God, it feels great to be so mobile again.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Résumé / Abstract

Methane, coal and biomass are being considered as alternatives to crude oil for the production of basic petrochemicals, such as light olefins. This paper is a study on the production costs of 24 process routes utilizing these primary energy sources. A wide range of projected energy prices in 2030-2050 found in the open literature is used. The basis for comparison is the production cost per t of high value chemicals (HVCs or light olefin-value equivalent). A Monte Carlo method was used to estimate the ranking of production costs of all 24 routes with 10,000 trials of varying energy prices and CO2 emissions costs (assumed to be within $0-100/t CO2: the total CO2 emissions, or cradle-to-grave CO2 emissions, were considered). High energy prices in the first three quarter of 2008 were tested separately. The main findings are: * Production costs: while the production costs of crude oil- and natural gas-based routes are within $500-900/t HVCs, those of coal- and biomass-based routes are mostly within $400-800/t HVCs. Production costs of coal- and biomass-based routes are in general quite similar while in some cases the difference is significant. Among the top seven most expensive routes, six are oil- and gas-based routes. Among the top seven least expensive routes, six are coal and biomass routes. * CO2 emissions costs: the effect of CO2 emissions costs was found to be strong on the coal-based routes and also quite significant on the biomass-based routes. However, the effect on oil- and gas-based routes is found to be small or relatively moderate. * Energy prices in 2008: most of the coal-based routes and biomass-based routes (particularly sugar cane) still have much lower production costs than the oil- and gas-based routes (even if international freight costs are included). To ensure the reduction of CO2 emissions in the long-term, we suggest that policies for the petrochemicals industry focus on stimulating the use of biomass as well as carbon capture and storage features for coal-based route

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=21984195

This youtube stuff doesn't do justice without the bass line roaming around. Reminds me that I saw Christian McBride giving 2 hours of lessons while playing with the 86 year old Roy Haynes with Kenny Garret and Chick Corea at the Nice Jazz Festival last week. John McLaughlin stepped in for a couple tunes. What a thrill.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland

The Swiss far-right wants to expand the country by annexing German, French, Austrian and Italian border regions, reports Gazeta Wyborcza. The Swiss People's Party (SVP) floated the idea in June but only now has submitted a draft proposal calling for necessary changes to the constitution to make the enlargement possible. The regions in question are the German state of Baden Württemberg, French departments Alsace, Savoy, Jura and Ain, Italian provinces Aosta, Como, Varese and Bozen and the Austrian province of Vorarlberg....

.....the results of a poll conducted by the Swiss weekly Weltwoche. It showed that 63% of nearly 1,800 German, Italian and Austrian polled living in the border regions said they were in favour of joining Switzerland.

On this date sixty-five years ago, the planet had witnessed the detonation of just one nuclear device. That was the Trinity test at the Alamagordo Bombing Range in New Mexico on July 16, 1945. Twenty days later came the second, and four days after that came the third. Since then there have been 2,050 more - or perhaps 2,053: there may or may not have been a nuclear test in the Indian Ocean in 1979, and North Korea claims to have tested two nuclear devices, although those claims are not universally acknowledged.

They began slowly, then picked up pace as the United States and the Soviet Union -- and, to a lesser extent, the United Kingdom, France and China -- built up massive nuclear arsenals in pursuit of a Cold War strategy that was literally MAD, centered as it was around the notion of Mutual Assured Destruction.

And every single one of them -- from that initial test in the New Mexico desert in 1945, to the detonations that confirmed the entry of Pakistan into the nuclear club in 1998 -- has been recorded and animated in this extraordinary time-lapse map by Japanese artist Isao Mashimoto

Baseball Cup here.

Live Ticker here.

Skennah Kowa

I'm still alive

to which I responded

God here. How do you know?

When I spoke to him, he was pretty spaced out on morphine having just had a chunk of bowel removed. This was the aftermath of an appendectomy over a year ago, followed by a major abscess and the wound then healing open.

He's had a test for Crohn's disease etc (which they suspect but could not confirm) but they won't really know until they do a biopsy on the bowel segment removed.

I had my appendix out on the day that England won the World Cup in 1966, and thanks to penicillin the peritonitis I also had didn't kill me. They left the wound to drain, and after a month it healed.

Firstly, I can't help thinking they could and should have let youngster's initial wound drain (which they are now doing) instead of sewing him up and relying on antibiotics, which was then followed by the serious abscess referred to.

Secondly, I can't help thinking that with the sort of key-hole surgery my other youngster had for his appendix in Oslo a couple of winters ago (and it was not a straighforward operation) then he would never have had the problem in the first place.

Oh well.

Gotta leave it to the professionals, and apparently they've had the A Team on it this time....

Fingers crossed. The last thing the poor devil needs is a stoma bag for the rest of his life.

Modern conservatives engage in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy: the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.Galbraith

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy

BTW, this is one of the better renditions I've heard.

If you never fail, you're not trying hard enough.

One pic for now:

Wind power