The week’s essay of the week comes from Gene Logsdon’s blog and it is called Bouncing In The Wool Sack.
Essay of the Week: 6/29/08-7/5/08
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Interesting Watching
First SAS Survival Secrets episode. Well worth watching if you have any interest at all in basic special forces craft. Unlike some many others this is realistic and not over the top.
More indebted then US households?
I guess this just goes to show that it could always be worse. From the Telegraph (h/t Calculated Risk)…..
British households are now more indebted than those of any other major country in recorded history, it has emerged.
Families in the UK now owe a record 173pc of their incomes in debts, official figures have shown. The ratio of debt to income is higher than any other country in the Group of Seven leading industrialised economies, and is sharply higher than the 129pc of incomes it was five years ago.
The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics as part of its National Accounts, underline the scale of the coming slowdown facing the UK, economists warned yesterday.
Michael Saunders of Citigroup warned that – at 173pc of household incomes – the debt burden is higher even than Japan’s when it peaked in 1990, before more than a decade of deflation.
“Not only are we the highest in the G7, we are the highest a G7 country has ever seen,” he said.
Could we please try raising rates?
From MarketWatch.…
Crude-oil futures climbed to unprecedented levels Thursday, as weakness in the U.S. dollar, influenced by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to stand pat on interest rates, sent prices to a peak above $140 a barrel.
I don’t think that raising rates are going to cure all the economic problems we face. I don’t think there is a quick cure for all the economic problems we face. But when you depend on the rest of the world for financing, I really think that ignoring the value of your currency is a big mistake.
Ave Maria is a favorite?
It is common knowledge in the Ethereal Land that the Japanese have expensiveness tastes in toilets. But I never would have guessed that it was popular in Japan to play a catholic prayer while making potty noises.
There is a hiccup, though, in this world-beating record. It happens inside the Japanese home, where energy use is surging. And nothing embodies the surge quite like the toilet — a plumbing fixture that has been reengineered here as an ultracomfy energy hog.
Japanese toilets can warm and wash one’s bottom, whisk away odors with built-in fans and play water noises that drown out potty sounds. They play relaxation music, too. “Ave Maria” is a favorite.
High-end toilets can also sense when someone enters or leaves the bathroom, raising or lowering their lids accordingly. Many models have a “learning mode,” which allows them to memorize the lavatory schedules of household members.
Poem of the Week: 6/22/08 – 6/28/08
This week’s poem of the week is On Growing Old by John Masefield.
Rant of the Week: 6/22/08 – 6/28/08
According to the Belmont Club, Israel is mortgaging its future to gain a little diplomatic leverage.
Essay of the Week: 6/22/08 – 6/28/08
This week’s essay of the week is Terminated by T. M. Shine. Also worth checking out is his website where more good writing can be found.
Running a car on water?
Based on some of the comments following my post on the “water car”, I think several people misunderstood the point. It was not to debunk the water car. You can in fact run a car with water as one of the reactants. I could even run a car on crushed ice or Jell-O, if I used the right second reactant.
My point was merely to show how a car could be run on water, and to further point out that it requires a second, very reactive substance. In other words, the “water car” is not running solely on water. The other point was that the reactive substance will always take more energy to produce than you will get back from splitting the water. That’s simply pointing out the thermodynamics. It doesn’t mean that there might not be times that it makes economic sense to do this – just that there is much more to the story than a car that runs on water.
I always thought that running car on water was just a myth cooked up by conspiracy buffs. Turns out, it can be done in theory, but it is just not economical because of the cost of the reactants.
Growing Your Own Diesel
“I have to grow 500 acres of 100 bu. per acre milo to net enough money to buy all the fuel I need for my farm. But it takes only 100 acres of sunflowers to grow all the fuel I need for my farm – about 11,000 gal. of oil.
“I paid a total of $6,000 for the press and engine. It doesn’t take many gallons of fuel to pay that back.”
According to McAmoil, growing your own biodiesel fuel is far more practical than using cooking or vegetable oil. “There isn’t enough restaurant oil within a 100-mile radius of my farm to operate my diesel-powered equipment for even two days. A lot of farmers in the High Plains are starting to buy presses so they can grow their own fuel. One farmer is looking at buying several presses so he can operate five different irrigation engines, using 50,000 to 60,000 gal. of biodiesel fuel per year. He’ll hire someone to operate them full-time all year long.
This almost sounds to good to be true. But it is common knowledge that you can run a diesel engine off of vegetable oil. So why not off of oil that you press at your farm?
If you read the full article, you will see that the guy adds some gasoline to the mixture so it is not 100% homegrown. Still, this could be the wave of the future.
Admittedly, it is still turning food into fuel, but it does so in a manner that is a lot more practical then ethanols. For one thing there is no fermenting. The oil is being pressed out of the crops and being used in the tractors will only a little gasoline being added. Moreover, the left over mash is being feed to cattle.
Most importantly, this process is not being driven by government mandates. The guy did a straight up cost comparison between how much acreage he would have to plant to pay for diesel fuel and much acreage he would have to plant to grow his own fuel. The amount he would have to plant to grow his own fuel was less the amount of acreage he would have to plant to buy it.