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"History is just people doing things" THE ABQ
CORRESPONDENT
ISSN 1087-2302
Online Edition Number 321......September 2022 Published since 1985 for clients and contacts
of of The ABQ Correspondent is "the
impact of new ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY In these puzzling times many people are promoting the use of
hydrogen as a fuel suitable for powering all sorts of processes in
manufacturing, construction, and transportation. Its big attraction is that when
it burns…combines with oxygen, releasing energy…the byproduct is
water, H2O, and since hydrogen is the most abundant element is
the universe, we’re unlikely to run out of it. It’s been 85 years
since the Hindenburg disaster made everybody and his dog nervous about using
hydrogen for anything, and that uneasiness is subsiding, based in part
on the not-necessarily-warranted assumption that Sensible Science has
found ways to handle the stuff safely. In fact, a team of sensible
scientists at Deakin University in Australia (with campuses in Melbourne,
Geelong and Warrnambool) seem to have found
a genuinely new way to handle hydrogen, making it useful in a lot of
practical applications. They use a mechanical process to combine hydrogen
with other chemicals, creating a stable powder that can release the
hydrogen for useful combustion when it’s heated by a couple of hundred
degrees, (Dunno whether that’s °F or °C and one rather hopes for °C, making
it harder to have accidents in the kitchen, for example.) This makes it
practical to carry very highly concentrated (not compressed) hydrogen around
safely. The “mechanical process” is highly surprising. They select
appropriate chemicals, and tumble the stuff in a ball mill under
controlled temperature and pressure, so the chemicals are repeatedly
mashed by falling metal balls. Somehow, this pounds the atoms out of the
chemicals, and lets them re-form into other chemicals in powder form from
which hydrogen may easily be released. Further, the process is
efficient, using less energy than other methods of producing gaseous
hydrogen. Who’d have thought? This may be a big deal, and hydrogen is
not the only gas of interest. “Mechanochemistry” may become economically
important to the petroleum refining industry,* which has a nice lot of money
for exploring this new technology. While the Deakin team has published a thoughtful technical
paper on their work, the best
popular-level explanation
we’ve seen is by Loz Blain, writing for New Atlas. *In the late 1950s,
a training film I was assigned to write at Pilot Productions
was on “platforming,” for Universal Oil Products. That
probably came to me because nobody else in the place was game
to learn the elements of petroleum refining swiftly. All I knew
for openers was that people collected black liquid from
the ground, and heated it up or something to turn it into
various desirable products like gasoline and lubricating oil. In
preparation, I consulted encyclopedias (of which Collier’s was
most helpful, may blessings on them fall) that relieved a
small part of my vast ignorance. UOP provided an informative
guide: the startup manual for a liquid overhead cat cracker they
had just put into operation in Kamloops BC, which I studied
diligently in hope of finding out, among other things, what a cat
cracker was. When I asked why, no matter how carefully I
counted, it appeared that the system put out more gallons of
material than were put into it, the fellows looked at me as if I’d
crawled out from under a flat rock, and said, “When you’re
changing molecules from rings to strings and back, the
volume changes.” That was obvious to anybody with two brain
cells and I felt foolish, but my BA in Studies of Russia and East
Europe had not set me to thinking along those lines. The next
film I wrote and directed was a sales presentation for
home water softeners in which the topic of changing volumes
did not arise. I have since forgotten most everything I
learned about both oil refining and water softening …and this…and
that…reverting comfortably to vast ignorance. The upside is that
everything technical I encounter is fresh, unbiased by
previous knowledge. It helps also that I don’t much mind looking
foolish because I have so much practice at it. DON’T COME ANY CLOSER This press release from about two-and a-half years ago…Quanergy
Accelerates a Safe Return to Work with 3D LiDAR Solutions for Social
Distancing…cheerfully explains that the company has developed systems
integrating such things as cameras (presumably to see who’s not wearing a
mask), remote temperature sensors (presumably to detect people with
fever), and lidar (to detect how far apart people are) to aid in
reducing transmission of Covid. That was in April 2020, mind you, just
shortly after Covid had emerged in the general consciousness. The release is
reassuringly sensitive to issues such as privacy, pointing out that the
good effects of using the system could be achieved without identification of
anybody in the crowd. Still…one rather wishes that non-intrusive use of
the technology did not depend wholly on the good will of its user. Not
complaining; that’s just how things are. My dad was a big time
advertising copywriter for major national clients. When he was challenged in
the 1950s about the use of “subliminal” advertising in television
commercials, he said simply, “It doesn’t work; if it did, we’d be using
it.” When an associate traveled on business in the Far East in the ‘80s,
he was impressed by the width of the street leading to the Forbidden City
in Beijing. Old friend Ed Sie (aka “Shay” or “Hsieh”) who had been
there in earlier times remembered the street as much narrower, but the
Management decided it should be wider, so they wiped out a neighborhood
hundreds of years old to make it so. “If they decide that isn’t enough,
and they want another 500 feet, they’ll take it.” All Managements may
change their minds. Some leaders in our society have exercised restraint
in the application of machine intelligence in producing extraordinarily
imaginative porn and realistic political deepfakes, but that’s a matter of
personal taste, and when push comes to shove, somebody will use the tools at
hand. We have somewhat longer
experience in trying to discourage people from developing nuclear
weapons, and we’ve learned something about the effectiveness of
passing laws against them. Perhaps there are alternative ways of
encouraging restraint. Meanwhile, we have optimistic media releases to
keep us entertained. It ain’t the technology. Item: Re: last issue’s comments on breadfruit. jackfruit, and durian: a couple of readers commented on their own experience in finding the aroma of durian intolerable. Good news has arrived: somebody has now bred durian that doesn’t smell terrible. Jake Mendelssohn reported that he was going to tackle a jackfruit on his own. He hasn’t been heard from since. Steven Sester warned me to be alert for a package. Sure enough, a couple of days later Mr. Amazon delivered three lunch-snack sized packages of “breadfruit chips.” I tried them, and sent a note in response: Hi, StevenS-- I'd almost like to have seen
the expression of a porch pirate on opening the package. Item:
Just a nostalgic look in 2020 at DC-3s whose first flight was in 1935. These great stills and a wonderful video documenting a mass flight of these planes from England across the Channel to Normandy in 2019 are almost painfully nostalgic to a few of us. They estimated then that about 8% of the 11,000+ that were built were still flying Item:
Daughter
Chantal is a greeter at the outstanding St.
James Tearoom (this classy English tearoom is in an adobe-style building
in Albuquerque) where all seatings are at set
times. As one seating begins and another ends, they may have 120+ guests
coming or going, Chan commented that fifteen minutes before a seating a
couple of days ago she was daunted to realize that she had 60 people still to
check in. The staff is good at it, and it went well. …but
the comment recalled the time in 1977 when Personal Computing Magazine
staged the first personal computing show…in a hotel at the corner of Century
Blvd and Sepulveda anent the Los Angeles airport. (Somebody else had
announced an earlier show, but aggressively competitive publisher David
Bunnel was determined to beat them…so away we went on a wild ride.) Literally
fifteen minutes before the show opened, about a third of the hundred booths
in the big ballroom were empty. The scene was subdued and gloomy. I worried.
In those last fifteen minutes, with a huge bustle of activity, the folks who
had signed up to exhibit in those booths galloped in with their stuff. The
show went well. Most
of those late exhibitors were computer stores from all over the LA area. They
were amateur retailers who had invested their life savings along with money
borrowed from friends and family into the brand new business of stores
selling something most of the population didn’t understand at all. They had
to take stock off the shelves to bring it to the show, and the stores
couldn’t afford to be short of product for a minute longer than necessary.
Hence the crazy last-minute rush. Computer
retailing empires have risen and fallen since then. Tearooms
have been in business much longer with more knowledgeable clientele, though
we’re unaware of any tearoom empires. ITEM
FROM THE PAST This item from 1996 was brought to mind somewhat improbably by a report on new tunneling technology. The new Denver airport, magnificent as well as expensive,
suffers fascinating and exhausting problems of scale. We have all heard about
the troubles associated with scaling up the automated baggage system, which
has a tolerable failure rate at small size, and an intolerable failure rate at
large size...but have you tried getting from Gate 79 to Gate 7 to make a
connection from a late incoming flight? It must be half a mile between gates.
Even a passenger who runs along the moving sidewalks, not falling more than a
couple of times as he reaches dry land between them, staggers up to the
departure gate perspiration-soaked, bright red, and gasping. Many sag to lie
on the briefcases and carry-on bags they have been toting. Their hands feebly
raise ticket envelopes up to the counter agents. The effect is especially
impressive in people who have just arrived from sea level, and can’t yet
handle the mile-high thin air. It’s a great show. In fact, the three parallel runways at
DIA are reportedly a full mile apart…and Management gave up
many years ago on the automated baggage system that
kept throwing bags on the floor violently. DIA is a long,
expensive way from town, but that’s not what recalled
the old item. The construction of the airport took so
long, running up a staggering cost overrun, and some of the
details of its construction and decoration are so odd
that several entertaining, sort of plausible
conspiracy theories are connected with the establishment.
See this,
this,
and this,
The talking gargoyle is lots of fun, What triggered this was the
conspiratorial suggestion that DIA is connected by a tunnel to NORAD at
Cheyenne Mountain a hundred miles away. The Correspo spoke a few months
ago about a company called Petra
that figured out how to apply so much energy, controllably and inexpensively, to an
area of rockface that the rock crumbles and can literally be
blown away as the process continues. Their technology
apparently could create a 60” diameter tunnel through solid rock
at a practical rate of maybe 120 feet a day. Wow. A competitor to Petra has now appeared
with similar technology, a company called Earthgrid,
that speaks optimistically of tunneling at the rate
of a full kilometre a day ...making it six months, easy, from
DIA to NORAD in Colorado Springs. If this class of technology is really
practical, it’s a BIG deal. Oh, and note the reference in the
quarter-century-old item to to “ticket envelopes.” Grandpa, what’s a ticket envelope? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everybody is a Somebody --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ISBN: 978-0-557-05785-6 Review(s) Available
at Lulu.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Copyright © 2022 ABQ Communications Corporation All Rights Reserved |
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