Mar 12 2021 - ReThinkx on Energy

 

Do you remember the predictions of RethinkX for the next 10, 20, 30 and more years?  And some of them seem ordinary and others seem outrageous.   The report on agriculture and farming is like science fiction to me. The science fiction part is the prediction that by 2030, the number of cows in the U.S. will have fallen by 50% and the cattle farming industry will be all but bankrupt.  It will be replaced by a Food-as-Software model, where foods are engineered by scientists at a molecular level. The cost of proteins will be five times cheaper by 2030 and 10 times cheaper by 2035 than existing animal proteins, before ultimately approaching the cost of sugar. They will also be superior in every key attribute – more nutritious, healthier, better tasting, and more convenient, with almost unimaginable variety. This means that, by 2030, modern food products will be higher quality and cost less than half as much to produce as the animal-derived products they replace. There are now many articles on these proteins and their availability - it isn't science fiction to me anymore.  Likely our focus on COVID is what keeps the progress backgrounded. What about their latest report?  I received the notice of their report on the energy sector and it predicts a dramatic disruption.  Their investigation indicates that leading analyst organizations, both government and private, have inaccurately estimated what is known as "levelized costs of electricity" (LCOE) for coal, natural gas and hydro power plants. This had made these types of fuel appear to be better investments than they are.  Solar, wind, and batteries are the disruptors. Financial market corrections will mean the bursting of a trillion-dollar bubble similar to the subprime mortgage housing bubble. That was a big ouch known as the great recession.  They say something similar can happen. Here's the report HERE.    This is one of the montage pictures.  I seem to be attracted to rust and copper corrosion montages. Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 9 2021 - Alien Driveby?

  

It has recently occurred to me that there are unanswerable questions that I don't want or care about getting answered. Take a look at just a few of the dozens of unanswered / unanswerable questions:  How exactly did life begin?  Why do we dream? Is there a pattern behind prime numbers?  Can we travel through time?  Is our universe the only one?  What exactly is consciousness?  Where is all the antimatter? As soon as you ask for "exactly" something answers then it is going to get difficult to answer.  A question I don't consider important the unanswerable realm:  Where did I come from? But then I see a NY Times article and my curiosity is engaged. Did an alien life-form do a driveby of our solar system in 2017? The particular circumstance is a cigar shaped thing out there that was given the name Oumuamua — Hawaiian for “scout” — it was first noticed by a telescope on the island of Maui on Oct. 19, 2017, when it was already on its way out of the solar system, having passed closest to the sun a month before. It had come from outside the solar system, from the direction of the star Vega. Author of the book The First sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Avi Loeb argues that it is no more preposterous to suppose that Oumuamua was a lightsail, a thin material that gets its propulsive boost from sunlight or starlight, either launched in our direction or anchored like a buoy in space, where we ran into it on our planet’s travel around the galaxy. In which case the age-old question — are we alone in the universe? — has been answered. The NY Times quotes from Loeb's book “But the moment we know that we are not alone, that we are almost certainly not the most advanced civilization ever to have existed in the cosmos, we will realize that we’ve spent more funds developing the means to destroy all life on the planet than it would have cost to preserve it.” The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth  By Avi Loeb   Here are more montage images - I didn't have to bury the pictures in salt and vinegar potato chips to get the blue green copper verdigris colour.  Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

On the Street Where You Live

We will all be travelling/driving a little more around Christmas time.  Shopping increases; there are more visits with friends; the family Christmas dinner brings people together from different areas. I was driving in my little town of 30,000 people and came across the corner of Ontario and Adelaide Streets - made me think of Toronto as it has that intersection.  Street names can follow us in our travels.  We moved from Toronto's Sunnylea area to Grimsby's Sunnylea Crescent. In Toronto we lived in The Kingsway - we can drive on Kingsway Crescent in Grimsby. There is the intersection of Victoria and Front Street in Niagara-on-the-Lake, like in Toronto.  There is a Yonge Street on the escarpment, but sadly no Yonge and Bloor intersection.   So I went in search of the authoritative guide to the most common street names in Canada.  The article is at the10and3.com website.   This website's mission is to tell compelling and unusual stories about Canada through maps, interactive charts and other interesting visualizations, so I encourage you to read the story on street names. I am familiar with street names in Ontario.  However, the article notes: "there are 7,204 kilometers between Victoria and St. John's Newfoundland, and 4,529 Kilometres between Alert, Nunavut in the north and Windsor, Ontario in the south".  So my Ontario experience is limited - every Ontario town has an Ontario Street. The most popular/common street name:  Second. That turns out to be the most popular street name in America as well.  Numerical street names are six of the top ten street names.  The Canadian distinction?  Maple! Statistics Canada's Road Network Files for 2015 were the data source for the analysis - and the popular categories of street names were: numbers, nature, people, royalty, and other. Why isn't First the most common street name?  They tell us it is because Second Street will often come after whatever serves as a city's primary thoroughfare.  Front Street  and Main Street are common for the primary street. What's the distinction of 50th Avenue and 50th Street - it originated in Alberta and serves as the midpoint of many urban municipalities in the province.  It was a popular and easy navigation system in earlier times.  "It comes as little surprise that names of royal descent appear on the list before those of famous Canadians. Victoria (501), King (479) and Queen (371) are more common than any historic Canadian, a testament to our enduring if not complicated ties to the British monarchy. After all, Queen Victoria has 501 streets named after her and a federal holiday to boot, while Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A. MacDonald, didn’t even make it onto the list". Sometimes we worry over our complicated world - perhaps we can insert some simple pleasures - street names would qualify in my books. Our pictures today feature nature and man - the back of a tropical leaf and the back of a transport truck.

Copper Smith in Niagara

On Saturday I took the last photos of the St. Catharines Gardens on the 2016 tour.  What a delight to find the owner is a Coppersmith and his workshop is in the garage.  He was working on restoring copper eavestrough for a Toronto house, along with lamps that would originally have had gas for lighting.   He said that one of his challenges is making new copper match the old so that the repaired eavestroughs are attractive. When I looked at the workshop table I remarked:  "Look at that colour on the table."  He laughed as he told me the colour came from Miracle Gro and that's what he uses to 'weather' the eavestroughs so they look old.