Mediocrity.US » Science

Texas and Brown Gold

David Barach — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 22:00:26 +0000

Greed and deregulation has sent the US economy into the toilet. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we can use it to start making some money! That’s exactly what San Antonio, Texas is doing. A state that struck it rich with Black Gold is doing it again, but this time with what they are affectionately calling biosolids, or as I like to call it, Brown Gold.

San Antonio will harvest methane gas from the 140,000 tons of human waste that its residents produce per year and turn it into clean-burning natural gas. Does gas get any more natural? Getting methane from human waste isn’t new, but San Antonio plans to use 90% of its human waste which makes it the first large scale project of its kind. They already use the solid waste for composting and the liquid waste for irrigation, this is the next logical step in a state that uses every part of the pig.

Speaking of pigs, I hear only two things come from Texas, and one them is steers. With all the cow and pig farms in Texas, you’d think animal waste would be a more logical step.

Did you see that? I just used logical and Texas in the same sentence. Yeeha!

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Kudzu – Rock Band or Cuddly Doll

David Barach — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:41:36 +0000

Neither, kudzu is a fast growing vine that has various nutritional and medicinal uses (it even helps with hangovers – I kid you not. Look it up!) the US Natural Resources Conservation Service encouraged southern farmers to use from 1935 -1950 for control of ground erosion. The problem is that this Japanese import grows completely out of control in the south-eastern US due to the friendly climate there – friendly to kudzu that is, less friendly if you’re not church-going. If you’ve been anywhere in the south-east, you’ve seen it climbing trees, poles, bushes, and just about anything that sits still for more than a day.

Now kudzu is creeping into Indiana, and they don’t like it one bit. Not only because they are afraid it might smother Dan Quayle, but because they are a proud midwestern, rust-belt state that is not going to let another Asian import take over American jobs. They have launched a campaign to eradicate it, because kudzu can carry a fungus that is a threat to an important local, all-American, red-blooded, Indiana-grown crop. The soybean.

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Robots with Biological Brains

David Barach — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 23:48:39 +0000

Scientists at the University of Reading in England have created a robot that receives input to, and processes responses from, a brain made of rat brain cells. The robot knows how to steer to avoid colliding with objects.

I don’t really understand what all the hoopla is about. Americans did this in the 1980s. Doesn’t anyone remember Ronald Reagan? Regardless, anyone that has watched (the best show on TV) Battlestar Galactica knows that biological melding with machines can’t end well.

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