Man of Science, Man of Faith

As a public service, I’d like to line out some of the finer points of masonry technology. The basic building block of modern masonry products is portland cement.  It is the component that, when mixed with water, causes concrete and mortar to set up. As soon as water is added, it begins to cure. Portland is available as a singular component to allow mixing of your own cementatious products.

Mortar is made when portland is compounded with sand of various grades. It is used to join brick or block. It can also be used to set tile and other, for lack of a better term, stuff.

Concrete is a mixture of portland, sand, and aggregate. The aggregate is usually stone of various and sundry sizes. It’s the stuff you see driving around in ready-mix trucks.

So next time you go shopping for this stuff at your local big-box home improvement store,  do us all a favor and make sure you know what you want.

Because business is slow and I have bills to pay, I went out and got myself a job working for “the man.” And by “the man” I mean Lowes. On one hand, regular work scheduled by someone else blows a bit. On the other hand, I get money for my trouble. Decent trade, I figure.

After picking up a new hot surface igniter for a furnace, I was on my way back to the site of the aforementioned broken furnace when I realized that I don’t understand what it would be like to not fix stuff myself. I don’t give a second thought to cracking into a broken or malfunctioning appliance to attempt fixing the bugger. The notion of calling a repairman is mostly foreign to me – offhand, the only reason I can think of to call someone is to recharge an air-conditioner since it requires a license to handle the refrigerant. Silly EPA.

Under my roof, I will make every attempt to repair stuff that can be repaired. In my experience, all that stands between working and not working is a very simple repair.

All told, the furnace repair cost $33 plus a bit of fuel. Had I called an HVAC guy out to fix it, the total cost could have easily been $250. It took 10 minutes to do the repair and it was relatively simple as repairs go.

After too many years to mention, we here in the broadband no-man’s land finally have DSL. We and our neighbors literally ordered the week it was available. There has been much rejoicing. Ticker tape and confetti, even. Alright, that last bit might be an exaggeration.

The transition to DSL means that my venerable Citynet account will be closed after many years of faithful service. I’ve taken the opportunity to set up a proper blog where you, my faithful readers, can leave comments. You might have noticed the change. I have no idea how much attention anyone pays to my blog.

I may or may not decide to back post some of the material on my older blog.

The pickeroo domain is my own, I made it up last night about 9PM. I eventually plan to set up another blog, not personal in nature, that will cover badly designed stuff. By that I mean objects that are engineered in such a way as to either not be durable or that are simply dysfunctional when you take them out of the package. Keep an eye out for that.

I hate me the crappy engineering.

I won’t pretend that I’ve been so busy for the last month that I couldn’t possibly fit in a moment to write. I haven’t exactly been working 8 hour days and filling my spare time with lots of travel and/or overly exciting projects. The last two weeks have been somewhat more eventful than usual and I feel like mentioning the events.

Tuesday October 2nd, someone thought it would be a good idea to knife my tires. I don’t exactly feel like it was a random act since I was the only car on the street to get the vandalism treatment. On the other hand, I don’t know for sure that anyone on my list of suspects would go so far as to be out late on a Tuesday stabbing tires. One of the tires needed to be replaced anyway.

Sunday the 7th, I met up with Jenn and we went to see Junior Brown at the V Club. For those of you who know of Junior Brown, it would be redundant for me to tell you that the show was awesome. For the rest of you, the show was awesome. I wasn’t surprised to run into Michael Sullivan there and we caught up a bit, so that made for a good time.

Monday was Columbus Day and in accordance with time-honored tradition, the family got together and made this year’s batch of apple butter. Yeah, I know – who cares about some silly redneck tradition? Don’t knock it, though, until you’ve tried the product. It’s good stuff.

Friday I was back at the V Club with Jenn to catch The New Relics. I’ve heard a lot about these guys and it was cool to finally get to hear them play. While I was there I ran into Bud Carrol, so he and I spent a few minutes catching up even though we never really talked that much in high school. I think about the only thing we ever had in common was our mutual affection for Kelly Bader. Only he got to date her. I managed to lose my shot at that in 7th grade.

So that’s pretty much it. Business is slow, but I’m working some. If I could manage a job a day, I’d be pretty good at this point. I’m still looking for part-time work – not very hard, but I’m looking. I’m not particularly happy with my general living arrangements and I think that’s a good thing – it means I’m motivated to make a bigger effort to change them. I made some promises that I thought I could keep but haven’t been able to. That bothers me.

One of my very few goals today was to get my grubby paws on some Tazo Chai. In the past, Starbucks has provided the necessary “hook-up,” as the kids are calling it these days. With business to take care of at the mall and some time to fill, I wandered to Borders and once there noticed that they offer Tazo products. Can you see where this is going?

I like you Borders. There is something about your aroma of warm coffee and freshly minted books that makes me feel smarter just standing there among your volumes. Today, though, today, Borders, you let me down. Standing there today in the midst of your Tazo boxes with their many-colored seals, disappointment washed over me as I realized that you could not offer the orange-sealed box that my soul so desperately needed. Don’t fret though; our relationship is far from over. I forgive you and I hope you’ll forgive me for seeking fulfillment with Starbucks just this once.

Relax Borders. Starbucks just couldn’t produce the goods today, much to my suprise and no doubt yours as well. I had to visit an old friend to fill the hole in my soul. It was Kroger who had the orange-sealed box I so desired from you. Kroger is no threat to you – it may satisfy my physical hungers, but only your ample volumes contain the wisdom and knowledge for which my soul lusts. Nonetheless, if our relationship is to grow, blossom and bear fruit, you’re going to have to better anticipate this man’s Tazo needs.

You may or may not have heard the good George W. talking about two energy-related topics recently: the “Hydrogen Economy” of the future and ethanol, the goal of both being to wean America from its foreign oil dependence. Both have huge problems and I’d like to point them out for you here and now. First, let’s talk hydrogen.

Hydrogen makes an incredibly clean fuel. You burn it with oxygen and you get water – no carbon emissions there. It also happens to be the most abundant element in the universe. Super. Here on earth, though, practically every last red hot atom is locked up. We do have plenty of water here on terra firma that we could break up to get hydrogen and that is the plan. Take a little water, apply a little electricity and blammo; you’ve got hydrogen and oxygen. The catch is that you have to spend about twice as much energy to split water apart than you get out from recombining the hydrogen and oxygen. Where will that energy come from? If we use our current infrastructure, it will come from coal and natural gas. In this scenario, we have not only moved the emission of carbon dioxide from tailpipes to smokestacks but we’ve increased the amount we’re spewing. The upside is that it is easier to capture and deal with the carbon dioxide from big point sources like power plants than it is to capture it from several hundred million cars.

This isn’t to mention the difficulties of distribution and storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a tiny molecule that is very good at slipping through tiny cracks – think welds on tanks and connections in plumbing. Leaky pipes aren’t really a huge danger as hydrogen likes to float up and away, but losing gas from your parked car overnight could be annoying. Also, volume for volume, fuels liquid at normal temperatures have way more energy in them. A 16 gallon tank of highly compressed hydrogen wouldn’t even begin to get you as far as a 16 gallon tank of gasoline. Oh – and we have absolutely no large-scale distribution systems for hydrogen. Bummer. Let it go George.

How does ethanol stack up? In 2006, 1/5th of the 105 billion bushel U.S. corn crop – the third largest ever – went to making 5 billion gallons of ethanol. George W. wants to replace 15% of gasoline with ethanol by 2008. Meeting that goal will take 35 billion gallons of ethanol which will take 147 billion bushels of corn. Estimates indicate that it will take an additional 80 million acres of corn to do that. We also have to remember that corn has to feed us and our livestock. Already increased demand for corn has doubled prices from $2 a bushel to $4. The chicken industry has been saddled with $1.5 billion in extra feed costs. The cost to produce a bottle of soda has jumped $0.06. Ultimately, consumers eat the cost.

Ethanol also has its share of problems as a fuel. It carries less energy than gasoline meaning that you can’t go as far on equal amounts of each. It also attracts water like nobody’s business so every last steel component in fuel storage and transportation systems has to be replaced with stainless steel. Plants also don’t just grow and harvest themselves, either. The production of energy from plants – especially corn – takes energy, currently making the whole process nearly a wash. Fortunately, we are very close to being able to produce ethanol from cellulose. Instead of having to use the corn kernels, we could use the stalks. There are also very beneficial perennial prairie grasses that carry the most promise. They are native and actually improve the soil where they grow. But pushing corn as our main ethanol source is stupid and short-sighted, so stop it GW.

I want to chat about my favorite disaccharide, sucrose, also known as table sugar. Since the development of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), every food and beverage producer that could replace sugar with HFCS has, but why? It turns out that the US government has imposed steep tariffs on sugar imports since the Civil War. On top of the tariffs, the USDA sets limits on the amount of domestic sugar that may be sold annually, creating an artificially limited supply. This keeps US sugar prices two to three times above free-market prices.

It should come as no surprise that hard candy manufacturers – who have to use real sugar – have moved out of the country to avoid these troubles. The domestic sweetener industry isn’t losing sleep over any of this, though. For sugar growers, they get a great deal. Because the government helps prop up prices and sets production limits, they don’t have to work hard to compete in the sugarcane market. Also benefitting are corn growers since all of the HFCS comes from them.

Big consumers of sugar – candymakers and soft drink producers to name two – have grown tired of this system and are pushing to ditch the tariffs and production caps. I’m taking their side. I prefer things sweetened with sugar over those sweetened with HFCS.

An article in BusinessWeek got me started on this tirade. I’d link you to it, but you have to register and possibly buy something, so nevermind on that. You should also check out the Wikipedia article on HFCS. Pay special attention to the part where normal corn syrup is run through a process with alpha-amylase, glucoamylase, glucose isomerase, liquid chromotography, back-blending and plenty of ion-exchange. Not that sugar production is chemically uninvolved, but production of actual raw sugar is pretty simple: boil sugar juice. Bleaching the sugar to make it nice and white is a bit disturbing, but not too bad. Anyway, let your local congress critter know that sugar tariffs aren’t cool.

As if anyone really cares, I actually checked out my numbers on the heat pump. It turns out that at full tilt boogie, the compressor, fan, and water pump pull 2.9kW. This lowers the cost-per-hour to $0.1531, making it an incredible cost savings over gas. In cold weather, most heat pumps switch over to electrical resistance heat. An equivalent amount of resistance heat to our 3-ton heatpump is 10.5kW meaning a cost of $0.5544/hr. Most folks without gas end up in this situation. Why don’t we? Our heat pump is ground-coupled, also called geothermal or ground-source. What we have is a 1200′ loop of pipe buried 6′ down that we circulate water through. At 6′ down, the temperature is near 60F year round. Instead of trying to extract heat from cold outside air in the winter, we can pull heat out of the ground all day long. In fact, most heat pumps will quit working and switch to electrical heat in cold weather simply because the outside unit will move its heat into your house, condense water, freeze it and promptly quit working. We have a similar advantage for summer cooling – we can pump heat into the dirt instead of trying to get rid of it in 90F air. And there’s no ugly box outside the house.

We’ve told people building new houses that they should consider ground-source. So far, they haven’t. They also have higher utility bills.

We are what we eat, right? There is a very interesting article over at the New York Times. It is a look at how science has, over the years, worked to make our diet “better.” What the article points out is that as we have fooled around with our food in the name of nutrition, we have at times inadvertently screwed our health. It also speaks to the rising popularity of boxed and engineered “health-food” items that may or may not actually be healthy and/or food. It is a good read and I agree with it. As our food becomes more fooled around with, as we feed our livestock antibiotics and hormones to raise productivity and as we tinker with the genes of crops at the molecular level*, we put ourselves at greater risk of declining health.

The antibiotics trend is especially troubling to me, mostly because I’m a firm believer in the encouragement of beneficial bacteria and the regularly challenged immune system. Antibiotics kill essentially all bacteria, good and evil, something that science is discovering to be detrimental to health. In fact, without the bacteria in your gut, you wouldn’t be able to get nearly as much energy and nutrition out of what you eat. Antibiotics can also lead to super-bugs that are highly resistant to antibiotics. That isn’t to say I’m completely against the use of antibiotics. Sometimes it is the way to go. If I’ve got a raging infection, give me the drugs, doc. What I’m saying, though, is that beneficial bacteria actually help keep the baddies from taking hold and the immune system needs to be given a chance to fight on its own.

A great portion of the livestock industry, though, gives animals antibiotics their whole lives. Not just when they’re sick. The drugs make it into our waterways and into us. And it isn’t good for us.

But that isn’t what the article is all about. You should read it.

* We have for hundreds of years been tinkering with the genes of plans through selective breeding. I see the distinction in that when selectively breeding a plant, nature generally doesn’t allow hazardous properties to find their way into the fold. It is when we start taking bits of DNA from completely different species that we are setting ourselves up for trouble.