I discovered this amazing song from the Catalonian newspaper El Periodico that my fellow HelpXer Marc introduced me to.
27 mil views….and the original version has 44 mil !!! Have I been living on the moon? I haven´t heard this on UK radio….
Anyway, enjoy.
I stole this fromThings I learnt on Radio4 today after listening to the radio programme.
The sound of presenters Sally Magnusson weeing very loudly in an echoey toilet got us right in the mood to discuss the powers of urine. By the sound of it, once research on urine fuel cells is complete, Sally could power a small town all by herself.
It’s not actually urine that we’re interested in, it’s the urea within urine. Urea is made from ammonia generated during protein metabolism. It is converted into urea in the liver so the body can then excrete it, after further filtering by the kidneys. Don’t let Sally’s prolific peeing put you off urine, because wee comes into the world perfectly filtered, sterile and unstinky. The pong only starts once it comes into contact with micro organisms in the air, in the toilet bowl, in the carpet (if you miss). These micro organisms convert the urea back to toxic ammonia which stinks. So stop being so squeamish about wee wee, because as you may have heard our natural resources are depleting, and when they do, wee might have the answer.
In laboratories somewhere in Scotland, toilets have become wasteful relics. Scientists are looking into Carbamide Power Systems also known as Youtricity. These are fuel cells that convert urea into water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and electricity. If you haven’t access to mains electricity, say when you camping, you can wee on your fuel cell (please go outside the tent) which will light your lantern and as a by product give you a nice drink of water as well. If it’s good enough for NASA astronauts it’s good enough for you.
I know it sounds a bit messy but the technology is in its early stages. Who knows what advances are to come in the next few years? If I could pee in my petrol tank every morning before work and drive right passed Esso, then they’re onto a winner I think.
Human urine is good, but so is pig’s urine. D’you know how many pigs there are out there in the pork industry? 285 million. 285 million pigs peeing is a problem – a stinky problem. The Dutch pork industry can no longer expand because of the government’s odour control restrictions. Not to worry, as always there’s someone who can help.
There is a company, Waste to Green, that will come to your farm and collect your urine for free. I’m talking about the pig’s urine, but you can add some yourself if you like, it’s all good. This solves your pollution problem, you won’t smell of wee and you’ll get yourself a girlfriend. Everyone is happy. The company can then use the urea to make plastics, fertilizer, glue and lipstick (don’t kiss that new girlfriend). If Waste to Green can collect urine from 1% of the 285 million pigs out there, they will make 1 billion US dollars per year (says the excited owner). Where’s my wellies and bucket?
So if collecting millions of gallons of pig’s wee is going to make you a billionaire, why can’t we collect our own? There are millions of gallons of pee waiting inside bladders right now and there’s a man, who used to own a portaloo business, extracting the urine. He is a urine miner. From human urine he can extract proteins, growth hormones, Prozac, in fact any drug that ends up in the bladder. Once extracted these drugs can be remanufactured and remarketed. The portaloo guy reckons mining urine is more lucrative than mining gold or oil. There’s a fortune right under our nostrils.
Just as an aside, I’ve got to ask: how’s your plumbs? Or your carrots or rhubarb for that matter? If your fruit and veg aren’t doing to well and the garden centre’s charging too much for its fancy soil mixtures, instead of wasting your urine in the toilet, nip outside and put it to good use. Urine is an excellent fertilizer and already used commercially on a large scale. Fertilizer urea is manufactured though, so it’s not the real stuff. Once manufactured urea becomes too expensive, there might be openings for full-time Tinklers, you never know.
Sally ends her urine journey at the Malt Whisky Society. She tries some whisky made from the urine of old people and diabetics. Older people and diabetics can’t convert sugar to energy, so these highly processed molecules are extracted and added during fermentation of the whisky. Sally didn’t sound to happy about it, but was quite chuffed with her joke ‘it’s a wee dram’ This turned out to be a con, the whisky wasn’t made from urine it was just some artist making some point that I didn’t understand, but worth putting into the programme for the joke.
It’s going to be difficult to make urine into a respected, recycled commodity. It’s just a bit nasty. But in this world of declining resources, we need to make more use of our wee before the high tech alternatives run out. Oh no, Sally needs to go to the toilet again. The programme ends with either Sally standing next to a large body of water falling into a deep gorge or back in cubicle three of the echoey toilet. Yuk…
There are 206 days to go to the start of the London Olympics and I hope to be as far away as possible from our Capital city while the events take place.
If I were silly enough to endure the inevitable travel chaos then queue up and fight my way through the crowds and pay a fortune for the privilege, it would be to attend the Mountain Bike race at Hadleigh Farm in Essex on the 12th August.
On Friday 1st June there is an event happening in the Cotswolds that would seem to be almost as dangerous…
‘An Olympic Games held in London in 2012 will mark a unique anniversary – it will be exactly 400 years from the moment that the first stirrings of Britain’s Olympic beginnings can be identified’. This statement was made by no other than the British Olympic Association in their successful bid for the games.
They continued, ‘In 1612 in the tiny village of Chipping Campden, Robert Dover opened the first ‘Cotswold Olimpicks’, an annual sporting fair that honoured the ancient Games of Greece. Those early ‘Olimpick’ competitors were as remote as you could imagine from the Olympic stars of today, and the ‘sports’ included singlestick, wrestling, jumping in sacks, dancing and even shin-kicking. But whatever the eccentric nature of the event, this was the pre-dawn of the Olympic Movement, and the Cotswold Games began the historical thread in Britain that was ultimately to lead to the creation of the modern Olympics.’
I do hope Daddy P has ordered a supply of extra strong shin pads.
“A wand’ring fire
Compact of unctuous Vapour, which the Night
Condenses, and the Cold environs round,
Kindled through Agitation to a flame,
Which oft, they say, some Evil Spirit attends,
Hovering and blazing with delusive Light,
Misleads th’ amaz’d Night-Wand’rer from his way
To bogs and mires, and oft through Pond or Pool,
There swallow’d up and lost, from succour far.”
MILTON.
As readers of this blog may know, I am interested in all things scientific, indeed, hardly a day goes by without me having to frantically investigate Buchner’s Funnel , give Signer’s Dog a once-over or look into Craig’s Rotavap, so it was that I found myself being kept up to the early hours after New Year’s Day by Prof Andrea Sella telling me all about Spooklights.
Listening to the Prof’s lecture I learnt it is possible to produce X-rays by simply unrolling Scotch tape.
Apparently peeling back ordinary sticky tape can generate bursts of X-rays intense enough to produce an image of the bones in your fingers.
That’s what Seth Putterman and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles, found when they used a motor to unwind a roll of sticky tape and recorded the electromagnetic emissions. Ripping the tape from its roll at 3 centimetres per second generated X-ray bursts lasting one-billionth of a second, each containing over a million photons.
The researchers suspect the emissions arise when the two surfaces involved acquire electrical charges of opposite sign. In this case, the adhesive becomes positive and the polyethylene roll negative. The charge difference builds until electrons jump from the roll to the adhesive, apparently with enough energy to produce X-rays when they hit the tape.
(Source: New Scientist 22 Oct 2008)
http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2679
Other Spooklights I was informed about included the phenomenon known as Will-o’-the-wisp which is said to be seen chiefly on summer nights frequenting meadows, marshes, and other moist places. It is also often found flying along rivers and hedges, as if there it met with a stream of air to direct it.
The Will-o’-the-wisp has been recorded as flickering over marshy ground since at least the middle ages, in the centuries that followed, dozens of antiquaries have recorded anecdotes and personal accounts of the ‘ignis fatuus’ as it is also known, with even Sir Isaac Newton mentioning them in his 1704 opus Opticks. The lights have also been incorporated into modern literature, e.g. Dracula, and have even had a children’s television show named after them. The most commonly cited explanation for them is that they’re the product of ignited marsh gas: most likely slowly leaking methane whose ignition is triggered by phosphene.
Andrea Sella’s blog: http://solarsaddle.wordpress.com/
BBC WS Discovery prog
Our latest volunteer arrived last night.
Kristi is from Estonia and volunteered earlier this year through the Workaway organisation.
About all I know of Estonia is that the capital Tallinn is popular with groups of British stag-night revellers, and the tragic ‘Estonia’ ferry catastrophe, Europe’s worst maritime disaster since World War II. 852 people are known to have died when Estonia sank in the early hours of September 28, 1994, but more than 1,000 may have perished, if, as reported, some 150 Iraqi Kurds were being smuggled to Sweden in one of the trucks on its car deck.
I had imagined that, like it’s near neighbours Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, it would be a cheap holiday destination.
Apparently not though – Kristi says consumer goods are cheaper in the UK than in her home country!
I asked if people crossed the borders to fill up on cheaper goods, like we Brits did in the days of the Duty-Free ‘booze cruises’ to France and Belgium, but she didn’t think this happened.
The conversation then got onto the subject of the butter shortage in Norway, partly caused by Swedish celebrity chef Leila Lindholm.
The Telegraph reported today:
The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes and online sellers are cashing in on the crisis by offering 500-gram packs for up to €350 (£294).
“Sales all of a sudden just soared, 20 per cent in October then 30 per cent in November,” said Lars Galtung, the head of communications at TINE, Norway’s biggest farmer-owned co-operative.
Last Friday, customs officers stopped a Russian at the Norwegian-Swedish border and seized 90kg of butter stashed in his car.
Food safety authorities have warned people not to buy butter from strangers, Norway’s TV2 reported.
Hmmm….Who remembers ‘butter mountains’ being in the news?
‘EEC summit meeting — “From up here on the butter mountain, we have a splendid view of the sugar mountain and the massif of the cereals as well as, in the far distance, Great Britain.”’ In December 1969, the German cartoonist Köhler illustrates the problem of surplus production faced by the key players in the common agricultural policy (CAP).
Here is a photo taken earlier this week on the farm I am working at. The photo is poor quality and has been shot into the sun, the caption could be “WTF am I doing here?” ‘cos the place is a madhouse.
Some of the equipment we have to work with is a little basic…
When I applied to come to this farm, I was told we would start work at 09:30. I thought this was a bit late, surely farmers are up and out at the crack of dawn?
Not here, we are never picked up from our worker’s house before 10:30!
There is far too much chaos here to write about, but if I tell you that I have spent many days being driven hundreds of miles around the local (and not so local) area to dismantle concrete garages so that they can eventually be re-built on one of the farm sites (there are 6!) as Guinea Pig sheds – yes, that’s right Guinea Pigs as in Cavia porcellus, there are 200+ of these creatures being bred for….er, well, nobody knows really. They are not sold they are just ‘collected’, it’s sort of a hobby that got out of control…..
You get the picture.
I have been here since October 24 and will probably leave end of January, am planning my escape now.
*****************
I have written before of the exploits of the wonderful Sarah Outen, and she is mentioned here again because she went to school in Stamford about 11 miles from where I am living. The farmer’s daughter was at school with Sarah.
She is currently on another of her crazy travel adventures.
Some time ago, I tried to help someone whose Hotmail account had been hacked.
This person (who shall remain nameless for fear of embarrassing Nicole) used the password
STUPID….
Just the 6 letter word you understand, even the punctuation I added above would’ve made it slightly more secure.
For a password to be secure it should be at least 12 characters in length and made from a combination of numbers, letters (upper and lower case) and the various punctuation marks and other symbols on your keyboard.
But how does one remember such a complicated collection of characters without writing it down?
Easy! You DO write it down -but in a secure way.
I have 30+ passwords of 16 characters that are written down in an easily remembered code. Some of the list looks like this:
Amazon Gn R Blk Blu
Mozy Gn Blk Blu Red
JobsToday Blk Blu Gn Red
voda gitwizard56 Blu Gn Blk Red
So my ‘JobsToday’ site’s username (deleted here) is followed by my password which corresponds to four groups of four characters which I remember because each group is represented by a colour – Black, blue, green and red.
Using the grid above, read the corner characters clockwise for each coloured box and my password would be
/Ca:#&)=r!?9b497
This looks incredibly complicated, but use this system for a few weeks and you will remember that ‘Green’ means r!?9 and the other groups will be just as easily remembered.
Keep your list as an email in TWO email accounts and write down the password (somewhere secure) of one of your email account passwords until you remember it!
I´m posting this on a Spanish laptop, so the keyboard is not helpful.
Would´ve copied the page (can´t even work out how to post link) which is here at the BBC website:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16011926
And we have this government as an ally….
At Emerson College there is quite a heavy bias towards arts courses, with wood and stone sculpture, painting and pottery, as well as the performing arts.
When this weeks new students arrived on Sunday, I found myself sharing a table at lunchtime with 2 middle-aged guys who hail from Yorkshire.
Phil works at a Camphill community and has done a few courses at Emerson in previous years.
I asked him what course he was doing this time round.
“Clowning and maths”, he replied.
A forkful of green Thai curry came to a halt inches from my mouth.
“Clowning and maths”, I repeated, searching his face for a clue.
“Yes”, he said, as I looked to his colleague for confirmation. Dave was nodding.
My curry returned to it’s plate.
I looked at Phil, and back to Dave, to see if I was missing the joke somewhere.
“Clowning and maths ?” I tried again, slightly incredulous now.
Phil gave Dave a look that said “is he deaf or stupid?” and me a pitying look as he again said “yes”.
I laughed weakly and said “that’s a weird combination…….”
“Not really” said Dave “the mask helps bring out a more expressive side of the clown…”
“Oh! Clowning and MASKS” I said laughing……
I was telling this story at tea break today and several people nearly choked on their gingernuts. When everyone had recovered, the conversation got round to other misunderstandings.
I was reminded of a friend who was taking a group of builders to a site up in London one day very early in the morning. As they rounded a bend in a country lane, they collided with a deer. The battered Ford looked much the same as it had before the accident, i.e. as if it had been driven over a cliff! The unfortunate animal also looked as if it had been driven over a cliff, and was killed outright.
Never one to look a gift horse hind in the mouth, my friend had his crew load the carcass into the van and they continued on their way.
When they arrived at the site, one of the builders was instructed to drive the van back to Sussex and put the deer in my friend’s garage.
On arriving home that evening, my friend was amazed to see that the normally quiet cul-de-sac where he rented a house, was blocked by police vehicles and lit up with floodlights.
The houses were set back from the road and a steep driveway led to the garages. The steep driveway to my friend’s neighbour’s garage was slick with blood, and several police officers were standing looking at a very dead deer. A visibly shocked old couple stood nearby being consoled by other neighbours…………..
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