Degage – free of constraint; relaxed in manner; nonchalant; without strain or anxiety; uncommitted, uninvolved, detached; extended with toe pointed in preparation for a ballet step.
Listening and napping
28/08/2012Discussion with Jim Mora on Critical Mass today was sparked off by:
Ten simple steps to a remarkable relationship – which gives tips on listening.
And
Meringues made easy
28/08/2012One of my special occasion specialities is meringues using Jo Seager’s recipe.
I couldn’t find it on line but it’s similar to this one.
Just double the quantities and replace the espresso with two teaspoons of vanilla.
That makes about 100 small meringues and I’ve sometimes made several batches at once when catering for large numbers.
That’s a lot of eggs to separate and try as I might I usually get the yolk mixed up with the white at least once. That’s why I always separate them one at a time, dripping the white into a glass then tip it into the mixing bowl so I don’t contaminate the whites I’ve already separated.
This looks like a better way.
I’ve never tried it but if it works it would make meringue making much easier.
Can’t deliver two objectives with one instrument
28/08/2012Quote of the day from Don Brash:
. . . The Reserve Bank has got only one instrument, and that’s monetary policy. You can’t deliver two objectives with one instrument, and David Parker at least should have the brains to know that. Apparently not.
He was responding to comments from Winston Peters and Parker who are both trying to get the Reserve Bank to control both inflation and the exchange rate.
The high exchange rate against the US dollar, pound and euro is making business harder for exporters but that is far more a reflection on their weaknesses than our strength.
But the exchange rate with Australia isn’t too bad and that’s our major trading partner.
Exports would be earning more if our dollar was lower but imports would cost more too.
That wouldn’t just mean luxuries but also necessities like fuel, machinery and medicines.
And a high dollar is far better than high inflation or any of the other consequences of tinkering by politicians.
How bad is fracking?
28/08/2012Kiwiblog might be guilty of hyperbole in saying fracking saves the planet but it is reducing carbon emissions:
In a surprising turnaround, the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere in the US has fallen dramatically to its lowest level in 20 years, and government officials say the biggest reason is that cheap and plentiful natural gas has led many power plant operators to switch from dirtier-burning coal.
Many of the world’s leading climate scientists didn’t see the drop coming, in large part because it happened as a result of market forces rather than direct government action against carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.
Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Centre at Penn State University, said the shift away from coal is reason for “cautious optimism” about potential ways to deal with climate change. He said it demonstrates that “ultimately people follow their wallets” on global warming.
“There’s a very clear lesson here. What it shows is that if you make a cleaner energy source cheaper, you will displace dirtier sources,” said Roger Pielke Jr, a climate expert at the University of Colorado.
In a little-noticed technical report, the US Energy Information Agency, a part of the Energy Department, said this month that total US CO2 emissions for the first four months of this year fell to about 1992 levels. The Associated Press contacted environmental experts, scientists and utility companies and learned that virtually everyone believes the shift could have major long-term implications for US energy policy.
While conservation efforts, the lagging economy and greater use of renewable energy are factors in the CO2 decline, the drop-off is due mainly to low-priced natural gas, the agency said.
A frenzy of shale gas drilling in the Northeast’s Marcellus Shale and in Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana has caused the wholesale price of natural gas to plummet from US$7 or $8 per unit to about $3 over the past four years, making it cheaper to burn than coal for a given amount of energy produced. As a result, utilities are relying more than ever on gas-fired generating plants. . .
. . . The boom in gas production has come about largely because of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Large volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals, are injected to break shale rock apart and free the gas. . .
. . . Despite unanswered questions about the environmental effects of drilling, the gas boom “is actually one of a number of reasons for cautious optimism,” Mann said. “There’s a lot of doom and gloom out there. It is important to point out that there is still time” to address global warning.
This might not be a long-term change but market forces and fracking are reducing carbon emissions.
There are questions about the safety of fracking. Drew Hutton, president of the Lock The Gate Alliance in Australia; and Rosalind Archer, Associate Professor at the Department of Engineering Science at Auckland University debated the issue on Nine to Noon last Thursday.
Professor Archer (at about 15:50) said there is evidence of a small number of problems caused by very bad practices, shoddy well construction and very poor monitoring. But:
. . . there are other jurisdictions where, or instance, the US State of Ohio has records of 80,000 fractured wells with no evidence of ground water contamination.
In my opinion this is something that can be done right . . the head of the US Environmental Protection Agency said she thinks it can be done right. Recently the Royal Society for Science and Engineering in the UK also came out saying that fundamentally this is a process that can be done right so I think New Zealand just needs to learn from international best practice. . .
That practice is improving all the time and it is possible the debate could be overtaken by technical advances:
Chimera Energy Corporation of Houston, Texas, has announced that they are licensing a new method for extracting oil and gas from shale fields that doesn’t contaminate ground water resources because it uses exothermic reactions instead of water to fracture shale. . .
. . . Despite the fact that fracking is used mainly in deep, sealed geological deposits, there is the fear that it may pose a danger to groundwater. Depending on the method involved and the type of oil field, various other materials are added to the water used in fracking, such as sand, foaming agents, gels and friction reducers. The concern is that the water, which is pumped out after the process, may either leak these substances plus radioactive radon from the well directly into aquifer layers, or contaminate water supplies after pumping out.
For this reason, some fracking engineers prefer non-hydraulic methods. One of these, used recently in New York State, swaps the water for gelled propane. The idea being that the propane reverts to a gas at the end of the process and can be pumped out, leaving any additives behind in the well, much like boiling seawater and leaving behind the salt.
The Chimera process takes this a step further by eliminating any working liquid. Details of the process have not been made public yet due to patent concerns, but Chimera Energy uses what is called “dry fracturing” or “exothermic extraction.” First developed in China, this involves using hot gases rather than liquid to fracture the shale. This was originally intended for wells in arctic regions where water used in fracking freezes, but Chimera Energy has developed it for general use. . .
If this proves to be practical and safe it still might not be good enough for everyone who opposes fracking.
But then some opposition isn’t to fracking in particular it’s just the means of demonstrating opposition to mineral extraction in general.
August 28 in history
28/08/2012489 Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths defeats Odoacer at the Battle of Isonzo, forcing his way into Italy.
1189 Third Crusade: the Crusaders began the Siege of Acre under Guy of Lusignan.
1349 6,000 Jews were killed in Mainz, accused of being the cause of the plague.
1511 The Portuguese conquered Malacca.
1542 Turkish-Portuguese War (1538-1557) – Battle of Wofla: the Portuguese were scattered, their leader Christovão da Gama captured and later executed.
1609 Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
1619 Ferdinand II was elected emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.
1640 Second Bishop’s War: King Charles I’s English army lost to a Scottish Covenanter force at the Battle of Newburn.
1749 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and scientist (d. 1832).
1774 Elizabeth Ann Seton, American-born Catholic saint, was born (d. 1821).
1789 William Herschel discovered a new moon of Saturn.
1810 Battle of Grand Port – the French accepted the surrender of a British Navy fleet.
1828 Leo Tolstoy, Russian author, was born (d. 1910).
1830 The Tom Thumb presaged the first railway service in the United States.
1845 The first issue of Scientific American magazine was published.
1859 A geomagnetic storm caused the Aurora Borealis to shine so brightly it was seen clearly over parts of USA, Europe, and as far away as Japan.
1862 American Civil War: Second Battle of Bull Run.
1879 Cetshwayo, last king of the Zulus, was captured by the British.
1884 Peter Fraser, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, was born (d. 1950).
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1898 Caleb Bradham renamed his carbonated soft drink “Pepsi-Cola”.
1901 Silliman University was founded in the Philippines, the first American private school in the country.
1906 John Betjeman, English poet, was born (d. 1984).
1913 Queen Wilhelmina opened the Peace Palace in The Hague.
1914 World War I: the Royal Navy defeated the German fleet in the Battle of Heligoland Bight.
1916 World War I: Germany declared war on Romania.
1916 – World War I: Italy declared war on Germany.
1917 Ten Suffragettes wre arrested while picketing the White House.
1924 Janet Frame, New Zealand author, was born (d. 2004).
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1924 The Georgian opposition stages the August Uprising against the Soviet Union.
1930 Windsor Davies, British actor, was born.
1931 France and Soviet Union signed a treaty of non-aggression.
1937 Toyota Motors became an independent company.
1943 World War II: in Denmark, a general strike against the Nazi occupation started.
1944 World War II: Marseille and Toulon were liberated.
1948 Danny Seraphine, American musician (Chicago), was born.
1951 Wayne Osmond, American singer (The Osmonds), was born.
1953 Nippon Television broadcast Japan’s first television show, including its first TV advertisement.
1954 Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme were convicted of murdering Parker’s mother Honora.
1955 Black teenager Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi, galvanizing the nascent American Civil Rights Movement.
1961 Motown released what would be its first #1 hit, “Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes.
1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom: Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have a Dream speech.
1963 Emily Hoffert and Janice Wylie were murdered in their Manhattan flat, prompting the events that led to the passing of the Miranda Rights.
1964 The Philadelphia race riot began.
1965 Shania Twain, Canadian singer, was born.
1979 An IRA bomb exploded on the Grand Place in Brussels.
1986 United States Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years imprisonment for espionage for the Soviet Union.
1988 Ramstein airshow disaster: three aircraft of the Frecce Tricolori demonstration team collided. The wreckage fell into the crowd killing 75 and seriously injuring 346.
1990 Iraq declared Kuwait to be its newest province.
1990 The Plainfield Tornado: an F5 tornado hit Plainfield and Joliet, Illinois, killing 28 people.
1991 Ukraine declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
1991 Collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
1992 Canterbury’s “Big Snow“.
1996 Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales divorced.
2003 An electricity blackout cut off power to around 500,000 people living in south east England and brought 60% of London’s underground rail network to a halt.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia