Entries tagged with energy

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Americans are downing close to 200 pounds of meat, poultry and fish per capita per year (dairy and eggs are separate, and hardly insignificant), an increase of 50 pounds per person from 50 years ago. We each consume something like 110 grams of protein a day, about twice the federal government’s recommended allowance; of that, about 75 grams come from animal protein.
Mark Bittman. NYT, January 27, 2008

The article talks mostly about energy impact of meat consumption in the US and the rest of the world.

The reason I highlighted the paragraph above is that it explains the American habit of drinking a lot of water, which often baffles Europeans, especially, the French. ( why water, not wine?!!!) We drink water not only because we are afraid to get dehydrated in a hot climate ( a typical explanation in California), but also because high consumption of protein ( meat, poultry and fish) damages liver, unless it is accompanied by plenty of water.

We have to over-drink water because we over-eat meat :)

п.с. водка ( алкоголь) с мясными закусками должна сильно бить по печени, потому что водка обезвоживает, а протеин грузит печень.

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Пишет современный Робинзон Крузо:

Основные цели, которых я стремился достичь изменением образа жизни. Главная и первейшая цель – достичь максимальной автономности в основных аспектах жизнеобеспечения, к которым относится в первую очередь питание и жилье. Вторая цель – достичь максимальной автономности по всем остальным сторонам жизнеобеспечения, к которым отнесем воспроизводство элементов материальной культуры. Третья цель – достичь максимального качества жизни, к сторонам которого относятся физическое и психологическое здоровье, полноценное питание, здоровая окружающая среда, наличие достаточного количества свободного времени для отдыха, творческая самореализация и т.д.

Объединяя решения относительно снабжения продуктами, и жилья, получаем решение для общего образа жизни: жить надо в частном доме, на участке земли, как можно большем, организовав хозяйство так, чтобы автономность по питанию и жилью была возможно более полной.

Сюда бы хорошо еще добавить речку, чтобы поставить мельницу. Солнечные батареи тоже бы не помешали. Эх, бросить бы все и уехать в село Ковалин.

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The University of Delaware has inched up the record for solar cell efficiency with a new device that can convert 42.8 percent of the light that strikes it into electricity.

That beats the old record of 40.7 percent hit in December. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, has been funding research to get efficiency up to 50 percent.

The cell, created by Christina Honsberg and Allan Barnett of UD, splits incoming light into three buckets: high energy, low energy, and medium energy light. The light is then directed to different materials, which then extract electrons out of the photons that make up sunlight.

Give it another ten years and we'll start seeing major changes in ways electricity is generated and consumed.

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Heard an interesting story on how global warming directly benefits energy companies. It's based on the insight that Arctic contains about one quarter of the world's oil and gas resources, which right now are largely unavailable. The rise in global temperature causes Arctic ice to melt, thus creating opportunities for resource exploitation. While publicly denying existence of the global warming, the energy industry is quetly investing large amounts of capital into its "non-existing" consequences, by conducting large scale oil and gas exploration projects in the far north. Sounds like a perfect strategy to me: the longer people do nothing about the situation, the easier it becomes to access new energy fields.

Very interesting. Need to do some digging around the concept.