Ask a French nuclear engineer about his job

/r/France in Reddit is currently having an AMA (ask me anything) with a French nuclear engineer - Je suis ingénieur nucléaire, AMA. All in French of course but if you can read it and are interested in his job then go take a look. One interesting exchange begins thus:

Q: Quand tu te retrouve à un rassemblement ou une fête plutôt ambiance roots/écologie, tu t'inventes quoi comme profession ?

A: j'ai fait quelques rasemblement de ce genre (seminaire permaculture, rencontre CSA, conférences sur l'agriculture bio) je me cache jamais. mais il y un gros stigma dans le nucléaire. et je connais beaucoup de collegues dont les enfants disent juste "papa il travaille dans l'électricité"

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Quick link roundup: 15 August 2012

--- Curiosity scientists will be doing an AMA on Reddit tomorrow. AMA = ask me anything, so an AMA is a huge question and answer session. Given the volume of comments (always a few thousand) that usually means your question will probably only get answered if you ask near the beginning, or if it happens to be particularly interesting.

--- The ESA's proposed Venus Entry Probe. Not my preferred mission to Venus (a solar flyer would be more or less indefinite while this one would be about two weeks) but the tiny ballast probes the balloon drops during the mission is an interesting touch: it both allows it to survey the lower atmosphere as well as lighten the balloon itself, giving it a longer mission time.

--- The Economist on toilets without water that have been developed for a contest created by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

--- The PLQ wants a new Loi 101 within a few months if they win the upcoming election in Quebec. Un article écrit en français, bien sûr.

--- The first school in New York to offer Portuguese as a language of study. Other languages: Spanish, French, Italian, and Latin.

--- The New York Times on the other Siberian railroad.

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Link roundup for 30 March 2012

This week was full of articles to mention in a link roundup. Here they are:

--- Denmark aims to get 35% of its total energy from renewables by 2020 and 100% by 2050 - pretty self-explanatory.

--- Japan Airlines now has its first Boeing 787 Dreamliner, giving the world a total of seven of these airplanes so far.

--- Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com billionaire and the guy behind Blue Origin) has found the original Apollo 11 rocket engines and intends to raise them from the ocean floor. They should end up in a museum (they are still NASA property, even if Bezos recovers them), and hopefully their age and original appearance when first lifted up will remind the world of just how long ago Apollo 11 took place - in other words, we didn't go to the moon, a previous generation that has now mostly died away did. We have only been to Low Earth Orbit, no farther.

--- An article on why young Americans are less and less interested in buying cars, and even in getting driver's licenses.

--- An article on the checks and balances in the US system vs. the Canadian parliamentary approach. Americans by and large do not seem to be aware of how weak a president is compared to the Prime Ministers in other nations, and are frequently disappointed when the country has not changed 180 degrees in the two or four years after a presidential election. Remembering back to the passing of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the idea of a Prime Minister having to negotiate and negotiate again with his own party to pass a single bill is laughable.

--- From December - an interesting article on a French language program for Spanish speakers in Cal State.

--- The Office québécoise de la langue française, now with 246 staff, is adding another 69 (an increase of about 25%).

--- On Will Ferrell's Spanish immersion when filming Casa de mi padre and his language-learning ability. Will Ferrell is fluent in Swedish thanks to his wife, and so this is not the first time learning another language for him.

--- The PVV in the Netherlands on nomenclature in South Africa again.

--- An interesting brown dwarf has been discovered 29 light years away, trailing a star in the big dipper. I would prefer 1 light year away, but 29 is acceptable for now.

--- Votes and vowels: an interesting article on the pronunciation of certain vowels in parts of the US and how it affects the way a person comes across politically, plus a number of other things. I won't try to summarize it here, except to note that it's quite reminiscent of a Malcolm Gladwell book.

--- Finally, a small site with Italian etymology that I like. It seems to be just a number of images cobbled together from an old Italian dictionary, but being able to quickly search one word at a time is nice. The etymology for sbagliare (to be wrong) for example comes from Latin varius.

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What do Latvians think of high-speed rail?

I came across a pdf about this very subject here:

http://lietussargs.lv/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/RB_06_RailBaltica_TNS_Latvia_24-March-2011.pdf

The short answer is that the line from Tallinn through Riga and down to the south is the most popular option, while a large number also want to see Riga to Moscow.

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Looks like the Russia - Alaska highway may be good to go by 2030

Great news - it looks like a the Russian side of the project to link Russia with Alaska and therefore the rest of North America has been approved, with the Russian part to consist of 5,000 km of road and then a 100 km tunnel under the strait. Not sure whether the $100 billion estimated cost is only about the road or includes the tunnel, and whether the tunnel would be jointly financed by Russia and the US (assuming the US decides to go ahead with its part of the project too).

So what will the world look like then? According to future GDP estimates, we'll see the following change over that time among the countries closest to this rail link:

US: $15 trillion ---- $23 trillion
Russia: $1.5 trillion ---- $4.3 trillion
China: $5.8 trillion ---- $34.3 trillion
Japan: $5.4 trillion ---- $5.8 trillion
Korea: $1 trillion ---- $2.2 trillion

So this would be a link to quite a different market than that found in 2011.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the situation will not drastically change by then: North and South Korea is an obvious example as there is almost no possible way the North will have the same leader by then - the already fairly unhealthy Kim Jong-il would be almost 90.


While we're still on the subject of Russia, another Korean article I found yesterday - this article is about how interest in other languages besides the three Koreans usually study (English, Japanese, Chinese) is increasing, with more interest in Spanish, French and Russian. The reason given is that the first three are already fairly saturated with a hagwon (school) to be found anywhere to learn them, while there is a very small number of schools that teach the other three in comparison with demand.

No exact numbers are given, but the article gives the example of a hagwon that teaches Russian, German and Arabic along with the usual three, and has seen a lot of businessmen coming to learn these languages.

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High-speed rail by country, per capita

Wikipedia has a convenient page here showing the amount of high-speed rail in existence by country, with the results for existing rail (not including planned) as follows:

China 6,158
Spain 2,665
Japan 2,118
France 1,872
Germany 1,032
Italy 923
Russia 780
Taiwan 345
Korea 330
Turkey 235
Belgium 209
Netherlands 120
United Kingdom 113
Switzerland 35

What it lacks though is the amount of high-speed rail per capita. This is a more telling figure to a certain extent because even large countries like Russia and Canada have areas with large concentrations of people. Because of this calculating the amount of high-speed rail by area would be an inaccurate way to tell how convenient rail in a country is for the people that live there.

So how much rail is there per capita? Let's look at it per million people.

High-speed rail per million inhabitants:

Spain - 58.8 km
France - 28.9 km
Belgium - 19.5 km
Japan - 16.7 km
Italy - 15.4 km
Taiwan - 15 km
Germany - 12.6 km
Netherlands - 7.2 km
Korea - 6.6 km
Russia - 5.6 km
China - 4.6 km
Switzerland - 4.6 km
Turkey - 3.1 km
United Kingdom - 1.8 km


You might be able to roughly say that a country becomes more or less fully connected at around the 10 km per resident level. Korea for example has high-speed rail from the capital to the second-largest city, but the KTX has not yet reached the southwest and the east. By 2017 it should be up to snuff. Taiwan is pretty much fully connected since it's a fairly small island and a simple north-south line is mostly sufficient.

A more accurate way to look at this though might be by region. Western Europe in particular is a place where looking at high-speed rail by country doesn't tell the full story. Belgium and the Netherlands are right next to each other, and if you live in Breda then Brussels one country over is about as far as Amsterdam.

The Wikipedia page also gives numbers for future high-speed rail, and this is interesting too. Without calculating the exact values, we can see that China aims to more than triple its existing length, Japan is aiming for a 15% increase, Turkey about the same increase as China, and countries such as Taiwan, Belgium, Netherlands and the UK are not planning anything new.

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Lowering speed limits in Spain to save 1.15 billion euros annually

From an article today in El País on the reduction of speed limits on highways in Spain to save gas:

Lowering the maximum speed on highways to 110 kph has had a large impact since the change was approved on the 4th of March. Almost two months later, the government claims to have achieved its fixed goal, while also reducing carbon emissions.

Minister of Industry, Energy and Tourism Miguel Sebastian said today that combustibles have been reduced by 8.4% annually over the three seasons and a half in March when it first came into effect. This means a savings of 94.2 million euros. Over an entire year, this would mean a savings of 1.15 billion euros. This is, however, half of the expected 2.3 billion in annual savings.

As always, the article itself has much more information on top of this, but these are the main points.

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Wind power in Alberta set to increase thanks to new installment close to Vulcan

Found this article in French today on wind power in southern Alberta, where it is both very windy and very sunny. The new wind power installation is due to be constructed near Vulcan where all the Star Trek imagery and memorabilia is.

The largest wind power project in Canada has just been approved and will see the light of day in the south of Alberta. Greengate Power Corporation intends to install the wind project by 2013 with a production capacity of 300 megawatts (MW) close to Vulcan, around 160 km south of Calgary.

The company intends to then double production in the second phase in its wind power field, producing the equivalent of electric consumption for 200 000 homes.

The province at the moment has a total wind power capacity of 800 MW, making up 6% of consumption. In 10 years this capacity should reach 4000 MW.

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Which countries import the most oil from Libya?

This article from Welt has the answer.

More than 85% of Libyan oil exports go to Europe. The rest go to Asia, Australia and the US.

(barrels = barrels per day)

• Italy - 376,000 barrels (22% of all oil imports)
• France - 205,000 barrels (16% of all oil imports)
• China  - 150,000 barrels (3% of all oil imports)
• Germany  - 144,000 barrels (8% of all oil imports)
• Spain  - 136,000 barrels (12% of all oil imports)
• UK  - 95,000 barrels (9% of all oil imports)
• Greece  - 63,000 barrels (15% of all oil imports)
• USA  - 51,000 barrels (0.5% of all oil imports)
• Austria - 31,000 barrels (21% of all oil imports)
• Netherlands - 31,000 barrels (2% of all oil imports)
• Portugal - 27,000 barrels (11% of all oil imports)
• Switzerland - 17,000 barrels (19% of all oil imports)
• Ireland - 14,000 barrels (23% of all oil imports)
• Australia - 11,000 barrels (2% of all oil imports)

And rearranged in order of dependence:

• Ireland - 14,000 barrels (23% of all oil imports)
• Italy - 376,000 barrels (22% of all oil imports)
• Austria - 31,000 barrels (21% of all oil imports)
• Switzerland - 17,000 barrels (19% of all oil imports)
• France - 205,000 barrels (16% of all oil imports)
• Greece  - 63,000 barrels (15% of all oil imports)
• Spain  - 136,000 barrels (12% of all oil imports)
• Portugal - 27,000 barrels (11% of all oil imports)
• UK  - 95,000 barrels (9% of all oil imports)
• Germany  - 144,000 barrels (8% of all oil imports)
• China  - 150,000 barrels (3% of all oil imports)
• Netherlands - 31,000 barrels (2% of all oil imports)
• Australia - 11,000 barrels (2% of all oil imports)
• USA  - 51,000 barrels (0.5% of all oil imports)

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Zeit article on using heliostats to make the cold, dark winter a little more bearable

Here is a particularly interesting article from the German press today, on the use of heliostats for both personal and public use. Villages in hilly and mountainous areas tend to be particularly depressing during the winter. Because villages in these areas are naturally located near the base where transport is easier and rivers tend to be, they also tend to be located in the darkest parts while higher up where nobody lives there is still a good amount of sunlight. The solution? Building a mirror to reflect the sunlight below. The mirror needs to be large, and its heading also needs to be controlled in order to continually reflect the sunlight onto the house or village below.

The article has two images: this shows the size of a personal heliostat compared to a person, while this shows the result - an otherwise dark and cold room in a house receiving full sunlight even in the winter.

The most striking example given in the article though is the Italian village of Viganella, which made headlines in 2006 after spending 100,000 euros to install a mirror to reflect sunlight onto the village below. Before doing so the village spent a full 83 days each year without any sunlight at all, due to the mountain next to the village over which the Sun never rose during the darkest period of the year:

Before the installation of the mirror the poor village was like Siberia in the winter, according to residents.

According to an Austrian company referenced in the Zeit article that makes about fifteen heliostats a year, a personal heliostat like the one in the first two pictures (a mirror of 2.5 metres or 8 feet on a mast about twice that height with a computer tracking system that keeps it focused on one area) costs about 10,000 euros.

The company that makes these heliostats is a fairly well-established company (80 years) that makes most of its money from different yet related ventures (air conditioning, ventilation, fireproofing, etc.) and says that heliostat technology has not yet reached the level of mass production, which is part of why it is still so expensive. The position of the Sun still has to be directly fed into the device instead of recognizing the Sun's position automatically. The pictures also don't show any protection against potential vandalism besides being located on a mast 4 metres up.

The next example given in the article is a heliostat in a hotel in the village of Ischgl in Austria, which is 1377 metres above sea level and looks like this:

A businessman named Gunther Aloys there has installed a mirror on top of one of the luxury hotels, which apparently looks kind of silly in the summer but when winter comes around and the clock strikes three, the entire village is plunged into shadow except for the ice bar there, where everybody gathers to enjoy the only spot in the village that still has sunlight. You can see a picture of the hotel here with the mirror. Total cost for that mirror is somewhere around 100,000 to 150,000 euros.

One town that did not end up acquiring the funding for a heliostat was the Austrian town of Rattenburg. One of the darkest parts of the country in the winter, it made headlines a few years back with its plans to build a mirror to bring more sunlight in during the coldest months. Unfortunately the expected cost (four million euros) was just too much for a village of just 434 people, and plans have been shelved for now. The opportunity to build another major project of this type would have been a good opportunity to refine the technology a bit more, so its cancellation was particularly regrettable for companies that hope to eventually perfect and mass-market heliostats.

A few years after the installation of the mirror in Viganella the village still has all the regular problems one would expect with a village of its size (young people leaving for opportunities in the city, essential utilities still missing) and though the odd tourist comes in every once in a while to view the mirror, tourism has not exactly boomed. But the mirror does continue to work, and the 83 long days of shadow during the winter are now a thing of the past. This video shows the installation and the first usage of the mirror back in 2006 - skip ahead to about 5:15 to see the reaction to the mirror after it is set up and begins reflecting sunlight below.

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Chinese have the best new year

So it's the lunar new year now, and upon reflection the Chinese new year seems to be positioned at just the right time. Take a look at three major periods of time for judging the new year:

Western (and most of the world): January 1
Chinese - around the beginning of February
Persian - the beginning of spring

The first one is by far the worst. January 1 doesn't feel new at all - the days are the shortest they'll ever be and the Earth is still almost completely still, giving you just a pathetic few seconds of extra sunlight per day. The coldest part of the year is still to come, and spring is far away. It's only a new year in the sense that a person who wakes up drunk in a rainy street somewhere with a bruise on his head and decides to turn over a new leaf has started a new life. Perhaps that is technically where a new life begins, but it sure doesn't feel like it at the time.

Skipping over to Persian: spring is here, and it feels like a new year. But then again, the first day of spring is where the lengthening of the day begins to slow. And just three months later the days will begin to shorten again. Why have a new beginning so close to autumn? Celebrating the new year at this time in the calendar feels like the former drunk celebrating his new life when he has already been clean and sober for a few years and with a few promotions under his belt as well. There's still a ways to go up, but it feels a bit too late to use the word new.

And now to the Chinese new year: it's still fairly cold and winter has not released the northern hemisphere from its grasp, but not only do the days grow longer with every passing day, the rate at which they do so increases as well. Spring is around the corner and you can feel it, even if it's not here yet. Having the new year in the beginning (the middle would be fine too) of February is like the drunk in the street who is now a few months clean. He's just finished up a month at his new company and is walking home. He passes by a bar and thinks hey, why not celebrate with just one beer? But then he shakes his head with a smile, and walks into a Starbucks instead to spend the next few hours sipping coffee and pass the evening reading a good book for the first time in a long time. He's still not rich and has a lot of debt to pay down, but things are looking up and he's feeling good.

Over here in Seoul the temperatures are positive for the first time in about three weeks, and there is no sign yet of them dropping again. But more importantly, it now smells like spring. You can smell the newness in the air right now.

How would one define the beginning of the year in this manner without using a lunar calendar? Easy. The beginning of the year starts halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. February 15th, February 16th, something like that.

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German Fehmarn and Danish Lolland to be linked by tunnel in ten years

Welt has an article here in German today on the decision to construct a tunnel between the islands of Fehmarn (Germany) and Lolland (Denmark). This link has been talked about for a long time and is one of the EU's 30 top priority transportation projects. The current route from one to the other looks like this:


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The gist of the article is as follows:

Whether to join the German island of Fehmarn with the Danish island of Lolland just 17.6 km away with a bridge or a tunnel has been the subject of discussion for quite some time, and now it has been decided that a tunnel will link the two. The tunnel will commence operation ten years from now, at which time most boat traffic between the two islands will cease. Had a bridge been decided upon, it would have been the ninth-longest in the world.

As the tunnel will be financed by Denmark, Germany has no say in the project besides the role it will play in the environmental impact assessment of the project, which will happen in the spring of 2013. In fact, this is one of the reasons for the decision to go with the tunnel as it would take but two years to construct and would have no effect on the marine life in the area. In spite of this though there is a lot of protest against the project on the island of Fehmarn due to how they see it affecting the environment, and revenues. If a fixed link is built between the two islands then the drivers that currently spend some time in the neighborhood waiting for the ferry to arrive will no longer stop, and tourist revenues would shrink.

The tunnel itself will look something like this, with rail as well as a roadway:

Now let's see what some of the comments below the article say.

Im Hochgeschwindigkeitszug nach Skandinavien. Toll.

To Scandinavia by high-speed train. Great.

Besser hier die Milliarden investieren als sie wieder für Integration verpuffen zu lassen.

Better to spend the billions here than to let it fizzle out again on integration.

Hoffentlich wachen die Dänen auf und schließen die Grenze nach Deutschland.

Hopefully the Danes wake up and close the border to Germany.

Auch an diesem Projekt werden unsere GRÜNEN wieder etwas zu meckern finden !!!

Of course our GREENS find something to grumble about with this project too!!!

Spätrömische Dekadenz. Schauen Sie mal auf der Wikiseite für wieviele potienzielle Menschen man das baut.... Für ein paar millionen Dänen....Na da wird sich der Tunnel in nichtmal einhundert Jahren amortisieren....

Late Roman decadence. Look at the Wikipedia page for how many potential people would build it...for a few million Danes...the tunnel won't be paid off in even a hundred years...


That last comment was mostly voted down.

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Canada one of the best places in the world for road trips

This article from today isn't of any great geopolitical importance, but to all young parents in Canada and anywhere else suitable for road trips it's a good reminder of what a pleasure it is to live in a country that has such variety of places to visit by car. In Japan and Korea (among others) road trips are an entirely different manner: highways are usually built above ground, cost quite a bit of money, and are also necessarily isolated from the rest of the roadway system, since maintaining a paid system is easiest this way.

Those with young children should do one or two-day trips as much as possible as these are always a great deal of fun. Here are some of the places I remember well from our road trips departing from Calgary:

1) For some reason this tiny hamlet named Nevis, population probably less than a hundred. Checking Wikipedia...yep, population 35. I remember us getting gas there and wondering how one ends up living in a place like Nevis Alberta of all places.


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2) Drumheller. One of the best places for paleontology in the world, I absolutely love this road that leads into the town. All of a sudden you move from regular boring prairies into badlands, and have entered a town famous for its role in determining what the Earth was like tens to hundreds of millions of years ago. For some reason Google decided not to drive all the way to the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology, and went in on a pretty cloudy day too. On a hot day during the summer the area is quite surreal.


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3) Any downtown area in a small town. The idea of a downtown area composed of a single street never failed to trip me out. Something like this:


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4) Canmore. Better than Banff, it's a nice hippy town near the border of Banff National Park. Same national park-type feel, less touristy and close to the Three Sisters (three mountains nearby).


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5) Takakkaw Falls. The second-highest waterfall in the world, it's pretty close to here. Not the place for a casual road trip though as it's kind of in the middle of nowhere and inaccessible during the winter too.


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YouTube is better in showing the waterfall:



6) The town of Vulcan. Yes, that's the Enterprise.


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And in addition to those six there are hundreds more, and hundreds more where you are from too. If you're lucky enough to live in a place with access to free and fast highways, you simply must go on day trips from time to time. The less defined the destination before you leave the better, and beginning at about 5 am when the streets are almost completely empty is especially surreal.

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The first sunrise of 2011 in Korea

The tradition of going to see the first sunrise of the year (or at least trying to) is particularly popular in Korea, and since I live pretty close to the Han River (15 minutes walk away) we went to see it this morning. What was particularly striking about this morning is that before sunrise the crescent moon and Venus were also out, and very close together. Being particularly attached to Venus it's always sad when it disappears from the evening sky, but since I'm not a morning person at all I tend to forget that it's easily visible then too.

So why not just quickly go outside in the morning? Ah, it's not so simple as that. Going outside = waking up the cats, which then means about one to two hours of running around before they go back to sleep again. That usually means not being able to concentrate on other tasks such as writing here or studying, since a certain overweight cat hates it when someone is using the computer and ignoring him.

But I digress. The other interesting thing about the sun this morning is its position in comparison to the ramp leading down towards the river. Here's a view of the area from above:

I live near the circle on the left, the entrance to the river park is the circle on the right. Let's zoom in on the river:

The triangle-looking thing is the ramp leading down. The shortest part of the triangle is the staircase leading directly down, and the part extending to the left and right is a ramp for bicyclists and people in wheelchairs. What was interesting was the position of the sun, which was in the direction of the arrow; in other words, it was perfectly visible at any position on the ramp leading up. If it didn't coincide with the flow of the river one would think it was specifically designed to be an ideal viewing location of the sun at the solstice and new year, kind of in the way Stonehenge sometimes lines up with the sun at certain times of the year.

Anyway, if you can get out of the house during the morning without waking up cats or anyone else you may want to take a look at Venus as it's absolutely spectacular at the moment.

While we're on the subject, here's a thread from two weeks ago on Reddit started by someone who found out for the first time about how the cloudtops of Venus 50-60 km above the surface are the most earthlike part of the entire Solar System (besides Earth, of course). It really is a pity that so few people know that.

Perhaps a simple video on YouTube introducing the concept is in order.

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Facebook map shows why Canada needs high-speed rail

This month you may have noticed an interesting map made by people at Facebook (I think), showing the world with respect to the number of Facebook connections it has. It ends up kind of like one of those images of the world at night, except that this measures something a bit more specialized than just light. It looks like this:

Right away you'll notice that this isn't representative of population all the time, as China hardly exists here, and neither does Russia. India loves Facebook though. As a gauge of activity in North America and Europe though it's quite accurate, and shows in particular what Pierre Burton used to say: Canada is a long and thin country like Chile. Canadians love to remind themselves and others that they are the second-largest country in the world, but this image is particularly unhelpful when it comes to high-speed rail, as it leads to the conclusion that yes, it's good for places like Europe and Japan where there are many people in a small location, but Canada is somehow different. This is a myth though. Let's zoom in on Canada to make this even clearer:

There it is. Long and thin, long and thin. Looking at it this way it's easy to see why Canada has just a bit over a tenth the population of the US, as we simply don't enjoy trying to fill up every bit of space allotted to us in the even colder north.

As for why I'm bringing this up today - see this article, a piece on the front of CTV right now about Canada's failure to build high-speed rail while the rest of the world is doing so (now even the US).

An even easier refutation of the "Canada is big so it doesn't need high-speed rail" argument is probably Russia. Russia is much bigger and already has high-speed rail, and will have even more lines by 2018 when it hosts the World Cup. There simply is no excuse for Canada to not have three lines: one from Montreal down to Toronto (and maybe into Detroit), Calgary to Edmonton, and Vancouver down into Portland. Montreal to New York is another good option.

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Christmas day randomness

It's Christmas day and there are a number of things worth mentioning so let's just put everything together and see what happens.

First of all, I've written two posts on 90 Years Ago Today since I last mentioned it here, as I don't always make a note of it on Page F30 when I do. The US has elected a new president and the League of Nations is shiny and new. It's Christmas 1920 and 1921 is just around the corner.

Over in Occidental land I've just finished uploading Cosmoglotta to 1930. I've never read old issues of Cosmoglotta before so I'm watching the progression of the language for the first time, and though by 1930 it mostly resembles the Occidental of today and the language went through quite a bit of fine tuning that year, it still has the apostrophe that denotes a very soft y sound here and there.

Cosmoglotta November - December 1930

In Sambahsa land Olivier has finished translating another movie, this one a fan-made Star Wars movie called Revelations. I watched it once back in 2006 or so and don't remember a great deal about the story. I believe this makes four movies that we have subtitles in Sambahsa for: The Hunt for Gollum, Born of Hope, The Man from Earth, and this one.



Dawn is now just 9 million km away from Vesta, or just 6% the distance from the Earth to the Sun (23 times that from the Earth to the Moon). The chief engineer updates at the end of every month and I had hoped he would mention when they expect to take and release their first images of Vesta during the last two but nothing so far. In under a week we should see the next update here, and maybe he'll bring up the subject. Because entering orbit with an ion engine requires a lot more finesse than your typical chemical engine, it will continue to slow down more and more compared to Vesta until it finally achieves the same orbit, when finally a tiny thrust will be enough to enter orbit. This is why it's still going to take seven months to 'arrive' even though it's already at an extremely close distance. Your average interplanetary probe flying by an object would cover this distance in just ten days or so.

More on Martin Gaskell, the astronomer who is suing the University of Kentucky for religious discrimination: for some debate and background on the case see these threads here and here.

Want to compare the altitude of two locations? You can do that here. Click on one location on the map, click on another, then to the right of that select draw profile and you'll end up with something like this.

It's potentially quite useful when looking for a place to live in a city with a varied topography, as lower generally = warmer and less windy. There's a world of difference between a house in the suburbs in the hills and away from downtown compared to a south-facing apartment by the river near downtown, which benefits not only from the lower altitude and less wind but also the heat island effect being near downtown brings. In the end this is only a couple of degrees, but when gardening this makes a huge difference:

A superb example of a unique microclimate is the Calgary Zoo and Botanical Gardens’ site on the flood plain of the Bow River which has become a resource to many Southern Alberta gardeners. The gardens benefit from river moisture and a high water table in well-drained sandy soil. There is a good canopy of mature trees and bushes designed in part to protect much of the area from the extremes of wind, hail, rain and sun; the soil has been cultivated and well mulched for decades by expert gardeners. Extra heat is provided because of the proximity to the downtown core and the nearby major traffic routes. A consequence of all these factors is an array of trees, shrubs, annuals and perennials that thrive in a few communities in Calgary, but can be replicated in some areas of many gardens, especially near downtown Calgary and within the Bow and Elbow flood plains. The Perennial Trial Gardens sites at the zoo, Olds College and at the Muttart Conservatory in Edmonton test and publicize plant varieties that should grow well over much of south-central Alberta. At the zoo, some of the more unusual trees include the Manchurian walnut, and linden, but some “exotics” like the Hick’s yew (Taxus x media ‘Hicksii’) can be susceptible to winter kill.

My favourite new Portuguese band: Madredeus.



I found out about them (and a number of other singers and bands) on Yahoo! Answers of all places.

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Korea's ignored northeast

The lack of people in the northeast part of the country along the ocean has always struck me as odd. Take a look at this population map:



Seoul has the largest concentration of people by far, followed by Busan in the southeast and its close neighbor Daegu, and the area from Seoul directly south down to Gwangju also has a fair amount of people. The development of the KTX (high-speed rail here, based on the French TGV) reflects this as well:

Now, if there was something wrong with the northeast there would be a good reason for this, but the northeast is actually the nicest part of the country. When Koreans talk about going to the sea for fun they never mean the sea in the west, which is shallow and cold and an industrial centre shared by a number of large Chinese cities as well - they mean the part on the east side (Sea of Japan / East Sea) down to Busan and off to the west until you reach the southwest corner and the islands there, never Incheon and the area nearby. In contrast to this the sea on the east side is the stiller and deeper Pacific Ocean, the sun rises there, and lots of people make road trips to go see it in the morning.

Here is a quick rundown of the climate in Korea:

Seoul and nearby: super hot in the summer and rainy season just before that, cold in the winter (down to -15 but also very windy), Incheon along the sea is windier.

Gwangju: one would think that being located down in the south would make it quite a bit warmer than Seoul but it's less than you would think, only about three degrees warmer there.

Busan: the warmest part of the country outside Jeju-do, but quite windy and rainy at times.

Jeju-do: like Busan but even more so. Higher temperatures, even more wind and rain.

Northeast: temperatures similar to Gwangju, but the Taebaek Mountains just to the west block a lot of the wind and snow and the ocean on the east moderates the temperature.

This satellite picture in the winter probably demonstrates this best. Seoul is snowed in, as area the mountains in the northeast and southwest. Busan in the east is nearly always free of snow as is the ocean to the south, but also note that the area in the east at the same latitude as Seoul is free of snow as well. North Korea is almost entirely snowed in.

There actually is a reason why the northeast has remained relatively free of people: a catch-22 type situation where the mountains make it more difficult to set up rail and road links which means fewer people, and with fewer people there's less motivation to set up rail and road links in the first place. Fewer people = less rail, less rail = fewer people. But if the transportation problem were to be solved (KTX is eventually expected to extend there) then there's no reason why it shouldn't become a popular place for more people to live. It's a bit like Vancouver and Seattle in how the areas right by the ocean are quite mild, but just a little ways away you have some of the best mountains in the nearby area with a lot of skiing and other winter sports. This is one of the reasons why the results of the 2018 Olympics will be particularly interesting as if Pyeongchang finally gets them (their third try and apparently Pyeongchang is the bid to beat) then high-speed rail to the northeast will be given priority and we'll see the region get paid attention to for the first time.

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$1.2 billion of Wisconsin, Ohio high-speed rail funding to go to other states

Two Republican governors were recently elected in Wisconsin and Ohio who have chosen to cancel high-speed rail projects in their states, which means that the $1.2 billion is going to go to others. An article here on the subject goes over the news in general and a page here from the government gives us the exact numbers, which are:

• California: up to $624 million
• Florida: up to $342.3 million
• Washington State: up to $161.5 million
• Illinois: up to $42.3 million
• New York: up to $7.3 million
• Maine: up to $3.3 million
• Massachusetts: up to $2.8 million
• Vermont: up to $2.7 million
• Missouri up to $2.2 million
• Wisconsin: up to $2 million for the Hiawatha line
• Oregon: up to $1.6 million
• North Carolina: up to $1.5 million
• Iowa: up to $309,080
• Indiana: up to $364,980

Putting it together in a chart, it ends up looking like this.

No surprise that California is given the largest share considering its size and population. However, if we break down the numbers per capita it's actually not California that was given the most. Here's what it looks like when we look at the numbers in terms of dollars per person.

Washington State leaps well ahead here, and as a Canadian that's particularly exciting since the proposed line there could end up linking Vancouver as well. This is also why I consider this to be good news: though it's too bad that Wisconsin and Ohio won't be getting the funding originally allotted to them, the high-speed rail funding has also been (in my opinion) too little over too large an area, and what the US (actually North America) needs is a clear example or two of high-speed rail in action in order to demonstrate its potential in the urban areas that need it. It would be nice for example if a line were to be constructed between Vancouver and Seattle-Portland, leading people in Alberta (where I'm from) to begin seriously thinking about the Calgary-Edmonton line, which has been talked about for as long as I can remember. The terrain in between those two cities is particularly ideal as it is just 300 km, entirely flat, and right in the middle of the two is the city of Red Deer, a rapidly growing city of over 82,000 people that would become in effect a suburb of the two cities as far as commuting is concerned if a high-speed line were to be set up.

Here, see for yourself just how flat and featureless the terrain is between the two. A large number of the people I know back home make the trip to Edmonton and back by car all the time. Nothing would be easier than a high-speed line between the two.


View Larger Map

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Autumn in Seoul exposes the craptastic pruning jobs from last year

It's autumn now here in Seoul, and as the leaves begin to fall off the trees in November this is the time of year where the craptastic pruning jobs done on the trees by the road really make themselves known. What happens every year is this: around December or so when all the leaves have fallen off, for about two days you'll suddenly see branches all over the street and trucks parked by the road, on top of which is a group of guys going at last year's growth with their saws. BZZZZZAWWW- BZZZAAARRRGHAWWWW, and down goes another branch. It's all a very roughshod and slipshod and really quite horrendous job really that gets done to the trees, and after they are done they become leafless and quite stumpy until spring finally comes around and covers them up.

Now, the result of this haphazard pruning every year is this: right around now when the leaves begin to fall, for a few weeks you get to see a really quite horrific sight, somewhat resembling what happens when you take a rubber glove and fill it with water like a balloon - the middle part is much too bloated, while the fingers suddenly change from a part of the hand into some sort of weird stubby protrusion that doesn't fit well with the size of the rest of the hand at all. The palm is too large, the fingers are far too small. That's what happens here too. After such a rough pruning job only some fairly thick parts of the tree remain, and one year of growth is still much too thin in comparison, so what you see is the trunk, then move up to where the trunk splits, gets a bit thinner, a tiny bit thinner, and....all of a sudden you're now looking at twigs.

Tough to imagine? That's why I took pictures. Here's the view from yesterday. Looking at the trees with leaves still on them you can imagine how hidden this stays throughout the summer, but not any longer.

(and click on the images to see them in a much larger size)

These ones are probably the worst.

Notice the tree on the right there, the one that looks normal? That's because...

it's a tree in an apartment complex next to the street, where they hire real gardeners to take care of the trees. Here's what a tree that has been properly pruned should look like in the fall.

That's more like it. Now I've almost arrived at my destination so I took one more picture of a sad tree before turning off the camera.

So will the chainsaw truckmen be back this year too? I hope every year that they've gotten around to hiring some real pruners, but who knows. One thing Korea does a good job of though is changing and adapting, and the city does continue to improve year after year with more green space, better walkways, more buses running on natural gas, etc. Whether they've gotten around to doing something about the horrible pruning job in the winter though is hard to say.

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GE purchases 12,000 Chevrolet Volts from GM

Big news for the Chevrolet Volt a few days ago as GE has decided to purchase a full 12,000 of them. At full price ($41,000) that works out to almost half a billion in sales, though of course they paid less per unit than that (though they did not say how much). The amount GM spent to develop the new technology for the Volt was around $1 billion, so it shouldn't take long before they fully recoup this investment. Reviews for the Volt continue to be almost entirely positive, and today it was named Motor Trend Car of the Year.

I really do think people are going to eventually see their cars the way they see their cellphones or netbooks, as something they use during the day and plug in at night. Until range gets up to about 400 - 600 km for full electric, the Volt will be the way to go for those that want the ability to almost entirely avoid going to the gas station but without range anxiety.

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