The Official Good Ideas Thread™
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more of a leg man?
A leg man? Why would I be a leg man? I don't need legs. I have legs.
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I appreciate beauty in all its forms. Including but not limited to round and bouncy.
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:lol:
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well played....
i laughed.
:-D
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And behold the real reason I've posted this:
The new fuel was tested by German Education and Research minister Johanna Wanka last week. She put the first five liters into her official car, and declared the project a success.
Johanna Wanka
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I need that equipment mounted to my pickup truck. If I power it from my diesel engine, I'll never need fuel again!
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The J in German is pronounced as a Y in English, correct?
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Ja ;)
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Audi makes diesel out of water and air
And shitloads and shitloads of energy.
More than it produces when it burns? Probably.
Related: This bus runs on human poop
Now that's more my speed!
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If the difference isn't too much, it could be used as an energy storage mechanism for times when there's too much coming in from wind/solar/etc.
I wonder how green types would react to renewably sourced diesel?
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I wonder how green types would react to renewably sourced diesel?
Probably hypocritically protest it. Like they do with nuclear plants.
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More than it produces when it burns? Probably.
Thermodynamics says yes, assuming there's no nuclear shenanigans going on. RTFA, and you find out they separate the water using high temperatures. Of course, they talk about using stuff like solar / wind as a source. And now we're back to the problems of scaling a very diffused energy source.
I guess the chemical process of combining the hydrocarbons is interesting, and will probably be useful if we ever figure out something useful like fusion.
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The company said it was aiming for a pre-tax price of between 1 and 1.20 euros per liter ($1.10 to $1.30), compared to the current German pre-tax price of around 0.6 euros per liter of gasoline.
OUCH!
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Hm. Wonder what the "e-diesel" is? Some kind of short-chain hydrocarbon, obviously, but what?
This concept isn't new, but maybe they found a good catalyst.
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>Related: This bus runs on human poop
Now that's more my speed!
Yeah. That would bring a whole new dimension to mass transit. Every seat on the bus is a toilet! If you make a deposit, you don't have to pay a fare!
Try giving a current bus some "fuel", though, and you'll probably spend a night in jail.
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I wonder how green types would react to renewably sourced diesel?
Based on all past performance, they'd rave about it as long as it was only in the lab, only to savagely turn on it if it became commercially available.
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Based on all past performance, they'd rave about it as long as it was only in the lab, only to savagely turn on it if it became commercially available.
Right, because they aren't against fossil fuels but modern prosperity outside of their control.
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Right, because they aren't against fossil fuels but modern prosperity outside of their control.
Exactly, although it seems like you've got too many qualifers somewhere. They almost seem anti-prosperty and anti prosperity-outside-their-control, orthogonally.
They're against nominally-renewable fuels as well, if those would lead to a loss of control, too, as evidenced by both objection to modern nuclear power plant design as well as things like wind farms or solar farms then they get scaled up ("oh noes, birds are getting killed!")
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They almost seem anti-prosperty and anti prosperity-outside-their-control, orthogonally.
Of course in reality they are anti-prosperity, but I'm not convinced they believe this. They just can't comprehend that the stuff they want to do will make everyone poorer.
I'm sure there are a few people in there with enough functioning brain cells to figure that out, but I think that a lot of them think that they'll lead us all into a new golden age. And age where we all consume "slow food" and everyone has plenty of time to indulge in creative whims and fulfill our souls. If only we would submit.
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And age where we all consume "slow food"
I'm all for it, as long as someone else cooks it.
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They're against nominally-renewable fuels as well, if those would lead to a loss of control, too, as evidenced by both objection to modern nuclear power plant design as well as things like wind farms or solar farms then they get scaled up ("oh noes, birds are getting killed!")
Yeah -- they're control freaks, full stop.
The bird problem is one thing -- but it's a) something that lends itself to scientific inquiry and b) not nearly the only hazard migratory birds face -- US1549 wasn't the only time an airliner cooked some geese. Nor can they see modern skyscrapers in their way very well for that matter -- the excessive glazing area makes the buildings practically invisible to birds in addition to hurting energy efficiency! (What you gain in natural light you by far lose in HVAC, and you make the folks with window seats uncomfortable as well...)
Yet nobody wants to do anything about one of the biggest energy efficiency problems modern commercial buildings face, simply because it's not considered aesthetically pleasing to have an "old school" facade any longer. Idiots.
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Of course in reality they are anti-prosperity, but I'm not convinced they believe this.
I don't think they're smart enough to, most of them. Well, "smart" isn't the word, more like ossified in thinking. I've known enough people who believe this BS, who are otherwise smart, but seem unable to grasp the concept that what they've been told about things might not be true. I have a (sadly, now ex-) friend who loved to talk about Reagan defining ketchup as a vegetable, even after I gently explained to him1 he had it wrong. The knowledge just sort of faded away.
nd age where we all consume "slow food"
LTFY
1 no, really.
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Good thing that kid's too young to get audited.
Might suck for his dad, though.
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Nor can they see modern skyscrapers in their way very well for that matter
Doesn't even have to be a skyscraper, just a lot of glass. I was on the 3rd floor of a 5-floor office building once when a bird slammed into a window just a few feet away. Freaky occurrence. You don't expect a thump like that.
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Doesn't even have to be a skyscraper, just a lot of glass. I was on the 3rd floor of a 5-floor office building once when a bird slammed into a window just a few feet away. Freaky occurrence. You don't expect a thump like that.
Yeah -- makes me wonder if it'd just be cheaper to you know, not put so much glass on the exterior?
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Yeah -- makes me wonder if it'd just be cheaper to you know, not put so much glass on the exterior?
My building is a hollow rectangle with an inner courtyard, so we have double[1] the glass a building this size would otherwise use.
[1] Well, obviously somewhat less, since the inner courtyard's not a fractal.
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Is he too young to be signed up for obamacare?
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Yeah -- makes me wonder if it'd just be cheaper to you know, not put so much glass on the exterior?
Given it'd be a steel-frame building, maybe not; whatever you use instead of glass will have to be very strong to stand the updrafts and the pressure differential they create. And the taller the building, the more it has to deal with high speed lateral winds.
The way to make toughened glass for skyscrapers is pretty cheap; it's just a case of heating it and cooling it right. And maybe laminating two sheets, but again, that's not exactly expensive to do.
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Punishment pending, then.
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The way to make toughened glass for skyscrapers is pretty cheap
Given the context, he was not just talking about the cladding, but increased heating and cooling costs for not only that building, but all the other ones around.
whatever you use instead of glass will have to be very strong
I do believe that's a solved problem. ;) E.G.,
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Given the context, he was not just talking about the cladding, but increased heating and cooling costs for not only that building, but all the other ones around.
Heating: Exploit the greenhouse effect.
Cooling: Open a fucking window!
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More than it produces when it burns? Probably.
Highly likely. What it means is that provided we have energy sources (which don't have to be burning stuff; whatever is convenient) then we can produce hydrocarbons for those applications that require it.
Efficient? No. Expensive? Yes. A backup plan? Yes.
They're probably using this…
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Given it'd be a steel-frame building, maybe not; whatever you use instead of glass will have to be very strong to stand the updrafts and the pressure differential they create. And the taller the building, the more it has to deal with high speed lateral winds.The way to make toughened glass for skyscrapers is pretty cheap; it's just a case of heating it and cooling it right. And maybe laminating two sheets, but again, that's not exactly expensive to do.
There is nothing wrong with using masonry cladding on a steel-frame building! That's basically what you have with the Empire State Building for instance (which also happens to be the tallest LEED-certified building in North America):
. What it means is that provided we have energy sources (which don't have to be burning stuff; whatever is convenient) then we can produce hydrocarbons for those applications that require it.
Efficient? No. Expensive? Yes. A backup plan? Yes.
Yeah -- better ways of going from electricity/heat energy to hydrocarbon storage are certainly welcome in my book!
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Never said there's anything wrong with using masonry; however, pound-for-pound, glass works out better suited.
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Taking advantage of desperation:
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Doesn't even have to be a skyscraper, just a lot of glass. I was on the 3rd floor of a 5-floor office building once when a bird slammed into a window just a few feet away. Freaky occurrence. You don't expect a thump like that.
I witnessed a duck hit a window on ground floor. I suspect it overshot a water pool where other ducks were.
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Never said there's anything wrong with using masonry; however, pound-for-pound, glass works out better suited.
Except that it's thermally conductive as all-get-out -- even the best performing window is no match for, ya' know, a wall section when it comes to insulating performance.
See http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/insights/bsi-006-can-fully-glazed-curtainwalls-be-green?topic=resources/low-energy-bldgs for more details.
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I witnessed a duck hit a window on ground floor. I suspect it overshot a water pool where other ducks were.
Heading for the reflection of the pool?
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Heading for the reflection of the pool?
It might have just been a dumbass duck. The duck in the quadrangle at the centre of our building seems to have no problems despite having glass on all four sides.
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I've known enough people who believe this BS, who are otherwise smart, but seem unable to grasp the concept that what they've been told about things might not be true.
This problem is a lot more widespread than most people think.
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Heading for the reflection of the pool?
It's been years, but if my memory serves me right neither the window was that reflective, nor was the sun in a favorable position, nor did the angles work out. But I guess it's possible.
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the excessive glazing area makes the buildings practically invisible to birds in addition to hurting energy efficiency
On the upside, some of the more cunning architects have employed curved surfaces to make their buildings double as death ray generators:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ousmnx1B-gU
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even the best performing window is no match for, ya' know, a wall section when it comes to insulating performance.
Even so, some of them are really, really good, and when judiciously combined with light-absorbing thermal mass, can become the vital centrepiece of good passive solar design:
3.1.2 Superwindows
Much of the building’s performance is due to its advanced windows. Many off-the-shelf windows couldn’t meet project requirements, but some commercially produced, high-performance windows
can be costly since they are produced on a small scale. To produce the original R-5.3-center-of-glass windows economically, the design team worked closely with Alpen Glass, now a unit of Serious Materials. Gradually retrofitting this firm’s successive generations of glazings had by 2005 raised that R-value to 12.5.The advanced windows installed at the Banana Farm more than doubled originally, and later more than tripled, the performance of standard “low-e” (low emissivity) glazings. The original glazings were argon filled and used one spectrally selective surface. Later many were given a second selective surface and filled with krypton, which insulates twice as well as air. Today, all the windows have four selective surfaces (two on each side of two suspended polyester films) and xenon fill. This design, 1.39 inches thick, loses only 8% as much heat as a single pane of glass, but lets in 52% of visible light and 41% of the total solar energy. Three special R-20 units now include low-e glass too, insulating like 20+ sheets of glass while admitting 41% of light and 35% of total solar energy.
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That same building was also observed damaging the exterior of a Jaguar car.
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In other news, 10kWh of zero-maintenance 92% round-trip-efficient wall-mounted electric storage for $3500 including a 10 year warranty looks like a genuinely good idea to me.
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damaging the exterior of a Jaguar car
Yeah, that car was parked though. It's gonna need a bit of work to get it upgraded to a proper death ray that can fry a Jag at full speed, but you know, early days...
OTOH this is London, so full speed is probably not actually that high.
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But still, something that can take ordinary sunlight and melt metal with it has to be doing something right...
Not sure if good, bad or evil idea...