omenti

design, diy, boredom and creativity

As a first year grad student I was required to take a few shop classes to get my key to the department's shop - something necessary for any experimentalist.  People of my vintage were used to building projects - everyone was good at soldering as we were weaned on Heathkit projects and we mostly knew basic woodworking and drafting from home and shop classes, but I had never done any machining so I took a metal working class.  It was basic - learn how to use a lathe and milling machine.  

 

Of course it came in handy and I had to weld too (fortunately I learned how in high school), but it wasn't until after I cleared the preliminary exam before I worked on a project for fun.  

 

The inspiration came from old Popular Science magazines in the library.  There were a few engines of various types and I decided it would be neat to make a solar powered Stirling engine using a parabolic mirror's focus to provide the necessary heat.  I poured over some existing designs and came up with a simple two cylinder design, bought the steel, aluminum and brass stock I'd need and some neat ball bearings from the SKF company. I ruined one of the pistons, but everything else came together and I had something that generated about 30 watts at 1,500 rpm using a blowtorch flame.  I never got around to finding a nice parabolic mirror to turn it into a solar powered engine, but learned a lot in the process. It wasn't elegant or beautiful, but it worked.

 

About a month ago I found myself part of a group charged with trying to understand mass customization (extreme personalization and whatever you want to call it) a bit better.  There is the notion that 3d printing will become a major force changing the world in the near future.  I don't agree - at least not in the next decade, but there is so much more to mass customization and extreme personalization than 3d printing.¹

 

The successful companies to date, other than those specializing in prototype support, are those that offer multiple choice of already designed products - think of it as an extensive options list.  Manufacture is still conventional, but the process may have to be radically different.

 

 In theory one of the largest opportunities in this area is machine assisted bespoke.  Jheri and I have worried about this and have discussed it as it relates to clothing and I've mentioned bicycles.  The clothing piece is more interesting as it has seen much more attention and some automation - the largest benefit is probably getting away from sizing, but also to give a bit more freedom in fashion.

 

Jheri has been giving me a better sense of what fashion means as a personal expression of taste and even artistic sense.  She notes that women her age in the US are generally lacking in creativity compared to many of the major European cities and also notes the Americans tend to spend more money and buy many more pieces of clothing.  But the clothing is poorly made out of inferior materials, mostly in Southeast Asia under conditions approximating slavery.  This exists in Europe too, but apparently a middle ground of clothing that vanished from the American market still exists.  Workmanship, materials and fit are still important and the idea is to get pieces that will last and can be modified from year to year.

 

Jheri added something very interesting.  Young American women are no longer being taught how to sew whereas most of their European counterparts - particularly in France, Italy and Northern Europe - are. A bit of checking around shows the boys are also receiving shop training.  The continent has a larger percentage of young people who know how to build things.  This doesn't mean they will, although it happened on a large scale in Iceland a few years ago when their economy crumbled, but when you build things you get a better sense of what design is.  You won't become a master, but you'll appreciate it more.  This may translate into a different appetite for well designed objects - watches, clothing, furniture, cars, bicycles or whatever and, more interestingly, it may translate into different tool needs for personal involvement in mass customization.

 

The Do It Yourself movement is alive and well in the US, but is notable as it is such an enormous contrast with the rest of the country.  This type of activity is more common in many of the European countries where hobbies and crafting take up a larger percentage of time that is devoted to passive entertainment in the US.  Jheri follows street fashion and notes a few world class hotspots in America, but generally it is more interesting in European cities.²

 

The basics for beginning to appreciate fabrication and design were once taught in the school system.  A few people are doing it themselves, but is this something we should try and bring back?  What does it say about education?

 

The notion I'd like to have you think about is the power of free time and boredom and its relation to home fabrication and design.  Over the years I've become convinced that intense periods of single tasking followed by periods where you aren't doing much in particular and may even be a bit bored, are very important to creativity.  The interesting thoughts usually strike me out of the blue during those quiet periods, but they are rare or absent if I haven't been pushing myself.  I've noticed that tasks associated with building things and trying to sort through that intensely connect the dots world of design and fabrication can leave me completely puzzled where I just have to quit and think of other things - or just sit around being very bored with my lack of progress.  For whatever reason those have proven to be very rich moments.

 

If you are looking for something for your kids or yourself that is probably totally different and may expand your horizon and possibly provide new insight into your normal work I recommend learning a bit about building things and design. But this usually needs to be hands on and it is going to be much easier and more fun if you can find local people to learn from and with.³ 

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¹ It would take many pages to go into this, but basically there are some major roadblocks.  3d printing makes enormous sense for very low volume fabrication - prototypes, certain types of hobbyist kit, some medical apparatus and the like and it is revolutionizing those worlds.  The idea of having the spare parts for your washing machine or a new household device appear from your home or even community printer is off in the future.  If you are willing to compromise on material choice, fit and finish and price, you can do it - but those are major concessions.  On the other hand 2d printing is approximately here now.  Ping me for details if you want a discussion.

If you have the time and patience I do recommend playing with it.  You can even design objects and have them printed by someone else so you don't have to pay a few thousand bucks for an "ok" printer.  They've made great leaps since the early days - I first used one at Bell Labs in 1993 and most recently a few months ago.  An amazing difference, but we're still in the early days for home use - certainly not at the IBM PC or Macintosh level and not even at the Apple II or TRS-80 level.  But great fun for learning.

² She puts it a bit more starkly than I stated - "American women mostly dress only as they are told by advertising.  The streets are so predictable and boring with all of those poorly made outfits marching around with each similarly dressed wearer proclaiming 'I am an individual'  There is so little personal art involved."

I add that there is a lot of crafting in the US, but it is reduced from what it was mostly because it is done as a hobby rather than for making things we really need.  Now we just buy cheap imports.

³ Our school system used to offer inexpenise shop classes, but those vanished with the shop program.  The community college still offers them.  Some cities have clubs that share a well equiped workshop for a low fee - here is a neat one in Cambridge in the UK and you can find them in regions where people build things - Brooklyn, the East Bay, Silicon Valley, Cambridge, Mass, and so on....  Check out the local university- some of them do this sort of thing.  If you are into clothing there are any number of sewing, weaving and other forms of 2d fabrication with people who have deep expertise.  It often helps to live in an urban area, but see if you can find a good match.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Tree nuts are good for you in moderation.  As a vegetarian I'm supposed to have 30 to 50 grams a day of almonds, cashews, pecans or walnuts.  All great things in my book. Here's a neat little salad for pecans

 

Apple-Pecan Broccoli Salad

 

Ingredients

 

Salad

 

° 6 ounces brocoli slaw or one cup shredded broccoli stems, one cup shredded carrots, and one cup shredded red cabbage  (I cheated and used a 6 ounce commerical bag which was on sale for $2)

° one tart apple cut into matchsticks

° a handfull or so of pecan halves

 

Dressing

 

° 2 tbl plain Greek yogurt (I used 2% Fage)

° 2 tsp mauonnaise

° 1 tbl honey 

° 1/2 tsp sweet curry powder

° 1/2 tsp fresh black pepper

° 1 tsp rice vinegar

 

Technique

 

° toast the pecans over medium heat in a dry frying pan until you can smell them.  Don't brown them!!

° In a mixing bowl whisk the dressing ingredients.  Add the salad ingredients except for the pecans and toss 

 

 

on thanksgiving

I have so much to be thankful for that it is good we celebrate this day several times a year.  Some great family members and a few astoundingly wonderful friends who I consider family.  Too many of them are at a distance, so for a few we put on a Thanksgiving celebration when they visit.

 

I'm also thankful for the wide span of interests I'm regularly exposed to.  Connecting the dots and uncovering brand new ignorance is aided by this approach and I'm lucky enough to know some very different and very brilliant minds.  It certainly adds to the quality of my own work (except writing - I doubt I'll ever sort that out properly).

 

Music and art are very important to me.  I'm not very good at music and maybe a bit better at art, but they impact me deeply and are part of how I think and solve problems.¹ Last night I heard a NPR All Things Considered report on Max Richter's recomposition of the first four concerti of Vivaldi's Il Cimento dell' Armenia e dell'invenzione - otherwise known as The Four Seasons.

 

First some background is in order...

 

I'm something of a musical omnivore these days.  The range of music that interests me has grown with time - as an undergrad it was mostly western classical music, folk songs and some emerging electronic music.  When I went to grad school on Long Island I bought a VW Rabbit and wanted a vanity license plate.  

 

At the time I was deeply into the late baroque and early classical period and decided on VIVALDI on my Montana plates (I was still a resident).²   Having them generated more than a few stories, but my favorite took place at a Mobil gas station in Rocky Point, LI.

 

I had just filled it and gave the attendant my credit card - full service was still standard in New York in those days.  She went to the back of the car to write down the license plate.  Watching in my rearview mirror (she was about 18 or 20 and a pretty blonde), I noticed a look of confusion spread over her face.  She slowly walked back to the station, completed the transaction and started walking back...   Halfway from me her gait suddenly changed and her countenance switched into that smile of delight that comes with an "aha!" moment.  She handed the card and receipt to me and said with a knowing confidence

 

"Vivaldi - that's the vampire, right?!"

 

How could you possibly ruin such a perfect moment...   I gave her a knowing and impressed look and said - "you nailed it.  You wouldn't imagine how few people come up with that..."

 

Such a delightful moment - one is thankful for them whenever and wherever they appear.

 

I add the music is wonderful and something of a revelation if you know the Vivaldi work well.  It is very different, but added to my appreciation and understanding of the original - I've already listened to it three times.  Available on iTunes and probably elsewhere. Essential  stuff!

 

I'm also thankful for delightful little hacks that private citizens come up with.  Jheri points out this delightful bit of social hackery to help non-Danes pronounce street names in Copenhagen.

 

 

WTPh? - What the Phonics from Andrew Spitz on Vimeo.

 

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Recipe Corner 

 

Two items this time.  A quick improvement (at least for me) on Thanksgiving cranberry sauce followed by a good side dish for this time of the year.  The ratios probably aren't that important - particularly the sugar .. more if you like it sweeter, less for a tarter sauce.

 

 

Cranberry and Blueberry Sauce

Ingredients

° 350g  cranberries (thawed if frozen)

° 175g water

° 200g white cane sugar

° 225g blueberries (thawed if frozen)

° 2 tsp vanilla extract (I use a good homemade extract)

Technique

° cook cranberries in the water over medium-high heat until the cranberries begin to pop (about 3 minutes)

° add sugar and blueberries and cook until mixture comes to a full boil.  Continue on boil until the mixture thickens a bit - maybe 3 minutes

° remove from heat and add vanilla -> refrigerate

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I love celeriac.  Cutting them is much easier than you might think, but be sure and wash out all of the dirt.  You need a good vegetable stock for this one.  Store-bought sock will not cut it.

Celeriac Gratin

Ingredients

° 1 large onion finely sliced

° 2 tbl extra virgin olive oil

° 750 g vegetable stock (I made a really rich one based on mushrooms)

° 1 tsp cider vinegar

° 1 largish garlic clove, smashed

° 3 sprigs thyme

° a large celeriac (mine was 600g after peeling)

° 180g eating class apple

° 50g hazelnuts, lightly toasted, skinned and roughly chopped

° a sea salt (I like Maldon) and fresh ground black pepper

Technique

° preheat oven to 400°F

° heat the oil over medium heat in a pan and gently fry the onion until soft and translucent.  Add the stock vinegar, garlic and thyme; crank the heat to medium high and bring to a boil.

° quarter the celeriac and thinly slice.  Add the celeriac to the pan; reduce heat to simmer, cover and let cook for about 15 minutes.  Season to taste..

° move half the celeriac and onions to a shallow ovenproof dish with a slotted spoon.  Peel and thinly slice the apple and arrange slices on top of the celeriac.  Pour about 200g of the liquid over the pile, scatter  the hazelnuts over the top and back 45 minutes.

 

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¹ Two of my senses, hearing and vision,  are non-orthogonal. Having crisply orthogonal senses makes a lot of sense if you are a hunter and potential prey, but the specialization that comes with civilization has allowed some of us with this condition to survive.  I find it a great aid in doing physics and math, although I would love to experience crisply orthogonal sight and sound for awhile.

² The plates were stolen four times.  In New Jersey I used to have the plates WEASL 1 (we have ferrets) everyone who asked assumed I was a lawyer ... go figure...

 

 

just how much is significant?

How much carbon dioxide does a person produce and how does that compare to our cars?

 

One of the more interesting questions I've had during a talk in some time.  Maybe not from the answer, but because it leads to some other rich areas including, perhaps, your mental efficiency at home and in the office.

 

The simple answer is about a kilogram a day.. we breathe in air which has some oxygen in it.  There are tiny chemical factories in our cells called mitochondria that manage a neat trip - cellular respiration, which is the rough inverse of photosynthesis.  They take carbohydrates and oxygen and produce energy with carbon dioxide and water was by products.  This energy is what keeps us alive.¹  For example:

C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ -> 6O₂ + 6H₂O + energy

For an average adult who uses about 2,000 Calories a day we get close to one kilogram of carbon dioxide a day.²  So now we can take on the car comparison.  In a year the population of the US produces about 300 million * 365 days * 1 liter/day ~ 110 billion kg of CO₂. Last year Americans burned about 134 billion gallons of gasoline.  Burning a gallon of gasoline releases about 8.8 kilograms of CO₂, so automotive use releases about 1180 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  Our cars emit about ten times as much carbon dioxide into the air as we do.  Of course most of the world doesn't drive as much as we do, so the average world figures would be much closer.  It begs the question of how important are cars relative to humans?

 

The answer is easy at the surface.  People get their energy from recent photosynthesis.  It may pass through a cow or a chicken on its way to your body, but it probably came from a recent plant that is either still alive or has been replaced.  It is part of the carbon cycle the Earth is currently tuned to handle.  Most of the gasoline comes from oil which is a carbon storage source that has been sequestered for millions of years.  We are releasing carbon dioxide into the air that is beyond what the carbon cycle can handle - at least that's the simple explanation. 

 

Looking a bit deeper, and why this question is interesting, we have to ask how much energy was used to get the energy stored in the plant to our fork and where did that energy come from?   Sorting that out turns out to be a very complex task.  A vegan who eats uncooked plants raised without fertilizers and harvested by hand requires very little excess energy.  But our food system is terribly inefficient.  It takes an enormous amount of energy to irrigate a field, making fertilizer takes a lot of energy, energy is used to harvest, transport, process, refrigerate and cook our food.  Making food from food adds another layer of inefficiency.  A steer is a machine that turns plants into meat with a miserable 5% efficiency.  Chicken is much better at 10 to 15% and some fish can be very inefficient when the cost of fishing is added.  

 

A bottom line is that our food system is only about 10% efficient overall - an average person requires about 2,000 to 2,500 Calories a day and it takes about 25,000 Calories of energy to produce 2,500 Calories.  In country-scale discussions you sometimes encounter the term quad.²  The US population requires about 1 quad of energy from food and agriculture, distribution, cooking etc consumes about 10 quads.  Total energy use in the US is about 100 quads - so although people only require one percent to stay alive, it takes ten percent of our energy economy to feed us.

 

But we exhale enough carbon dioxide to fill about 275 two liter bottles a day - and much that is in a home or office.³  Although carbon dioxide is relatively harmless it can kill if the air you breathe has a lot of it.  A reasonable question is what are the effects of normal respiration in a closed environment?  Can our bodies handle it?

 

When AT&T Research moved to the Florham Park, NJ facility I found the air in my office became stuffy and stale when the door was closed.  The circulation system wasn't properly adjusted, so I had the building HVAC guy adjust it. His first step was diagnostic - there were any number of chemicals to worry about with carpets outgassing, but it turns out measuring CO₂ levels is reasonably inexpensive and is a proxy for many problems, so they left monitor with a chart recorder in my office for a few days.  The levels frequently went to over 2,000 parts per million. 

 

It turns out there are any number of suggested standards for CO₂ levels, but I don't know about any firm requirements - at least not in New Jersey.  At the time it was recommend a close office not exceed 800 ppm.  The vents were adjusted and a dead fan restarted taking my office to about 500 ppm with the door closed for hours with a few people in it and a bit over 400 otherwise.  Not bad as the atmosphere at the time was about 370ppm (now it is closer to 400).  The room now had a breeze, but I felt more comfortable in it.  

 

Recently work has been done looking for better numbers.  Just what should a home or office be set to?  Ideally one would think about 280 ppm as that is what we have evolved to, but we've blown through that.  Is the safe level 500, 600, 700, ... 1,000???

 

Recent work suggests that you shouldn't go over 600ppm - that one begins to see cognitive issues that get worse with increasing concentrations.⁴  Confirmation of these results is needed, but other work suggests they may be good enough to take action - after all, no harm is done lowering a level to something closer to the atmospheric background.

 

Do you know the CO₂ levels in your office, your conference rooms, your home...?  Just what kind of accuracy do you need to measure it?   There are a variety of techniques, but a relatively inexpensive device can be had that is good to about 50 ppm in the range from 100 to 10,000 ppm.  

 

I wonder how many homes and businesses are running with an intellectual handicap?  This is particularly important as home and offices become "tighter" and less drafty to save energy.  At some point one has to think about ventilation and possibly use a heat exchanger.

 

When weather conditions and work permits I tend to work outside.  Since I turn off my phone this has the added benefit of allowing me to focus on single tasks.  Not a bad way to spend portions of the day.

 

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¹ Since the carbohydrates ultimately come from green plants which get their energy from the Sun using photosynthesis, it is fair to say that we are ultimately solar powered.  There are some conversation and storage steps, but the energy was recently (usually within a year or less) leaving the photosphere of the Sun in the form of visible light.

² A quad is a quadrillion British Thermal Units.  A BTU is yet another unit of energy - 1 Calorie is approximately 4 BTUs

³ One kilogram of carbon dioxide works out to about 550 liters of carbon dioxide gas at standard temperature and atmospheric pressure - a mole of CO₂ is 44g, so we have 227 moles of CO₂.  At 25°C and 1 atmosphere Boyle's law give us about 24.5 liters for one mole of gas. So you would fill about a 275 two litter bottles every day if you wanted to sequester it.

⁴ http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/2012/09/1104789/

Is CO₂ an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO₂Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance

September 20, 2012 Advance Publicans

Usha Satish,¹ Mark J. Mendell,² Krishnamurthy Shekhar,¹ Toshifumi Hotchi,² Douglas Sullivan,² Siegfried Streufert¹ and William J. Fisk²

¹Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Upstate Medical University, State University of New York, Syracuse, New York, USA, ²Indoor Environment Department, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, USA

Abstract

Background: Associations of higher indoor carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations with impaired work performance, increased health symptoms, and poorer perceived air quality have been attributed to correlation of indoor CO₂ with concentrations of other indoor air pollutants also influenced by rates of outdoor-air ventilation.

Objectives: We assessed direct effects of CO₂, within the range of indoor concentrations, on decision making.

Methods: Twenty two participants were exposed to CO₂ at 600, 1,000, and 2,500 ppm in an office-like chamber, in six groups. Each group was exposed to these conditions in three 2.5-hour sessions, all on one day, with exposure order balanced across groups. At 600 ppm, CO₂ came from outdoor air and participants’ respiration. Higher concentrations were achieved by injecting ultrapure CO₂. Ventilation rate and temperature were constant. Under each condition, participants completed questionnaires on health symptoms and perceived air quality, and a computer-based test of decision-making performance. Participants, and the person administering the decision-making test, were blinded to CO₂ level. Data were analyzed with analysis of variance models.

Results: Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO₂, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scales of decision-making performance (raw score ratios 0.06-0.56), but performance on the focused activity scale increased.

Conclusions: Direct adverse effects of CO₂ on human performance may be economically important and may limit energy-saving reductions in outdoor air ventilation per person in buildings. Confirmation of these findings is needed.

 

 

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Four small items this time:

First Sukie is allergic to chocolate, so I've been experimenting with homemade carob bark and chips ... here is the best effort to date:

 

You need a first rate carob powder. After struggling with some substandard carob powders I tired the toasted carob powder from Bob's Red Mill.  (I also strongly recommend them for grains in general - great quality and consistency plus they are socially responsible).  Really excellent stuff!

This gives a bit over 100 grams of carob bar (break it into bits for chips)  - scale as you need.  Grade A maple syrup has nothing to do with the quality ..  rather it is the first draw and tends to be clear and delicately flavored.  It is difficult to find in stores (much of it is mislabeled).  If you use regular maple syrup, try a lower amount - say half as much, and make up the sweetness with simple syrup)

Ingredients

° 22g toasted carob powder

° 60g coconut oil

° 20g grade A maple syrup*

° 4g finely ground white sugar

° a pinch of salt

° 0.5 tbl vanilla extract

Technique

° spay a non-stick coating on a pan that will fit in your freezer (a standard 8x8 cake tin is great)

° Pour the coconut oil into a bowl and heat a bit (I use a microwave on low power) to liquify it.  It is usually solid or semi-solid at room temperature.

° mix in the rest of the components .. you may want to start with a bit less sweetener for your first try

° adjust sweeteners

° pour the mixture into the pan and freeze for about 30 minutes

° pop off with a spatula or knife.

You might try a larger mixture pouring it over almonds for a carob almond bark

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The maple and vanilla flavor is interesting and needs further exploration.  A more basic bark would just use simple syrup   

 

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Tree nuts are good for you in moderation.  As a vegetarian I'm supposed to have 30 to 50 grams a day of almonds, cashews, pecans or walnuts.  All great things in my book.  Here's a neat little salad for pecans

 

Apple-Pecan Broccoli Salad

 

Ingredients

 

Salad

 

° 6 ounces broccoli slaw or one cup shredded broccoli stems, one cup shredded carrots, and one cup shredded red cabbage  (I cheated and used a 6 ounce commercial bag which was on sale for $2)

° one tart apple cut into matchsticks

° a handful or so of pecan halves

 

Dressing

 

° 2 tbl plain Greek yogurt (I used 2% Fage)

° 2 tsp mauonnaise

° 1 tbl honey 

° 1/2 tsp sweet curry powder

° 1/2 tsp fresh black pepper

° 1 tsp rice vinegar

 

Technique

 

° toast the pecans over medium heat in a dry frying pan until you can smell them.  Don't brown them!!

° In a mixing bowl whisk the dressing ingredients.  Add the salad ingredients except for the pecans and toss 

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 For the third item I note that pasteurized eggs are starting to show up in some stores.  The brand around here is Safest Choice and their webpage has a store list.   When you bake and are experimenting it can be very useful to sample the dough or batter and this allows you to do it safely.  Refining the recipe for Sukie's carob cake was easy - I made a master batch of batter and broke it into ten parts each of which I varied something.  Using two main batches I could conduct twenty trials in a few hours and was able to find a few variations that stood out from the rest.  You can also make foods like eggnog, some ice creams or just snack on chocolate chip cookie dough safely and that is worth the high price every now and again.  

Recommended!

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And finally an observation.  In rebalancing the temperature in our refrigerator as it started working after the massive power outage of superstorm Sandy I managed to nearly freeze a greek yogurt.  Once or twice a week my breakfast features a 200g container of Fage 2% plain greek yogurt, about 14g of walnuts or cashews and some berry jam and fresh berries.  The yogurt is usually refrigerator temperature  - about 40°F.  Near freezing - say 33° or 34°F - the yogurt becomes extra thick and smooth making the mixture even better - much better I think.

So try chilling your yogurt to get it near freezing - without managing to actually freeze the stuff.

 

 

connecting with an audience

In the past four years I've given nearly two dozen public talks, each with over 100 people in the audience, on it and I still struggle to connect.  Those who know me know I'm not a particularly compelling speaker, but there is a message I feel a need to deliver.  I'm learning as I go but despite the efforts of a few excellent coaches I'm still not connecting.

 

Part of the problem is the subject is exceptionally technical with a good deal of active science underway.  Within the research community there is a strong consensus on the fundamentals.  The nature of science is to live on the edge and expand the world's ignorance, but as science carefully sorts through those new and interesting beaches there is a lot of confusion that needs to be worked through.  The experts are often working on issues where there is no consensus and their excitement can be very puzzling to the public.

 

This is true in medical science.  Understanding something as complex as the human body in any depth is beyond us.  Studies often give what appear to be contradictory results and, unfortunately, these are often reported to the public giving the impression that the science is settled by drug companies and University PR arms.  The attention can produce profit for one and attention that results in new grants for the other.  But the public often has the mistaken view that science gives black and white results and hearing about a new study than contradicts something that was reported on the news two months ago can create enough confusion to get John Q Public to ignore any information on the subject - including bits and pieces of science that is settled and accepted with a high degree of confidence.

 

Most of my public talks are on global warming.   The first half dozen were similar in content to Al Gore's talk^.1  The problem was I wanted to explain the physics behind each little point to a public which had no interest in physics.  Each talk was politely received, but had very long Q&A sessions - usually as long as the talk.  Slowly I learned to simplify the talk and not get into physics, chemistry or biology.  My real goal should be to teach only one or two very general concepts - doing more in an hour would require a miracle.  

 

I learned that some of the audience want simple suggestions of what to do.  Some of the audience can teach me something and a portion of the audience is uninterested in solutions and came to argue.  I've learned there is no way to convince the latter group that the basic science is settled.  Engaging with them can turn into a two player game where mud balls are trump.  

 

Your general practitioner has a similar problem.  You go in for your physical and usually are given a dozen things to change - your diet, exercise, medicines and so on.  You are inundated with information and that special diet you heard about is greeted with a confused look.  Most people get confused and intimidated and walk away doing nothing.

 

When it comes to fighting global warming much of the same is true.  People have no idea what is cost effective and what isn't.  Some very committed folks start to worry about plastic bags and buying a new Prius while they completely ignore a few things that not only make a large impact, but can save them a lot of money.  Ideally a short talk would communicate one or two big ideas with enough impact that people in the audience could connect the dots with their own lives and remember them enough the day after the talk to implement one or two of them.   

 

That is what I need to do.  

 

It isn't exactly easy.  Coming up with this sort of image is akin to writing poetry.  I've had talks with a well know popularizer of astrophysics who makes it seem effortless, but he often struggles for a week on a single image that he can paint with a few sentences in under thirty seconds.

 

A few of you are gifted speaker and story tellers and I'm grateful for the ideas and mentoring.  Slowly I'm making progress.  Recently I was able to chat with Mike Evans - a family physician at St Michael's in Toronto and an associate professor of family medicine and public health at the University of Toronto.  He has a passion and talent for finding a single piece of advice - often the most important bit of advice - in what amounts to a sea of confusing medical information and communicating it clearly.  He made this beautiful nine minute youtube video with an artist and two days of studio time.  Watch it!

 

 

He doesn't fall into the trap of trying to explain too much that I'm often fall far but, at the same time, he doesn't dumb down the information.  The advice he gives is widely held in the medical research community and happens to be very easy to follow, inexpensive and can make a huge difference in your quality of life.

 

The results have been amazing.  He hasn't publicized it - nearly three million visits in less than a year.  The message isn't what people expect to hear and he has a curious phrasing near the end that makes it stick in your mind.  Tens of thousands have emailed the link to others and social sharing of things like this is an extremely potent mechanism for spreading information.  

 

Speaking of storytelling, Pixar's Brave has been released on DVD.  If you haven't seen it take a look.  If you have seen it you probably want a copy anyway.  The story is simple and a bit predictable, but the cinematography is excellent.  This is now my favorite animated film and one of my favorite films ever.  I have some connections with Pixar, but I'd say the same without them - this is the first Pixar film that takes the top spot on my animation list.  

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¹ Only a small percentage of the public connected with Gore's talks for the long term.  They had a lot of showmanship, but if you asked people about them a month later all they remembered is being confused about the hockey stick and an unfortunate polar bear.

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Recipe corner 

 

Another holiday dish - a butternut squash side dish that would probably work well with pumpkin.

 

A Different Sort of Butternut Squash

 

Ingredients

 

° 3 tbl olive oil

° a generous pinch of ground asafetida

° 1/2 teaspoon whole mustard seeds (I've tried both brown and yellow with good results)

° 600 g peeled and seeded butternut squash, cut into segments inch-ish pieces (about 1-1/3 cup)

° 1/4 cup water

° 3/4 tsp salt

° 1-1/2 tsp sugar

° 1/4 tbl cayenne pepper

° 1 tbl plain yogurt

° 2 tbl chopped cilantro

 

Technique

 

° Pour the oil into a pan over medium heat. When hot, add the asafetida and mustard seeds. Add the squash when the mustard seeds start to pop, (very soon!!). Cook while stirring until the squash pieces just start to brown.

° Add the water, cover, turn heat to low, and cook until the squash is tender - maybe 10 minutes (note - you might try a vegetable stock in place of the water, but try water first)

 ° Add the salt, sugar, cayenne and yogurt. Stir and cook, uncovered, over medium heat until the yogurt is completely absorbed. Sprinkle in the cilantro and stir a couple of times and its ready.

 

 

 

 

 

feeding your phone m&ms

Many of us who had long term (over a week) power outages during superstorm Sandy and the Nor'easter that followed ran out of batteries, candles, lacked electricity to run natural gas furnace fans, had problems charging phones and laptops, lost refrigerated food and ate cold food.   Having some sort of locally generated power would be nice, but gasoline fueled generators are loud, inefficient and handling gasoline causes more than a few fires.

 

Some of the items mentioned have very small power requirements - often just a few watts.  Since a person can easily produce 30 to 100 watts of power, the thought of using a small generator comes to mind.  

 

In the early 90s a friend and her husband set up a small DC generator on a bike for their kids so they could watch the Olympics on a small black and white TV.  It was crude, but seemed to capture the imagination of everyone who heard about it.  People would then ask about how much it would cost to build one and gave up on the idea.  These days you can buy small units for a few hundred to about a thousand dollars.  Anyone who is in reasonable shape should be able to produce about 100 watts for hour long periods.  You could easily charge several cellphones along with a laptop, but running your furnace fan would be a bit beyond what your muscles could provide.   Of course electricity is an ephemeral form of energy and you need a battery to store it unless you are directly powering something.

 

On the smaller scale where you are looking to replace C and D cells, people sometimes have hand powered mechanical units.  Some of these store energy in springs, but that turns out to be extremely inefficient. I haven't played with this unit, but it has a usb port to charge your phone and a small 200mAH battery pack so you can crank away and store a charge.  

The power from the generator is very small - probably under a half watt as the specs say you can get about 30 seconds of phone use with a minute of cranking.  Filling the battery (about 10 watt hours) would take quit a bit of work and wouldn't be fun.  Our legs are much stronger than our hands and don't tire as quickly, plus turning energy released from you metabolism into mechanical work is usually a bit under 20% efficient - which is why you get hot during physical labor...

 

But a single M&M has about 3.4 watt-hours of energy.¹  Hydrocarbon based fuels - and much of our food is just that - have energy densities on the order of a hundred times greater than batteries.²  Wouldn't it be great if we could just stuff a few M&Ms in our phones or laptops and be done with it?  Our bodies are fuel cells that convert food into mechanical energy, a bit of electrical energy, heat and other forms of chemical energy. It is possible to build fuel cells that convert hydrocarbons into electricity, but so far they are too large and expensive to find use in phones or laptops.  But someday ...

 

But what to do during a power outage?

 

My experience is that a furnace fan to move the heat from our natural gas furnace into the house would be awfully nice, but ours averages about 100 watts on a cold Winter day and my rowing only gives 6 to 8 watts.³  Since most of our energy is turned into heat a nice approach would be to invite a large number of people over for a party.  Each person gives off about 100 watts and if you could have them dance or commit some other form of exercise you might be able to raise the room temperature to a comfortable level.

 

The alternative you use is local heat and insulation.  During the day you sit in the sunlight and wear a sweater.  When it is darker you wear several sweaters or a down coat. You cover all of the windows to keep whatever heat you have. And you suffer a bit.  The Summer is worse as cooling takes more energy than heating for a similar size temperature change.

 

Rethinking the electrical grid would be nice.  We have underground power in our part of town, but it is fed by higher voltage lines that run through a wooded area.  The infrastructure is over 50 years old and tends to be problematic.  In the past two years we've only had electricity 97% of the time and only a bit over 98% over the past five^.4  Electricity is something you really want with yearly up-times minimally at 99.9% and downtimes no longer than a half hour at a time.⁵

 

But assuming you can deal with the heat and lack of refrigeration, the next items are lighting and communication. For some communication is more important than heating.  This last outage destroyed cellphone use for nearly twelve hours.  It turns out our cable modem based phone was dead too - we had thought of that as a lifeline and need to re-think.⁶  A bike generator could supply some efficient lighting or rechargeable lamps, charge your laptop and keep your Internet modem running.

 

While it might seem nice to have a "smart grid", that isn't coming any time soon and it probably doesn't make sense to push it immediately.⁷  What needs to be pushed in the short term, and something that broke badly was the cellphone infrastructure.  These should have the ability to run for extended periods by themselves.  In areas like ours a week isn't unthinkable (you would want battery and a fuel powered generator).

 

I would tend to stay away from the little hand generators as they only do a limited job.  You can't supply a lot of power over a long time with your hand and these devices tend to be very inefficient to boot.  Apart from a serious stationary bike based generator and storage battery I would recommend batteries  Get lanterns and flashlights that use the largest cells normally available - usually alkaline D cells.  Another option is to use disposable lithium batteries as they have greater energy densities than alkalines and have much better power densities.   While expensive, they often can be stored for a decade and still provide good performance. You can get a cheap battery case and wire an old usb cable to charge your phone for a visit to Radio Shack and a couple of bucks.  Commercial disposable battery chargers for phones run $10 to $25.  These are going to be much better than $75 to $100 rechargeable external battery packs over the long haul!

 

If you only see outages up to a few hours get an uninterruptible power supply for your computer and modem (one unit can easily power both).  There are a lot of cheap units that don't work very well (their batteries need to be replaced once every two years), so I'd spend a bit of money if connectivity is important.  Any rechargeable solution needs to be tested at least twice a year.  

 

In any event it makes sense for many of us to prepare.  The frequency of large storms - even what used to be 100 or even 1,000 year events - will increase with climate change and our infrastructure isn't exactly robust.  One of those external costs associated with burning an excessive amount of fossil fuel...

 

And finally I should stress the experience wasn't entirely negative.  While sub 50° house temperatures towards the end were not comfortable, there was a lot of human good will everywhere - from the restaurants that gave away food or would deal with IOUs, to neighbors sharing rides and food, to the story telling with friends and family and a few beautifully clear dark nights that you rarely see in a densely populated area.  I also was able to spend a lot of time away from regular communication just thinking and reading. That was a real treat.  As a result we've instituted a couple of hours of zero electronic communication every night. So far it is great.

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¹ Guess how I found out?  A serving of plain chocolate M&M's weighs 42 grams and has 210 Calories.  I counted 122 in a 420g pile - about 3.44 Calories per M&M.

² An M&M has an energy density of 5 nutritional Calories per gram - about 5.8 kW-hours per kilogram or 20.9 megajoules per kilogram.  (Calories, watts and joules are all just units of energy and one can easily convert to whatever is most appropriate for a calculation).  Carbohydrates (sugars) average about 17 MJ/kg, fat about 37, protein about 16.8, an average Li-ion battery is about 0.7, a lead acid battery about 0.1, gasoline is about 46. 

³ We have a 560 watt electric motor running the blower.  Our house is only 1100 sq ft and we average about 2 kW-hr of fan use per day in January.  There is no way I could supply enough power to run the motor directly, but I could if I used a battery.  I can supply about 150 to 200 watt-hours during my exercise sessions, but that leaves me spent. A small generator and mechanical transmission is probably 80% efficient.  Assuming charging is nearly 100% efficient I would need 2500 watt-hours of rowing a day.  That is more than an order of magnitude more than I can supply.  

⁴ In the past 24 months we were without power for 22 days spread over three major storms in roughly equal amounts.  Two times in cold weather, once in very hot weather. In the past 5 years we've been down 29 days for 98.4% uptime.  

⁵ A 99.9% uptime gives the utility 525 minutes of outage a year - a bit under 9 hours ...  99.99% is a bit less than 53 minutes.

⁶ When IP telephony was proposed for cable modems it was assumed that phone ready modems would have backup batteries.  The requirement was dropped by the FCC, but units have optional batteries.  We assumed ours had a battery, but of course it didn't so all of our lines were dead until we got a bit of cell service.

⁷ Smart grid is a somewhat nebulous term with too many meanings.  The general concept gives something that should be much more robust in immediate storm recovery, but the standards to get there aren't solid yet and this is very expensive infrastructure.  There are some areas where it makes sense to deploy developing technology as the problems that are solved are immediate and huge - climate change comes to mind.  Other areas require more study and thought. In five years to a decade we should be at a point where robust deployments can take place.

 

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Recipe Corner

 

Two seasonal items - something really quick and easy for Thanksgiving that is a nice change from the traditional cranberry sauce and a neat side dish with celeriac.

 

Thanksgiving Cranberry-Blueberry Sauce

 

Ingredients

 

° 12 oz cranberries, fresh or frozen

° 3/4 cup water

° 1 cup white granulated sugar

° 8-oz blueberries

° 2 tsp vanilla extract

 

Technique

 

° Combine cranberries and water in a medium saucepan and cook over medium-high heat until the cranberries begin to pop, about three or four minutes.

° Add the sugar and blueberries and continue to cook, stirring occasionally  until mixture comes to a full boil. Boil for three or four minutes, stirring occasionally, until mixture thickens slightly.

° Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract and transfer to a refrigerator-safe container and allow to cool to room temperature, then cover and place in the fridge. Chill until ready to serve.

 

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I love celery root - that terribly ugly lump of brown you see in some stores.  It turns out to have some fairly amazing properties and is soft enough that it trims up easily.  Just use a big sharp knife and slice away - and be careful to wash it as there are deep crevices where sand can hide.

 

I don't know what to call this, but it came together well and is a keeper..  Feel free to adjust ingredients and proportions as this was a first throw together.  Next time I'll probably use a good balsamic vinegar. It is really good with a whole grain bread!

 

Apple and Celeriac Bake

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 large onion, finely sliced

° 2 tbsp olive oil

° 750g vegetable stock

°  tsp cider vinegar

° 1 crushed garlic clove

°  3 thyme sprigs

° 600g Piece of Celeriac (peeled weight)

° one largish apple (I used a Fuji - what was crunchy and on hand.  Mine was 190g). 

° 50g almonds, lightly toasted, skinned & roughly chopped - probably great with hazelnuts

° sea salt and fresh ground pepper

 

Technique

 

° preheat oven to 400°F

° fry the onion in a pan with the oil over medium heat until soft and translucent.  Add the stock, vinegar, garlic and thyme and bring to a boil

° cut the celeriac into quarters and then thinly slide what is left.  Add the slices to the boiling mixture.  Reduce heat to a simmer, cover and leave for 15 minutes.  

° season with salt and pepper

° transfer about half the celeriac and onions to an oven proof dish (mine was a pyrex dish about 8x8 inches)with a slotted spoon. Thinly slice the apple and layer on top of the celeriac.  Scatter half the almonds over the apple and then add the rest of the celeriac and onions.  

° pour about 200g of the pan liquid over the layers and scatter the rest of the almonds over the top.

° bake for about 45 minutes

 

paths past 269

Just a quick post as I've been without net, electricity and heat for the past week.  I finally have the modern conveniences and it happens to be election day, so a quick post.  There are a few other posts that should come in the next week as I had a lot of time to think.

 

Today votes are cast for the election of the President of the United States.  Technically voters don't directly elect the president, but rather 538 electors.¹  To be elected President a candidate needs 270 or more electoral votes.

 

There are dozens of polls all with some noise.  Some are designed and executed better than others, some have built-in biases and most tend to move around during a campaign.  The press tends to focus on them and take them as the odds that a candidate might win or lose the race.

 

Recently Nate Silver, author of the 538 blog, has been criticized for suggesting that President Obama currently has a better than 90% chance of being re-elected despite the likelihood that the election might be very close - possibly a one percent or less popular vote margin for the winner.  This strikes some as entirely daft - how could the President have such a good chance in such a "tight" race?

 

It turns out this is a nice example of a statistical approach.  There is no inconsistency with a close election and a relatively high probability of a certain result - in this case the result required for a win is the accumulation of 270 or more electoral votes.

 

Rather than rely on one or a small number of national polls, the trick is to take a group of state polls and calculate a total probability that a candidate achieves 270 or more in a combination of ways.  Silver has a model that has some assumptions about the past accuracy and predictive properties of each of the individual polls as do others who use this approach. 

 

There are many possibilities to sort through - something over 2.3 quadrillion.  No one would try to be exact and some who use this meta analysis of polls look at a few thousand possibilities that are usually chosen to look at the important "battleground" states.²  

 

It should be noted that the various meta-analysis approaches are currently giving Obama anywhere between a 70% and 90% of keeping his job.  

 

We tend to have a notion that the popular vote is important, but to first order it isn't.  There is a weighting forced by the electoral college - the game that really matters - and districting.

 

It is easy to make some wrong assumptions about the real problem, add our own biases (and there are many with politics!) and slip into innumeracy.  I'm reminded of a section from John Paulos' book  Innumeracy

  

If from some stock market advisor you received in the mail for six weeks in a row correct predictions on a certain stock index and were asked to pay for the seventh such prediction, would you? Assume you really are interested in making an investment of some sort, and assume further that the question is being posed to you before the stock crash of October 19th, 1987. If you would be willing to pay for the seventh prediction (or even if you wouldn't), consider the following con game.

Some would-be advisor puts a logo on some fancy stationery and sends out 32,000 letters to potential investors in a stock index. The letters tell of his company's elaborate computer model, his financial expertise, and inside contacts. In 16,000 of these letters he predicts the index will rise, and in the other 16,000 he predicts a decline. No matter whether the index rises or falls, a followup letter is sent, but only to the 16,000 people who initially received a correct "prediction". To 8000 of them a rise is predicted for the next week, to the other 8000 a decline. Whatever happens now, 8000 people will have received two correct "predictions". Again to these 8000 people only, letters are sent concerning the index's performance the following week, 4000 predicting a rise, 4000 a decline. Whatever the outcome, 4000 people now have received three straight correct predictions.

This is iterated a few more times until 500 people have received six straight correct "predictions". These 500 people are now reminded of this and told that in order to continue to receive this valuable information for the seventh week they must each contribute $500. If they all pay, that's $250,000 for our advisor. If this is done knowingly and with intent to defraud, this is an illegal con game. Yet it's considered acceptable if it's done unknowingly by earnest, but ignorant publishers of stock newsletters, or by practitioners of quack medicine, or by television evangelists. There's always enough random success to justify almost anything to someone who wants to believe.

There is another quite different problem exemplified by these stock market forecasts and fanciful explanations of success. Since they're quite varied in format and often incomparable and very numerous, people can't act on all of them. The people who try their luck and don't fare well will generally be quiet about their experiences. But there'll always be some people who will do extremely well, and they will loudly swear to the efficacy of whatever system they've used. Other people will soon follow suit, and a fad will be born and thrive for a while despite its baselessness.

There is a strong, general tendency to filter out the bad and the failed and to focus on the good and the successful. Casinos encourage this tendency by making sure that every quarter that's won in a slot machine causes lights to blink and makes its own little tinkle in the metal tray. Seeing all the lights and hearing all the tinkles, it's not hard to get the impression that everyone's winning. Losses or failures are silent. The same applies to well-publicized stock market killings vs. relatively invisible stock market ruinations, and to the faithhealer who takes credit for any accidental improvement, but will deny responsibility if, for example, he ministers to a blind man who then becomes lame.

 

I'm a huge believer in basic statistics and probability courses in high school - it is at least as important as basic calculus for modern citizens to sort through information available and not be so inclined to take predictions on face value.  It is critically important to understand as much as possible about information and how it is filtered and manipulated.  There is real danger in considering the thing some call "data" as pristine and reliable.

 

Back to the election.  Many segments of the universe of voters are extremely stable and elections can be influenced by encouraging or suppressing some of them.  Black and Hispanic voters tend to vote for Democrats, so elections with poor turnout can pivot favorably for Republicans and the urge for that party to suppress votes has to be strong.  On the other hand the Democrats would want to focus on voter registration and get-out-the vote efforts in districts where a strong turnout can make a different.  The same can be said about fundamentalist Christians voting for Republicans and there are a huge number of segments of varying degrees of strength and reliability.  All of this gives enormous opportunities for trying to datamine and produce lists so these potential voters can be reached and potentially influenced.  

 

It will be interesting to see how the meta-analysis folks make out this time.  They usually do better than those who analyze (and mostly over-analyze) popular vote polls.

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¹ The number is based on the membership of the US Congress: 435 House members, 100 Senators, and 3 electors from the District of Columbia.  

² There are different approaches.  The Princeton Election Consortium uses a technique that looks at the probability of getting an exact number of votes.  It turns out you can do this by calculating a relatively simple polynomial expression.  To get a deeper look at a daily prediction from the Princeton group check this out.