In the meantime, I've had bigger thoughts to ponder. There's an obvious one, which I feel perfectly comfortable blabbing about ad nauseum in real life but can't make myself blog. We'll leave that one alone and go on to a couple of scientific things that are rather cool. It'll also let everyone in on how my brain works.
Ok, so, I was watching something on Discovery, National Geographic, or the Science Channel about how early bacteria and plant life sucked out all the carbon from the atmosphere, leaving an oxygen-rich environment. The Earth went from a global steamy swampland to the crisp, cool (relatively speaking) planet we know and love today.
Later, those little carbon eaters died, were mashed and heated for a few million years. This pressure cooking turned them into the fossil fuels we're burning today. After this, I was thinking, "Hm, if we're filling up our air with carbon that used to be there, how can we make like the fossils and take it back out?" Could we re-use this carbon, maybe in a more contained system?
Happily, minds who are trained in this have been working on cyanobacteria. Pretty cool stuff. We Americans are great at outsourcing. Why not outsource our atom splitting to the obvious experts?
Cut to this morning and me goofing around on the internet. I'm a pushover for the scientific news websites and have spent too much time on them already. The title "The Oceans are Beginning to Die" caught my eye.
I'm selfish enough to first think, "What about the seafood?!"
Then, the thought hits... The oceans need oxygen, the air needs oxygen, how about we use the cyanobacteria here, too? Couldn't we use the oceans as farmland to grow the bacteria, and harvest it for fuel? Also good would be the possible use of the fertilizer, either filtered and recycled, or as something plantlike the bacteria could live on as single cell apartments.
On a related, but separate subject is the clean generation of energy from wind and solar sources. So, here I was, thinking about the Sahara and Australian Outback as great places to set up solar panels and wind turbines. Probably passing these in Kansas during a hot July weekend started me thinking.
But, setting up the energy gathering equipment does no good if you can't get the new power from point a to b. When I read about wireless electricity experiments from MIT, there you go. (Tesla did it first, by the way.) Set up way stations and let the power do island hopping to go around the world. In an ideal world, famine-racked countries of Africa could now profit from supplying energy to the rest. Sadly, I doubt the rulers would let that happen. Maybe they would improve their infrastructure, if only for their own convenience.
Enough on what happens when I have too much time to think. On to more pretty pictures!
Someone turned 13! I made her a guitar birthday cake and she got Rock Band from us. A very happy girl.
This is Frygirl holding an EMPTY bottle. She's giving her Dad a defiant, yet cute look here, so I had to include it. The beer was mine, so you know there wasn't a drop left for her.
My entry in the Ravelympics for the Works In Progress Wrestling. I wrestled this bad girl to the ground, finishing it on time despite tons of distractions. Yay! It looks good on me, if a little tight.
Sadly, this guy has been ripped out completely. Do over! It needed to fit on my foot and didn't. I went up a needle size, am making my fair isle looser, and am kicking it again.
I had to include this for my Dad. I love this photo, too funny!
