Brad’s Take

Wired.com occasionally does a chemical analysis of common consumer products. I was breezing through the contents of coffee, when I noticed something interesting.

Caffeine is a diuretic, so coffee newbies pee out the water quickly; java junkies build up resistance.

Diuretics are sometimes prescribed for people with water retention problems, sometimes associated with circulation (heart) problems. My father was. And my father was a life-long coffee drinker. As in, according to this analysis from Wired.com, a diuretic-resistant person, due to a caffeine habit.

Check out the article, read about coffee contains compounds that fight cavities and free-radical damage (antioxidants), provide niacin when hot enough (160 degrees Fahrenheit), and also provide tastes, smells and ptomaine poison components.

Geekdads at Wired.com describe 30 venerable children’s games, from Button, Button, Who’s got the Button? to jumping rope and Red Rover – and Kick the Can.

The rules and play for non-tech games can enliven vacation days, picnics, and recess. Almost all are low carbon footprint, most are organic, and few require buying gear – maybe an empty can, a jump rope or two, or a play parachute.

Play on!

Geekdads at Wired.com report on the book, “Little House On The Prairie”, Pa Ingalls – Pioneer GeekDad?.

Using few tools, the book follows Pa Ingalls as he builds a house – using nails when he gets to the roof. The door, without hardware?

“First he hewed a short, thick piece of oak. From one side of this, in the middle, he cut a wide, deep notch. He pegged this stick to the inside of the door….”

For other pioneer, geeky gadgets – a frame to make bales of hay in, by hand, and mangers to scalding tubs – check out Farm Appliances and How to Make Them, George A. Martin, copyright 1887, 1999. (Lyons Press, Amazon.com)

Peak Oil posits that energy will get more expensive, that demand will outpace the supplies of oil and other energy sources. They call this the end of cheap energy, and see the result as partly depriving the economy, and people, of petroleum products, but more immediately, pricing public utility electricity and other economic commodities outside the reach of the average American.

More than half of Americans, according to Peak Oil, will be unable to pay for utilities, by 2012.

Is the electric grid about to shatter?

We all know about what ice storms do to electric power. In places where the power lines are still strung on poles, and around trees, the lines come down. Or a car knocks a utility pole over. Or a squirrel gets fried in a substation and lights go out for several blocks.

Or there are too many air conditioners running, and people experience “brown outs” as the voltage on the line falls when over-demand for the energy available. Or the power company pulls a “rolling blackout” – when the power company deliberately cuts off power to a segment of their customers. Then turns it on as they turn off another segment.

Stacking another layer on a house of cards

There are experimental installations in Ohio for transmitting broadband Internet hookups over the power grid. Talk and technology is progressing for “smart meters” – meters that charge different rates according to varying schedules. And can turn off your power if the meter “gets the signal”. Or when your neighbor opens his garage door?

Increased exposure to risk of failure of the grid.

Wired covers a story from the Wall Street Journal, about foreign adversaries targeting the electric utilities.

Peak oil advocate focus on surviving without the utility grid. And they want to develop local sources of food and expertise.

Perhaps an intermediate step would be to return to regional and local sources of power, not just personal solar panels.

Just as chickens in California and sheep in Wyoming won’t feed anyone, if the cost of getting them to hungry people is too high for the hungry people to afford, I am not real happy about losing power in Oklahoma so that California air conditioners keep running.

Parasite regions.

I have nothing against California, I lived there from 1984 to 1989. But even then they were making stupid choices, legislating away their ability to live on the water available, the ability to generate the power they consume, or to raise the food they eat.

Southern California is merely one of the best recognized regions for making foolish energy and food choices. Most cities require vast regions to supply food for their people, power for residences, commerce, and industry, and often rely on tourism for enough revenue to support themselves.

i drive my tractor in pearls…, writing at My Modern Country Home, takes pride in the independence of the Oklahoma state constitution. I wonder – is she comfortable that Oklahoma could supply enough energy for Oklahoman use, if the national grid came apart?