CaptainPanic

The dirty stuff is only part of a much larger problem. It's impossible to pick out a single TV genre, and put all the blame on that. The core of the problem is: all that matters to the owners of a channel is how many people watch the commercials. What they show between the commercials (the actual show) is just a matter of attracting the most viewers for the least amount of money. Why do you think that reality shows, sitcoms and talkshows are such a success? Because it's good TV? NO. The reason is because they're cheap to make. You cannot leave the education of children to such a rotten business model. It's ok to expose them for a short time to it, but not 5 hours per day. And the worst is: you can't blame the TV channels. Their primary responsibility is to their shareholders (not to the viewers!).

The US is incredibly divided. The US political landscape has a grand canyon running straight through it. You're either a loyal republican or a loyal democrat... but it's impossible for the two sides to reason with each other. And I get the feeling that it has polarized over the last decade. The political discussions - especially the presidential campaigns - are fought with a ferocity that I can only call it propaganda. Presidential campaigns, I am sure both sides know quite well, have little to do with facts, and a lot with emotions. From my outsider's point of view, the discussion between democrats and republicans has almost become religious. People who believe in a different god will also never agree about religious issues. At a very fundamental level, the two sides disagree with each other. Both sides have become blind for the fact that they are (from a European point of view) quite similar. Because of the two-party system, the politicians have forgotten how to cooperate. It's always very simple: politics are like black and white. There is no grey. There is no cooperation. And the entire country seems to follow in this kind of thinking. And both sides just cannot believe that the other side can be so stupid to think that their plans for the US are going to work. The internet (including this forum) is full of blogs and posts by democrats and republicans alike, both wondering why the other side doesn't behave more reasonable. Both sides paint hitler moustaches on the other side's presidents and presidential candidates. (This site shows examples of Bush, Palin and Obama - all depicted as the ultimate evil). When emotions take over the rational political debate, and when emotions decide what people vote for, rather than reason, isn't it better to avoid the inevitable conflict and just peacefully split up the country?

It's pretty much the same idea. Instead of your legs going up and down, in an engine the pistons move up and down. And on a bike, there is a chain between the gears, but in a car the gears are in direct contact. To change gear on a bike, you move the chain onto a different gear. In a car, you move part of the gearbox, so different gears come into direct contact with each other. So, it completely relates. It's the same principle. It's only put together in a different way.

As realitycheck said: your body would stop receiving oxygen. After some time (couple of minutes) your muscles would also lose strength... and without muscle power, you would just fall down. If the lack of oxygen lasts long enough, the next step would be death of body parts (like with frostbite, you can lose parts of the body). Gangrene is then a serious problem. I guess if that lasts long enough, you would also start to rot, as your immune system needs oxygen (and other nutrients) too to function. You'd be a real zombie... with the exception that you wouldn't even be able to lurch. You'd be motionless. Eventually, just that invincible nervous system would be left. Everything else will die, and be eaten.

Although FutureFarmer has not visited this site for over 5 years, I'll answer anyway. The easiest and most popular solution for the CO2 in biogas is to leave it in the gas. No separation. Why not to separate The engine will run just fine with the little extra CO2 (just google for Biogas Engine, although probably regular natural gas engines will run as well - please doublecheck before trying this). I would be surprised if engine-generators aren't simply available on the market today. A small Google search showed me that at least 5 kW engine-generators for natural gas exist (commercial link - I have no ties with it, it's not spam!). Your best bet is to ask the professionals. At some point, you should stop hobbying, and just go to a supplier. I think you're better off with a larger storage (if you cannot run the engine continuously) than with a separation step. The separation will use material and energy, and will probably require an investment similar or larger than the increased storage. Separation only makes sense if you wish to sell biogas as fuel grade methane (substitute natural gas). But with such small quantities (1-3 kW of power), I wouldn't bother. Apart from the construction and installation, the permits are probably more expensive than the profits of the next 20 years. The idea of FutureFarmer is expensive. Such small systems (1-3 kW) are not economically interesting, unless you're not on the grid, and your only options are solar power or small scale wind. With things like these, the rule is simple: larger is better. FutureFarmer is talking about an engine that is 1.3 to 4 horsepower (i.e. 10-20 times smaller than the smallest car on the market today). It doesn't get much smaller than that, so it doesn't get much more expensive than that. If you insist on a separation If you insist on a separation, again I would suggest to go with the commercial solutions: absorption, pressure swing adsorption, membranes, cryogenic separation or pressure swing absorption. To my knowledge, the absorber is the most popular. It's simple: water absorbs CO2 far better than methane. Oh, and btw, nobody uses any system to chemically react CO2 to form carbonates. Lime water is a silly idea, as John Cuthber already explained. FutureFarmer had a point when he said that he doesn't want to go 'boom' in his 1st sentence. Building your own process equipment for stuff like this will ultimately make you go 'boom'... I hope that's not the reason that FutureFarmer made only 2 posts in 2005 on this forum. Trying to clean up biogas is no joke, and shouldn't be seen as a hobby project. If you want an installation on your premises, contact the professional suppliers. If you just like to discuss, please don't post any silly ideas.

Yes, that I can agree with (sort of). If your pigment particles are large enough and if your concentration of pigment in lacquer is high enough, the lacquer doesn't fill up the space between the pigment particles anymore, and you have a matte finish. However, I maintain that you can get gloss by simply adding more lacquer - regardless of the pigment particle size. Therefore, I maintain that the particle size has nothing to do with it.

The admins of SFN. Why do you ask?

But books take you by the hand, and start at something relatively basic, and build it up from there. Don't worry, each book only teaches you a tiny bit about maths... it's gonna take a lot more than the 4 books DJBruce wrote down to learn "everything in mathematics". If you want to be able to upgrade your maths skills from what you describe, to a level able to work and understand the quantum mechanics, then I would advise you first to let go of the idea that 4 books are too much. You're probably looking at more than 4 books. Also, if the money for 4 books is too much, then you might want to look at used books (Amazon has used books at lower prices). You're looking at quite an endeavour, so you might as well realize what resources you need to achieve it: lots of time, dedication and also some books. And possibly a teacher too. It takes regular students in a university a couple of years to learn and properly apply the maths. It'll take you even longer if you do it alone (unless you're a genius).

The relative difference between the gas and the air is what matters. This relative difference will be larger at colder temperatures. However, the effect is quite small (unless you are comparing the difference between Siberia in mid-winter to the Sahara in summer).

So, you do NOT want to make an internal combustion engine. But you do want to make an engine. What kind of engine?

The problem is very simple: you can only spend so much money to make a particular metal. Or, if we approach it from the other side: every kilogram of asteriod that is brought into orbit costs a certain amount of money. Most of that asteriod isn't even worth it to be put into orbit, let alone to be brought down to the surface. For the large majority of metals, it's just not worth the fuel to slow down an asteroid into orbit around either the Earth or the Moon. Tin is one of the more expensive metals and that goes for just 28 $/kg. I'm not gonna do any calculations today, but I think you might be better off to mine the precious metals on the moving asteroid (not in orbit), and attach your nukes and ion thrusters only to the product (the really expensive metals) to send that into earth orbit. That way, you only have to accelerate/decellerate a tiny fraction of the total mass.

I usually approach this discussion from another point of view (with similar conclusions though). If you put kids in front of a TV - why not teach them something? Whether you like it or not, kids will absorb information from whatever they watch. Therefore, showing them narcist and fame focussed shows is nothing short of a crime. It's possible to make fun programs that are educational (I always loved Sesamestreet when I was a small kid)... So, my question is simply "Why not make more?". I'm not suggesting actual study TV shows. It's easy enough to hide useful information in a fun package. Anyway, TV as a whole is suffering from a dumbing down syndrome. Only 10 years ago, Discovery Channel was interesting. Now, all you see are reality shows of people at their jobs... (edited because of a small typo)

The evidence is not plain at all. And avoiding to enter the discussion, while accusing the other person of threatening you (verbally) is a very weak response. In fact, it's a type of fallacy to first make a point, and then play the victim to avoid having to answer it. And that fallacy comes on top of the fallacies in the original post that John Cuthber asked you a question about. But I'll come to those fallacies in a moment. I would propose that if you are not ready to defend your own posts, then don't write them down. In a worst case scenario, you can simply ask the mods to delete your own post. And if you feel personally attacked by another member, you can report a post to the mods, and they will evaluate it. Personally, I think John Cuthber asked a valid question. Your post does sound like racism, as I will explain below. So, I think we should not allow you to withdraw in silence while (your post #26) is still in this thread. When I read your post, I read that you claim that the people in the Horn of Africa would be incapable of building a society, regardless of their location or resources. And that Japanese would be able to build a society regardless of the lack of resources or location. This is not proven at all. But to make things worse, you then compare immigration in the US and Europe to this unproven thought experiment, and you draw secondary conclusions from it. The reality is that immigration in the US and Europe is mostly successful (the large majority of immigrants have jobs, most speak the language, and at least in the Netherlands all immigrants (including illegal immigrants) receive education). In Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Immigration started in the 60's and 70's because the economies were booming, and there were too many job vacancies. Yes, those countries invited immigrants to come and work. They did not come to Europe to search for a job. Instead, those European countries sent people to Northern Africa and Turkey to find people! This fact alone already disproves your claim that immigration and a bad economy would be negatively related. The employment rate of especially Muslims is lower at the moment in many Western countries. What remains unproven is which factor is the most important reason for that: whether this is because of dicrimination by the employers (for which there is evidence), or because these people are just not so useful in the job market as you seem to claim. Immigration, as explained in this paper, allows more experienced people to move on in the labor market into more abstract and complex jobs, while the routine jobs are done by the immigrants. In a flexible labor market, this can strengthen an economy. I'm sorry to go pretty far off topic.

With all respect to your point that carbon seems more versatile every day, and that technological advances can be expected in that field... we're not in the Iron Age anymore. That ended (according to this wikipedia page) when the Middle Ages started. Around 400 AD in Europe. If you're looking at materials only, you should also queeze in the current Plastic Age (although that doesn't sound very cool to live in the Plastic Age), or the Oil Age... btw, plastic and oil are also mostly carbon based. And maybe we should distinguish between the Iron Age and the Steel Age (although both are mostly iron). Sorry to make things unnecessarily complicated. I'll stop now, and go for more coffee. Perhaps more important than all other developments is the population growth: I think we'll enter the Age of Overpopulation, or the Age of Shortages.

In more simple words: your problem is that the distance from 0 - 2 on the X-axis is not the same as the distance 0 - 2 on the Y-axis.

If you ask someone from Manchester (UK) what they think of Chelsea (a football club from London), then they might well say that they "hate" it. Does the hate of communism go any further or deeper than this completely silly group-disliking of another group of people? Create two groups of people. Make sure that the two groups start working as a team, and that they have to compete against the other group. Eventually, there will be rivalry. And rivalry can grow into dislike and even hate. In politics, the politicians claim that there are fundamental differences between the different economic systems (which is true)... but sports, and also musical subcultures, show that groups can dislike each other for much less. Also, there is no reason why someone should hate a different economic system - especially if you're not even living in it. But we do. I hereby postulate (without proof) that Americans (and Europeans) hate communism more because they all do, rather than because they actually understand the fundamental differences and came to an objective conclusion that their own system is inherently better. In short: the hatred stems from simple group behavior, influenced by the leaders, through the media.

First of all - safety really does come first. Don't ever take unnecessary risks. Always read the MSDS (material safety data sheet) of a material before using it. An MSDS of almost every material is available through Google. On topic: IIRC, acetone makes the skin more permeable to other chemicals. Acetone dissolves some of the lipids in your skin, and other chemicals can therefore enter your body easier. So, as long as you work only with acetone (like when cleaning glassware), and you're certain you won't come into contact with chemicals that are skin permeable, and the exposure is short, you can work without gloves (although I wouldn't recommend it). I would still recommend the correct gloves. Mother nature put those skin fats there for a reason! This MSDS (material safety data sheet) seems to agree: "Contact with skin may cause defatting". Obviously, a more long-term exposure to acetone can lead to other kinds of toxicological effects.

500 Megajouls sounds like a lot, but it's not if you're talking about powering whole countries. It's just the same as about 12 liters of petrol. To power a city like New York, which uses about 11 GW of electricity (souce, see page 9), you would need to catch 22 lightning strikes every second (and be able to convert all the energy of the lightning into useful electricity. According to wikipedia, lightning strikes about 44 times per second worldwide, so you could power two cities the size of NY city with that - if you're able to catch each and every lightning strike everywhere on earth (including the cloud-to-cloud strikes that never hit the ground). ... so, in short: all the lightning together does not carry enough energy to be of significant importance to the world. Also, it's available at random distributed places. At best, it can power smaller things (like your house). The investment therefore also has to be affordable for a single person or a small company. And that is the bottom line: it's too bloody expensive to build something that can handle lightning. Your system should be incredibly robust to handle lightning. You're better off with a windmill or a solar panel.

Let me first propose a set of eras (because if I read the wikipedia page on 'era', it seems you can choose this as broad as you like: from geological eras of millions of years to the musical era of Disco or Frank Sinatra). I propose we go with the European historical one, as summarized in the contents list of the wikipedia page on European History: 1 Prehistory 2 Lepenski Vir - Vinča - Cucuteni cultures 7000 - 2750 BC 3 Minoans and Mycenae 2700 - 1100 BC 4 Classical Antiquity 4.1 Ancient Greece 4.2 The rise of Rome 4.3 Decline of the Roman Empire 4.4 Late Antiquity and Migration period 5 Middle Ages 5.1 Early Middle Ages 5.2 High Middle Ages 5.3 Late Middle Ages 6 Early Modern Europe 6.1 Renaissance 6.2 Reformation 6.3 Exploration and Conquest 6.4 Enlightenment 7 From revolution to imperialism 7.1 Industrial Revolution 7.2 Political revolution 7.3 Nations rising 7.4 Colonial Empires 8 World Wars and Cold War 8.1 World Wars 8.2 Cold War 9 Recent history I think we've entered the Age of Information or Communication somewhere during the 90's or last decade. This will also be known as the Oriental Era, where China will become the dominant economic power in the world.

I'm not a paint expert... But I think you're wrong. I think it's the transparent material around the pigment particles that makes it glossy or not. After all, it's possible to have a transparent paint which is glossy (varnish or lacquer). Wikipedia says the following about 'gloss':

If you freeze water, you get ice. And if you melt ice, you get water. This is a reversible process. If you squeeze water out of wood, you cannot take that water, and turn it back into wood by changing the temperature. You probably get a very dirty ice instead...

Apologies! I have just seen many posts quite similar which were aimed to lure people to commercial websites.

I invite you to open a new thread to discuss the Netherlands, and all it's problems. I completely agree that the Netherlands is not paradise, and we have problems. However, I do think you have a couple of misconceptions about the place. I think it's too much off topic for this thread though. The Netherlands might be densely populated, but it can be self-sustaining regarding food and energy and its population has mostly stabilized, so it doesn't belong in a thread about famines and population growth. p.s. We also wonder why Heineken is such a success. Then I misunderstood. I'm glad that this is solved I am hestitant to accept that education (as we know it - schools and such, learning to read and write) is really the issue here. The native Americans seemed to be able to live in harmony with their environment, and all they had (as far as I know) were some village elders who had wisdom and local knowledge... or should we count that as education too? I don't see why elderly people in Africa should be any different. Why can't they have wisdom? My limited knowledge about native Americans might have given me an idealized view of their society. Did they have their population growth under control? Birth control is really easy to provide. And really cheap. I postulate, without any proof, that any economy in this world, no matter how poor, would be able to provide birth control if it wanted to. If you can get an AK-47 and a box of bullets in the middle of nowhere to fight a conflict, you can sure as hell get a box of condoms or birth control pills there too, if you want to. I do not think that the things you describe are the problem. You describe only issues here that are not in the hands of the locals. But I really think that in Africa, there are people who make decisions against birth control. There are people who knowingly allow this to happen, and possibly even encourage people to have large families. I think leaders of these people take conscious decisions to stimulate population growth. It's a cultural thing (and that's something which is completely in the hands of the locals). Local farmers know quite well how many people their lands can sustain. They know how much cattle they must have to feed all the mouths. They know that with larger families, they either must expand or eat less. These people understand the consequences of their growing families. And they still do it. I've read many posts here which put the blame for the situation of Africans somewhere else... and their economic problems are indeed for a large part in the hands of the rich countries. But their population growth is not, as far as I'm concerned.

Although I don't see the point of knowing where I'm from, it's no secret: I'm from the Netherlands. I should probably have said "value" instead of "merit". Anyway... the value of that post is that Ophiolite explains quite well the behavior of most people in western countries. Many of us pretend to care, but we actually don't. Many of us say that those people in Africa have themselves to blame for their own problems (or, more accurately, we simply don't take much responsibility in the rich countries, and the people in Africa also have nobody else except themselves to rely on, so logically they are responsible for themselves... and now that it's gone wrong again, "responsibility" might be replaced by "blame"). The large majority of the people in the western countries just don't care about the people in far-away countries... We might donate a tiny portion of our income to it (0.1 - 1% of our annual income, or something) out of pity or guilt... and that's it. We knowingly consume food and goods from "cheap labor" countries - produced for a wage which we certainly would refuse to work for. On a daily basis we exploit them. Their life expectancy has for many years been significantly lower than ours. In every physically measurable way these people's lives are worse than our luxurious lives. Ophiolite chose his words well to give that large majority a voice. From our rich point of view, the responsibility for the well-being of these Africans is obviously with themselves, since we just don't care... It's the hard reality that many of the people posting on this forum might later today drink a glass of wine or a cold beer, and forget about their troubles... while people in Africa are dying of malnutrition. I don't think there's much satire in the post at all... although Ophiolite might have meant it as satire, I think it's useful that Ophiolite opened up the discussion like that. p.s. I realize that I talk about Ophiolite's post, but I don't intend to put words in his/her mouth. My interpretation of that post is mine only.

This seems spam to me. If you have already a specific company in mind, I suggest you contact them directly - if they don't already employ you.