Energy

Back in March 2017, with his characteristic hyperbole, Billionaire space explorer Elon Musk told South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill that his Tesla battery company could 'solve South Australia’s energy crisis within 100 days.'  Go Here - to revisit the South Australian 'crisis'.
Like the fabled mayor of Hamelin, Jay, desperate to save face after leading the State to the energy abyss, leapt at the offer. All his energy problems would be solved. 
Now the deal is signed.  The Pied Piper is to provide the world's biggest battery, a 100 MW/129 MWh Tesla Powerpack, in a 100 days... 'or your money back'.  
"Hooray for Jay!" shouted the media.
Meanwhile, Federal Energy Minister, Josh Frydenberg, cautiously welcomed the forthcoming delivery of "the 'world's largest' lithium-ion battery to help secure South Australia's power grid", while humbly submitting that: "it will not solve all the state's energy problems".  Was he implying that 100 MW is a drop in the bucket, in a State with 1,600 MW of rapidly fluctuating wind generation?  
In an attempt to regain the initiative he proposed his 'superior' solution, a big bucket indeed: 'package' pumped hydro-electricity.
Yet could both 'fixes' be woefully inadequate?  The cost of both these storage methods certainly brings water to the eyes.
Nevertheless, like Ol' Blue Eyes': 'ant and the rubber tree plant' both Jay and Josh have 'high hopes'.

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Travel

The big news on American Independence Day, the 4th of July 2017, was that North Korea has launched a rocket that travelled vertically to reach an altitude of 2,802km (1,731 miles).
That probably means that they could put an H bomb in orbit. But although nuclear annihilation has worried my generation for most of our lives, starting with the first man-made satellites in the 1960's, like Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, we've learned to 'stop worrying and love the bomb'.
This is largely because of MAD - mutually assured destruction. So, strangely, I find I'm not too worried.

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Fiction

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Travel

Here it is at last.  I've finally given up my fight with Google Pictures and accepted URLs the length of small essays, just so that I can store my images in The Cloud.
The essay on Southern England uses the old Picasa image storage. But in the middle of writing this, a few days later, Google withdrew it and introduced their mega-URLs. Then, before I could get any further with a solution, I found myself in hospital.  See below.

Anyway I hope this was worth the wait - particularly for those of you who like to travel and have not yet been to Romania.

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Travel

In mid July 2016 Wendy and I took flight again to Europe. Those who follow these travel diaries will note that part of out trip last year was cut when Wendy's mum took ill. In particular we missed out on a planned trip to Romania and eastern Germany. This time our British sojourn would be interrupted for a few days by a side-trip to Copenhagen and Roskilde in Denmark (later posts to come).
We spent the initial week in London and after our return from Denmark, toured about the West Country to Cornwall and then east along the South coast as far as Sidmouth.

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Ideas

Catching the ferry back from seeing Wendy onto the airport train on her way to Iran, I saw a girl with ash on her forehead and realized it was Ash Wednesday.
What would I give up for Lent?  Undoubtedly the obvious.
Then the following day I was wearing a so called 'halter' monitoring my heart for 24 hours to see if death is imminent - perhaps at Easter?
And that made me revisit this story, adding some additional personal details.

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News

I was recently restored to life after being dead for several hours. 

'Really?' you say, 'dead?' What does: 'dead' really mean?

At one time a person who was no longer breathing; who had no heartbeat; was limp and unconscious; and failed to respond to stimuli, like being poked with a knife; or having their heart removed; was pretty certainly dead.
Yet while a death certificate may well have been issued for me in the not so distant past, today we set no store by the heart or the lungs or even reflexes as indicators of life but rather the potential recovery of the brain and central nervous system.

Thus I was not actually dead. The colony of cells that is me remained relatively undamaged, still a viable living organism thanks to continuing oxygenated blood supply. In particular my brain was undamaged, so my mind could be restored to awareness when anaesthesia ceased. 

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News

For my 70th Birthday Wendy took me at my word and bought me a voucher to go Skydiving.  I've always wanted to try it and 75 is a limit for insurance.

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Recollections

The 2015 Spielberg movie Bridge of Spies recalls the U-2 Incident, one of those seminal moments when the world would take a new path into the future.  In 1960 this otherwise mundane spy flight would swing the result of a US election and thus set the tone for the coming decade.  The new President was to make US confrontation with the USSR a hallmark of his term in office.  The Cuban Missile Crisis; escalation of the wars in Indochina; conscription;  draft dodging; protest; flower-power and a spate of assassinations; can therefore all trace their roots to this incident. 
On the positive side was the Peace Corps and the 'Space Race' that would lead to rapid technological advance. The technologies of the 21st century: communications and computers; new materials; 'and all that' came from there.

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Travel

I've been to Berlin several times but have been reluctant to offer an 'off the cuff' summary of this complex city.
Instead here are some selected impressions that are by no means intended as a comprehensive analysis.

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News

The recent Australia Day and Invasion Day dispute made me recall again the late, sometimes lamented, British Empire.
Because, after all, it was the Empire that was the genesis of Australia Day.
For a brief history of that institution I can recommend Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World by Niall Ferguson.
It may also have some relevance to US hegemony - Amerika über alles!

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History

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing now.  Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred.
Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow.
In six generations, I, like most people, have 126 ancestors.  Around half have become obscure to me. But I know the majority had one thing in common: they lived in or around Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England.

During that time Newcastle grew from a small port town into one of the World's most important and innovative cities.  Thus they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund.

So it's also a tale of one city.

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Environment

Partly in response to my article Carbon Footprints (below) several friends and acquaintances have told me that Climate Change is a myth.

Might this be true?

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Energy

With the long predicted problems in South Australia and soon in Victoria  due to over-dependence on wind generated electricity (follow this link:  'Wind is seldom a good match for the customers’ consumption requirements...' ) clean coal is back in the news as a possible solution.
It may come as a surprise to some but coal is not carbon free. Nor is petroleum. Nor is 'natural' gas.
Coal-fired supercritical steam technology may get coal close to conventional gas but it comes at a cost and neither are 'clean'.
So when people speak of 'clean coal' they usually mean technology that incorporates a means of capturing the combustion by products - in particular carbon dioxide (CO₂) and putting them somewhere other than into the atmosphere.
I've explored carbon capture and storage also known as carbon sequestration on several past occasions.  
I'm not a fan as there is an obvious; safer; less expensive; and technically mature; option already in widespread use. 

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