hair hanging down in your face when you are such an attractive young person?" they would say. And, of course, the reason is that you do not believe that: in fact, you know for a fact that it is not so, because you see so many other people who are so much more attractive than you.

The other thing would be "Why do you want to seem older than you are?" and the answer would be that older people (not *too* old, mind you) get privileges that you cannot get.

Yet another thing would be "Why do you think you have to act like that?" and the answer would be "To get attention, and validation, because I am afraid, but I would never ever admit that."

So facebook away, young friends. You are much braver than I when I was your age. If it existed, I would not believe that anyone would be much interested in my facebook page.

more depressing stuff! ... not really

So there is a time you can worry, and a time you can live. Some people live to worry, others worry about living. There are a lot of serious things in the world to learn and write about. You will read none of them here, however, at least not substantively.

My hard disk on my oldest notebook died the other day, or at least it seems to have died. I installed Win XP SP3, and after installing, the system was taking a long time to shut down, so I powered it off.

This was a mistake, first in a series.

Whatever it was doing at that time was essential to it's restarting properly the next time. The next time, it gave me the XP splash screen, then nothing. It should've been showing me the user icons, to log in, but instead nothing.

So, my next mistake. I took the hard drive out of the notebook, and attached it to a USB to IDE adapter, in an attempt to attach it to another Win XP system to see if I could run a chkdsk on it.

That PC recognized the drive as a disk device, but did not assign a logical drive letter.

This led to a merry chase through the XP help screens to find out about mounting a disk and assigning a logical letter.

One the cusp of doing just that, it appears that the hard disk was not recognized as 'readable'. I'm not sure why that is, but I will eventually find out.

So, I will need a new hard disk for that drive.

Now, what I *should* have done was to dig out my Win XP disk from where ever it was, and used that to boot, then fixed the disk. But I could not find it readily, and I was impatient.

Bottom line, then, I should have been more patient.

I am taking this, then, as a lesson in patience. But I'm kind of rebellious, and that goes with being impatient, I guess. But at least I wasn't stupid, or at least I was narcissistic enough to believe that the musical content on that drive was worth saving, so the important data was backed up.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

ok so I will tell you some things...

There have been a lot of ideas that i've been struggling with. The notions of education versus intuition, and higher thought versus instinct and perception.

People are animals, yet people are transcendant animals somehow. What I believe and what I've been taught to believe and what I believe people believe based on what they need to feel and what the world is going to become and what is naturally, physically, problematically more or less certain...

all of these things in my head and heart.

Here is a thing which is a big thing. There are too many people on the planet, there are more people every day. There will be so many people in some places, very soon, that it will be very difficult for them. What happens when this happens?

We want everyone to be able to set a path towards happiness. Everyone has a right to do this, we say. But in many cases it is denied, or obstructed.

Who are we to say how happines happens for one or another?

People who tell people what to do without telling them why it needs to be done are despots, idiots, the living damned.

There was a thing during WWII I read about, this is simplified, but in general:

There was a material used to kill people in concentration camps, a powerful insecticide, Zyklon B. In order to 'deploy' it, there was a person dispatched to go pick it up from a depot, another who would deliver it to a storage point, another who would dispense it into an unmarked container (which was illegal), another who would take the unmarked container to another, and another who would take it to the top of a building and pour it into a hole.

When poured into the hole, it would be mixed with water and turned into a poison gas that would be dispensed through shower heads onto a crowd of people.

The reason for this complicated chain was to avoid culpability, to ensure that the technical illegality vis a vis the letter of the law was minimized. So in this chain of events, the only portion that was illegal by design was the portioning of the substance into unmarked containers. The person actually pouring the poison could not confirm or deny the nature, amount or potency of the substance being poured into the hole in the building, nor could describe where the substance poured down the hole really went.

No single point of complete knowledge, by design.

You should remember that, this is an important social mechanism.

had the most amazing dream...

I haven't been feeling very well, been fighting a cold. EVERY time the seasons change I start fighting a cold type thing. anyway... took a bit of Alka Seltzer liquid nighttime cold medicine last night...

and it worked pretty well, slept very well, and had the most amazing dream.

I've been thinking about my mom a lot, a lot. So I dreamed all these wild things about people that we both knew when I was growing up, that I was meeting them all again, in different contexts, and exploring places near where I lived that I had wondered about when I was just a kid.

There is a feature that recurs in my dreams, it's a big bridge. It is a bridge that goes waaaay up high, really high, in this amazing arc. In this dream, I was going across that bridge with people I love, my family, and I was driving. It was windy, and I was afraid to go over the bridge. It reminded me of some real things that had happened to me, driving on a very slippery road, or riding with someone on a very slippery road.

In this dream, the bridge had a bunch of different ways to go, an upper deck and a lower deck, but several of them, winding around almost. So I took the safest one. But it ended, in a construction site. We had to get out and walk! I was like... this is not real, but here we are, making good time. We were going to New York, Manhattan.

There was a construction crew, and they guided us through, several narrow turns and twists.

Then we came out onto this rooftop kind of restaurant/bistro, where there were people that were friendly, welcoming. They seemed familiar, like old neighbors, but that at the same time I did not recognize any of them. They seemed surprised, admiring, that we had made it this far.

But there was further to go, more rooftops to cross, we were in some kind of "not quite manhattan" place. However, this was a pleasant resting place, people where very friendly. This dream will continue later, another night, I think.

It was a wonderful dream, full of love, a bit of danger but good decisions made. I really enjoyed it.

I really enjoy my dreams most of the time.

If you are reading this, take some time to be with people you love. It's really a very good place to be. There is going to be a lot of pain in your life, and you really need to laugh and share with the people you love.