Admin Mod to Trolls: “Drop Dead”

New York Times ^

[Buck Ninety-Nine]

WASHINGTON, May 31 — After vowing to steer a greater share of antiterrorism money to the highest-risk communities, Department of Homeland Security officials on Wednesday announced 2006 grants that slashed money for New York and Washington 40 percent, while other cities including Omaha and Louisville, Ky., got a surge of new dollars.

Homeland security officials said the grants were a result of a more sophisticated evaluation process

[Irish_Thatcherite]

He is the definition of pompous!!

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

Darn it!

The mods took another chew toy away before I got him broken in and before I could ping the list.

He was a proper idiot too.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

You would think they have more important things to worry about...

[Irish_Thatcherite]

I'll be back in a while..

[sionnsar]

rushing from one air-conditioned spot to another.

Looks like it might become one of those (few) days I wished we had air-conditioning.

Then again, I'm launched into my first effort to "rip vinyl" and with the various difficulties I'm running into I might have to work on the WAV files on the machine in the basement.

It's an excuse, anyway.

[fanfan]

Sounds nice.

[NicknamedBob]

I'm very much in favor of basements, and other forms of geothermal buffering.

Houses in most climates would benefit from an earth-tube at the time of construction. It wouldn't add much cost, and it works without maintenance.

[sionnsar]

But don't you have to go down kind of deep with those?

BTW, the Reichstag now uses that system for aid in cooling in summer and heating in winter.

[NicknamedBob]

"... don't you have to go down kind of deep with those?"

No, it doesn't have to be deep. It would only have to be below the frost line for your area. What you are seeking is thermal mass, wherever it happens to be.

Many early colonial homes had massive chimneys centrally located. A fire would heat the entire mass, which then slowly re-radiated the heat throughout the season.

Unfortunately, they took up enormous amounts of interior space. It's much better to take advantage of exterior thermal mass when you can. It doesn't have to be in any particular direction, however.

If you have an accessible slope behind your house, you can install a gradient pipe into the hillside when your house is built. Natural convection will move air through the pipe without consuming any energy.

However, moving air is not energy intensive. The thermal mass can be a tube or matrix spread in almost any orientation. A fan will then move the air through it to dissipate or recover heat.

It can also be easily set up to bring in geothermal heat as a precursor to a water-sourced heat pump. Geothermal heat never gets into the low Fahrenheit figures that make some heat pumps switch over to electric resistance heating.

So geothermal sourced heatpumps remain your maximally efficient heat source. "Well" worth the investment.

[sionnsar]

It would only have to be below the frost line for your area.

We don't have such a thing here, ir it's just an inch or so. Doesn't get cold enough long enough.

Project isn't going well. The computer turned out to be flaky (that was a known possibility), so it's going to be torn down for component parts and another built up in its stead.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

I'm back..

[NicknamedBob]

I'm wondering how efficiently a system could operate that relied on passive solar, earth sheltered, wind-driven heat pumps.

Probably about as efficient as a totally passive solar house.

However, at some point you have to draw power from something, (for nocturnal illumination and for refrigeration.)

The use of solar cells and battery energy storage seems expensive and inefficient. I was just reading about solar dynamic systems, which concentrate the sunlight onto a mechanical dynamo. You still have to deal with batteries, but the investment and physical profile is smaller.

Another advantage is that you could arrange for thermal energy storage, which can actually be used in many food preparation procedures.

Internal household efficiencies could be boosted by using heat pump technology to remove excess heat from refrigeration chambers and transfer it to a water-heating function.

Essentially, we should design our houses as if each one were isolated on an asteroid. Then the next step would be upgrading our communications capabilities to the point where travel was almost unnecessary.

Picture a new high-tech internet, where you could "videoconference" to work together and solve problems. There is very little that most of us do that could not be done equally well by an immersive communication technology.

This opens up the possibility of new immersive entertainment venues as well. One could establish a connection to his favorite science fiction scenario, and enjoy role-playing to his heart's content.

With a suitable android robot available at your house, your doctor (plumber, handyman, maid, et cetera) could also make house calls.

[NicknamedBob]

Hi, Irish!

[Irish_Thatcherite]

Howya Bob!!

[NicknamedBob]

I think I'm in full science fiction mode.

I'm imagining a full body virtual reality immersion suit, with goggle type eye coverings in which each eye is tracked by infra-red sensors, and sees an individual image.

I've already worked out the artificial skin, and how it interacts with the wearer.

I have not fully designed certain aspects of the suit's operations, but I'm not the only one working on that.

[Irish_Thatcherite]

I think Virtual Reality could have interesting applications with the Internet - you could actually feel like you are in Cyberspace!!

[Irish_Thatcherite]

That's ok, Es, I figured you were busy with something last night.

[EsmeraldaA]

Yes, I was.....I am. ;)

[Irish_Thatcherite]

I'm thinking Paul_Denton was banned for the same reason DNDMSB was banned, if you know what I mean... *cough* border enforcement *cough*

[Irish_Thatcherite]

*busy Es*