Radioactivity

I've been getting emails suggesting that I am confused between radioactive radiation versus electromagnetic radiation.

So, here goes....  radioactivity has basically three components to it...

Alpha Particles:  Positively Charged Particles (Example: He++  like Helium with two electrons stripped off of it.)

Beta Particles:  electrons

Gamma Radiation:   PART OF THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM... just a higher frequency of electromagnetic radiation ... above X-Rays.  POWERFUL STUFF!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/EM_Spectrum_Properties_edit.svg

P.S.

Just to let you know.. "CAT SCANS"  X-RAYS..... FROM WIKIPEDIA...

 "It is estimated that 0.4% of current cancers in the United States are due to CTs performed in the past and that this may increase to as high as 1.5-2% with 2007 rates of CT usage;^[5] however, this estimate is disputed.<sup>[6]'   --- REALLY?
  

P.S.S.  Isn't it curious that if we think of the frequency of sound waves... the LOWER FREQUENCIES travel farther than the higher frequencies... EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC FREQUENCIES...  That's why Drum Fish use low frequency sound and whales use low frequency sound to communicate long distances.. One for a good time, the other for who knows what?</sup>

A Story I Wrote

The Death of the Power Grid

A fictional story on how our country collapsed and the dawn of a new era began.

Politics have always been controversial and it is hard not to pay attention to some of it.

  Jake started listening to the news after 9/11 and ended up listening to what was happening in Iraq. It wasn’t long before he ended up listening to the U.S. news.  He became addicted to the soap opera of the day and began to form opinions on who was right and who was wrong.

The news was always negative and it never told the whole story, just the scary parts and a cliff-hanger to get him to watch for the next breaking news on the subject.

As time went on, the economy crashed, jobs were lost and people started to lose their life savings due to inflation and drop in home prices.  To survive the day, they had to rely on credit cards to buy food and it didn’t take long for the cards to be maxed out and couldn’t pay anymore.

In response to the number of people going broke, the credit card companies began raising interest rates to keep their profit margins up and increased the rate of the number of people defaulting on their payments.  Now the survival of the banks was threatened, and many banks failed.  Those that survived did so by getting bailouts from the government.

The government did not get the tax revenue it needed to function at the status quo because of job loss and had to borrow from foreign countries in order to pay its bills.  This caused the value of the dollar to fall which caused the price of oil to increase.  The higher cost of oil impacted the price of everything in the country.  Food prices went up.  Social Security benefits lagged way behind the increased cost of living and more and more people fell into poverty causing the national debt to climb to dangerous heights.  The value of retirement funds fell precipitously in terms of purchasing power.

Meanwhile, the legislators in Washington, insulated from many of the problems faced by their constituents, continued their job of writing new laws which further hampered the ability of job creators to hire people.  This snowball of destruction continued without any stops as the country continued to go deeper in debt without any hope of stopping the train to destruction. Laws started to show up that criminalized such things as sharing surplus squashes from your garden with your neighbor.  The consequence of sharing the squash was $5000.00.  Another revenue source for our government.

Companies tried everything to improve efficiencies and cut corners wherever they could.  They laid off people, reduced the quality or quantity of the products they sold which put their customers deeper in debt.

Jake was watching this happen and felt helpless to stop it.   Politicians lied all the time, twisted facts to gain an unfair advantage and promised the moon to anyone interested in listening to them.  Pandering was rampant and promises were made which could never be implemented.  Special interest groups donated vast sums of money behind their candidate of choice with the expectation of having a better chance of survival than their counterparts. Laws were not enforced uniformly and only enforced for a political advantage.  The normal taxpaying citizen be damned.

Then one day, Jake noticed that his electric meter was changed. No more dials!  Just an LED display that blinked several times a minute.  He didn’t pay attention to it, everything seemed normal until he accidently came across a website that showed the same meter that was installed on his home.  

In big, bold letters, the site said “Say No to the Smart Meter”.   This caught Jake’s attention and read on.  What was presented on the site were videos of dangerous radiation being pulsed from the meters, and complaints on how these meters invade privacy and break privacy laws.  There were people talking about how their health has been impacted the moment their Smart Meters were installed and the lawsuits that were won against the electric companies that installed these meters.

Jake’s curiosity kept him looking at this issue and soon found out that there were many ways this smart meter system could be abused.  Jake knew then why his electric bill came within two days of the reading of it. The bill mailed from the main office, no more meter readers.

During this time, Jake’s financial situation was also getting worse.  He depended on credit cards to manage his finances, but as the interest rates climbed, he found himself in a financial bind.  He tried  everything he could to reduce his expenses and soon this endeavor became an adventure, a passion to reduce as many expenses as he could to see how far he could go without losing the comforts and freedoms he was used to.  He discovered how “Lower Cost” anything raised rates and fees slowly until he paid much more than he should for a service.  Jake also found out that what he believed was necessary to be comfortable was a lie.  His experiments to reduce costs had him place Styrofoam on his south facing windows to keep the heat out, how to manage heat by using a fan and a wet T-Shirt.  He was pleased with the newly found ways to stay comfortable without spending a ton on heating or cooling with almost no effort.  5 minutes a day max.

One day, Jake scraped enough money to pay off his electric bill and used his banking service to pay his electric company through it.  He paid the bank in plenty of time for the bill to get to the electric company, but noticed a day later that the money was going to be delivered to the electric company one day past the due date.  Jake decided to call his electric company to forewarn them of the day late and to not be concerned about his bill being paid… the money was in the mail.

However, what the electric company person told him was that if the bill was not paid on the due date, they would shut off the electricity.  Which they could do immediately from the main office now with the flick of a switch.  That comment sparked a lot of questions in Jake’s mind so he asked, “Do you mean that you will cut off the electricity of people who depend on it for survival like those in his area that depended on iron lungs and oxygen machines?  The answer he got gave him chills down his spine, “If the bill is not paid on time, we cut off the electricity?”  Jake asked again thinking he was misunderstood and he got the same answer!  Then Jake asked to talk with her supervisor to confirm what he was just told.  He got the same answer from the supervisor.  He asked to speak again to her supervisor and when he asked the same question, he got the same answer.  Jake asked, “Do you mean you will turn off electricity to a home knowing that you will kill someone?  The answer he got was “We will turn off the electricity if the bill is not paid on time.”

Anger rose up inside Jake that changed his life forever!!!

He now had a civic duty to let as many people as he could know what he heard.  He called his lawyer to see if there were any laws that would protect people from being murdered by their electric company and she dutifully and professionally perused the law and tried to find any prior cases related to this new SMART METER.   She found only two instances where the courts ruled in favor of the citizens and only two laws that provided any control over this new Smart Meter technology.  There were many legal reviews on the situation by law professors at various universities, but the fact of the matter was there were no laws that made the citizen safe from all of the dangers of the Smart Meter and or any valid studies that showed the radiation coming from the Smart Meter was safe.

One woman in Maine was told she had to get rid of her refrigerator and buy a new one because her old refrigerator did not have a chip in it for the Smart Meter to read. 

One day Jake decided to put in any keyword he could think of and decided to put in the part number listed on the meter as a search term.  He didn’t expect to find anything, but he did!  It was a Security and Exchange Commission Form 8-K dated June 3, 2010 which gave approval to the company that has installed 100’s of millions of these meters around the world to present at a Credit Suisse “Future of Energy Conference” June 23, 2010 to prospective investors about the capabilities of the new Smart Meter.  The Powerpoint presentation was attached for reference.

  

In that presentation, Jake found out that this new Smart Meter technology has been installed in 7 million homes in the U.S. and had 100’s of millions of these meters installed around the world. They had meters for electricity, natural gas, and water.  Each capable of being turned on or off with the flick of a switch from a main office or the companies main office.  In other words, the whole world’s electric, water, and natural gas could be shut off from one place!

This system could control thermostats, water heaters, air conditioners, and on the company’s main website there were other items that could be controlled by their “technology”.  Cars could be shut off, toasters, the new florescent light bulbs, almost any device that uses electricity.  Data can be collected about when you watch TV, when you go to bed, when you get up, what devices you use during the day, and when you are not home.  Jake hated the idea that his every move was monitored… for ANY REASON.

Plans were presented showing the expected and planned installation of the Smart Grid all over the world to get the people at the Credit Suisse conference in Washington, DC to invest in the construction of the Smart Grid with promises of excellent returns.

Jake didn’t stop, he continually searched for any hope of a backup plan to get himself and his loved ones out from under this controlling and threatening situation.

Then one day, he had an idea that could bring this whole system down.  And that was to get off the grid.  He knew he could stay cool with a wet T-shirt and a fan, and he knew he could stay warm in the winter with a simple infra-red heat lamp, and stay warm in bed with a 5 watt heating pad.  He also knew he could keep his pipes from freezing with simple pipe heating cable available at any hardware store, and knew he could change out his lightbulbs to a twelve volt system that was already available at camper retailers.

Jake also knew that he could live without hot water, but could heat it with a simple solar water heater or camp fire. Jake could cook outside with wood picket up from his yard  using a modified 55 gallon drum.  Jake also knew he could get enough electrical power from a charged up car battery to run his well long enough to get a day’s supply of water.  Jake also knew that, once done, he could live pretty much the same lifestyle he was used to with little expense or effort.

Jake knew that if he passed on what he knew on how to get off the grid, he could share this information. If he passed his knowledge to enough people who would go off the grid immediately, he could affect an immediate and devastating impact on the bottom line of the electric companies equipped with this technology to the point where they would have to increase rates in order to satisfy investors.  This cannot last for long, because as they lose customers because of increasing rates, their source of money would disappear.   Investors would drop them like a rock as a bad risk and the company would go down.  In other words, he could manifest the same problems the big banks have with their consumer killing interest rates, he could stop this insidious technology in its tracks.

Jake managed to get enough people to share what he learned.  Thousands of people had a new way to live and they started inventing even more efficient ways to get the comforts they wanted. 

People learned that what they thought was important to them was not important at all.  Money was no longer a symbol of success.  Nor were big homes with all the expense and work involved with keeping them up. 

More people could live in their own home and not be at the mercy of their landlords.  More people realized that the only thing left that gave the government dictatorial control over them were property taxes and eminent domain laws.  They found their total freedom after they voted in those “politicians” who got rid of these tyrannical laws. School systems were no longer needed and home schooling courses were selling like hot cakes.  No longer could the government decide what your children are taught.  You had control over the destiny of your child who would one day take  care of you.

And, these newly efficient technologies sold like hotcakes all over the world which raised the standard of living of every person on the planet.

Life was good.

Not Afraid to Look the Fool!

 NOTE: See followup after this article.......

I called Dr. Electric on WTN today and asked if I could talk about the smart meter, and if not, that's OK.

His response was that he wasn't familiar with them. (HUH?) and I mentioned Sen. Alexander's allowing EPA regulations to stay in place meaning we'll all have to pay up to 27% more for our electricity.,  I remember if he installed LED systems to keep electrical cost down.. couldn't remember what he said..

Then!!  I shared my wet T-shirt way to keep cool... and I was surprised at how comfortable I was.  I told him that I had not had my air conditioner on yet this summer and have been surprisingly comfortable... I was my own swamp cooler....

Dr. Electric said something on the order of "Hey, you're going to put me out of business."

And as I was going to say it was a great opportunity for him... WTN hung up on me, and I heard them LAUGHING at me!!!   HA HA HA HA   WET T-SHIRT....

Here's my take on this.... He doesn't see the opportunity for himself, and he will ridicule anyone who might impact his profits.

Here he is giving absolutely, wonderfully expensive and labor intensive solutions where there are much easier and cheaper ways for listeners to solve their problems.

Why is it people cannot see solutions beyond what might be the consequence of a change in the way we do things?

I am not afraid of being called a fool... Turns out, Dr. Electric made a fool of himself.  A lot of his listeners were talking about reducing expenses...  and they heard me.

And to promote Christ Jesus after the end of the show seems sorta out of place, doesn't it?

Update: June 28, 2012.. Still comfortable, learning some more tricks, saving a ton of money. Highest outdoor thermometer reading 105.8 F.

Update: June 30, 2012

I listened to the Dr. Electric show today, and they read my email response to the "ridicule" I perceived.  Not a word was edited out....  THIS IS A GOOD THING and this tells me these guys are OK.

I sent a thank you email with some more comments and Dr. Electric professionally and kindly responded to my email.  He also followed up with more information regarding cooling off with a fan blowing over container of ice.  This is true professionalism!!!

NO MORE LAWS!!! Laws Create Lawbreakers

Washington thinks its job is to pass laws.  NOT!!!

It's job should be to SIMPLIFY our laws and improve efficiency in everything they get involved in.

Every day, it seems there's a hundred new laws passed that cannot be enforced due to the massive oversight needed to enforce them.

The complexity caused by this process increases exponentially and us poor citizens have to obey every one of them  "or else".

Each new tax, each new reporting requirement, each new law has threats with it to anyone who doesn't comply.  Do we pay taxes to get threatened?

I want our government to ONLY PASS LAWS THAT THEY CAN UNIFORMLY AND COMPLETELY ENFORCE.  If the government cannot afford to enforce all the laws they pass, the ones we cannot afford to enforce uniformly and completely should not be on the books.

I'd like to see Washington, and our states  revamp our legal system so that the laws on the books are all enforced uniformly to everyone, and any law that cannot be enforced in such a way be taken down.

This would mean, Washington needs to reduce the complexities they introduce with each law and concentrate on the most important laws that will best provide the rights and freedoms of us citizens.

Three laws should cover it.....

1) Jail to anyone who lies, cheats, steals, hurts, or murders anyone.

2) Citizens have a right to protect themselves from harm (guns included) and to report liars, cheaters, and crooks.

3) Taxes ONLY for National Defense and enforcement of laws 1 and 2.

These three should cost us no more than 1/20th of our GDP...

Government employees will cringe at this thought..  "What about MY JOB!".  If laws are simplified, I'll lose my job!

My comeback:  "Then get another, productive job."

If we hired people with expectations reduced, there would be no assumption that a job will last forever and do two things:

1) Keep employees on their toes. ("Why work hard if I don't have to, my job is secure, they can't fire me."  I saw this working in a union shop.)

2) Draw those individuals who understand the expectations and adjust accordingly.  (i.e. understanding that a job isn't permanent means there will be no surprises or disappointments if it ends.  Much like a Day Job.  You don't see those working day jobs whining and complaining that the job only lasted a day.  That was expected.)

Stupid spew, I know, but we've got to get off this lawmaking bandwagon and simplify them to where us citizens and job creators can breath!!   GEESH!!!

Brainwashing Our Children

It just occurred to me how insidious the 

Marxist's are in trying to overthrow our government.

Do you remember my April 15th Post?

A student in the Erin, TN school system told me that she saw "The Story of Stuff" twice!
This video trashes "Capitalists" and is another production from the same company that made the video on my April 15th Post.

Now, I realize that they are teaching this trash to children who are at an age where they are just beginning to develop that part of the brain (Cerebral Cortex) that can handle analytical thinking. (Previous Post: Useful Idiots... hmm... Stalin or Levin?)

They are brainwashing our children at the most gullible time in their lives!

No wonder we cannot explain Capitalism or the agenda of the "commies" of choice.

Maybe it's not mercury. (Addendum to my getting into trouble post.)

Our Fantastic Representatives

I sent this email to Congressman Stephen Fincher via his web portal.. 

https://fincher.house.gov/htbin/formproc/email-me.txt&display=/contact-me/email-me-thankyou&nobase&fpGetVer=2

 Let's see if I get a response that makes sense.

Message Subject: THE RIGHT TO MURDER
Message Text:
I had a conversation with my electric company about a month ago when I was in financial trouble. I called them to expect full payment for my electric bill one day after the due date because of the "PayBill" service at my bank said it would take 5 business days for my payment to get to the electric company. The due date was four business days away. I was told that if they did not get their payment ON THE DUE DATE THEY WOULD CUT OFF MY ELECTRICITY. (With the flick of a switch with their new SMART METER system.) I told them if you shut off my electricity, you'll kill me because I will have no water and the nearest water source was a fetid creek five miles away. I am a heart patient, and at the time, my car was not working. They told me, regardless of my condition, they will shut off my electricity. I asked to talk with someone else and got the same answer from 3 separate departments. They will shut off my electricity. I asked them about people in iron lungs or oxygen machines... if you shut off electricity to them, you'll kill them... They said to me that if they do not pay by the due date, they will shut off the electricity. THIS IS WRONG!!!! THEY HAVE THE RIGHT TO MURDER SOMEONE WITHOUT ANY CONSEQUENCE!!! I suggest that there be a law that requires a public utility to check on the condition of anyone before they shut off their electrical service. No one in this country has the right to murder (let alone threaten someone's life). Yet it seems Dickson Electric thinks it can. Eric

I've sent similar letters to my senator with absolutely no response except an automated email talking about the issues of the day.  If I call, I get..."Sorry, we can't help you."

The ONLY TIME I HEAR FROM MY REPRESENTATIVES is when they are asking for campaign donations!

How to Save BIG on Electric Bills.

I ran into an insidious run of "Bad Luck" starting in late 2009.  The "bad luck" was the result of two unexpected computer crashes as my  backups were slowly corrupted.  I could not trust the numbers saved in my books, lost a lot of records (so slow, I didn't notice the files were being corrupted.) and I spent a good part of my waking hours for almost a year recovering my books for tax purposes.

Thank goodness I could pull this off!

In any event, last winter was tight.  I needed to save money any way I could and I thought I'd share with you how I managed to save $100's of dollars (closer to $1000) in my electric bill by doing some simple things.

I had a stack of 1/2 inch aluminum faced styrofoam sitting in a shed in back. (Cheap stuff.)

I decided to insulate my windows with it to keep heat in and not lose heat through radiation through the windows.  I'd judiciously take the styrofoam off of the windows on the south facing wall when the sun shined, and replaced it when the net amount of heat coming in was not enough to overcome radiant heat loss. (This was a judgement call based on the temperature I felt between the window and the styrofoam.)

I put on warm clothes to keep warm, and only turned on the heat when I felt the pipes might freeze under the house.  (Which was surprisingly not that often.)

It got to an "uncomfortable 48 degrees in the house, and if I was just sitting, my body didn't generate enough heat to feel warm.  (I'm an old fart.)

So, I overcame this discomfort by sitting under an infra-red heat lamp screwed into a chicken coop receptacle  (you know, the kind with the porcelain bulb holder.), and sat comfortably warm while the rest of the house was cold.  The furnace was rarely on, and my electric bill would hang around $58-$68 the whole winter.  The year before had bills in the range of $125 - $250+/mo.

When I went to bed, I slept with a heating pad.. kept me cozy warm between the covers.

Fall and Spring are no problem,  the weather is great and the house stays relatively comfortable 24/7.

This summer, it has been in the high 80's to almost 100F.  (The last I looked, 98.7F today.) at 1PM which is not the hottest part of the day here.  With daylight savings time, the heat on the hill I live on is highest around 3:30-4:30 PM.  I have not turned on my air conditioner, yet this year.

So here I sit, it's 98.7F outside and I'm comfortably cool.  How?  By wetting my T-shirt and sitting in the air flow coming from a window fan in the next room. Yes, I have windows OPEN on this 98 Degree day.  Why, because it helps cool the hot ceiling.

On these hot days, my T-shirt stays wet for about an hour. Then I have to go back to the kitchen sink (UGH), rinse out my T-shirt, and put it back on with a fresh supply of water.  Keeps me cool and comfortable all day long doing this.

I'm my own SWAMP COOLER!!!

Two other benefits besides feeling cool is, I stay cleaner with the hourly rinse, and my T-shirt stays cleaner, longer.

I always wondered how early Americans survived the tropical heat before air conditioning (let alone electricity) existed in New Orleans.  It is fascinating to ponder this while I look at the architecture of the mansions built during that era.  High Ceilings, Ivy covered walls, and covered porches and windows..  Big windows to let the breeze in... a lot of ingenious schemes can be seen in the design of the buildings built then.

We all know that there are millions of people on this planet who survive intense tropical, desert, and arctic conditions without electricity.  How do they do it?  Some practices defy logic, like black gurkhas in the Saudi Desert.  I thought black absorbed heat?  Yet, these people survive.

We have a lot to learn about how we define comfort and not pay too much attention to temperature.  Our bodies can adapt to almost any temperature given the right circumstances.  (For instance the woman who swam from the US to Russia in arctic water.  Normal people would die from hypothermia in minutes, but this lady spent months conditioning her body to withstand the frigid arctic waters.  In other words, her body adapted to such an extreme temperature condition.

We can also take advantage of how our body adapts to temperature throughout the year.
(My experience is, I gain weight in the fall, and lose weight in the summer.  The last few years I watched what I ate during the Thanksgiving and Christmas season to avoid the usual 10-15 pounds I gain during that time frame.  Although my caloric intake was drastically reduced, I still gained 10 pounds.  Was the 10 pounds just my bodies natural way of getting ready for winter?  Don't know, but it sounds reasonable to me.

I wanted to share this with you because it may be useful to know if you ever run into a budget crunch.

June 30, 2012 -- I BLEW IT!!

Yesterday I turned on my air conditioner for the first time.  The day before it was starting to get uncomfortable after several days of 100+ F temperatures.  I read 107.8F that day and noticed that the main reason I had problems was because the overnight low temperature was not getting into the high 60's anymore.  Conditions now are such that the lows are above 78F (which I feel is the cutoff point for my own healthy living.)

Yesterday, around 11AM I finally decided to change strategy when the outside shade temperature was 104F.  I realized that the ceiling fan was cooling the ceiling which was getting quite warm.  This cooling of the ceiling meant that the heat conducted through my ceiling was sped up.  (Heat conducts faster when there is a larger temperature difference is what I was taught.) So a hotter ceiling would emit more heat into the room through infra-red radiation.)

Steven Harris (a cool guy) teaches to reduce the temperature on the roof by devising a way to keep it cooler by watering it.   (Interesting to see infra-red light (electromagnetic spectrum) cause molecules to move faster = hotter; then the moving molecules cause other molecules in their surroundings to wiggle. This wiggling of the molecules cascades through the roof, only to find no more roof, so the excess energy is turned back into infra-red light.)  So, light can get through solids, in a round about way.

To slow down the conduction of the heat from the hot roof to my ceiling, I decided to turn off the ceiling fan to keep the air at the ceiling hotter.  My thought was hot air rises.   If I did not disturb the air flow at the ceiling, the ceiling would stay hotter and there would be less heat conducted from the roof to the ceiling.  (More infra-red heat radiating around the room, but the total heat coming into the house would be slower.)

The other thought I had was that the cooler air would stay towards the bottom of the room.  I've seen this stratification before and it not only happens in the air, but is very evident in water.  There was a definite thermocline in the swimming holes I enjoyed in the summer when I was a kid.  We hear the weatherman talk about this all the time.. so it's not rocket science.

Another thought is that water vapor (related to humidity) is also lighter than air, and "humidity" stratifies also which might reduce the humidity towards the floor.  (For those scientists out there, my own studies on air flows and air exchanges in the home led me to believe that air has a "yield value" that means air will not move until there is enough energy available to overcome the attractive forces between air molecules.  ---- poorly said   :{     )

So now my air conditioner is on and I'm slowly ramping up the temperature until I get uncomfortable.  At this point, I will try to balance my comfort using my wet T-shirt/fan technique to stay cool for the day.  I may decide to keep the Air conditioner set as high as I can to keep my electric bills as low as possible by balancing these two ways to stay comfortable.

THIS IS FUN!  (Yup, I'm a crazy guy who thinks he knows everything but knows nothing!)