Solar a Go Go

A couple of days ago, I was giving some back-story about domestic energy efficiency. I was talking about direct marketing in this field because I was whacked by a direct marketeer, called Killian, almost as soon as I got home from work last Tuesday. He was calling from Activ8 Energy Ireland and said he was following up an earlier enquiry. Dunno! I talked to a fellow about solar panels a few weeks ago; fobbed him off with "I'm super busy right now; have you got a web-site? why not call me later? [much later, by implication]". The back-story says that I am not the one to talk to on this: The Beloved used to be a consultant in Domestic Energy Efficiency; she wrote a Primary Schools Teaching Pack, she taught in the field in two countries for about 10 years; she examined the subject for City and Guilds qualifications. Killian may have represented the same people with whom she had been starting to negotiate a meeting or may have been from a new player in a busy field.

But it seemed likely that I was, for him, a new Mark because he wanted to ask me a few questions to establish if I/we were a suitable candidate for the Solar Panel Miracle that his company hoped to install on our roof.
My response: "Nope! sorry, but I have a question for you . . .
. . . what is the payback time for your product?" [You can see I've been schooled in the importance of this parameter].

Poor Killian wasn't able to answer this, because there were, in his head, too many variables, which would need to be thrashed out during a site visit by one of their consulants. "Yes, yes", I replied, "but you can give me some ball-park figures for the cost of installation; then I can get an average annual electricity consumption from our bill and from those two figures, I can calculate if your proposal is ever likely to fly.". Suddenly he caved in and told me that

• After a government grant of €1,400 - €3,800 . . .
• and an Activ8 Energy Ireland discount of €1,200 . . .
• there were two products that might suit our "average home"
• Solar Thermal System would cost between €5K and €8K
• Solar PV Electric System would cost €7K [PV for photovoltaic]
• Activ8 claims that their systems are able to shave 40% - 60% off the electricity bill

Our electricity bill varies quite a bit but €900/year would not be wildly off; So a Solar solution could be saving us €450/yr. Therefore  the pay back time is somewhere in the region of  €7,000 / €450 = 15 years. Young Killian was a bit non-plussed, when I suggested, gloomy like Eeyore, that 15+ years didn't sound too good because I was likely to be dead before I recouped my investment in roof-bling.

But here's the point. We live in a world where the value of things is wildly disconnected from their cost. [for example: We could surely manage with fewer paper-pushing, meeting-attending, middle managers in the Health Service and really need more nurses on the wards - but a "manager" is pulling in 4x the salary of a nurse. And is incapable both of dealing with a bed pan OR dealing with a crisis requiring some managerial skills]. Maybe, in deference to the planetary abyss into which we are carefully not staring [far too frightening after all] we should do anything soonest that will save electricity because that will impact our carbon footprint the most. Because Carbon Footprint will trample us all to death.

Speculation and superstition

In my hats-off to Murray Gell-Mann, I cited his ability to disconnect his crap-detector when surfing the media into realms outside of his expertise. I'm the same, I'm institutionalised in the cocoon of The Patriarchy and largely incapable of seeing, let alone appreciating, the creacle [new coinage! portmanteau of crap and treacle] through which women, blacks and BLTs try to make daily progress. Institutionalisation make you credulous <duh, seems good to me Barney> and, frankly, stupid. Gell-Mann amnesia is attributed by Michael "Andromeda Strain" Crichton - or for those younger than me Michael "Jurassic Park" Crichton = same guy. Actually Crichton is much more than those books-which-became-films. He was born in 1942 and grew up smart, wrote a lot and got into Harvard to read Eng.Lit. Suspecting one of his English professors of being unable to judge quality, he plagiarised an essay by George Orwell and submitted it under his own name: it merited a B-! This exposed the subject nature and inherent unfairness of grading in America's premier academic institution and Crichton switched majors to biological anthropology in the, probably vain, hope that the Science Faculty would be more evidence based. He graduated summa cum laude [=smarter than a bag of weasels] and then went on to finish Med School.  All the while he was writing, and publishing books "for furniture and groceries", and eventually - Andromeda Strain - hit the bigtime and could hang up his stethoscope.

All that scientific training has informed his speculative fiction, allowing him to extrapolate from what we know to what might be. But he also is on record as saying that all predictions of the future are so much baloney; even if it is put out by a famous newscaster or a demonstrable expert in the field. This is where he cites Murray Gell-Mann: Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. (I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.) Much of that essay [read it!] is written in a similar sardonic, skeptical tone. For me it is far too monocrome to say that all predictions are nonsense. The forecasters ar Met Éireann are pretty reliable unp to about 4 days. Beyond that chaos impinges. The Green Surge predicted from exit polls was just enough to secure Grace O'Sullivan [Ireland South], but not Saoirse McHugh [Ireland Midlands NW], a seat in Europe. O'Sullivan's fortunes went up and down as candidates were eliminated and their votes redistributed - a nail-biter for her and her supporters

Crichron is also on record as a climate change denier: cuing in on a study in Science that showed the Antarctic ice-sheets were building not melting. Current poorly-informed, but strong-held, opinion about anthropogenic global warming puts paedophilia, insurance fraud [most recent case "to pay for her own funeral"] and climate denial in the same unpeakable cad box.  The politico-media establishment was recently in a self-righteous knicker-wringer about Maria Bailey TD's false insurance claim. We've all had a snigger at the unfortunate woman who fell off a swing while clutching two bottles of alcohol and then claimed the hotel where the accident happened was negligent. But it seems that making a false or exaggerated claim, recoverable by insurance, is widely perceived as a victimless crime or a legitimate redress depending on how badly you've suffered. Michael Crichton's position on Ice Sheets was founded on the peer-reviewed scientific literature but nevertheless was denounced as culpably unhelpful to dealing with the crisis. Crichton also develops idea that the media is fuelled by crisis - the ordinary is never published and if it's a slow news day a crisis will be HEADLINED even if the small print says nothing really to see here. News is a commodity after all. I've taught environment science including ozone layer, methane and carbon dioxide but I certainly don't think I'm qualified to say how much of Miami will be dry 20 years from now. I am, however, skeptical when everyone is singing from the same hymn sheet. Whoa! that sounds like a religious metaphor.  Which is entirely appropriate given how we are turning for guidance to St Greta of Thunberg [R] in the same way as France looked to the teenaged St Jeanne d'Arc to help them through their 15thC existential crisis.

Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science. -Hal Clement, science fiction author (30 May 1922)

It's pay-back time

Nope - not A Bug's Life nor Men at Work nor Predator - more about the planetary abyss and our electricity consumption. Back in the day when we lived in a flatter more equable society, a chap could rent a room in a flat on Lansdowne Rd, D4 or a flat on the sea-front in Dun Laoghaire and still have change for food. In 1986, after 3 years renting a flat in Newcastle upon Tyne, I renewed my contract with the University and we went off and bought a house. It was part of a red-brick terrace with 3.5 bedrooms and a tiny yard; 80 years old and showing its age; but was the second cheapest place we viewed that summer - and the cheapest with a functioning, pigeon-proof, roof. It cost £20,950.

After we'd settled in, we responded to a direct marketing ploy and invited a couple of double-glazing sales-people to visit after work. They insisted that we both be present for the appointment. A man and a woman appeared on the doorstep and we brought them in for a cup of tea. It was quickly clear that the woman's role was to schmooze the woman-of-the-house "what a lovely chiffonier, I love that shade of blue" while the blokes talked about aluminium vs uPVC; BTUs and thermal conductivity.

Wronnnnng!

I failed my Physics "O"-level and really didn't know the difference between a BTU and a chip-butty; while The Beloved was working for a Fuel Poverty charity and knew more about loft-insulation, double-glazing and heat-transference than everyone else in the room (combined). But we went along with the script for a while because we had no TV and welcomed the human interaction. After going round and round the virtues of their product and not getting any data about the actual cost - not even an estimate - I pointed dramatically to the large pair of Edwardian sash windows behind me and asked - "how much, roughly, would it cost to double-glaze that".  Errrm! But eventually, the bloke admitted that upgrading that one source of energy-loss would cost about £1,200. I told him [you do the math] that I'd be better off buying a new house than double glazing all of this one. Which was a slight exaggeration, but enough to terminate the interview.

The Beloved explained afterwards that the key data is the cost of the installation / annual energy savings = Pay Back Time. Double glazing could have been a good investment IF a) a lot of energy was lost through the windows b) it cost very little to reduce that loss. Houses lose most of their heat through the roof (hot air rises) while only about 5% is lost though the windows. Even with Everglaze triple-glazing some heat is lost through the windows so typically the pay-back time for double glazing is in excess of 20 years.

A very few years later when Pat the Salt and Souad moved into a tiny cottage on the Waterford coast, the first thing we did was install 10cm of fibre-glass loft-insulation. Some people react badly to fibre-glass but as a thoroughly insensitive person, I went up in the attic to un-roll a lot of insulation. It took a couple of hours and a couple of hundred £s. Afterwards, in the November dark, I stripped off and hosed myself down from the garden tap to get rid of any residual fibres. I think we calculated the payback time as between 15 and 18 months. Nowadays, at least 20cm thickness is recommended.

mouldy ouldy

Q. What's worse than biting into an apple and seeing a maggot?
A. Biting into an apple and seeing half a maggot!
And face it, neither is as bad as having electrodes applied to your testicles. I think we are a good deal too fussy when it comes to rejecting food. While I still have a functioning immune system, I'm going to get as much as possible out of the food we buy or grow. Throwing a mouldy orange in the compost bin betrays a cock-up on the catering front. But I guess when the choice is buying No apples or Six apples (and a dinky polystyrene tray) then over-catering is not entirely the fault of the consumer. tbh, I wouldn't eat a lot of fruit and I have never consumed a smoothie [because I have (most of) my own teeth] so I suspect that the appearance of oranges and apples is part of a plan to get me to eat nearly 5-a-day.  Can't I just eat caldo verde five times a day? I made a big pot of this Portuguese ambrosia when spring cabbage was on 49c special last week and ate it four days running. My microbiome delivered a huge thumbs up and I felt mighty.

Mais revenons nous a nos pommes. What do you do with a bruised apple? If I'm at home I'll probably cut out the squidgy portion and eat the rest but if the bruise is sustained between home and work, I might just eat the whole thing shkin-and-all. Fresh bruise is less likely to be furry. And if you can't actually see the fungal mycelia, it's reasonable to assume what there will be too little to count. Microbiologists will look shocked at this and talk about aflatoxin and or mycotoxins but to a hammer everything looks like a nail and I think the odds are in my favour that I'll more like sustain injury in my car (slamming digit in the door is not unknown) than that I'll get sick from what I eat. My long term personal experience of eating re-heated rice is set against the occasional horrow story from the path lab.

I use that experience and common sense: salami and cheese routinely acquire a white schimmel and I've decided that it's delusional to scrape off the white stuff when there will be at least as much left invisible just below the scraped surface. I wouldn't treat mouldy chicken or hamburger in the same way - it just doesn't seem right. And chicken doesn't last long in the fridge: chicken soup is always a welcome change from caldo verde.

Dau.I sent us this diagram from an unattributed but seemingly authoritative source which leaned heavily on discard for pretty much every sort of fungal contamination. A key factor seems to be moisture content: hardy fungu that can make a living under dry harsh conditions are more likely to be 'good'. There is no way I'm going to 'discard' a whole pot of jam because it's got a little white orbblue cushion on the top surface. If I'm feeling twitchy, I have been know to boil the old pot up (having flicked out the manifest colony) and then start ploughing through it. Likewise, if I'm home alone, I'm more likely to put mouldy soft fruit in the saucepan than in the compost bin. I must admit that I am a little bemused / concerned about mayonaisse - how does that stuff remain good-to-go weeks after opening.

Binder twine

It's not going to happen but it's pleasant to imagine Rory Stewart as Prime Minister across the water. I written about him, and his not a complete waste of trees book before. He's a patrician and a landed-gent and the MP for Penrith and the Borrrders since 2010. On Mayday this year he was appointed to the Theresa May cabinet after another resignation as Secretary of State for International Development. He has previously held the Prisons and Africa portfolios. Those are pretty dark and probably thankless areas to manage but he's not afraid of 'difficult' having walked alone (except for the dog) in midwinter across a chunk of Afghanistan in 2002. From that I take it that he's happy in his own skin (and in his own boots) and has reserves of self-reliance. A small-small example of this competence is the fact that he delivered his own firstborn in the bathroom at home, when things came on a little too quickly. He's shown above taking tea and talking to camera in a BBC documentary about his history of Afgho. Here's a shorter talk about his long walk. And finally is his Desert Island Discs gig.

He's been a diplomat in Indonesia (East Timor times) and Montenegro (Kosovo [prev] times) and Iraq. After hanging up his Foreign Office pinstripes, he taught Human Rights for several years in Harvard. From there he returned home in the belief that he could make a difference in his own country as he had endeavoured to do in some of the most benighted, conflicted regions of the world. The UK doesn't yet have roaming gangs of AK47-wielding hoods tooling around the country in jeeps, but the country is definitely conflicted over Brexit. Here's Stewart trying to make sense of the Brexit situation with James O'Brien. And also lost as to how to solve the conundrums of 21stC society: how to square the circles of fairness, ambition, rights, responsibilities and freedom. My impression is that the other Eton-and-Oxford [k]nobs have lived a very constrained and sheltered life, the only people outside their own circle with whom they have had a conversation is the head gardener.  Stewart au contraire has talked long and hard, in Farsi and Serbo-Croat, under conditions where getting the wrong sense of what he heard could mean that people died. A man who can make valuable diplomatic contributions in the Balkans might be able to thrash out an agreement between the Centre-Left and Centre-Right of British politics.

To be successful in politics you've got to know your shit and think on your feet. Here's Stewart, in a ten minute journey across space and time, giving MPs more than anybody needs to know about hedgehogs. That is rhetoric at its best, that's what they teach kids at Eton - how to persuade people to your view while <look up there!> persuading them that your wealth and their poverty is not what We want to talk about. At the end of his speech Stewart rejects the hedgehog as a metaphor /mascot for Britain.

Here's a hymn to binder-twine triggered by an unfortunate tweet by Rory Stewart about his constituents. Ah baler/binder twine, the farmer's friend!

• Strong enough to keep hundred's of kilos of hay in a tight round bale
• Thin enough to cut quickly with a clasp-knife
• Doubles as a shoe lace
• Holds up the trousers
• A short bight tied under the knee stops harvest rodents running up the farmer's leg to bit his parts
• Key-chain
• Frapping for a broken tool handle
• Support for bean stalks
• Suspend a lamp from a beam
• Clothes-line
• Hair-tie
• Cat's cradle for the weans

When we came to the farm 20+ years ago, there was almost enough baler-twine. I would see great lengths of it un-wound in the hedges and stop the car to salvage it. Every bale of straw we bought came with 30m of the stuff for free. We had enough for me to make [really terrible, asymmetric] netting with it. But now it's all gone: hay and straw are baled with a couple of turns of hideous micro-filament netwrap, which is more 'economical' than twine. Netwrap is single use that leaves nothing but tangle and clutter, I hate it.

Bobs bits n bobs

I'm in England this w/e, visiting my mother with Thelma & Louise Dau.I and Dau.II. As we're tooling along the by-ways, past various village greens, I'll probably start to hum some English ditties :-

• Elgar Nimrod
• Yetties [prev] Fling it 'ere
• Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending
• The Who Pinball Wizard
• Trad Greensleeves
• Manfred Mann Pretty Flamingo (back in the 1960s, when we lived in Portsmouth my Mum knew Mrs Pond lead singer Paul Jones' mother)
• Navy Hearts of Oak

Other Matter:

• Matter:  Withnail
• Butchery - prev hawg - now hoggett by Scott Rea; thais is Part II folks of stern stuff than me may click through to Part.I Silencing the lamb
• St Noam of MIT [R] speaks truth to power BBC
• Nigel Owens rugger referee - Respeck!
• Murray Gell-Mann died last week. 
• The Edge remembers
• Culverts, pressure, box v circle
• We were sailing to Byzantium earlier in the week
• A sword from that era surfaced in 2016
• BBC Minidoc on the rising of the Vasa
• Lean on Me or Lean Ong Mee: nice kids, nice kit

Stuff it

50 years ago, I lived in a town and bought books, like, new books, like, in a bookshop. A little less than once a week, I'd be able to must€r €nough to buy  one book and one week That Book was a Pelican called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps. I read it forwards, backwards and sideways - especially the first section: 101 Zen Stories. One of which concerned an old monk and a young monk, celibate, who are on the hike from one temple to the next. At a ford in the river they meet a pretty young woman who is unwilling to get her kimono wet. The older fellow picks her up and carries her across, deposits her on the other side and they carry on walking. Later the youngster starts to barrack his older colleague about how he they were not supposed to have truck with ladies especially not young pretty ones. The old man growls "I left than girl on the river bank. You are clearly still carrying her". Ah So! You can get the whole text.

I was reminded of this by a comment by Burhanistan in a MeFi post about Stuff - esp the difference between estate sales and yard sales. "Yeah, someone who is obsessing over decluttering or keeping things minimal is just as weighed down by stuff as someone whose closets are bulging" True dat! Many MeFi people agree that Mari Kondo is not being judgemental or proscriptive; she's just trying to helful to people who are a bit stuck and would rather be unstuck at least, if not 'free'of all that clutter. The hook in that post is an article in Curbed about Estate Sales: rootling through other men's bowers after they die and trying to imagine who last licked that tea-cup.

Here's another comment that spoke to / of me: I revealed my deep, unshakable belief that at some point--maybe next month, maybe in a few decades, but sometime--everything digital will die or be otherwise inaccessible. Maybe forever, maybe temporarily. But you can bet your bippy I'm keeping my paper books because I will NOT be bored during it. I'm the bloke who bought several boxes of chunky wood-screws as portable, functional, currency after the Y2K armageddon that never happened. It's only 160 years since The Carrington Event. Time for another one, maybe.

I really must work through some archival paper work this Summer with a view to dumping most of it. If I haven't read it for 40 years, am I likely to read it again? Well frankly, the answer to that is "Yes, I'm going to sit down; on the lawn; right now; beside this box of old articles and read this really interesting essay about Corsican trout fishing. Yes it is a thing. Then again who needs a rod?