Just got up on my first morning with central air conditioning: too cold! It's an old house, with ductwork originally designed for a coal-burning furnace with no forced air, so it will take a few days to learn the optimum settings.
Speaking of air, if you're travelling today you probably already know that tight security has gotten tighter. In Britain you cannot carry on any electronic devices. In Canada, our prime minister Stephen "der Fuhrer" Harper, was recently asked by a flight attendant on his government plane to turn off his cellphone and crackberry in accordance with Canadian flight regulations. He refused, so the attendant appealed to the pilot. The pilot supported the attendant, so Harper had the pilot fired!
Now, AFAIK, the pilot of a plane is like the captain of a ship. On his plane, he is the law. So Canada has a prime minister who considers himself above the law. Actually, we already knew that because his government recently invoked "national security" to exempt itself from following its own laws with respect to a contract for military transport aircraft.
In other news, Toronto is running out of places to dispose of "sludge" - what is left after all efforts at "treating" human waste have been exhausted. Currently, the largest city in Canada (fifth largest in North America) piles it into trucks and sends it to Michigan, where it literally and figuratively causes a stink. It can supposedly be used as fertilizer, but for some reason people don't like the idea of sludge-enhanced tomatoes or corn on the cob.
Meanwhile, the world is running out of oil. We know that gasoline can be stretched with ethanol. We also know that diesel engines can run on vegetable oils from such as corn, soybeans and canola. One of the drawbacks of both ethanol and biodiesel is the cost of fertilizer. So, what would be wrong with using sludge to grow corn, extract the oil for diesel fuel and ferment the rest to make ethanol?
Speaking of air, if you're travelling today you probably already know that tight security has gotten tighter. In Britain you cannot carry on any electronic devices. In Canada, our prime minister Stephen "der Fuhrer" Harper, was recently asked by a flight attendant on his government plane to turn off his cellphone and crackberry in accordance with Canadian flight regulations. He refused, so the attendant appealed to the pilot. The pilot supported the attendant, so Harper had the pilot fired!
Now, AFAIK, the pilot of a plane is like the captain of a ship. On his plane, he is the law. So Canada has a prime minister who considers himself above the law. Actually, we already knew that because his government recently invoked "national security" to exempt itself from following its own laws with respect to a contract for military transport aircraft.
In other news, Toronto is running out of places to dispose of "sludge" - what is left after all efforts at "treating" human waste have been exhausted. Currently, the largest city in Canada (fifth largest in North America) piles it into trucks and sends it to Michigan, where it literally and figuratively causes a stink. It can supposedly be used as fertilizer, but for some reason people don't like the idea of sludge-enhanced tomatoes or corn on the cob.
Meanwhile, the world is running out of oil. We know that gasoline can be stretched with ethanol. We also know that diesel engines can run on vegetable oils from such as corn, soybeans and canola. One of the drawbacks of both ethanol and biodiesel is the cost of fertilizer. So, what would be wrong with using sludge to grow corn, extract the oil for diesel fuel and ferment the rest to make ethanol?
posted by Ooten Aboot | Friday, August 11, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home