Mac Bandy

Bandwagons aren't pulled, they're pushed.

New Word of the Day

myme

from meme/myth, noun: a dullderous falsehood propogated by urban advertising.

Speaking of Funky Camels

Phenakistoscope

Ducks Suck... Go Beavers...

The funny thing about the quack curve is that it shows net load - as if there was a net around California's grid protecting it from all the hydro in the Pacific Northwest and all the thermal generation in the 4 Corner states. If there was an annual award for how to lie with statistics this graph would take home the dishonors.

 If you think the duck curve is bad hold on to your britches. The camel curve is way worse... This stanky bastard has been known to show up randomly in Socal when it's hotter than a sheriff's pistol outside... Speaking of guns... Hey Chavez... d' d' d'you guys see the size of that griffin? You don't want to be on shift for a Griffin Event... That's when a funky camel curve collides nut to butt with a randy duck curve - It's like you're in that movie with the boat and the wicked big waves... C'mahn you BITCH!!!!

Check out my chrissy behind... It's fine all of the time...

QOTD

Coal-fired power plants emit 84 of the 187 Hazardous Air Pollutants identified by EPA as posing a threat to human health and the environment.

Emissions of Hazardous Air Pollutants from Coal-Fired Power Plants

Picture of the Day

Mac Bandy

It's not one thing leads to another. Anothers come from all over.

Checkers

When I was a kid my Opa taught me checkers. One of the rules he played by was that if your opponent offered you a jump you had to take it even if the move wasn't in your best interest. This particular rule is interesting. It led to me beating Opa a year or so later... We didn't play any more games of checkers after that... Next came chess and poker and Boule.. a game Opa may have learned in Italy but favored in France. Great camping game.

Oma was from Brittany. Her family was rich enough to have servants. WWII put a crunch on that... She was suddenly in a convent reading by candle light. She said you'd lose all your banks reading. She was 18 at the end of the war. Years go blank. Mourning... Fixing... One day Oma gets out of there.

She spent time in Cuba before all hell broke loose. I'm figuring she was there around 52' give or take. She worked there and elsewhere as a nanny.

As I'm writing this story it occurs to me that I've made a move I must follow up on with an additional move I don't want to take...

I've just realize... dun dun dun... There's either a hole in my memory regarding Oma's story or there's a hole in Oma's story.

Oma got pregnant around 55'... Where was the child born? Don't know... Do know the child was adopted.

Years pass... Oma looks up her lost daughter. Daughter agrees to meet. Wonderful crazy painful things happen to bind them together.

How did the child get to California? Ahhhh....

Now I remember...

She was a nanny for a star. They were vacationing and perhaps filming in Cuba. Then back to Hollywood.... Of course... she provided the info just not in order.

But then she goes back to France after the baby is born. She recovered... Then back to the US to pick up and climb. But then on the trans-Atlantic cruise she runs into Opa... a handsome 37ish, well spoken 6 foot drink of water who happens to be a good dancer and a magnificent artist headed back to his home state of California. Boom. He seduced her with is copious skills and before you know it they were married. They honey mooned in Death Valley... Same as Aimee and I. Oma has a wedding picture holding a bottle of Sonoma wine but she's holding the bottle just so... She's in profile with her red hair and red grin... you can just see OMA on the bottle.

It's all fitting together now.

Travel...

I can't keep up with my wife. If she had her money is no object way we'd be permanent travelers. 2 weeks a place Boom... Boom... Boom... She doesn't do drugs... She does imagination... Snorts the fuck out of it...

Play

Been playing around with statistics lately. Funny statistics... I built an abacus that tells me how many feet are in a meter. How many meters around the earth. How many earths in a sun. How many snowflakes in the universe. How many cunt hairs in the fluff of a scrote.

feet per meter... 3.281
Earth's Circumference... 40075000 meters
Earths in a Sun... 333070.998
Snowflakes in the Universe... 3.34 * 10^60
Cunt hairs per scrote fluff... 1.337

I may be wrong about the maths but I'm right about the play

US Power Plant Capacity (1920 to 2012)

QOTD

“When we work on making our devices accessible by the blind, I don’t consider the bloody ROI." 

Tim Cook - Apple CEO

Math Exercise

Givens:

• 19.64 lbs of CO2 are produced from burning a gallon of gasoline.
• 1.22 lbs of CO2 are produced from turning Natural Gas into a kWh of Electricity.
• The average US driver travels 12,000 miles per year and gets about 30 miles per gallon.
• The average home in California uses 6,000 kWh per year.
• Assume all electricity comes from natural gas in the following examples

Results:

• Vehicle Emissions = 21.5 lbs of CO2 per day
• Power related Emissions from a 100% NG powered home = 20 lbs of CO2 per day

Note:

While this exercise is hypothetical it's surprising how similar daily CO2 emissions are between these two "activities"... i.e. Driving a gasoline car and powering an NG home produce about the same about of CO2.

More Givens:

• NGCC = Natural Gas Combined Cycle - it's a common type of power plant 
• Average vehicle emissions of hydrocarbons: .21 lbs per day
• Average NGCC emissions of hydrocarbons: .002933 lbs per day
• Average vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide: 1.57 lbs per day
• Average NGCC emissions of carbon monoxide: .001467 lbs per day
• Average vehicle emissions of NOx: .10 lbs per day
• Average NGCC emissions of NOx: .005161 lbs per day

Results

• An average vehicle emits around 60 times more hydrocarbons, 1000 times more carbon monoxide and 20 times more NOx than a hypothetical 100% NG powered California home. 

More Notes: 

It's surprising how much relative pollution comes from cars when viewed from a non-CO2 standpoint. Extra surprising when you consider that the average US home has 2 drivers.

If my math is off well then fuck me.... Given these ridiculous comparative pollution numbers you'd have to think my math must be way way off but in my defense I channel checked the numbers across two separate sources and they were spot on.

• Above we established that CO2 emissions from a car are about equal to the CO2 emission from a NG powered CA home. 
• Forget CO2. 
• An average vehicle pollutes around 60 times more hydrocarbons, 1000 times more carbon monoxide and 20 times more NOx than a hypothetical 100% NG powered CA home. 

I started this post thinking... hmmm... math is fun... At the end of this post I'm feeling sick... How is it that we're being distracted by CO2 metrics while all this pollution flies under the radar?

How did we lose sight of the fact that pollution is currently murdering multiple ecosystems worldwide? Given that pollution is a clear and present danger why are people so worried about global warming impacting their grand children? How are unborn grandchildren more important than today's tortured ecosystems? Anybody know? I sure don't. I'm at a complete fucking loss.