Environment Protection
Environment Science

My friends here within the Northeast are all running out to purchase backup generators now (i.e., closing the barn doors after the horses are gone). The lowest priced that I’ve heard for an installation is set $7,000, complete with electrician’s efforts (i used to be quoted over $20,000 at my house, partly because of there not being a very good location or it near the home). The resulting machine might want to be maintained, run a week for a couple of minutes (very noisy), and should never recoup any of its costs.

It occurs to me that rooftop solar systems are within the same price ballpark ($7,000 to $30,000?). Supplemented by a snow broom, i’d think that a rooftop solar system would make an effective backup and, for the 99 percent of the time that the grid was working, could help defray its cost by generating useful electricity.

Obviously the solar panels wouldn’t work at night, nevertheless it isn’t usually a massive deal to head overnight without power. If the well pump and heating system could be operated in the course of the sunlight hours that needs to be enough to maintain pipes from freezing and make allowance the residents to enjoy a modicum of civilized existence.

Here are some questions for the solar pioneers:

• why isn’t rooftop solar a more common backup power solution?
• what happens when the grid power fails and there isn’t a giant battery pack? Does the inverter trip off when the voltage to the home drops below 105 or so? After which you run round the house turning off appliances and check out to bring the inverter back up? Or there’s automatic load-shedding somehow?
• how much power does it take to run a forced hot water heating system (ignition for the oil burner plus pumps to transport water across the house)?
• what concerning the roof underneath a rooftop solar system? How would you ever repair shingles? Is it typical to install a brand new 30-year roof together which you installed a 30-year solar panel system?
• how big a system does one need in New England to run the essentials within a home? (essential = heat, well pump, fridge, Verizon FiOS box, router, desktop PC)
• how many square feet would that system occupy at the roof?
• is these things getting a whole lot cheaper? Supposedly Solyndra died because conventional panel prices were dropping. Has the cost of panels dropped enough to make the general system substantially cheaper than three years ago?
• what about all the tax breaks whereby one was once in a position to get one’s fellow citizens to pay a lot of the bill? Are those still in place? [i feel government subsidies are bad, except ones that involve mailing a check to my house.]

I’m wary about solar since it sounds like too advanced a technology for a U.S. home. It’s so painful to get simple stuff fixed that i will’t imagine what would happen with a technician up at the roof with a Fluke voltmeter.

You often hear/examine Hollywood stars and celebrities losing a few pounds, taking clenbuterol, a brand new weight-loss drug that literally melts away fat, and often you people follow your favorite stars and celebrities. However, take a moment to learn about the drug that you are working to put into your body.
Often blundered for a steroid because of its illicit use in athletics, clenbuterol is actually the drug that is meant extra for veterinary than people use. It is the narcotic for horses. In person use, clenbuterol is often prescribed to the people undergoing from breathing disorders as, such as decongestant and bronchodilator. Often used as a bronchodilator, clenbuterol aids to make breathing easier for the people suffering from chronic breathing disorders favor asthma. Clenbuterol is maximum commonly available in salt manner as Clenbuterol hydrochloride.
Clenbuterol is often enhanced for its lean-muscle-mass benefits among bodybuilders. It is often used as heaviness detriment drug and often notified as safe drug in assorted countries, yet the United States Food and Drug Administration documents don’t advocate clenbuterol as weightloss drug. The agent also does no endorse the use of clenbuterol among bodybuilders, and other jocks.
Clenbuterol was banned by the US FDA in 1991, as it was found to help add accessory weight and muscle in show animals, and numerous cases of harmful reactions were reported in people who had expended the clenbuterol-tainted meat; the folks showed impaired heart and lung function. America FDA whatever ratified clenbuterol for the get rid of horses anguish with lung in 1998. But, the pony that received the drug couldn’t afterward be slaughtered for food.
Yet, the Centers for Disease Control, in 2005, reported some 26 cases of people, who were hospitalized for cardiovascular negative effects, such for a racing heart beat and palpitations, nausea and breast grief, reportedly catching heroin. However, these reactions were untypical, for heroin depresses the nervous system. So, when patients were tested, clenbuterol was ascertained of their urine. The discoveries suggested that the heroin could have been laced with the problem.
In September 2006, over 330 people in Shanghai were reported to was poisoned by dining pork contaminated by clenbuterol that have been fed to the animals to order their meat lean.
Surely, the FDA considers clenbuterol as a poison, and has banned clenbuterol for entire off-label use. As of fall, 2006, clenbuterol is not very one factor of any medical drug approved by the U.S. FDA. The product labeling for clenbuterol very clearly states: “To be used in horses not intended for food.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the FDA monitor the illegal use of the materials in animals.
Clenbuterol has also been banned on the International Olympic Committee. Thus, unless you’re a horse with bum lungs, clenbuterol namely illegal. Former Major League baseball pitcher, Jason Grimsley agreed namely he was using clenbuterol. The tennis player Mariano Puerta used to be penalized to be used of clenbuterol. Australian wrestler Mitchil Mann was also suspended because testing affirmative for the reason that clenbuterol.
Know about parakeet behavior and parakeet breeding by the Talking Parakeet site.

By Flora Lee

Like the American SAT, the British A-level or the French Baccalaureate, there’s also a last, nationwide examination in Korea: the KSAT, or “Sooneung” because it is traditionally observed. The daylong exam contains exams in Korean, mathematics, English plus one to four subjects of choice in social sciences, natural sciences, or vocational studies. Officially, it’s aimed toward calculating students’ academic abilities and their aptitude for varsity education. But inside the “real” world, students and oldsters are likely to understand the Sooneung because the ultimate once-in-a-year multiple-choice test that could totally decide your future life. To foreigners it would seem a little an exaggeration, but I’m sure any gosam (the graduating class of highschool) in Korea would acknowledge the giant pressure of test, including the truth that only a simple stomachache could easily ruin the day that you just prepared tediously and painfully for many of your youth.

Just to briefly describe the lifetime of a standard gosam: he/she gets to school by 7 to eight a.m., and does practically nothing instead of study, study, study until midnight or more-at college, at home or at private school rooms that cost rather a lot. Essentially this brutal slog begins as soon as final exams end in one’s junior year if not once the exam is taken by seniors (many students set a “D-Day” countdown application on cell phones or computers at 365 days and follow the countdown by days, hours, minutes and seconds and the rest can’t escape constant reminders from friends, teachers and parents). For students who wish to enter a prestigious university-called SKY here indicating Seoul National University (Korea’s Harvard), Korea University (Yale perhaps) and Yonsei University (maybe Oxford)-the competition gets fiercer, the strongest enemy being yourself. Imagine having all that effort judged on one single day. One mistake, and you could be stuck not in a university dormitory but in Gangnam-Daesung or Jongro Yongin Campus , two famous academies for jaesusaeng-to all gosams, being put on the jaesusaeng list and spending another year in hell is a terrifying punishment (sadly 150 thousand students ended up victims of it last year alone).

Of course, hard work pays off and those who score high on Sooneung are those who studied ever so ardently. What is frightening is that a lot of hard-working students actually fail to earn high scores. That is how I, as a gosam, felt as I counted down the days to D-Day, November 18, 2010. As those days hit 100, 50, 10, I was scared and I was worried and I lamented my poor score on mock examinations that we took almost every month. But I knew at the same time that fretting would not change anything. The only right choice I could make was to be calm and study-but that was hardest thing.

Anyway, the day that I never ever dreamed would come actually did. The weather was not as cold as usual. (Every year the day of Sooneung- sometime around the second/third week of November-is extremely cold and people joke that it is because the students are nervous and frightened!) I got up around 6 o’clock, had a nice breakfast of rice, some small fish, cooked veggies and beef. My mother prepared a dosirak for lunch, of rice and a few other side dishes of kimchi, beef and fruit. My 72-year-old grandfather drove me to the examination place along with my grandmother and mom. They offered words of encouragement while also telling me they’d prayed for me and had had favorable dreams.

The exam location was at Moohak Girl’s High School (students take the test at a different school than the one they attend) and a bunch of 1st and 2nd graders from our high school-probably twenty-were waiting for us test takers at the front gate-they sang songs, cried out encouragements and gave everyone a little box of chocolates. There were also five teachers from our school who gave me a hug and said I’d do well. Thanks to them, I felt really good as I entered the school. There really wasn’t much security-no one searched my stuff. I remember finding my seat, sitting down and opening some book to look at. Honestly, I was surprised at how everything felt so normal and un-special. I had my usual last-minute checkups on the facts, the supervisor checked our identity with our registration ticket and identity car, told us the usual last-minute rules, and at 8:40 a.m. sharp the Sooneung was finally on with the start of the listening section!

The first subject, Korean, took 80 minutes and consisted of listening, grammar, literature and general reading comprehension. Second was mathematics which took 100 minutes. After those two subjects I felt… nothing. I really couldn’t figure out whether it was easy or not, nor whether I did well or not but my friends seemed like they’d ruined the test and one even cried because she blew the math section. But apart from a few “It will be okays,” none of us said much and just ate lunch. A quick stop at the restroom, and the test was on again with the English section taking 70 minutes. Next came the two-hour parade of four social studies subjects, 30 minutes each. I took Ethics, Korean History, Korean geography and Economics. Last but not least was my language major French to fill up the last 40 minutes and at around 6:00 p.m., everything was over.

During the test, I personally didn’t feel much. It honestly flew by just like that. The only noticeable emotion was probably that Sooneung felt so normal! It was just like one of the many mock exams I had taken (that must be one of reasons we take so many). One of my friends left a proverb about the Korean and Mathematics sections saying: “Sooneung is nothing much but jaesu is something near.” Only gosams will understand the black humor poured into the sentence. It seemed like he was already readying himself for another year of test preparation.

After Sooneung, I took a taxi and came home. Actually, to the school dormitory. Although my parents weren’t waiting for me, like other students’, I didn’t feel that sad because they said they’d come after I marked the scores, at about 9 p.m. That was actually better for me since I didn’t want to mark it in front of them. In my room, nervous and anxious, I turned on my laptop and starting marking my scores based on the answers I had written on my examination ticket (legitimate, by the way). Megastudy.net offered an easy program to mark scores, so I put down all my answers, and one click of the button “chaejum (mark score)” would show my score. I took a deep breath, then clicked. Oh my god!. As soon as I saw my Korean score, I knew that I was doomed. I wasn’t bad at Korean-I always used to get mediocre scores at the least. But this was unbelievable. Afraid of nothing, I clicked on all the other buttons, not believing what I was seeing because the score of each subject popped up.

The result? Unfortunately, I wasn’t a winner at the Sooneung day. I have to say that I cried and cried all that night because the scores of that day were something I had never ever seen. Mom tried her best to console me, told me that I did well and things would surely turn out for the best. She was ever so nice, but of course it didn’t do much to alleviate my deep sorrow. I still don’t know what exactly was the problem. Maybe I was nervous, maybe I was simply unprepared. I don’t blame anything. What is sure is that ruining the Sooneung was and still is an enormous trauma to me, and probably to all people that practically spent their life with a pen and a book and yet screwed the test. It’s a pain to face your parents or your teachers properly because you feel so sorry and guilty. However, what is also sure is that whatever the degree of difficulty, there are always students who survive. All the students who are satisfied with their scores deserve it, and that i applaud them.

Sooneung has its winners and losers. And as a total loser who is anxiously anticipating the news about the only susi I applied to (early application with minimal Sooneung requirements-my only hope to go to college this year!), thinking about Sooneung to write this was agonizing. Adults say thon the test and university are nothing compared to the hurdles you will face later in life. Yet they also say that despite all that, they know and understand what Sooneung means to us. It’s a big, gigantic hurdle that appears so fearful. But most of us students have to jump over it at least once in a lifetime. Robert S. Eliot said, “If you can not fight and if you can not flee, flow.” Before Sooneung I thought that was the best way to think. After Sooneung, I still do.

____________________________________________________________________

Flora Lee is a graduating senior at Daewon Foreign Language Highschool where she majored in French. She hopes to get into college where she’ll fine tune her French skills.

Editor’s Note: One reasat the exam might need seemed so hard was because it was so hard.
Update: Flora is now wrapping up her first year at Seoul National University.

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My dumb economics question for the day is regarding Greece. The rustic has a population that isn’t much larger than the Chicago metropolitan area. Greece, like Chicago, is a part of a currency union. Greece, like Chicago and surrounding suburbs, has borrowed some huge cash via issuing bonds. Suppose that the citizens of Chicago decided that they didn’t are looking to work very hard after which retire at age 50 and possibly weren’t going to trouble paying back their creditors. Would that be a crisis for the whole U.S.? For the dollar? For worldwide stock markets?

If the U.S. could suffer the, well, relaxation of Chicago, why can’t Europe handle one country whose citizens take a more relaxed view of labor than their creditors would really like?

[Separately, events in Europe appear to reward caveman-style investing. Italians and Greeks have a good looking lifestyle that does not include an excessive amount of labor. England has a fixed of entrenched interest groups (see Mancur Olson) that may seem to make sustained economic growth impossible. Absent lots of fancy data from investment banks inclusive of Goldman Sachs, an investor would run faraway from any opportunity presented in these countries in favor of investments in Germany, Korea, China, etc. Inside the last year or two we discover out that England is in actual fact kind of broke and that the numbers the investment banks and Greece recommend were simply false. Japan, i guess, is the simplest counterexample to this caveman-style investing approach. People there are highly skilled and work very hard, but investors haven't done well in past times couple of decades.]

By 3WM
On Saturday November 12
from 9 P.M to twelve at Roofers in Itaewon, the award winning British artist duo Tiger and Bear present to you a night of comedy performance art entertainment with Tiger and Bear’s Cave to Humanness. The wildest performance art game show you’re ever more likely to experience this year. You’ll laugh, cry and possibly cringe and if you are feeling adventurous, you could possibly dance, sing and ddong chim. With special Tiger and Bear personalized art prizes to be “won,” guest appearances from Robot Taekwon V and Mazinger Z and live music from super cool brilliant band Yours, it is a night you have to tell your grandchildren about when you are really old and tormented by dementia.

Entrance 5000KRW

Visit event page here.

Read about Tiger and Bear’s previous exploits and journeys throughout Korea in Four Acts only at 3WM:
Act I
Act II
Act III
Act IV

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IMINT is the acronym for Imagery Intelligence. In case you prefer to use maps and to assert big words like coordinates, another acronym is GEOINT, which stands for Geo-spatial Intelligence. Some spies say IMINT, others say GEOINT. Some forswear any acronym in favor of using the word imagery. The word sounds very technical (one in all its charms), but it’s really only a fancy way of asserting intelligence from photographs.

You might think that sexy photographs are found only in magazines, but spies know another source: aerial reconnaissance – photos taken by a spy plane or a spy satellite. That said, what a spy considers to be “sexy” could have nothing to do with sex. (It also means the spy must get a life.) Within the Army and Marine Corps, the word reconnaissance is typically abbreviated as recon, whereas within the Air Force the abridged version is recce. The latter is pronounced WRECK-kee.

“That sounds somewhat ominous.”

Yes, it’s.

Fighter pilots love to call themselves hot stuff. That’s kinda strange, considering what hot stuff really means. Perhaps they’re envious of reconnaissance pilots. Within the early days of propeller airplanes, back within the early twentieth century, the common recce pilot would fly over enemy lines, looking for where the enemy’s troops had gathered that day. He’d wave to them, graciously, they usually waved back. It was very civilized. And upon landing his airplane, the pilot would notify his artillery friends where to try their big guns. BOOM!

Once the shell-shocked foot soldiers made the relationship, they started shooting on the spotter planes. And alas, ultimately even the pilots themselves started shooting at one another. Thus were born fighter planes.

For another approach to aerial reconnaissance, the Germans mounted tiny cameras on harnesses strapped to pigeons. Really.

And it worked. Actually, the photographs proved to be panoramically pulchritudinous, truly a bird’s eye view. After each reconnoiter the bird would then rendezvous together with his birdie beloved within the pigeon coup. Before being put inside, however, his camera was removed, lest the inadvertent creation of any pigeon pornography.

You can’t make these items up.

During the Cold War the main advanced airplanes were spy planes, probably the most famous being the U-2. (No, not the Rock band.) Created jointly by the U.S. Air Force and the CIA, the U-2 flew at extremely high altitudes, making the most of its extremely long wings and since it was extremely light. So light, the U-2 was not much stronger than a compact car product of aluminum foil. Whenever a U-2 at the ground got bumped by, say, a mechanic’s tool box, that clumsiness actually dented the plane. And it wasn’t an inexpensive fix. However the end product was a spy plane which did fly very high. So high that one pilot complained, “The worst thing about flying higher than anyone has ever flown before is that you just can’t tell anybody!”

For a time U-2 spy planes overflew even the Soviet Union itself. Those were tense years, however the overflights were kept very secret – by each side. The Americans kept quiet because they were sneaky. The Soviets kept quiet because they kept botching their chances to shoot the darn things down. One U-2 overflew a Soviet test site – prior to the Soviets tested an Atomic Bomb. (Guess what the pilot saw in his rearview mirror?) Ultimately, against another U-2, the Soviets launched missiles even while the aircraft was being chased by Soviet fighter planes. BOOM! BOOM! (Oops. One boom too many.) The U-2′s pilot survived, although he did get captured and was later sent back to America, traded for a captured Soviet undercover agent. As for the luckless Soviet pilot – well, his widow married another pilot. From an analogous squadron.

You can’t make these things up.

The next generation after the U-2 was the SR-71. The SR-71 was a spy plane so sleek and sexy, you may call it a red hot lover. As it loved getting red hot. Cruising at greater than thrice the rate of sound – that’s nearly 2,200 miles per hour, or three dozen miles every second – the SR-71 generated a lot air friction that the airplane glowed red hot and truly grew several inches. To face up to all that heat, the airframe contained the metal titanium – imported from the Soviet Union. The Communists never got the metal back, despite greater than 4,000 attempts.

Trying to shoot down the plane.

But if the SR-71′s speed and shape rendered it hot and sexy, its soaring altitude gave it a soaring attitude. Its pilots flew so high that their chest medals included Astronaut Wings. Really. Their flight suits were later adapted to be used at the Space Shuttle.

Well, Communist fighter pilots can be forgiven for thinking that the SR-71 was some style of alien spaceship. As their fighter planes tried, tried, and tried again to succeed in its cursing altitude – and not succeeded – the lofty SR-71 would sometimes fly in a circle, simply to taunt them. Nice.

If you are a UFO aficionado, get this: the SR-71 was flight-tested on the super-secret Area 51. And it was created by a secret organization called the Skunk Works.

You really can’t make these items up.

So…what do you think that of this post?  Leave me a comment!

Respectfully (because all my readers deserve respect),

Reginald Dipwipple, Spy Extraordinaire