Some Knowledge

Here is a hilarious report on the effects of eating a diet rich in algae.  Scientists were interested in if they could supplement the diets of poor people with algae as a cheap source of nutrition and protein.  What they found is that algae is basically not edible for humans, or even for rats.  The report describes in detail what they did and what the results of this experiment were.

There are a lot of places selling algae supplements for outrageous prices.  AFA bluegreen algae flakes sell for $195 a pound.  The report above describes in detail the effects of eating 500 grams of algae a day.  It is not a pretty picture.  There are some things people just should not eat, and algae is one of them.

There are many creatures in the sea that live on a diet of algae.  These creatures are usually invertebrates.  Shrimp, as I recall, eat a lot of plankton and algae.  Some species of fish even filter algae out of the water.  In general, it is very tiny creatures that feed on this green soup.  Human beings might eat algae as a treat, sometimes, if they have nothing better.  In general, algae has a foul taste.  It upsets the gastrointestinal system because it is indigestible. I have tasted algae, as in kelp, and it is disgusting.  Nobody who wasn’t desperate would want to eat that stuff.

Of course, there are many kinds of algae in the world.  There is also genetic engineering, which works pretty good on one-celled organisms.  Perhaps, if scientists want to feed algae to people, they could create an edible strain.  They could put the gene that makes muscle tissue into the plant, so that it produces digestible meat proteins.  They could put the gene that makes gelatin in bones into the plant so that it produces a gelatin coat instead of a cellulose coat.  They could remove the gene that produces the bad taste.  Of course, they would have to leave the genes for photosynthesis.  With a lot of work they could get a plant that tastes like hamburger, and that would be digestible.  It may take a thousand years before people can do any of this.

Algae is not food.  It has been proven by experiment that people can not eat this stuff and survive.  The thing to do would be to grow algae and feed it to shrimps.  Poor people could then eat shrimp and be happy.  I think they might already do something like this with fish farming.  Then again, the whole ecosystem of the seas works on this principle.  All I can say is after reading the report of that experiment, I have no desire to try to eat algae.

Soylent Green, dystopian fantasy or grim vision of the future?  Made in 1973 and starring Charleton Heston and Edward G Robinson, Soylent Green is one of the classic movies of all time.  The film depicts an overpopulated world filled with pollution, where food is not generally available.  The vast majority of people exist on a diet of processed food products made by the multinational Soylent corporation.

Even though this movie is a darkly-themed piece of cinema, I still like it.  I think the concept is pretty funny actually.  The idea that you could feed people the processed bodies of the dead is pretty ridiculous.  How exactly do you turn meat into a cracker?  They must mix the dead bodies with a lot of filler like corn or soybeans, or as the company claims, plankton.  This kind of recycling just would not work in principle.  A person eats far more than their own weight in a year.  Sure, it might improve the flavor of soybeans, but still, the human flesh in the cracker is not going to be a big proportion of the caloric content.

Perhaps the funniest element in this movie is the way people riot for this great-tasting food product.  They actually used some kind of bucket loader to scoop up rioters looking to get more Soylent Green.  Sure, it’s pretty macabre to think of people fighting over human flesh for food, but at the same time it’s ridiculous and absurd.  If food were really so rare and expensive, people would dig up their lawns and plant potatoes.

The theme of this movie is anything but funny.  What would the world be like if there were ten times as many people as today?  What would everybody eat?  How would a government control crowds of rioting and starving persons?  Reality is different than movies.  There is no physical way for the world to become overpopulated.  The amount of available food limits population.  If there is not enough food to feed people, they die.  This limits population to a sustainable level.  Disease and crime also increase in crowded conditions, further reducing the number of people.  Then there are always the wars various governments foist off on people.

Soylent Green could have been a better movie.  Instead of turning it into a detective story, they could have done the movie from the point of view of the Soylent Corporation.  It might have been funnier to watch busy executives arguing over the laws of supply and demand as they go about grinding up bodies for food.  At the same time, it might have been worse that way.  Money should not grant one person privilege over another person’s life.  But that’s the way the world operates.

I don’t think the world will ever degenerate to the point where we have to recycle dead people into food.  Most people would be revolted by the very idea.  In a world where so many people are without food, what is needed is better management of the resources that we have.  If some company actually started making food products out of algae, we might have an alternative to land-based agriculture.  If I made crackers out of algae, I know what I would want to call them.  If I get anything out of this movie in the way of an idea, it’s that there is always some way to supply what people need.  If people ever want to eat tasty green crackers, or are forced to eat these things by necessity, some company will appear to manufacture the product.

It’s Sunday morning.  There is a wide area of rain sweeping across the nation, bringing storms and destruction to the unlucky few.  I’ve seen it on the news this morning, and know it is on the way here.  The big storms are all to the south, so we should only get some soaking rain.  There should be no tornadoes here this morning, and that is good.

If it were not so expensive, people might build homes that were impervious to storms.  If it were not for flooding, people could live in underground warrens, dug out tunnels below the ground where storms could not harm them.  Underground homes would be easier to heat and cool.  You could grow food crops on top of your house.  People could travel back and forth to their jobs on underground railways.  The surface of the earth could be covered with solar cells and windmills to supply power to the people living underground.  Robots could do the hard labor of farming and manufacturing.

Of course, there are other problems with living underground.  Lack of sunlight does nobody any real good.  There would be the constant threat of cave ins.  Floods could potentially drown people like rats.  It would be quiet, however.  The earth absorbs sound well.  There would be no traffic noise outside your windows.  Storms could just blow by overhead and uproot all the trees without wrecking your house.

Of course, underground cities would be massively expensive to construct.  You would need ventilation equipment to keep the air fresh.  It would take a lot of steel to shore up the roof and walls.  You would probably have to install several flat screen TVs on the walls to show live pictures of the outside so people don’t go stir crazy from being inside all the time.  There would have to be good artificial lightning all the time.  Plumbing might be a problem, as lines would be buried deeply.  Still, it could be done.

I’m not sure if underground cities are the new wave of the future.  Maybe if people built homes by welding together I-beams and setting them in concrete they would not blow down in tornadoes.  Maybe if people set up millions of windmills they would absorb the damaging energy of storms and keep destruction to a minimum.  Who knows.  Perhaps there is some survival value to being lucky.  One thing is for certain.  When the rains come, you will get wet, if you are not under some kind of roof.

I have a 1985 Mazda RX-7.  It’s seen better days.  For the last couple years the car has sat out by the barn.  It made a handy home for little mice and wasps.  Leaves fell on the car and decayed into dirt.  Rust slowly ate through the bottom of the doors, and the battery went dead.  A film of black dirt covered the paint.

The other day some guys came buy to ask if I wanted to sell this vehicle.  “Sure, why not?”  I thought, and led them back to the barn.  “The battery’s dead.  The car has a lot of problems.”  I explained, showing them the derelict.  I gave them my price and they still seemed interested.  I told them I would charge up the battery and try to get the thing started.  I gave them my phone number and they said they’d call me Saturday.

So, the next day I put the battery charger on the car, and pumped air into the tires.  I checked out the radio, and made sure the battery was taking a charge.  After a day on the charger, the engine turned over.  It would not run without a shot of starting fluid, of which I was fresh out.  I stopped by Murray’s Auto and got a can of starting fluid.  After sitting around this morning wasting time on the net and writing in this blog, I decided to see if the car would start.

A good shot of starting fluid down the throat of the carb and a key twist later the engine roared to life.  I let it warm up for a while, but not long enough.  It stalled out and I had to hit it with the fluid again.  This time I let it get good and warm, and it finally idled pretty well.  I closed up the hood and retrieved the can of fluid, and threw the thing into reverse.  The right rear wheel just spun.  In two years the car had sunk into the ground,  Some wheel spinning and back and forth rocking later, and the car was free.  I pulled up to the front driveway and parked the RX on asphalt.

With the car safely parked, I got the shop vac and cleaned out all the leaves that had collected in the various crevices of the vehicle.  I vacuumed out the engine compartment, including a mouse nest by the battery.  Then I mixed up a bucket of soapy water and got a rag and the hose and washed the grime off the car.  A little cosmetic help will not detract from any price offers.

So the car is running and can be transported and is relatively clean.  Now I’m waiting around for this guy to call.  If he doesn’t get back to me this week, I think I’ll make up some nice number signs and park the car by the road and put a price on it.  It never hurts to advertise.  I did a lot of work on that car to keep it running over the couple years I drove it, and I spent a lot of cash on stuff like cool speakers and a stereo and all the other stuff I did to make the car run.  Now I just have to become a used car dealer and sell the thing off.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I can always sell it to the junkyard for scrap.  In fact, I might make more money taking and selling parts of it online to people looking to rebuild this car.  It’s not a complete pile of junk.

I have spent many days working on cars in my life.  I used to do all kinds of different service to vehicles.  It is a hobby I used to enjoy.  If you can take a piece of junk and make it work to get you around, you have saved some money.  I probably spent more on gas and insurance for that vehicle than I ever did on the price.  Still, it would be nice to get rid of the thing so I don’t have to think about working on it all the time.  I have considered converting it into an electric car, but it’s kind of heavy for that.  It was interesting to study the construction of this contraption and learn how it operates.  Perhaps I will go into the car business and design my own vehicles.  Perhaps I will only need a couple hundred million to start a car company.  That’s what venture capital is for, right?

Cyber Wyre has a pretty interesting website value calculator.  All you do is enter a URL and this widget looks up Alexa rank, Google page rank, counts backlinks on Yahoo, Alta Vista, and the web in general.  From these numbers the thing figures out how much you might make per month in advertising and affiliate sales, and calculates a sale value for your site.

I’ve been using this gadget to track page rank here for a while.  It’s very easy to use and doesn’t give huge inflated values for a site like some other website value calculators do.  Cyber Wyre makes an interesting tool for getting some idea of how a site is doing as far as ranking against other sites.

As an aside, another site I use to track ranking is Technorati.  Once again all you do is enter a blog URL and Technorati gives you a rundown on the authority and rank of your site.  I’ve noticed this blog slowly climbing up on both of these evaluations, which is maybe a good thing.  It might be helpful or just interesting to look up how your own site is doing with these simple tools.

I’ve been at this blog almost every day for two months now.  It seems I’m finding less and less to write about every day.  Google Trends used to give me a few ideas, but the topics there have been mostly uninteresting lately.  I guess I’m burning out on trying to blog about factual information.  I should have studied more closely when I was reading that book on writing comedy.  Then again, the jokes in the comedy writing book were not very funny.  Perhaps I need to move in a new direction.

There was a lot of interest in one little three paragraph post I wrote about a racing game.  Over three thousand page views there.  Two whole comments from all that.  Candy Tracks contest ends next week, so my visitors from that search will no doubt evaporate soon.  Still, it got far more traffic than anything else I wrote.  Stuff like news stories only draws a few people for a while.  Maybe I haven’t been marketing my site effectively.

Then there are the comments.  There are a few comments on some of my posts.  Mostly these are pretty nice.  If I were making any money on this deal I might consider putting better references in my articles, but now, I don’t feel the need to justify what I write by citing sources.  It’s a blog, not Wikipedia.  I might write some long endless diatribe about something and not list a single reference.  Apparently, I just write to hear the keys on my computer click.

But now, back to the topic.  What to do about burning out on this blog?  I might need a better source of information than the Internet.  Does such a thing exist?  Certainly it’s not TV.  I have been considering going totally fictional.  The problem with that is that a blog is backwards for what fiction should be.  You need first in, first out architecture for fiction, not last in first out like a blog.  Maybe it doesn’t matter.  Most of the access to this blog is random.  Readers just come from everywhere and look at one thing then split.  That’s generally what I do when I find blogs on the net.  I might read related articles if they are interesting and listed in some way that is logical.  In general I just read something and go back to the search.

I spent a lot of time this morning looking at sites about solar power and alternative energy.  For some reason this interests me.  Maybe I should start a power company and sell power to consumers.  I could branch out into electric cars when I make some cash.  Electric cars to use the electric power from my solar power plants.  Maybe Warren Buffet could slide me a few billion to get going.

I looked around for a while at different money making schemes on the net.  They are all basically the same.  Write an ebook and sell it for $29.95.  Sell moneymaking websites and hosting.  None of this produces anything but information that anyone can get just about anywhere.  Do you know how many ebooks there are about making money with Google Adsense?  There are probably thousands of those things being sold on the net.  Ridiculous.

Compared to my other blogs, which I’ve pretty much abandoned, this is the bigtime.  I’ve gotten over a hundred page views a day for a while.  There is still the problem of what to write.  Maybe I should ask people to email me funny pictures of rabbits and post those.  What a dumb idea.  A blog that’s nothing but funny pictures.  I guess people would like that.  Don’t bother trying to write stuff that makes people think, just show them idiotic scenes to make them laugh.  Sort of how TV works, isn’t it?

I guess if I wanted to post a novel or something I could figure out how the web page editor works and just post it as some chapters on another wordpress page.  That would mean I would have to post a novel I worked on and then would be publishing for nothing.  Maybe some book publisher would see how brilliant my story is and offer me a book deal.  Most likely, people wouldn’t even read anything I post as a novel.  Even if it were about a magical wizard who turns ogres into frogs.  What nonsense.

I’m not sure what the point of this post here is.  Maybe it’s just typing practice.  There’s not much point in trying to educate people in a blog.  People pay big money to schools for their education.  One blog can only contain a small amount of information in the big scheme of things.  If all I write about is passing fads, then the usefulness of this blog will be nothing but a passing fad.  I need stuff that people can read in ten years that will still be relevant.  Even writing about games has a limited lifetime.  Games get old and people stop playing them.  I wrote something about chess a while ago.  I think one person read that little piece of knowledge.  Not a big payoff for some considered work.  Still, I enjoy what I do, so it’s not a total loss.

There are other things I should be doing today.  I should try to get my old car started so I can sell it.  There’s a fifty-fifty chance some person will call me today and offer to buy the old RX-7.  I don’t have the kind of money or patience it would require to turn that car into a good vehicle.  Things get old, and turn into total losses.  I might have to call the scrap yard and sell it for junk.  That would be a pity.  Still, aluminum, steel and glass have some value.  I could go into the junk business and make money off the derelicts of our automotive culture.

I think this is about the end of this post.  I still have no idea what I want to write about.  The weather is getting nice and warm, and I will soon have a ton of outside things to do like take care of the garden.  Perhaps what I should have done is start a blog about nothing but cars.  People like cars.  I have a few articles on Helium.com that are about cars, and people still read those.  Oh well, it’s just an idea.

Scientists are working on ways to grow algae for fuel.  Certain species of algae produce large quantities of oil.  Using water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, algae can produce all the fuel the world needs.  Algae is more productive per acre of pond area than most crops and can continue to grow and be harvested year round in suitable climates.  There is little waste in an algae operation, as the plant produces oils, starches, and protein that can be used as feedstocks for fuel production or for food.

An algae farm, or any other farm for that matter, is just a way of converting solar energy to chemical energy.  Photosynthesis is a means of capturing the energy of sunlight.  The advantages of farming over other forms of solar energy is that large areas of land can be covered with some crop and large amounts of sunlight can be captured in a form that is easily utilized by machinery.

The overall efficiency of photosynthesis for converting sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water into carbohydrates is approximately 6.6%.  This is not as efficient as good solar cells.  This is also the plant efficiency, and will be lower when energy inputs for processing are factored in.  There is some waste involved in any biofuel operation.  This waste will occur from costs for drying the product, extraction of oils, fermentation of starches into ethanol, and other costs such as transportation and further refinement.

The overall efficiency of any biofuel operation could be improved by just drying and burning the crop directly in a high-efficiency steam turbine electrical powerplant.  The whole point of growing  algae would be to derive fuel that could be used in motor vehicles, airplanes, and for other uses like home heating.  As the price of petroleum goes up, the economic payoff for an algae farm increases.  The cost inputs of an algae farm are for land, pond construction, maintenance, harvesting, drying, and further processing.  Once set up, however, the system could continue to run with only input from sunlight.

Many of the species of algae being studied for farming are marine species.  This means that algae farms might be located in warm coastal regions where they could draw seawater for their ponds directly from the ocean.  There are algae farms under construction in Texas now, and some in operation in Arizona recycling carbon dioxide from a power plant.  It has been estimated that it would take algae farms equivalent in area to the state of Maryland to supply the United States with fuel.  An area the size of Texas could supply the entire world with oil.

As with any other large scale venture, farming algae for fuel will require a lot of capital.  It costs a lot of money to construct such huge operations.  Algae farms could power the entire world, but it would require a large investment in land and refineries to make this energy available to people.  When the petroleum begins to run out, algae farms may be a good way to supply the world with the power it needs.  As the petroleum was originally made by algae in the ancient seas of earth, this is not such a strange idea.  Man has always used nature to survive, and will continue to do so in the future.

A California company is planning on marketing a home system for generating pure ethanol from sugar.  The e fuel corporation is planning on marketing a device that looks like a gas station fuel pump, runs on electricity from your home, and uses a feedstock of inedible Mexican sugar supposedly available for 2.5 cents a pound.

My question is:  If you have a distillery in your home, why bother going anywhere?  Sure, you will need to buy sugar for the still, or filter, or whatever it is they use to separate the water from the alcohol.  It’s pretty strange to me, this idea of filtering water out of the fermentation liquid.  In general, you need a still for that process.  What’s more, the maximum percentage you can get of alcohol by distillation is 196 proof, which explains why this is the proof of Everclear.  To get the last four percent of water out of the juice, you need a complicated chemical process involving bromine.  In any case, this company claims they have a process to make 100% ethanol suitable for motor fuel from something the size of a washer-dryer.

If this ten thousand dollar system actually makes fuel-grade ethanol, why wouldn’t they just scale up the operation and sell the ethanol at a profit like any respectable energy corporation?  E fuel claims their system will make alcohol for a dollar a gallon.  Surely if it works like this the availability of a fuel they can mark up and sell for a three hundred percent profit must have them thinking.  What does the IRS have to say about their home still?  I’m sure the revenuers would be interested in any gas pump that spits out high-octane white lightning.

There seems to be a trend these days to want to make motor fuel at home.  Yes, the stuff is expensive.  it’s expensive for a reason.  It costs a lot.  Sugar is more expensive than gasoline.  From what I recall about fermentation, it takes two pounds of sugar to make one pound of ethanol.  The yeast consumes some of the energy in the process.  This is pretty wasteful.  Maybe instead of selling these things to motorists they should think of selling them to bars.  There is a higher markup on beverage alcohol than on motor fuel.

I don’t know what the world is coming to with the high price of oil.  Things keep getting more expensive every day.  There is just no way I am going to pay anyone ten grand for a lousy still I could make myself, if I were that desperate.  It would be cheaper and less hassle just to pay for gas and not drive so much.  If a home still is such a good idea, why does the government keep busting moonshiners?  If this system makes pure ethanol you would have to pay the liquour tax on any fuel you make, because it would be drinkable.

A home still is just a bad idea.  If people really wanted to save money they could ride a bike.  I don’t see anyone marketing enclosed pedalcars for transporting people.  There’s no practical way to drive a pedalcar on the roads the way they are now.  If there weren’t so many cars on the road I could get a rickshaw and start a taxi business.  If I spent ten grand on a still I wouldn’t burn the booze it made in a car.

I’ve just seem more nonsense for supposedly increasing fuel economy in vehicles.  Various companies are selling products that are supposed to increase fuel economy or convert your car into running on water.  These things all work the same way.  They take water, pass electricity through it from the car’s electrical system, break the water down into hydrogen and oxygen, and burn the resulting gasses in the cylinders of the car.

These systems sell for from hundreds to thousands of dollars.  Some even claim they will run your car on nothing but water.  This is all a load of nonsense.  It takes energy to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen.  It takes more energy than you get from burning the resulting hydrogen and oxygen.  Water is not a source of chemical energy.  Water is a product of combustion.  You can not run your car on water as an energy source.

There is a lot of talk these days about a hydrogen economy and use of hydrogen as a fuel source.  Hydrogen is not available in its elemental state on earth.  It is bound with oxygen in water, or bound to carbon in methane and petroleum.  Hydrogen in fossil fuels combines with oxygen in the atmosphere to release chemical energy and combine into water.  If you want to use hydrogen as a fuel, you will have to supply energy to generate the free hydrogen in the first place.  In a car engine system, using electrical energy from the alternator to generate hydrogen from water will not supply net energy to your engine.  You will lose more energy to heat and inefficiencies of electrolysis than you will gain from burning the resulting hydrogen in an inefficient engine.

Do not waste your time or money trying to get something for nothing.  You will only lose whatever money you spend on this system.  You can not improve your gas mileage by recycling mechanical energy from the engine to generate fuel gasses.  I can’t believe people get away with selling such ridiculous systems.  This is a ripoff.  Your car can not run on water as fuel.  You will only decrease your mileage and compromise your engine by installing any such hydrogen generator in your car.

There are a lot of people in the world.  Many of these people can not afford food.  Some 50,000 people die each day from malnutrition.  30,000 of these people are children.  The situation is deplorable.  What can be done to feed all these humans?

There is at this time no shortage of food in the world.  Farmers produce a surplus every year.  What is in short supply is money for the poor.  It is a financial problem that causes people to starve to death.  It’s not that food is not available, it’s that people can not afford to buy this food.  The price of food has been going up recently.  This means that more people will not be able to afford this food.

There is only a limited amount of money available to people.  This is because there are only so many jobs.  A job does not create money.  A job apportions money from one person to another.  The fact is that there are a lot of rich people and corporations.  These people make money by selling stuff to workers.  The workers make their money by working for some factory or other operation.  It is a closed loop.  If you want money, you have to get in the loop.  This is where the system fails.  There are not enough jobs for all the people.  Some people are unemployed and can not afford to buy necessary things.

So, what can be done to end this mess?  If governments were responsible they would create work programs for people to earn money.  Governments print the money, so there should be no shortage.  In a worst case scenario, governments could even give away money to the poor.  This already happens in the welfare system.  The government isn’t losing anything but a bit of inflation on the value of their currency.  The alternative is that more people will die.

The world is basically run on a free market economy.  This means that the corporations rule the earth.  If you have money you control things, like commodities and companies and other resources.  The problem with this system is greed.  People are naturally inclined to amass large fortunes.  One person having a thousand times as much money as the average person means that a thousand average persons have nothing.  It is a simple equation.

Perhaps the solution is to supply free food.  Free food cuts into the profitability of local farmers, who then can not produce food to feed local people.  Still, if all food were free, it would solve the problem of starvation.  We do not live in a world where you can just go off into the forest and spear a deer.  We live in a world that has concentrated populations.  If you lose your job, you might die of hunger.  Maybe what is needed is a program that guarantees jobs to everyone.  It’s just an idea.

It’s disgraceful for children to be starving to death while corporations turn perfectly good corn into motor fuel.  There has to be a solution to this problem.  Perhaps the governments of the world could forget their paranoid militaries and spend that money on coming up with a plan to feed the hungry.  Even in the united states there are many homeless people who have no food.  Instead of relying on the darwinian forces of the free market economy to solve problems they have no incentive to solve, we should tell our governments to find a solution to the problems of poverty and hunger.  It makes no sense that so many people should have to die while there is so much food in the world to feed them, if they only had money.