Author Archives: Ponderer

About Ponderer

Ponderer also writes science fiction and science-inspired rhyming poetry. Check her out at katerauner.wordpress.com/ She worked at Rocky Flats for 22 years - you may know her as Kathy London.

Thank You Charles Dickens

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For this week’s expression I’m working backwards – on words.
We know the origin of these terms – the works of Charles Dickens.

“It’s a sign of an author’s genius when his characters step out of the stories and become words in the language. Dozens of Dickens’s characters are now part of the English language.” wordsmith.org

Wellerism: Dickens’s novel Pickwick Papers. Earliest documented use: 1839. A familiar phrase followed by a humorous invention. “Prevention is better than cure,” said the pig when it ran away from the butcher.
Fagin: From Dickens’s novel Oliver Twist. Earliest documented use: 1847. One who trains others, especially children, in crime. A fagin crook led a gang of young thieves.
Gamp: From Dickens’s novel Martin Chuzzlewit. Earliest documented use: 1864. A large umbrella. “By the time we fumble with our gamps, the air is dry once again.”
Scrooge: This is the only one I’ve ever used, and it took a while to enter the language. From Dickens’s novel A Christmas Carol. Earliest documented use: 1940. A miser. “He was not entirely a Scrooge. There were times when he secretly helped poor people.”
Thanks to wordsmith.org

Future of Clean Energy?

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Pebble_bed_reactor_scheme_(English).svgI recently ran into an article reporting that a “nuclear startup called X-energy just scored a game-changing grant from the [US] government.” X-energy is run by a space contractor who is an Iranian-American – nice bit of irony there.

The article goes on to say the grant’s actually not that big or game-changing. But the technology could:

Commercialize a much needed energy source that doesn’t contribute to climate change and which could help revive a struggling nuclear industry.

Nuclear power
When you think about nuclear energy you probably think of huge plants that divert enormous amounts of water for cooling, thereby damaging aquatic life. Massive transmission lines marching across the countryside to move the power to its users. Difficult concrete pours and high-tech welding. Complex safety systems and expensive refueling cycles.

Okay, maybe some of this only occurs to those of you interested in reactor construction.

Everyone thinks of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

(BTW – it’s not like coal and gas fired power plants are risk free. See this old book– the numbers are out of date but the concepts still apply.)

But people need energy
and even some long-time opponents of nuclear energy are willing to look at better plant designs to stave off global warming. The threats of global warming over the course of the 21st century are extensive enough that listing them sounds hyperbolic. If you’re not familiar with the issue, check out wunderground.com.

X-energy is working on a design I read about some time ago – pebble bed reactors – which I find very exciting.

The pebbles are tennis-ball sized spheres of graphite and ceramic fuel (various radioactive elements can be used). Gas (helium is preferred though I like nitrogen – cheaper) is used to transfer heat from the core, rather than water that becomes radioactive and can lead to steam explosions. The reactor needn’t be shut down to refuel, and the spent fuel come out in the easily handled, shielded pebbles. You can learn more about the technology here.

This design makes the reactor inherently safer, and it gets even better:

A pebble-bed reactor thus can have all of its supporting machinery fail, and the reactor will not crack, melt, explode or spew hazardous wastes. It simply goes up to a designed ‘idle’ temperature, and stays there.

I once read that small reactors might be built inside railroad cars and hauled into place all over the country. Imagine a grid where one outage doesn’t black-out huge areas. Imagine avoiding the power loss suffered by long transmission lines that eat up land and view-scapes.

Imagine your brother-in-law running one of these things. It’s okay! They’re simple and inherently safe.

I have a nagging concern that, if they’re so wonderful, why aren’t we already using pebble bed reactors? Wikipedia says there’s only one in operation – in China.

The balance between global warming fears and nuclear fears may allow us to look at pebble-beds with a fresh eye. I hope we can make rational decisions based on facts. It may not matter too much for me, but posterity could enjoy cheaper, safer, cleaner, and abundant energy.

Thanks to fortune.com for their article

Living, Working, and Dying in the National Parks

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ranger confidentialEver wonder what National Park rangers talk about when they swap war stories over a beer? In Ranger Confidential, Andrea Lankford offers you a chance to find out with this collection of related stories – a wonderful view into the nitty-gritty of rangers’ lives.

National parks are small, self-contained towns and must provide all the services that implies, from jails to restaurants. As one ranger noted, they are “cops, firemen, EMTs, and game wardens! All of the fun stuff in one job.”

The format allows you to dip in and out of chapters, hearing about the lives and experiences of several rangers, including the author. As you’d expect, these stories are the “most.” Most stupid, most frustrating, most unfair, most drunk.

Park visitors bring all the troubles of society with them.

  • Many of the stories are not G-rated. Early in the book one ranger arrests a man caught masturbating over a woman who was asleep on a beach.
  • There are kidnappings, fights, and nuts trying to blow rocks off Yosemite waterfalls with home made bombs.
  • Bureaucratic frustrations abound – you can’t apply for a full time (with benefits – an important point) federal job unless you have a full time federal job.
  • Climbing accidents can be horrific, and rescue or recovery dangerous.
  • Suicides are traumatic for responders, and there was a flurry of people driving their cars off the edge into the Grand Canyon after a popular movie ended with that very act.
  • “Tombstone humor” is common. Upon finding the decomposing body of a fallen climber after a long search, one ranger comments “I don’t think he’ll make it.”
  • Locals are often angry at rangers for enforcing rules so a night off “in town” can turn unpleasant. “Pine pigs” is one taunt.
  • Concession employees who live in the park can be as dangerous as visitors, with drunken fights and rapes.

Animals figure in stories, too. Continue reading →

Living on Almost Nothing in America

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$2 a dayThis book by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer says something important, though the style isn’t my favorite.

As Steven Pinker says, “if narratives without statistics are blind, statistics without narratives are empty.” My analytical mind leans to statistics while Edin and Shaefer lean to narratives.

The title comes from “one of the World Bank’s metrics of global poverty in the developing world – $2 per person per day… The official poverty line for a family of three in the United States worked out to about $16.50 per person, per day over the course of a year.” Even America’s definition of “deep poverty” is $8.30. I hadn’t expected to discover that 4% of Americans live in the poverty of $2 per day.

The book explains the history of federal government “welfare” in America, starting with States overwhelmed by Civil War widows and orphans, and continuing through the 1990s reform era to today.

Trapped
People are often trapped in $2 poverty by physical and mental health issues – their own or family members they care for. They live in areas where low-level jobs are few, but haven’t the money to move. The authors focus on heart-breaking stories of individuals who surely deserve better – like a young father who presses his shirt before going to a local store to seek a job – even while showing that the individuals deal with addicts, abusers, and craziness around them. But I can understand the difficulty of landing a job at a retail store if your teeth are rotted and your clothes are stained. Applying for government aid can require so much time, jumping through so many hoops, that it prevents individuals from seeking and holding jobs!

Failures throughout history
If you think all the deeply poor deserve their fate, read the stories here. Most $2 poor have a history of work and want to work. While some studies that establish such facts are explained in the book, in other places I wish a reference was included.

The authors say (missing those statistics and references again) that the old welfare system is not proven to create dependency, “indolence and single parenthood,” but that doesn’t really matter. Programs begun during the Great Depression that offered money, penalized mothers who had a husband in the family, and demanded nothing in exchange are “so out of sync with American values” they are “doomed to fail” in the long-term.

A majority of Americans reject “welfare” in polls, but “the number of Americans who thought we were spending too little on help for the poor actually rose” over time. The government is failing to deliver what most Americans want and what the poor need. Even the deeply poor hate “welfare” programs. Continue reading →

So Far, So Good

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Being an engineer, I’m familiar with problems and hate to tempt fate by saying something is going well. “So far, so good” is therefore one of my favorite clichés.On Stackexchange I learned there is an archaic meaning of “so” that means “in this manner/condition.”

FreeDictionary says the idiom was first recorded in James Kelly’s Scottish Proverbs (1721), where it is defined: “So far, so good. So much is done to good purpose.” The title of the book implies the phrase was already well known.

Etymonline offers a detailed etymology of “so” and agrees with the 1721 reference. So it seems Kelly was the first to write the phrase down and publish it.

Get Your Act Together

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A woman from Japan was telling a friend about her trip to the United States. The woman had visited major businesses and investment companies in New York City and Chicago.

I studied English before I left home,” she said. “But I still was not sure that people were speaking English.”

She was puzzled by “get your act together” which means to get organized. In business, it usually means to develop a calm and orderly plan of action.

Learning English says the expression probably came from the theater or movie industry and was common by the late nineteen seventies.

The Kirkpatrick’s book Cliches: Over 1500 Phrases Explored and Explained agrees and offers no specific source.

I found variations on the phrase, some more scatological, but no source.

People – when you invent phrases, please make notes.