coming up to seven billions

Good news, there is growth everywhere...


7 Billion, National Geographic Magazine from Jamie Lee Godfrey on Vimeo.

Carpe diem!

snow over easter...

Possible captions:

Global warming fall-out now reached Easter Islands!

First we ran out of wood,

so we used stone,

now snow!

Virtuality will be the last resort

for our moai.

As seen in Bavaria*!

* true!

Carpe diem!

Happy Christmas from Nigel Farage

Greece is on strike, Spain will be down graded, Belgium and Portugal are sha(c)king; Ireland is forced into saving (more and more), UK students meet Charles while Berlusconi is paying €500k per vote to stay in power; this all allows Merkel and Sarkozy to run the show, order more paper and China to buy what's left.

Carpe diem!

let the eyes of vigilance never be closed

"How do you stop a snowball after it hit you in the face?"

I do not know Julian Assange, I am not related, I never met him; yet, I have the strange feeling it could have been me. Fox News want him executed but there are others, even Americans... that know better ways to discuss this latest distraction of what is a world in chaos and turmoil.

I agree with most of what (U.S.!) Congressman Ron Paul had to say and I disagree with the way Sweden and the UK are dealing with the matter making American dogsbodies of themselves. Blair was stupid and ignorant enough to get us into unwinnable wars, as among others  WikiLeaks' documents confirm; idiocy goes (a)round (the world) in circles.

This is all far from handling a democracy and its values in any intelligent and honorable way.

Carpe diem!

snow rumors on tyres

... or snow tyres' rumors?

BBC

Last weekend's best joke!

Some motorists who fit winter tyres to their car to cope with snow are being charged higher insurance premiums, it has been claimed.

AA Insurance Services says some people have been told to pay up to 20% more.

Winter tyres should be much safer in the snow, but some insurers have been counting them as a modification to the manufacturer's specifications.

I find it very funny (at times) to watch the UK's desperate need to be different than all the others, at least invent any possible wheel again but name it differently even for technologies and products that have been around for long and can hardly be improved by making them British!?

This is all far from being efficient and living an intelligent and sustainable life.

"The confusion may be through call centres, where that information is not getting through," says Malcolm Tarling, of the ABI.

Oh well, "... not getting through" what?

Carpe diem!

we should get mad, shouldn't we?

Carpe diem!

... a sleaze ball named Julian Assange!?

Murdoch's Fox News: The O'Reilly Factor (video):
There are traitors in America...should be executed or put into prison for life!

What information that has not been made public, yet, justifies discussions like the above? What is there that makes America - and/or the Banksters (??) - so nervous?

Propaganda goes back a long time!

Carpe diem!

how heavy the snow is!

...give me a break! Heavy blanket?!

 

As heavy snow blankets the country, STV viewers can keep
abreast of the severe weather conditions via our website and news broadcasts.

Our part of the country is covered with 30 or 40 cm of snow; no time to measure its weight and call it "heavy"; in the end it is just a normal winter's dress one would expect to blanket our country like so many others. The difference is most of those other countries just know how to deal with ice and snow while we seem to believe in global warming being a one-way-road and snow ploughs being a tool of the past.

With the North Atlantic Drift slowing down Western Europe would be in for a more continental climate which will have more extremes on the menu for us - it is that simple, that global and that un-heavy!

Carpe diem!

a genius never dies

Imagine there’s no Heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

See you there!

going passive, the future of construction...

making it fast, efficent and sustainable!

Simple answer on a simple question:

Carpe diem!

the older you get...

... the more friends are leaving you!






Peter Hofmann died November 30th, 2010.





See you there, Peter!

fish net will have to be something else, soon

The Spatial Expansion and Ecological Footprint of Fisheries (1950 to Present)

Using estimates of the primary production required (PPR) to support fisheries catches (a measure of the footprint of fishing), we analyzed the geographical expansion of the global marine fisheries from 1950 to 2005.


This approach enabled us to assign exploitation status across a 0.5° latitude/longitude ocean grid system and trace the change in their status over the 56-year time period.

At the end of the line there will be no fish:

The decline of newly exploited areas since the late 1990s, which corresponds to a decline in global landings [7], implies that the era of great expansion has come to an end. With a limited room for expansion, and excessive appropriation of primary production in many regions, the only way toward sustainability of global fisheries goes through reduction of PPR.

So we will have to find new applications for fish net...

Carpe diem!

hallelujah, school buses on snow tyres!

... and it just took another winter!

One evening a year ago our parents' council discussed the problems with school transport, mainly related to bad weather conditions; well, usually just normal weather conditions taking the season called winter into account.

The proposal to ask the bus contractor to install snow tyres was washed away by the local politician, indeed the local councillor, as being a condition to be included in the next contract term's agreement, only, as it had never been part of the current contract. With other words, as it was not ordered one wouldn't get it or: life is  "mostly sunny!", anyway.

Politicians?!?

So pushing all common sense plus those ever so destructive Health and Safety rules away our kids had the pleasure to sit in totally unsafe buses; okay, only when those made it up or out of the snow piles and across the ice patches which covered our roads for the first three months of 2010.

A mere eight months, early frost, heaps of new snow and may be the one winter on tyres blog post later those school buses show up on snow tyres!!

Victoria, victoria!

Common sense prevailed! Or would you think that a clever politician improved a contract?

Carpe diem!

the miracles of modern construction...

... based on fabulous marketing?

SupaWall® panels are extremely thermally efficient and have been tested by the National Physical Laboratory who confirmed a U-value of 0.12 W/m2K. When typical cladding is taken into account the U-Value is 0.11 W/m2K
...
As an option, the 50mm polyurethane insulation on the cavity face of the timber frame can be omitted, giving U values with and without cladding of 0.17 W/m2K & 0.18 W/m2K respectively.

We have calculated this wall construction several times; the best we come up with is an overall U value of 0.17W/m²K which is describing the best case scenario; the mentioned "typical cladding" is typically vented, so it does not really improve the U-value but rules the humidity level between the two walls which seems to make the dew point critical. Also, as the stone cladding needs to be attached to the wood construction, usually by stainless steel pins, the thermal bridging effect would further strain any U-value calculation, the correct one or its phantasy's version.

So what makes it 0.12? What did we miss?

Any suggestions?


Carpe diem!