Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Got up at seven-thirty in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Let's assume that an operating wind turbine can supply electricity for about 100 people in a city where electricity is produced only from wind power. On the additional assumptions that the monthly electric bill per person is $50 on average and the lifespan of a wind turbine is 25 years, in order to recover as much as the capital invested to purchase parts of a wind turbine, transport them to a windy site, install a wind turbine and power cables, and purchase service, maintenance and repair fees, these total costs have to be kept below $1.5 million. According to a topic found online, the cost of commercial wind turbines is $1.5 million per MW of nameplate capacity installed and the same turbine with a nameplate capacity of 3 (=~9000/3000 MW) MW costs about $4.5 million. Therefore, it seems that currently, it costs three times more than the recoverable amount of $1.5 million to cover all of these expenses for a wind turbine in a developed country. Efforts to pursue the practical implementations of any renewable sources of energy are painful. Therefore, some people call such a behavior noble.
Currently, both solar power and wind power are expensive sources of energy. It can be said that all renewable sources of energy are so. A favorable aspect of solar power and wind power is that the primary materials for these sources of energy, such as silicon and iron, are abundant on the earth. Hopefully, significant cost reductions will be attained in the near future. An unfavorable aspect of them is that the lifespan of solar cells and wind turbines isn't so long (20 ~ 30 years). This is about half of the lifespan of a typical thermal power station. This fact also means that solar power and wind power are expensive.
At the present time, major sources of energy are fossil fuels and nuclear fuels. This situation should continue for quite some time. If mankind has to achieve a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases more intensively, the percentage of the world's power from fossil fuels will drop, beyond a certain period of time. Sooner or later, fossil fuels will be abandoned as an energy source because fossil fuels are limited resources on the earth. The only reliable source of energy left in the world a few centuries later and beyond is nuclear power.
Hopefully, the development of fusion reactors will be successful. Moreover, a lasting peace will be achieved in the near future.
As well known, the world population has been growing quickly and is expected to reach ten billion by 2050. As far as the world population is kept high, mankind has to continue to rely on nuclear power for the generation of electricity. It seems that there is only one option to avoid it. That is the control of the world population. Mankind may be able to get along somehow while depending upon only renewable sources of energy if the world population is reduced below a certain level.
It may be said that the bottom line is that mankind has to choose the better of two choices. One is the way to seek peacemaking and then nuclear power. The other is the way to seek population control and renewable sources of energy. The former seems to be the right path. If mankind remains intact without choosing either way, unfortunate events may await it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Got up at seven forty-five in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
"This is an interesting topic found in the BBC online news today". The following is my comment on it:
The needs of the times have gradually begun catching up with the Iridium project, the service of which started in 1998. There are ups and downs in the life of a project.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Got up at six-thirty in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and pieces of California Pizza Kitchen's pizza for dinner.
Today, it's confirmed that the Membership Renewal Fee for a Citi credit card has been refunded sometime this week.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Got up at seven forty-five in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Japanese noodles for dinner.
The repair of my wife's Beetle was completed at a VW repair shop this morning. A careless repairman forgot to turn the indicator warning of a malfunction in the engine off. Went to pick it up this evening. Stopped by grocery stores halfway home.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Got up at nine o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and pieces of California Pizza Kitchen's pizza for dinner. Stayed at home for the entire day.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Got up at seven in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Got up at seven forty-five in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Japanese noodles for dinner.
Mr. Naoto Kan was formally appointed as the 94th Prime Minister of Japan on June 8, 2010.
The actual capacity of a wind turbine varies from place to place and should improve to some extent when it's installed in an offshore area with stronger and more continuous winds. However, when it's installed on the seabed exposing its turbine blades high above the sea level, the all-around costs of parts and installation for a wind turbine should also rise significantly. It seems that, in the case of offshore wind power, its lifespan is reduced due to corrosion and hurricane damage.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
As written previously, mankind may be able to get along somehow while depending upon only renewable sources of energy if the world population is reduced below a certain level. The reduction of the world population down to three billion, one billion, or below is easier said than done. It will probably lead to a serious decline in the world economy because of the shrinking of productive capacity and market size. Most nations don't desire to decline in their strength. Some religious groups and some undeveloped nations should offer opposition to it.
On the other hand, in the actual world, the world population has been growing quickly and may reach ten billion by 2050. It's an undeniable fact that there exists the maximum number of the world population that the earth is able to endure in terms of every aspect, for example, energy resources, material resources, provisions, and so on. Although it's uncertain whether the maximum number of the world population is above or below ten billion, some international agencies believe that the world population has to be kept below ten billion. It may be just a good number to stop. Well, it's hard to examine its genuineness with only a limited amount of information.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and an European-Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Got up at eight-thirty in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch. Went out shopping at grocery stores this afternoon. Ate a BBQ meal for dinner. Looked after the front and backyards of my house.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Got up at ten o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner. Took some self-portrait photos in the dining room of my house this evening. Stayed at home for the entire day.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Japanese noodles for dinner.
"This is an interesting topic found in the BBC online news today". The following is my comment on it:
A sincere statement was made.
"This is an interesting topic found in the BBC online news today". The following are my comments on it:
A sincere statement was made.
"This is an interesting topic found in the BBC online news today". The following are my comments on it:
The Higgs boson is the undiscovered particle that is postulated in an unproven mechanism of the quantum field theory endowing mass on some elementary particles and is expected to have a neutral charge and zero spin.
---"Dr. Adam Martin told BBC News that the two-Higgs doublet, which deals with five Higgs bosons with similar masses but different electric charges (three neutrals, one negative and one positive), could explain the results seen by the DZero team while keeping much of the Standard Model intact". ---
In a newly proposed theory by US scientists, two Higgs bosons out of five have electric charges.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and pieces of California Pizza Kitchen's pizza for dinner.
Around midnight, an intruder knocked loudly and rhythmically on the wall of the backyard of my house several times. It would seem to me while dozing on the bed that a servant of Lilliputians did it. In the morning my wife said that perhaps a raccoon did it. It seems that that's a larger animal than a raccoon. Any midnight disturbance of our peaceful sleep is unwelcome, except for justifiable reasons of security.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Got up at seven-thirty in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
The building work near my house has been going on for the last three months. In the darkness of early morning today, this neighborhood was very noisy because of its work. It's too early.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Got up at nine o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch. Went out shopping at grocery stores this afternoon. Ate a dish of Japanese noodles for dinner.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Got up at nine o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner. Stayed at home for the entire day. Looked after the front and backyards of my house.
--- According to Wikipedia, "The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster occurred on April 5, 2010, about 1,000 feet (300 m) underground at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine at Montcoal in Raleigh County, West Virginia". "Twenty-nine out of thirty-one miners at the site were killed".
"This is an interesting topic found in the BBC online news today". The following are my comments on it:
How many lives of miners per year do coal mining accidents claim on earth? The frequency of mining accidents has decreased over the past decades because of the advancement in mining technologies. However, it's still much higher than the frequency of accidents related to any other energy resources. Coal mining is dangerous because, different from oil drilling, miners themselves need to go deep underground, where there are risks of gas explosion, gas poisoning, flooding, being buried alive by cave-ins, etc., in order to extract a massive volume of coal. Although uranium mining is also dangerous because there is a risk of exposure to radioactivity with a slight amount of radon gas emitted from uranium ore, the number of fatalities in uranium mining accidents is smaller than that in coal mining accidents on the whole because the production of uranium; high-energy fuel (about 0.05 million-tones/yr) is much smaller than that of coal; low-energy fuel (about 7,000 million-tones/yr).
Different from oil and nuclear powers, in the case of coal-fired power, fatalities are mostly limited to coal miners. It can be said that no life of other people is placed in danger directly. Philanthropists tend to dislike this situation. On the other hand, some sorts of egoistic people love it though they never tell so. Unfortunately, the latter is in the majority of coal worshippers.
In spite of the fact that its impact on the environment is the worst of all energy sources to the exclusion of intentional accidents as well known, from the global point of view, the number of coal-fired power stations has significantly been increasing simply because of its low cost, abundance comparing to other fossil fuels and freedom from direct danger for all but coal miners.
Hopefully, the clean technologies that prevent pollution by filtering out the excreted substances, for instance, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, fly ash, and mercury from exhaust gases, will be adopted in future coal-fired plants, at least. Regardless of the small possibility that the emissions of greenhouse gases from coal-fired power stations may be suppressed for a certain period of time by some practical methods, coal is an energy resource, the use of which as an energy source mankind has to reduce, as much as possible, before long. Without the implementation of a major population control, only the energy source to replace fossil fuels including coal is nuclear power. In the near future, major progress towards lasting peace and the significant development of safe nuclear power technology will be achieved. In this stage, mankind will be able to abandon bloody coal entirely. Hopefully, the day will come shortly. Mankind shouldn't continue such inhuman acts for the next couple of centuries until coal is completely depleted on the earth.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Got up at eight-fifteen in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Got up at eight-fifteen in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Confucianism was founded and propagated by Confucius in China in the 6th ~ 5th century BC. Although Confucianism crossed over from China to Japan in the fourth century AC, when the development of Chinese thoughts nearly entered a period of stagnation, it hadn't grown under the dominance of Buddhism in Japan. In Japan, Confucianism had been mainly cultivated by the military class and taken into its own brand of chivalry, which had been developed since the 12th century, during the Tokugawa period (17 ~ 19th century) and became widespread with embarking on the road to militarism around the early of the Meiji period (the late of 19th century). Indeed, Confucianism has only a short history since its wide propagation in Japan. It's my understanding that Confucianism tells moral teachings valid for many Asian primitive societies.
Chinese thoughts might have reached a higher zenith if the development of its thoughts hadn't stopped prior to the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Western thoughts have continuously developed until now without entering any long period of stagnation, though there might be some periods of relative unenlightenment. Thoughts to pursue ideals and truths rarely seen in Western countries are more intellectual and preferable than Confucianism. It can be said that science is one of the crystallizations of these thoughts.
As written in my diary previously, some sorts of elderly Americans and elderly Europeans find a convenient system in Confucianism, that is, a seniority system. When the situation worsens for seniority worshippers, some followers of them tend to act violently around. Probably, that's who knocked loudly on the wall of the backyard of my house last week. That may be the true face of that raccoon.
One of the servants of seniority worshippers, such as elderly Asians and elderly Americans, threw a stone or shot an air gun at a window of my wife's room a couple of days after she sent me an email about her opinion on a seniority system in June 2009. My wife thinks that such small-minded bastards instigate red, blue, and/or pink women to commit such mischievous acts, as frequently seen in the political stages. It seems to me that some minority groups were also used for such dirty acts. Anyway, it's a really disgraceful way of doing.
My honest opinion on the Japanese version of the seniority system is that it's just one of trivial rules for convenience's sake valid only in a unique society where both a mandatory retirement system and a lifetime employment system exist. That's nothing more, nothing less.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
There is the other possible identity of an intruder. A servant of coal worshippers might do it. The people who worship both seniority and coal are most suspicious. Do you think that they just want me to get up earlier by about four hours?
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Got up at eight o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and pieces of California Pizza Kitchen's pizza for dinner.
It seems to me that what established a distinction of the West from the East in the development of thoughts post the medieval period are the moderate disobedience against given doctrines, the inexhaustible intolerance to existing contradictions, and the tireless pursuit of idealism. Neither a too-obedient good boy nor girl in thinking (not behavior, not attitude) will attain great Enlightenment.
On the other side, the Enlightenment of obedient Asians had almost slept until recently. However, obedient Asians have shown strength in high productivity since the early 20th century. In this period of time, some of them should also be awakened to the search for truths. However, their governments have increasingly pulled the buds of the Enlightenments off there as if they had been afraid of them.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Got up at eight-thirty in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Japanese noodles for dinner. Went out shopping at grocery stores this evening.
The worlds of industry, show business (?) or politics (?) in Japan or other Asian countries sent us a strange young guy wearing unique clothing just for trivial mischief. Who on earth is he? What a lowbrow way to do it is, as always!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Got up at nine o'clock in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner. Looked after the front and backyards of my house. Stayed at home for the entire day.
The more Enlightenment thinkers there are in a society, the more protesters, activists, and dissidents its government needs to face, as a side effect. The more seekers after existing doctrines there are in a society, the more believers in cult groups its government has to face. The governments in the Free World are always trying to fill voids in their people's intellectual thirsts by offering full of entertainment shows, sports events, superficial books, etc., and to weaken them by keeping people busy. As a result, these measures might be able to help make people rather knowledgeable while letting off steam, but mediocre. In the Communist bloc, there is strict media censorship preventing the publication and broadcast of undesired information that may lead its people to the Enlightenment accompanied by thoughts dangerous for its government.
In the case of the Japanese education system, it seems that what has ever been required for the last three decades isn't the so-called pressure-free education for elementary school and high schools, but high-quality education for undergraduate school and graduate schools. Naturally, too young students, in general, are incapable of plumbing the depths of fields of learning and aren't ready to give a worthwhile matter of repeated thought through their own efforts even when they get more relaxed. In higher-level education following strict rote learning in primary education, regardless of the science course or the humanities course, both making elder students busy with creative studies and making the degree of difficulty of promotions in undergraduate and graduate schools high seem to be effective and meaningful, while minimizing the possibility of the revival of campus disputes and the increase in potential dissidents. The talents of naturally gifted people, which may be buried in oblivion, should be cultivated in the right place at the right stage.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Got up at seven forty-five in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Got up at seven forty-five in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a Japanese-style meal for dinner.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Got up at eight-fifteen in the morning. Ate a bowl of cereal for lunch, and a dish of Italian pasta for dinner.
Found an interesting house in Austin Texas listed on the real estate websites yesterday. According to its description, this house is equipped with the (direct-use) geothermal heating system, which is designed to heat up every room of the house by circulating underground water with the pump through the system of pipes embedded in the walls and floors of the house and the deep underground. The heat is collected from the earth's interior. Therefore, there should exist hot geological formations located in relatively shallow underground constantly heating underground water in Austin. However, the heat of the stratum isn't hot enough for the use of the generation of electricity. In order to build the Enhanced Geothermal System here, the holes much deeper than those have to be dug in the ground, in order to reach the stratum hotter than that. In any case, the cost of the installation of a geothermal system should strongly depend upon the depth of the drilled holes required for it.
All of the renewable sources of energy, such as solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power, geothermal power including EGS, etc., may be effective and profitable only when they are installed in the right places. The direct-use geothermal heating system is suited to cold districts.
