Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
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I took If I’m not smiling, I’m just thinking on September 12, 2014 at 04:52PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on October 01, 2014 at 04:46AM
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I took Musicians on Robert Allan II on May 10, 2014 at 08:07PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on June 19, 2014 at 04:20PM
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I took Chicago River Walk Construction on May 20, 2014 at 11:44AM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on May 22, 2014 at 07:29PM
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I took reflections – Venice Canal Historic District on February 02, 2013 at 01:35PM
and processed it in my digital darkroom on October 30, 2013 at 01:24PM
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I took Icy River – Washington Bridge on January 06, 2014 at 01:36PM
Chicago River
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I took Crested on January 30, 2013 at 07:16PM
Manhattan Beach
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I took Circling A Single Thought on September 10, 2011 at 07:22PM
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You Better Use Your Sense was taken on April 18, 2009 at 12:55PM
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Lamar Street Bridge was taken on October 29, 2012 at 04:59PM
Tell Me Why You Hurry So?
Wild! I had not heard of graphene before today, but I’m intrigued…
Desalination might sound boring, but it’s super important. Around 97% of the planet’s water is saltwater and therefore unpotable, and while you can remove the salt from the water, the current methods of doing so are laborious and expensive. Graphene stands to change all that by essentially serving as the world’s most awesomely efficient filter. If you can increase the efficiency of desalination by two or three orders of magnitude (that is to say, make it 100 to 1,000 times more efficient) desalination suddenly becomes way more attractive as a way to obtain drinking water.
Desalination works exactly as you might expect; you run water through a filter with pores small enough to block the salt and not the water. It’s a process called reverse osmosis. The issue is that the thicker your filter is, the less efficient the process is going to be. If you know anything about graphene, you know where this is going. Graphene sheets are one atom thick. It’s sort of a best case scenario. Because it’s nanoporous and so insanely thin, it can let water (but not salt) through it without requiring the comparatively high levels of pressure that current filters do.
(click here to continue reading Graphene Improves Desalination Efficiency by Factor of 100 | Geekosystem.)
Eveready Battery aka Carbon and Carbide Building
Graphene is basically carbon:
Graphene is a form of carbon in which the atoms are arranged in a flat hexagon lattice like microscopic chicken wire, a single atom thick. It is not only the thinnest material in the world, but also one of the strongest and hardest.
Among its other properties, graphene is able to conduct electricity as well as copper does and to conduct heat better than any other known material, and it is practically transparent. Physicists say that it could eventually rival silicon as a basis for computer chips, serve as a sensitive pollution-monitoring material, improve flat-screen televisions, and enable the creation of new materials and novel tests of quantum weirdness.
In a statement, the Royal Academy said, “Carbon, the basis of all known life on earth, has surprised us once again.”
Graphene is closely related to two other forms of carbon that have generated intense interest in recent years: buckyballs, which are soccer-ball arrangements of carbon atoms, and nanotubes, which are rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms. It was long thought, however, that an essentially two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms would be unstable and would warp or fold up. Dr. Geim and Dr. Novoselov first succeeded in creating flakes of graphene by peeling them off piles of graphite — the material that is in a pencil lead — using Scotch tape.
(click here to continue reading Physics Nobel Honors Work on Ultra-Thin Carbon – NYTimes.com.)
Feeding On Its Own Hungriness
Fascinating article about the Norovirus, aka the stomach flu…
Norovirus is Norwalk Virus, named for the Ohio town which in 1968 was home to the virus’s first identified outbreak and which no doubt do not include this information in its Chamber of Commerce literature. Often called “stomach flu” or “24-hour flu”, this awful malady has no relation to influenza virus, but has gained a reputation no less sinister in recent years. It is the agent responsible for innumerable cruise-ship “gastroenteritis” outbreaks and outbreaks at camps, state fairs, nursing homes, schools, and yes, even NBA locker rooms.
Anyone who’s experienced it can tell you it’s a bit like having all of your intestines’ pain receptors activated at once, with uncontrollable nausea and/or diarrhea added as a special bonus. When I was in high school, every so often I’d experience twelve hours of intense pain along with nausea so powerful that I’d feel the urge to hurl even when nothing was left. This was followed by 12 hours of utter exhaustion. Then, I’d feel pretty much normal again and go right back to school, no doubt perpetuating the cycle since victims shed virus for several days after they recover. I’m pretty sure that it was norovirus.
…This virus is responsible for about nine out of 10 “stomach flu” cases in the U.S., and is probably responsible for about 50% of the cases of what people call “food poisoning”. It takes fewer than 10 virus particles to make you sick, and the virus can be spread by sick people handling your food or water, or shaking your hand, or by you touching surfaces they’ve touched, or even by (I know, ewwww) aerosolization of their bodily fluids when they flush the toilet after a visit to the necessary room.
(click here to continue reading Misery-inducing Norovirus Can Survive for Months — Perhaps Years — in Drinking Water | The Artful Amoeba, Scientific American Blog Network.)
Immense Activity of a Rain Puddle
It isn’t just my feeling this winter has been unusually mild, there are facts to support my contention:
Friday’s rain is just another of the meteorological oddities which have marked December 2011. The month, now running a 7.4-degree surplus and ranked among the mildest 12 percent of all Decembers on record over the past 141 years, is also, along with cities all over the Midwest, in the midst of a snow drought here. The month, typically Chicago’s third snowiest with 8.5 inches of snow and just behind January’s 10.8 inches and February’s typical 9.1 inches, is marching toward a midnight Saturday night close with only 1.7 inches of snow to its credit. That’s an amount which is one fifth (20 percent) the so-called “normal” tally for the month and just 10 percent of last December’s 16.2-inch total.
…
Lakefront hits 50-degrees Thursday; O’Hare tops out way above normal at 48-degrees, marking the 18th day at or above 40 this December. Mild Pacific-origin air swept into the area Thursday, sending Wednesday’s arctic chill with its 31-degree high packing. Readings Thursday afternoon surged 17-degrees higher, topping out at 48-degrees at O’Hare and Midway. Northerly Island on Chicago’s lakefront managed a 50-degree high. The reading was Chicago’s warmest in 10 days and marked the 18th time this month that temperatures have made it to 40-degrees.
(click here to continue reading Clocks tick toward December’s Saturday night close with just 8 percent of last year’s snow on the books – Chicago Weather Center.)
I’ve made a (mental) bargain with Chicago’s weather – I won’t complain about winter’s lack of sunlight, and general dreariness, if, and only if there is substantial snow for me to play in, and photograph. Despite Tom Skilling’s report of 1.7” of snow so far this winter, downtown Chicago has less than that. In fact, only once was any building dusted with a smidgen of snow, and it melted by the following day. Rain is difficult to photostroll in, at least with my current camera equipment.
Happy Just to Rain on You
Natural Science
Speaking of water infrastructure, this report is disturbing:
A new report by the American Society of Civil Engineers takes a dim view of the state of the country’s 54,000 community-based drinking-water systems and its 15,000 public wastewater treatment facilities. The systems are rusty, aging and seriously inadequate for meeting future needs, the study warns.
The drinking-water systems, just under half of which are publicly owned, supply 264 million people. The wastewater treatment facilities supply about 225 million people, but they are so prone to failure that 900 billion gallons of untreated sewage are discharged each year, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2004.
The E.P.A.’s 2010 estimate of the capital cost of modernizing this infrastructure was $91 billion, the report said, but financing for that purpose amounted to only $35 million. If systemic neglect continues, it adds, that shortfall will only increase.
(click here to continue reading Report Sees Investment Shortfall for Water Infrastructure – NYTimes.com.)
If only there was an unemployment crisis in the United States that could be solved by hiring folks to repair infrastructure. Oh wait, there is! Too bad the Rethuglican plan is to destroy our country by any means necessary, including sabotage of the economy…
A Dream of Presidential Showers
The Rick Perry Texas Miracle in action: privatization of public resources, for profit of the few. Who gets screwed? Just consumers.
A growing number of suburban Texans are getting their water from large, private corporations owned by investors seeking to profit off the sale of an essential resource. State figures show private companies are seeking more price increases every year, and many are substantial. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which regulates water and sewer rates for nonmunicipal customers, doesn’t keep numbers, but “their rate increases tend to be 40 and 60 percent,” said Doug Holcomb, who oversees the agency’s water utilities division.
For years, small private companies have played a crucial role in Texas, providing water and sewer service in new developments outside of cities. Analysts say private companies will continue to fill an essential need in the future, when public money is projected to be insufficient to make the billions of dollars in costly upgrades needed in water and sewer systems.
Increasingly, however, the companies are neither small nor local. Over the past decade, multistate water utilities have expanded aggressively in Texas, drawn by the state’s booming population and welcoming regulatory environment. A September report prepared by utility analysts for Robert W. Baird & Co., a financial management company, identified Texas water regulators as the most generous in the country for private water companies. Today, three out-of-state corporations own about 500 Texas water systems that serve more than 250,000 residents.
For residents living outside cities served by private utility companies, the state environmental commission is charged with setting “just and reasonable” water rates based on a company’s cost of doing business plus a guaranteed profit. In exchange, the companies enjoy a monopoly on their service area.
Yet critics say the agency is unprepared to handle the recent influx of corporations that have exploited a regulatory system more accustomed to handling rural mom-and-pop operations. Meanwhile, Texas laws provide fewer consumer protections to residents facing water rate increases than electricity and gas ratepayers.
“We are in the midst of a transformation in this state, and the state is ill-prepared to move into that transition,” said Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, who co-chairs a legislative subcommittee to investigate the rates charged by investor-owned water utilities. “It feels like it’s happening at warp speed.”
Industry officials say their rates reflect the true cost of rehabilitating and expanding older water systems, and that without their deep pockets, such systems would languish. The “larger Investor-Owned Utilities have invested in small, rural water and sewer systems that have gone decades without meaningful improvements in their infrastructure and often do not meet minimum environmental standards set by the state,” SouthWest Water spokeswoman Janice Hayes said in an email, adding that the companies have poured millions of dollars into new equipment and upgrades.
But in some places, the rate increase s following those improvements have been so high as to inhibit economic growth. Just south of Austin, SouthWest Water seven years ago purchased rights to provide water on the eastern edge of Kyle. Today, officials say, its rates are about double those of the city.
As a result, the company’s service area is one of the few desirable commercial locations — just off Interstate 35 — where fast-growing Kyle has remained underdeveloped, said Diana Blank, the city’s director of economic development. “We’ve lost projects because of that,” she said. Prospective employers “will look at the map and say, ‘Who serves the area for water?'”
SouthWest’s latest rate request, which would increase rates for some suburbanites to more than three times what Austin residents pay, has caught the attention of lawmakers. A half-dozen legislators said they will introduce changes to the law during the next session to provide more consumer protections.
“This may be the poster child for the kinds of reforms we need,” Watson said. “Some utilities will stretch the law as far as they can stretch it.”
(click here to continue reading Statesman.com : Growth of large private water companies brings higher water rates, little recourse for consumers.)
Regulation? I thought the mantra was that regulation was anathema in Texas? You mean to say, “let the free market figure it out!”, right?
Natural Science
Water is scarce already, especially in arid places like South Texas and North Dakota. But hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, slurps up a lot of water.
CARRIZO SPRINGS, Texas—Water has always been a concern for 65-year-old Joe Parker, who manages a 19,000-acre cattle ranch here in South Texas. “Water is scarce in our area,” he says, and a scorching yearlong drought has made it even scarcer.
What has Mr. Parker especially concerned are the drilling rigs that now dot the flat, brushy landscape. Each oil well in the area, using the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, requires about six million gallons of water to break open rocks far below the surface and release oil and natural gas. Mr. Parker says he worries about whether the underground water can support both ranching and energy exploration.
Darrell Brownlow, another cattle rancher, says that if the economically depressed region has to choose between the two, the choice should be simple.
Mr. Brownlow, who has a Ph.D. in geochemistry, says it takes 407 million gallons to irrigate 640 acres and grow about $200,000 worth of corn on the arid land. The same amount of water, he says, could be used to frack enough wells to generate $2.5 billion worth of oil. “No water, no frack, no wealth,” says Mr. Brownlow, who has leased his cattle ranch for oil exploration.
Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has revived prospects for oil-and-gas production in the U.S. and provided a welcome jolt to many local economies. Less than three years after its discovery, the Eagle Ford oil field here already accounts for 6% of South Texas’s economic output and supports 12,000 full-time jobs, according to a study by the University of Texas at San Antonio earlier this year, which was funded by an industry-backed group.
But fracking also is forcing communities to grapple with how to balance the economic benefits with potential costs. To date, criticism of fracking has focused mainly on concerns that the chemicals energy companies are mixing with the water could contaminate underground aquifers. Oil industry officials regard that issue as manageable. The biggest challenge to future development, they say, is simply getting access to sufficient water.
The issue isn’t just rearing its head in parched regions like South Texas. North Dakota, another big source of oil from fracked wells, is concerned about the industry depleting aquifers and has threatened to sue the federal government to free up water held by an Army Corps of Engineers dam. Oklahoma, too, is struggling to cope with the industry’s thirst.
(click here to continue reading Focus on Fracking: Oil’s Growing Thirst for Water for Hydraulic Fracturing – WSJ.com.)
So, either short term profits or long term ability to live in an area. Hmm, I know what Darrell Brownlow has chosen, but what about the rest of the people in his community? Are they willing to destroy the local water supply so that he can get rich?
Circling A Single Thought
And unregulated businesses are always going to choose profit over anything else, despite the oft-repeated GOP mantra: Regulation is UnGodly – or whatever it is they chant
In addition to tapping underground aquifers, oil companies are interested in water from Texas rivers. They have acquired—or are currently seeking to acquire—from local irrigation authorities the rights to nearly 40,000 acre-feet of water a year. That is enough to supply nearly a quarter-million people for a year.
One source has been the Rio Grande. Cities along the river, which are among the fastest growing in the state, draw from it to supply water to residents.
“This is a major concern for us,” says Juan Hinojosa, a Democratic state senator from McAllen who represents the area. “The oil companies have a lot more money than we do to buy water rights.”The intense drought over the summer exacerbated the water concerns of cities. More than 964 public water systems, covering 14.7 million Texans, have imposed voluntary or mandatory restrictions, according to the state.
This summer, the city of Grand Prairie, near Fort Worth, stopped selling water to oil companies as part of its drought-contingency measures, which also included lawn-watering restrictions.
Oil companies have long been exempt from most Texas state water rules and permitting requirements, but the state has begun to take a fresh look at the industry’s ability to drill water wells wherever they have acquired rights to extract oil and gas.