Stupid Ideas to Reduce Fuel Prices
*rant* I've been hit lately with a number of stupid ideas presented by people hoping to reduce their fuel bills. Besides the utter and obvious ridiculousness of having a "let's not buy fuel day", another one that has been passed my way is, and I'm quoting:
"Here's the idea: For the rest of this year, DON'T purchase ANY gasoline from the two biggest companies, ESSO and Shell."
To which I reply: "No, let's buy fuel from all those small, family run operations that presumably have their own condensate pipelines and refineries in their back rooms." Yes, that will definitely give the LARGEST OIL COMPANY IN THE WORLD (ExxonMobil), the second largest corporation in the world (ExxonMobil), and THE MOST PROFITABLE corporation in the world (ExxonMobil), pause for thought. It will also give the second largest oil company in the world (Shell), the THIRD LARGEST corporation in the world (Shell), and the second most profitable corporation in the world (Shell) that same pause. After all, they make all their money from you buying their gasoline... NOT.
Just where, exactly, do these people think non-ExxonMobil and non-Shell branded fuel stations buy their fuel from? Well, besides from ExxonMobil and Shell? Probably from that third most evil and trampling global death walker - BP, you guessed it, the THIRD LARGEST OIL COMPANY IN THE WORLD and FOURTH MOST PROFITABLE CORPORATION IN THE WORLD.
Any idea to reduce fuel prices by sabre-rattling in front of the juggernauts of global wealth is stupid. This is not a David and Goliath fight. The basic argument is flawed. Once everyone empties out the tanks of the Mom-and-Pop fuel stations, who are those fuel stations going to go to for their fuel stock, that is if they aren't already buying it from Exxon or Shell? It is not possible to reduce the demand for a product by not reducing demand. This is basic capitalist economics. Compound that with the fact that Mom-and-Pop fuel stops, regardless of any increase in demand, aren't going to get any volume discounts from the Big 3. Single operations can't bargin with Exxon, Shell, or BP. Nope, you're better off buying form a large chain with the bargaining power to get a volume discount.
Truck drivers and farmers aside, to pay less for fuel, use less. That's it. If that's not possible and nothing can be changed, pony up and pay. Scrape back money from all those other necessities like iPods, $8 lattes, and disposable clothes from Le Chateau, buy stock in Exxon, Shell, or BP, and reinvest the dividends in the fuel bill.
In the meantime, whomever it is that comes up with these ideas, please stop trying to dupe everyone into thinking demand reduces demand. Otherwise, I've got a bridge to sell you, cheap...*/rant*
Fulfilling promises.
I said I'd tell you about the Liptrap trip that I was on a few weekends ago, and it's been almost a month. So, without further ado, I've started this article with the daggiest photo of me ever (that's me on the RIGHT, in case you're wondering). There's no mistaking a demonstrator on school fieldtrips these days. I think it's funny that digital camera image sensors overload with the new high vis colours.
The Monash School of Geosciences runs a number of fieldtrips to familiarise its students with the practical aspects of geology. As a field of study, there's probably little that needs to be taught at the university level to make useful geologists in the real world, but such is life nowadays that everyone and his or her respective dog must attend university for increasingly less apparent reasons.
Anyway, the lesser (in length only) of two second year fieldtrips is to Cape Liptrap, which is on the southwest coast of Wilson's Promontory in the Gippsland area of Victoria (map coming if I remember). They go there to learn about structural geology, about which I have some fairly misinformed opinions that no one would really like to read at this point.
The day starts at a coastal cliff in which there are lots of folds and faults and rock fouled to buggary. The students slowly pace along the cliff and make a schematic cross section detailing the major features, which they later find out comprise a shear zone. A shear zone is a region of highly smooshed rock that are so stretched out and faulted that there's no original textures left, just a erosionally vulnerable set of what appear to be layered rocks. This cliff is in a place called Waratah Bay, which you can see on
this Google Map near the town of Walkerville.
We next go to Cape Liptrap proper, which is on the other side of the peninsula from Waratah Bay. From there, we scare all the faint-hearted city slickers and lash them down a cliff - look for the little people on the beach below. I took this picture from about half way down the cliff walk. Once down at the beach level, we teach them about strike and dip, which is a way of graphically representing the orientation of layered rocks and other planar and linear features.
This beach is particularly good for teaching strike and dip because there are a ton of really good surfaces to use for measure-ments, thus:
After getting a handle on strike and dip, which is a challenge for some, we walk for about 20 minutes, at low tide, along the beach to the next stop, which is a mound at an otherwise inaccessible area of the Cape. It has been named Fold Stack for the trip. At Fold Stack, the students fan out and begin sketching the stack and noting all its major features. Sketching in geology is probably one of the only bastions of elementary art class that is elevated to professional status. If you like using pencil crayons, sketching, and drawing, geology may be the "science" for you.
Fold Stack looks a little something like this (left). There's big folds here that make teaching all the structural malarky related to folding easy to visualise. We were lucky with the weather this trip and only had enough drizzle on Saturday to completely disintegrate everyone's first drafts. Heh. Sunday was, well, sunny. Off on another field trip this and next weekend. I'll post about that later.
TTFN
Oh to be suspended...
At first I thought that using the opening lines of High Flight would have been a rather appropriate title for this post, but this post isn't about that sort of surly bond, it's about an altogether different one and if it's done right, there won't be any slipping going on. I had this piercing urge to see what my flatmate was talking about when she said that she was going to watch a suspension. A couple of weekends ago, I got my opportunity. Ergo...
The Hanged Man is a suspension team based in Melbourne. They suspend people on marlin hooks. Marlin hooks put through skin. Marlin hooks that are, in fact, flown in from the United States.
You would expect that the overwhelming majority of people who are drawn to this sort of recreation are those who are inked (permanently), sometimes in many places, and pierced, also sometimes in many places. Piercings and tattoos are probably one of those polarising features of humans: you are either pierced or you are not; you are either pregnant or you are not; you have been suspended or you have not; and so on. Those not pierced or tattooed are, perhaps affectionately, known as "cleanskins." I was searching for another cleanie in the crowd of about 100 in which I felt very much a loner for a completely non-emotional reason, but was unsuccessful (they tell me there was another, though). You would expect that this is an exclusive club of pain junkies, but they're not. They're just people with an unexpected penchant for piercing, that's all.
The basics of the night involve a clean area where only begloved piercing staff are allowed and where the sharp end of the operation is conducted very professionally with antiseptic, skill, and a few gasps. Those of you who've been pierced would know best what that is like, just scale it up a bit. The hooks are "placed" through enough skin and in great enough numbers so that your entire body weight can be supported by your body's biggest organ - the skin. When done correctly and with sufficient hooks, skin tearing is very rare. Risky suspensions involve places like knee and calf suspensions (yes, knee and calves), where the skin isn't thick enough. It's rare though and a piercer worth his or her respective salt knows what will work and what won't. Nylon line is strung between the hooks and a block attached through a pulley system to the roof. A very intimidating chap who turns out be surprisingly gentle hoists the lucky meat into the air. Once air borne, you're free to float, meditate, swing, or just... well, hang out... as you do.
Probably the most common layout (or should that be hanging) is called the "suicide," which is four hooks through the skin of the upper back in the scapula area. In this configuration, almost anyone of any weight can suspend.
Now, with a large group at a suspension event hosted by a group of keen piercers, are there any guesses what you'd do to occupy the WHOLE group at once? How about a "pull"? Think tug-of-war, extreme edition. Like Extreme Makeover, but with hooks and metal rings. At this event, called "X" (check out the gallery at the website), there were about 22 people who wanted to play. Duly lined up and sent through the clean area, they were mostly hooked through the skin fold above the elbow. One fool, if I could be so bold, got it through that really sensitive area at the top of your butt crack whence the cheeks separate distinctly. He was the only one who yelled loud enough to be heard. Fool.
Again with the nylon line, each person was attached to the same 3" metal ring and when ready, the pull started. Talk about going to extremes to release tension and stretch out your back... I left during the pull, but those attached to the ring left much more slowly... It went for a long time and eventually ended with two people giving it all they could.
When you finish yourself off, there's more to it than simply removing the hooks. Air has been pulled under the skin and the disturbing phrase "rice crispies" has been coined to describe both the verbal state of being and removal of this air. Gives a whole new meaning to giving off gas. From what I understand, suspension is an outlet for people looking for an adrenaline pump; those looking to push a pain barrier and in my opinion completely smash it to lumps of grout and bits of dusty brick; those for whom skydiving, cliff hanging, and driving fast just don't qualify... I found it interesting, but as Ed said, Kuriousity killed the Kyle.
I'll stick to jets.
PhD - The Series
No, I have no plans to bore you with the ongoings of academia, I'll hopefully entertain you with my "above average" turn of phrase discussing the mechanically engaging bits of my PhD research. Hopefully, this will turn into a multipart series where I can address questions you have after each video segment.
The first segment is covering the experimental apparatus, called a piston cylinder. A piston cylinder is used to simulate very high pressures and temperatures. The essence of such a device is basically this: a sample charge is prepared in a precious metal capsule, then that charge is encased in a small graphite furnace and compressed inside a tungsten steel cylinder up to very high pressure. Current is fed through the entire apparatus, and graphite being an excellent resistor, much like your oven element, heats up and glows white hot, providing the necessary temperature for the experiment.
The basic components of a piston cylinder are an hydraulic ram, a pressure jacket, a piston, and an experiment charge including a small cylindrical graphite furnace. You place the experiment between the top and bottom of the hydraulic ram inside the pressure jacket and squish the piston into the pressure jacket, via the ram, where it compresses the experiment. Passing current through the entire apparatus, the graphite heats up. The elevated pressure and temperature are used to simulate, in very small volumes, the conditions found deeper in the Earth's crust. Exotic setups can simulate conditions in the very deep Earth - say 700 km, but they require double rams where a much larger ram squishes a smaller ram, which squishes the experiment. These can take up an entire room and require diamonds to actually transmit the pressure to the experiment.
Cooling water is needed to flow through the pressure jacket so that it does not melt, and large gauge cabling is used to transmit the power required through the experiment.
The setup here is small and can simulate up to 25 kbar, which is approximately the pressure you would experience at 80 km depth.
On to the video...
Questions?
P.S. I hope to have rehearsed a little more for the next one... maybe I'll even get creative and see what I can achieve with iMovie. More to follow. I know, I know... promises, promises...
Weekend Preview.
We were teaching second years how to look at rocks this weekend at a place called Cape Liptrapp. More on this later because I'm too tired to write tonight.
Oh, and then, if you can stand it, I'll take you on a journey into a curious segment of alternative Melbourne society, of which I am generally an accepting observer; one of those mysterious events that belong to the wonders of those who wonder as the sunlight begins to fade above the rooftops of a large cosmopolitan city if there must be unexpected things going on in places you know not where; someplace where "cleanskins" are considered weird; something that makes it on to the Showtime network after 2200 hrs... I'll tell you a little about this:
And no Mum, it has nothing to do with my body.
