Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Spaceship Earth

Very few people realize that planet Earth in its motion around the Sun, with Sun moving around the center of the galaxy at incredible speeds and have been circling the galaxy around 18 times since... well, since time began for it, our planet dances with the stars and the Moon. :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactic_year

So all celestial bodies sort of tango around, like Earth and Moon, Earth and planets and stuff. So no big need to go to Mars only a few of us cause we all may sometimes be where Mars has passed by and beyond...

Or try to go in the Delta Quadrant with Kathryn Janeway's Voyager since we all are going to be there in about a 100 million years or so anyways... Or maybe not, cause the galaxy itself might move around the Universe and stuff with other galaxies...

I'm saying Earth tangos with Moon because since Moon is one sixth of Earth's weight, it pulls it too a little bit and Earth rotates around Moon about 6 times less then Moon around Earth, together forming some sort of wobbling pair, locked in a sort of like gravity pull, never too far, never too close, for like eons...



Actually the motion of the Earth in space is very complex and it takes a lot of differentials and computer power just to figure the path of a satellite. Not talking about going to the Moon and stuff.

By the way, i thing it's impossible to go to Mars since going to the Moon for three men took a rocket about 2.8 million kilograms (6.2 million pounds), the weight of about 400 elephants. If light takes about 1 second to travel from Earth to Moon, to Mars, depending on the position on the trajectory of both, well, they wrote better than me here http://blogs.esa.int/mex/2012/08/05/time-delay-between-mars-and-earth/

4 minutes, that is 240 seconds, 240 x farther than Moon at the closest point, you will need a 240 times bigger rocket. 96000 elephant-power.

But let's come back here on Earth and talk about our spaceship for 7 billions.

Many times i think... Well... There are so many things that if would miss we couldn't be here that sometimes i think the whole damned thing is engineered.

If we only speak about magnetic field that deflects, together with the Solar magnetic field the cosmic rays, particles coming from cosmic cataclysms with near the speed of light that would fry everything on Earth if it wasn't for those two magnetic fields...

http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2013/08/08/nasa-says-the-magnetic-field-of-the-sun-is-about-to-change-polarity/

By the way, Sun's magnetic field is about to reverse polarity, it does so every 11 years or so and that takes about 3 month in which time Earth will be less protected...

Life on Mars is not possible just because of missing of a Magnetic field... Let's say if they could figure a way to dissociate water, if there was water there like in the movie with Schwarzenegger, and make an atmosphere, that would be soon swept away by the cosmic rays and the solar wind (a different story)...

I believe if they could start a magnetic field, maybe Mars will catch an atmosphere in time, from comets and stuff...

The thing is nobody knows exactly why Earth has a magnetic field. There is a theory, about the motion of magma inside Earth and creating an electric current that in turn creates this huge magnetic field, but that theory could not explain why Venus that does not have a molten core has a magnetic field, though weak, about 1% of that of Earth, still capable of maintaining an atmosphere, although made of CO2 and an average of 460 Celsius degrees (at which temperature structured objects, like rocks usually start to glow or radiate in visible red!).

I used to know this geological engineer in Romania, Emil Rusu, who once told me, nobody went yet in there (center of the Earth) so we can't know for sure what's going on...

By the way, Venus is about the same size as Earth and Mars about the same size of Moon, with twice the gravity of Moon but still 38% of that of Earth... So colonists in there would jump around not walk, LOL.

But the reason i wrote all these is i wanted to say something about the theory of convection inside the Earth and tectonic plates.



In other words, i never heard of an explanation like why the plates raise and separate from each other in the middle of the continents and bump into each other and sink in the middle of the Ocean... I always thought the other way around and plates are raising because bumping into each other in the middle of the continent...

The explanation may be because in the middle of the Oceans there is a different rate of cooling of the plates, the oceans carrying at the bottom, through currents, some coolness from Poles, much more efficient than air through winds and stuff, and cooling the plates. Then magma being cooled through the mantle as well, it sinks in that area, only to raise, after being heated again after traveling to the center of the Earth, in the middle of the continents. That's why.

The ridges in the middle of the Paicific Ocean, where plates meet and bump into each other...
However, according to this theory, at any point at the surface of the Earth, the temperature is lower than at the bottom of the mantle, some 100 km... down, where rock is actually molten and much hotter magma raises from the center of the Earth. That proves there is a constant transfer of heat from under the mantle to surface and radiating in the cold space surrounding us. Cause nothing, including the mantle, is not a perfect insulator... Some heat will travel through it... (If that wouldn't be so, there would be no convection in magma, cause if there's no heating at the bottom and cooling at the top, there's no convection)
Because of this, after billions of years since Earth has reach the current thermal balance, there is a source of heat at the center of the Earth, otherwise it would have frozen, like Venus, long time ago. (Venus is hot at the surface due to runaway greenhouse effect) but one piece of solid rock as a whole. Well, many pieces, of course, cause it is fragmented. (One more proof that appearances are sometimes misleading.) (Or maybe it has in the middle some tiny molten part and it still moves around a bit thus the residual magnetic field).

Isn't our Spaceship Earth wonderfully engineered? Isn't all this exciting?

Monday, August 12, 2013

Dust In The Wind

I did it once, let me see if i can do it again. But now, i'm no mood to make calculations.

Aproximately, how much weight brake rotors loose by wearing off? A quarter of a pound every 50 thousand miles would be fair? An average car front rotor is 10 pounds. 5 percent? Seems too much. Let's say 2.5%, a quart of pound of metal. Seems about right. It matches what i remember since i made the calculations.

I've been working at Les Schwab and resurfaced brake rotors. You can do that 2-3 times for a rotor and the rotor loses like 10% of the thikness in it's life time. But the rotor, besides disk, it has a bigger piece of metal in the middle that does not wear out.

Conservatively, i'd say a brake rotor looses in 50 thousands miles a quarter pound of metal just for braking. About the same for the pads. By 4 that is a pound of dust, plus ceramic and other stuff, including asbestos for older cars and some after market pads. So almost a pound of metal (heat resistant alloys, that contains, besides iron, up to 10% of all kind of heavy metals including chromium) per car per 50 thousand miles or the interval between two brake jobs.

In a city like Portland there are 2 million cars running an average of 20,000 miles per year. That is 40 billions miles per year. Divided by 365, we get 109 millions miles per day. Divided by 50,000 we get approximately 2200 brake jobs a day, with the same amount in pounds of dust metal and other good stuff released in the air (not talking about resurfacing but actual braking).

One metric ton of very fine, microscopic, heated, partly un-oxidized, metal dust released in the air in the whole Portland area. Is it much? Is it little? I'd say anything above zero in that category is too much.

But think about tires and road wear-out. How much asphalt dust, rubber dust? How much asphalt dust a studded tires car creates in a season?

Portland is kinda lucky because of the rain. During rain season much of this is washed out down the drains, into the river and into the Ocean. One ton of metal a day just from Portland.

That's why leaky oil pans, unburnt oil and fuel are good. All this stuff acts as a dust binder (including for mineral dust from insulation in the attics of houses near streets) and traps lots of it. However, in time it flies away from under the car, drys out but some gets trapped in the soil around streets and again into the drain. And let's not forget that engine oil contains as well high alloy metal and when it burns, it releases it... Fine metal in oil that does not oxidize and when burned, it is partly in metallic state.

That's why i think it's not a good idea to eat stuff grown in the cities or around busy highways.

Don't ask me what a good idea is to blow it with blowers on the sidewalks or parking lots.

With newer cars, less leaky, with catalytic converters that turn everything into CO2 is even worse. No binding of the dust. The hope comes from electrics and hybrids that do not use classic brakes except for failure of the regenerative braking system (turning braking energy into electricity and store it back in the battery). Smaller with smaller tires.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Tismăneanu vs Vişinescu

Just looked in Wikipedia for the page of Leonte Timsnăneaun (born Leonid Tisminetski) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonte_Tism%C4%83neanu

"In 1948, Tisminetski and his family were sent to Soviet-occupied Romania, where he changed his name in 1949 to Leonte Tismăneanu, at the request of the PCR(Romanian Communist Party).[5] He was named deputy director of Editura PMR (Romanian Worker's Party's), later Editura Politică, the publishing house of the Communist Party[6] and also held the Chair of Marxism-Leninism at the University of Bucharest.[1]"

He used to be the head of Communist Romania's main publishing house as stated above. Teacher of Marxism-Leninism at the University. We know at least one case where he was an investigator into a high profile case resulting in the imprisoning of a Romanian student that later became a known dissident and writer although controversial after year 2005 Paul Goma.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Goma 

"Controversies

Some of Goma's post-2005 articles and essays have been criticized for their strong antisemitic nature.[10][11] Goma rejects these criticisms[12] and claims that he has filed libel lawsuits against his accusers.[13] He asserts that his wife is Jewish and states that similar arguments were used against him by the Securitate in the 1980s.[14] On January 30, 2007, Goma was awarded the "Citizen of Honor" distinction by the Municipal Council of Timişoara. In February 2007, the Federation of Jewish Communities of Romania and the Israeli Embassy protested against the distinction, arguing that Paul Goma is the author of multiple antisemitic articles.[15]

On April 5, 2006 he was invited to become a member of the Tismăneanu Commission,[16] a body charged with researching the crimes of the communist dictatorship in Romania. Nine days later he was dismissed by the Commission's president, Vladimir Tismăneanu, who explained the exclusion based on Goma's questioning the moral and scientific credibility of the president of the Commission, and disclosing of their private correspondence.[16][17]"

In 1952 when in 10th grade he was detained by Securitate for 8 days for speaking out about Romanian anti-communist partisans and for keeping a coded personal journal... http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Paul_Goma#Dissident_in_Romania

In 1956 was arrested for being "part of the Bucharest student movement of 1956: during a seminar, he read out to other students parts of a novel he had written about a student who establishes a movement that is similar to the ones in Hungary" He did 2 years of prison in Jilava and Gherla, where Vişinescu was apparently inspector in that period of time. Tismăneanu was among those who inquired him.

Vişinescu does not have a Wikipedia page but Leonte Tismăneanu does. Why? Vişinescu was a low level semi-literate prison inspector and later prison manager doing the dirty jobs Tismăneanu and others of his kind ordered.

23 years after the revolution, Tismăneanu's son, Vladimir, now a teacher of Comparative Politics at Maryland University who has a much bigger page in Wikipedia suddenly remembered of Vişinescu, now 88 and started accusing him of executing his father's orders as himself plainly states:

"Securistul nu are convingeri, el sau ea executa (la propriu si la figurat)."

"The Securist does not have convictions, he or she executes (literally or figuratively)"

http://www.revista22.ro/articol-29549.html

(The word Securistul is hard to translate into English. Part due to the confounding with the English word security that the first one has little to do with.)

Securist is the word used to describe the most villain characters in the time of communism, the most hated, the most infamous, often killers and torturous, at least in the first years. Also the most visible. Recruited from the lowest levels of the social hierarchy in Romania. Often illiterate. Often rudimentary nationalists themselves. Most likely brainwashed, into loosing basic human reflexes, as ironically shown above by one who knows.

Later just hearing of them was convincing enough. Further later, they softened as they got used to luxury and comfort and into the traps of corruption. Some of them realized how much they were hated. Nowadays them and their inheritors caught in network of blackmail that paralyses most of the political life of that country.

From prison guards to heads and the lower ranks of the Minister of the Interior to military and militarized police and special forces, etc., they were all securişti. I think etymologically it's coming from the Ministry of Interior and State Security.

However, this is the perception. The real "politicians" - apparatchiks - used them to do the dirtiest tasks and instill fear into population without getting themselves involved. The most interesting part is they used brainwashed nationals into killing their own, with the multiple purposes of not carrying the historic responsibility themselves but also to show Romanians are killing Romanians.

Fear or the memory of it is exploitable to the day since the generations witnessing those events are still alive and vote worthy.

Vişinescu was a jail inspector before becoming a jail manager. That proves inspections were done and they knew at any level what was going on.

Although he directly might have been responsible for some of the inhuman conditions of the prisoners or the killing of some, that could be in the hundreds, they were figures with no other power except the one given to them by their superiors. Who by the way are responsible of the killing and imprisoning of hundreds of thousands comprising mostly of the Romanian elite, often nationalists, like Goma, mostly just patriots or rich or educated.

Tismăneanu's son, Vladimir (i know, another weird coincidence) lately became (by some) the de facto leader of the Romanian intellectuals. Teacher of Comparative Politics at Maryland Universtity, he constantly mixes, implying that authority, with the hot subjects of the day in Romania, from a distance, and if there is none or none he can touch he creates one on the fly, with all the needed and necessary arguments so he can get involved.

However, at least in the last article he uses the language of the 60s and 70s and at times unexpected and rare neologisms that i for one just gave up looking for in the dictionaries. The only thing that makes the articles attractive is the evocative emotions for many as Romania is getting deeper into a hopeless poverty for most and a scene of daily scandals featuring a few, with millions working outside borders and still having a 7% official unemployment rate and on the list of the first ten countries in the world for remittance, or money sent home by migrant workers with the fear that they will forever settle in those countries (mainly Italy and Spain) and the country will be severely depopulated.

23 years after Revolution very few Romanians are interested in justice for their grand or grand grand parents long gone but this can be easily substituted, at least for a day or two, until something else comes up, for the myriad of crimes in the area of economics and politics on an unprecedented scale for that country that occur even as i write this here.

But about the current image and status of Romania there is enough information everywhere.

There are some other, more subtle aspects that occurred to me as i read Vladimir Tismăneaun's biography in Wikipedia.

"In September 1981, a short while after the death of his father, he accompanied his mother on a voyage to Spain, after she had been granted a request to visit the sites where she and her husband had fought as young people.[10][12] Unlike Hermina Tismăneanu, he opted not to return, and soon after left for Venezuela, before ultimately settling in the United States in 1982."

As i just read in that section (honestly i did not read it all, it seems very interesting, i will make some time later) it occurred to me that besides not agreeing with the Protochronism theory, that was probably way out of the European cultural mainstream and visibly exaggerated and self flattering for the National Communist regime of Ceauşescu, i don't see a great deal of dissent against his father's old comrades whose sons he probably befriended and with whom he enjoyed all the privileges of being a son of an apparatchik.

Unlike others he did not waste his time and accessed the information and accumulated a great deal of culture reading whatever was available in those libraries that not many could enter. For that, he will be judged accordingly by those who have time to read his works.

The most intriguing part is that his unique biography seems conceived as a string of dilemmas and carefully laid out traps, by many contributors, untouchable, at least in Romania, by those who don't want to risk their careers and start discussing or controversing even parts of it. Even this article i'm writing about it is an obvious, well conceived recurrent trick taken out of a Science of Politics book, with some understanding for some readers and different understanding for others, depending of their "degrees of understanding", and about this and other aspects of it i hope i will write about later as i will try to treat it dually as well.

In Romania, the only that could even read this English page from Wikipedia are teachers or students or some of the journalists that depend on the current government, that is in Tismăneanu's likeness. He even made a list with those agreed. http://www.cotidianul.ro/lista-lui-tismaneanu-216344/

But there should be, at least some degree of controversy about a guy who has a degree in sociology since 74 and a Ph.D since 80 at the University of Bucharest (although self-corrected through his numerous individual unsupervised by... Securitate! - of which he was above through his father - studies) with the title ("The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School and Contemporary Left-Wing Radicalism").[6][7] and now teaches American students at the University of Maryland.

Mysteries Of The Attic, Revealed

Before picture date


After i discovered this i started working on. Damn thing was a trap. You touch it, it's your responsibility. Unnacceptable the way it looks, the smell from bathroom and kitchen coming back into the attic.

I though i was smart enough to mess with it. For about a year, several versions, unsuccesful.

About a year ago it became what is seen in this picture below.



A piece of plywood covering the vent hole. A 12 V computer case fan right under the vent, encased in the 6 inch vent. 4 one way valves with three flexible pipes, two from neighbors and one from me (that is not shown in the first picture above because it was laying on the floor blowing the insulation through a hole right above my kitchen window) in the covering plywood. Three 4 to 3 inches reductions. All sealed with silicon and 3M quality tape.

I have a variable voltage power supply for the fan. When it's hot in the attic (it can reach 120 degrees) i turn it to the maximum ant it cools the attic at least 10 degrees. At 6 Volt works but if one the neighbors forgets the fan like it happened almost every day within last 10 days, it won't cool the attic.

The one way valve that opens in the attic has been modified (re-balanced for a much lower flow). The others are plain valves for dryers and they work the way the were designed.

When one or two of my neighbors uses the bathroom fan the one way valves close and don't allow back-flow on any vent. There is one more one way valve at the other end of each pipe near the fan in each bathroom. Enough redundancy here.

For the kitchen exhaust, i used a computer fan fed by a 5 V USB power supply right above the microwave. If i don't use that one after i cook and stop the main fan in a few hours everything around it in the kitchen starts to stink really bad. I tried with a one way valve and didn't work. So that fan runs all the time.

In the attic i replaced the end of the pipe that was damaged and surrounded with a piece of plywood like in the picture.


Yesterday i discovered that for the vent shown in this picture above part of the tape was taken or blown apart. A small percentage of the whole flow was back-flowing. The two pieces of plywood that surround the pipe are cut around the pipe real nice and there is no much play. However i put new 3M tape and pushpins to secure the tape in place.

I also found 4 or 5 leaks in the other joints of the vents shown in the other pictures and re-taped them all.

Very difficult to work because they were numerous vehicles and small planes making noises like for every move i made. At first there was a big truck with pneumatic brakes that was releasing air every time i was breathing. This makes me very nervous and i make mistakes. My ground level neighbor also turned on the fan for about half hour. This always happens when i start working on those things. But since i write in here everything is quiet except a car or two.



08/08/13 7:07 PM:


Last year i taped this piece of 7 inch flexible pipe only at the joins and where it was leaking through tiny wholes. At the picture date and time 08/08/2013 07:05:39 PM i discovered several leaks, only with the main fan on. The wires are from a 12 V computer fan that is powered by a 5 V USB charger. It works all the time to prevent back-flow from the wind and bad smell to accumulate in the 7 meter/6 inch exhaust that goes in the other side of the roof near the vent as shown in the first picture. So i covered it completely with tape, 3M, Tough, 7 dollars at Home Depot. The valve that shows open in the 2nd and 3rd picture was sticky and wouldn't open or close easy. I checked and find some chip of plastic (1 mm long) hanging from one of the side like it was trimmed with a knife but not completed. It was out of balance too. I re-balanced it and checked to see if there are leaks so i covered the valve's entrance with a piece of cardboard and set the fan on 12 V. As soon i was removing the cardboard, the fan was going maybe 30% faster and noisier. When i installed the whole thing more than a year ago i put 2 big tubes of GE II Silicone and sealed the space between the vent, shingles and plywood. I installed two hooks for the attic lid and replaced it with painted fiberboard when i moved here. The hooks have threads and are long and go over the sheet-rock and into the wood. Today i found one more hole one inch next to one of the hooks that was corresponding to the attic and one of the hooks was replaced with a shorter one and wasn't reaching the wood. Fixed everything.

Yesterday and today i found two more small holes near the bathtub, corresponding inside the wall and attic space. Covered them.

In the last few days there was "attic smell" inside. I'll see if it disappears after these fixes.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Tavan, "pop-corn", var, ouă, găinaţ

Am încercat să scriu ce scriu aici şi pe facebook. La vreo oră două după ce instalez din nou Linux (în memorie, folosesc live-image), facebook devine atât de lent încât mă plictisesc până ce apare o literă după ce o tastez. Adică tastez un cuvânt şi când îl termin încep să apară primele litere. Deci voi scrie aici şi voi pune link- pe facebook. Folosesc aceleaşi dicţionare de fapt acelaşi sistem în aceeaşi configuraţie. Cred că îmi bagă cineva keyloggers la greu, la competiţie pe fb

07/29 10:54 AM PDT. The problem in this first paragraph was solved by moving back from Firefox 12 to Firerox 22.

Îmi pare rău ce voi scrie aici depăşeşte orice imaginaţie dar este real.

Când m-am mutat în martie 2010 în apartament toate tavanele aveau "pop-corn" pe ele. Dintr-un material moale, fibros, fonoabsorbant. Dar au absorbit şi tot felul de mirosuri timp de un număr de zeci de ani, probabil. O culoare galbenă indescriptibilă. Posibil să fi avut şi azbest în compoziţie.

Înainte de a vărui am dat tavanele cu aspiratorul şi am umplut jumătate din colectorul de praf de la aspirator cu "pop-corn" care se desprindea la cea mai mică atingere.

Deci când am "văruit" la început (am folosit o vopsea pe bază de argilă - kaolin, humă cum se mai spune în România cu bioxid de titan pentru albire + un polimer pentru întărire. După două straturi părea ok.

La vreun an după am văruit dormitorul din nou (am descoperit şi reparat de mai multe ori o gaură în peretele din dormitor din debara chiar lângă conducta de aerisire de la baia vecinului de la parter pe unde venea fum la greu). Dar de data asta am folosit var (luasem un sac de praf de "lime", CaCO3 + Mg2CO3 pentru ca să dezinfectez tomberonul din curte şi am încercat şi a ieşit destul de bine). Dar abia peste vreun an am reparat în sfârşit gaura aceea din perete.

Odată cu căldura mirosul din apartament a devenit din ce în ce mai insuportabil. Deci alaltăieri m-am apucat să văruiesc şi restul tavanelor, cu var care îl făcusem din praf acu vreo 2-3 luni şi îl aveam în nişte bidoane. Deci am văruit toată zona de lângă bucătărie şi holuri, cam jumătate din suprafaţa văruită cu kaolin încă rămasă nevăruită (1/3 din apartament). Am reuşit să acopăr şi ultimele găurele care nu se vedeau de departe de la văruitul cu kaolin, iar după ce s-a uscat varul s-a pietrificat. Anumite zone de lângă uşa de la intrare miroseau a urină în momentul în care le dădeam cu var. Diferite zone miroseau diferit. Anumite zone, de lângă uşă şi deasupra mesei unde aveam calc s-au îngălbenit dar după ce s-au uscat s-au albit aproape total.

Mirosul din apartament s-a schimbat total. Eu credeam că e fără speranţă deoarece am crezut că sediul mirosului acesta era în padding-ul de sub covor. Dar nu, tavanul era plin de miros.

Dar ce m-a făcut să scriu aceasta este că am pus nişte ouă la fiert, acum, după ce mirosul din apartament s-a îmblânzit aşa de mult. A ieşit din ouă un miros de găinat, şi Angela a confirmat, atât de puternic încât mi s-a făcut rău. Ouăle sunt cumpărate foarte recent şi nu sunt expirate.

10:40 PM EDT Tocmai am terminat de resetat... modemul! Nu îl mai puteam accesa cu parola deci am făcut un reset din buton, nu a mers, după care am făcut un reset hard, 30-30-30, adică 90 secunde apăsat pe butonul de reset din care la 30 secunde am scos firul de alimentator, apoi la 60 l-am băgat înapoi (cu butonul apăsat tot timpul, după care 10 secunde fără fir din nou și după ce am băgat firul și a pornit încă un reset normal și astfel am reușit sa preiau controlul modemului și sa îl setez din nou.

Fb merge mai bine dar tot ezita când încerc sa șterg cu backspace apăsat (repeat). Aceasta problema dispare dacă scot (dezinstalez din Firefox) dicționarele de romana și engleza (amândouă, dacă îl scot numai pe unul, în orice ordine ar fi nu are efect).

Foarte curios, după ce am văruit porțiunea aceea din tavan, de 2 zile nu mai aud nici avioane.

Combinat cu podeaua făcută din fibră lemnoasă cu clei din reziduuri animale... well... you get the picture...