House of the rising Moonglum

If you think that we can retrofit our society to exist without oil, the refinery shut down in Scotland provides an educational example. The refinery shutdown has reduced fuel availability, thus stopping work on the large wind farm that is being constructed in Scotland. If we haven’t made good progress to a oil free system before oil becomes truly constricted we might not be able to build that alternative system.

Rather, the cost of converting will be larger than we are really willing to pay in human terms.

Streetview is a cancer that is taking over Illinois and Wisconsin.

For some reason that pic really creeps me out. Also, they have been doing a lot of driving around!

I’ve never been a big Edison fan. I’m more of a Tesla guy myself, but I think that is because I always root for the hard working underdog. I’ve lately been reading a couple of things from Edison though that make me appreciate his vision a lot more. Check this quote out from 1910:

Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I’ll do the trick myself if some one else doesn’t get at it. Why, that is all there is about my work in electricity–you know, I never claimed to have invented electricity–that is a campaign lie–nail it!

Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. Now the trick was, you see, to concentrate the juice and liberate it as you needed it. The old-fashioned way inaugurated by Jove, of letting it off in a clap of thunder, is dangerous, disconcerting and wasteful. It doesn’t fetch up anywhere. My task was to subdivide the current and use it in a great number of little lights, and to do this I had to store it. And we haven’t really found out how to store it yet and let it off real easy-like and cheap. Why, we have just begun to commence to get ready to find out about electricity. This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of–it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon.

When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy.

Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed.

Now, I am not sure but that my new storage-battery is the thing. I’d tell you about that, but I don’t want to bore you…

I love this quote on a number of levels. First, Edison was a Darwinian in 1910. (Or maybe that was just a metaphor.) Second, he is willing to slam on his own inventions. “The scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick.” I love that. Even just when generators are being invented he saw that burning resources was not the way to go. And such a simple metaphor, we burn up wood and coal as renters burn up the front fence. HA! That is great. (Of course he doesn’t mention another alternative to burning fuel which had been running since the previous decade.)

Still there is some vision there. Maybe the next book I read will be about Edison.

Turns out it is US 52/41. Round about Fowler’s Ridge. I travel to Indianapolis on a fairly regular basis, and I actually love the drive down I 65. In particular I love watching the seasons change in the farmland. Now that spring is here you can see the green starting to pop up everywhere. Unfortunately, the last time I went down there they had removed the bridge over I 80 near Merrillville. This involved some pain of surface roads in New Chicago and Merrillville. Not a good time. (And I thought Chicago roads were bad. These weren’t pot holes, these were craters.) So I decided to take an alternate route back.

I have to say that was a really enjoyable drive. The US highways were really well maintained, and the barely had any traffic at all. The speed limit was a little slower, but looking at my gas gauge, I think dropping from 75/80 to 65/70 seems to have really jacked up my mileage. (Normally I do 33 or so highway, but my first guesstimate for the return trip is somewhere in the upper 30s!) The nicer items though were the fact that the road is less separated from the towns you are driving through. You get to see a bit more of the scenery, even if you do have to slow down some. Also I got to see the (apparently still in construction) Fowler’s Ridge Wind Farm. (Looked for a good link, only found news articles, and it is so new I can’t even give you a satellite shot from google maps[1].)

The major disadvantage it the long distance between potential bathroom stops. You get used to a McDonald’s at every interchange on I 65.

1 – My favorite not in Google Maps yet is I 355. Turn the overlay on and off and you can see that wile the highway is there on the map, there are only minimal signs that there will be a massive new superhighway there.

Looks like we had some good weather this weekend. And one of them involved some idiot shooting an AK-47 at the police. I am amazed that they were able to bring that guy in, with no one injured.

Let’s hope this simmers down quickly.

Hey all, just catching up, so the next few posts will probably just be links. The North Coast has a post that pretty much sums it up: Republicans want to steal from everyone to give to the rich, while the Democrats want to steal from everyone to give to a slightly smaller group. The one group that just gets stolen from? Responsible members of society.

No disagreement here.

Going up to the spirit in the sky. I heard this song on 97.9 the other day and had to look it up. It totally rocks, especially the reverbed sting at the end of the verse. But when I heard it on the radio, while it sounds old, I just assumed that it was some modern rock inspired christian thing. Turns out it is a one hit wonder all the way back from 1969!! The wiki entry is awesome: “after watching Porter Wagoner on TV singing a gospel song. Greenbaum later said : “I thought, ‘Yeah, I could do that,’ knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes.” … In fact, the line “Never been a sinner, I never sinned” runs counter to the Christian concept of sin.”

I love it. It did sound a little odd to me, and if it really was old (and theologically correct) we would have been singing it in church when I was growing up. I mean we sang Cat Stevens every Easter. (Yes, I was raised in the wild by hippies.)

But back to this song. The guitar sound is so awesome, and was apparently generated by a home made effects box with a lot of homage to Jimi Hendrix. And the VIDEO!!!! Oh my good lord. The little flashes of the cross and the beach. The james bond backup singers. The trippy back and white matting. ALL DONE ON SUPER 8!!!!! I can’t even imagine how much thought and effort had to go into that drug induced extravaganza. Super 8 only came out four years earlier, so all those special effects had to be hand done, and all that fast switch MTV style cutovers had to be done by hand.

Theologically unsound, hand-built guitar effects, trippy gospel video, tons of effort on everything except for actually writing the song. I think I like it.

The New York Times did a very interesting article last month looking at the difference in standard of living of the quintiles of income in the US. The thing that makes this article particularly interesting is that rather than looking at income, which is a pretty standard measure of “standard of living” they look at how much is spent. It is very interesting in that is shows the difference in money spent between the quintiles is much lower than the difference between incomes. This implies that the effective standard of living is not as different as incomes would imply. The flip side of this of course is that those lower quartiles are much more susceptible to dips in the economy, since they rely more on readily available financing. Since the upper quartiles save more, they will be more able to withstand extended downturns in the economy, with the one exception that they do have a tendency to spend much more on their homes, and thus might be vulnerable in that regard.

While the article was interesting in and of itself from a financial perspective, I found the graphic to be of particular interest. The top half shows where the different quintiles spend their money, but the bottom half shows what major purchases are considered “essential” for modern life. I find that graph shockingly interesting. For one thing it gives me hope that we will make it through the coming oil apocalypse. Clothes washers didn’t pass 50% penetration until the mid 60s, dryers later and air conditioners didn’t even exist until the 60s. We did without some of the largest consumers of electricity through the 50s. Another item of interest is the dip below 50% of car penetration near 45. The real doozies will be the stove and the refrigerator. How did people cook in the 20s anyway? Only 20% penetration of the stove?

According to Crain’s (dead tree version, no link) Illinois landfill (unused) capacity is currently 1 billion cubic yards. My building generates 2 cubic yards a week, or about 100 a year. In 2006, Illinois landfills accepted 54.9 million cubic yards. That means my building generates .00002% of the waste in the state of Illinois. Interestingly Illinois recyclers report that they diverted 32.4 million cubic yards from the landfills. What does this all mean? Without recycling we have an excess of landfill of 11 years of garbage production, with recycling it is 19 years. It works!

Also, I recently discovered that “97.5% of structural steel beams and plates were recycled.[25] Other steel construction elements such as reinforcement bars are recycled at a rate of about 65%. (wiki)” Now if only we can make it so cost effective for other materials.

Jack Bauer’s Wife.
Jack Bauer’s Daughter.
Jack Bauer’s Friends.
Jack Bauer’s Co-workers.

In case you can’t tell, I have seen a couple more episodes of the first season of 24. It appears that the only people who are actually safe around Jack Bauer are the terrorists. Or as I like to say, “Put Jack Bauer in charge and the terrorists have already won.”

Also, I find it somewhat offensive that the Counter Terrorism Unit is trying to stop an assassination, and they don’t really seem to care that a whole jumbo jet blew up. And they keep calling the assassins terrorists. Assassin = kill important people. Terrorist = kill lots of people. Let the secret service take care of the assassins, and try to stop the terrorists from blowing up airplanes please.

One more item. I hope Obama never watched 24. It is kind of creepy to be watching with the current presidential primary going on.

I have been using Hulu a bit lately, more for the experience than anything else. However, after watching the first episode of the new Knight Rider and a couple other random things that I really don’t need to see any more of, I saw the first episode of 24. The interface is pretty slick, and the ads really aren’t that bad (5 ads for an entire TV show? Pretty ok IMO.) So I decided I would give it a spin and see if this is something that I really need to integrate into my life. I was going to watch the entire first season of 24 in Hulu. Well, just after I saw the third episode they decided, in their infinite wisdom, that they were no longer going to offer the first season. The last line of this article says it all. OK, people. I know you are control freaks, but please if you are going to offer something in online only format, LEAVE IT UP LONG ENOUGH FOR ME TO WACH IT!

I guess I’ll still prefer the iTMS.

So I have written about zoning in the 49th ward quite a lot in the past, but it looks like this might be the first time that it is close enough for me to actually care. Interestingly it appears that this one will go through without ever having seen the light of ZULAC (according to MHH). I saw a few notices up a couple months ago about meetings, but I think that was for the new condos down the street a bit. In any case, this is a change from B3-2 to C1-2. Not a major change, although B3 is supposed to be more of a destination, whereas C1 can be in the middle of a street. The fact is most of western is B3-2 anyway, except for the strip mall with Eng’s and the Blockbuster, and some B3-3.

Clearly there is some business that wants to go in there, but 7429-7435 is such a small stretch of street, it must be a specificbusiness. This is especially odd since there are some pretty good businesses bracketing it to begin with. Mainly, Lynn Dry-Cleaners, Computech, Phat Fades and the still trying to figure out what they are Alwayz Official Fashions. I admit I don’t go to those last two, but it seems like they do reasonable business. I wonder what they are going to put in that requires a stealth rezoning? I’ll be excited to see. I just hope it isn’t another Morse and Western “For Lease” building. Seriously, why would you build a business rental place without lining up at least one business ahead of time?