Future energy

OK everybody knows that the oil and gas will run out one day and sure as hell the greens won't want that dirty messy smelly coal. So what is the answer from our greens, environmentalists, politicians? Electricity.

And of course there are super green ways of making it - wind farms, tidal barrages (although they will fuck the ducks), nuclear, ideally fusion because it creates little nasty waste. But electricity unlike carbon based fuel is notoriously difficult to store when on the move.

Sure we can use the old tricks like keeping the water behind a tidal barrage and only using it when demand warrants it. And yes we can pump water to the top of the hill at low demand and let it down again later. The latter always seemed wasteful to me.

But if it has to be portable, then as far as I can see it has to be batteries. (Yes I know you can use capacitors but they are for things of low energy for a small amount of time such as torches.) Even batteries have limited storage density compared to fossil fuels and batteries fade over time. Yes, so do internal combustion engines but I'd like to meet the battery that could take so much punishment over time and work in such a wide range of temperatures.

And then there is the problem of disposal. Batteries contain an array of quite noxious substances which are complex to separate and recover. Of course we could simply throw them away but in time that would cause more pollution and never forget we would be chucking away another non-renewable resource.

I don't know the answers but for transportation we might focus on liquid hydrogen engines. We are years away from them being practical and realistic. What is more, hydrogen is currently produced by electrolysis so that's more electricity consumption from various sources. Best we accelerate the development of fusion which I understand will produce more energy than it consumes. But fusions is years away from being a practical solution.

Anyone got any brighter ideas?

Handling people

Women are far more difficult to handle than men in life and in business. Tell me about it. You can reason with men and they can be calm or discuss things. Women are just so emotional and predjudiced you can get nowhere with them.

Empire & legacy

Was watching the cricket, England v Sri Lanka and once again, I hear the phrase 'colonial masters.' I am weary of this harking back to the past: it's an excuse.

USA got independence in 1776, Canada and Australia say abt 1900. They have got on well since then. Much of the rest of Empire got independence around 50 years ago and many have done fuck all with it since then.

My parents were poor and so was I but I do not see that as an excuse for not trying to be better.

Hypocrisy

So a US aircraft carrier captain has been sacked for making derogatory comments and videos about gays. He would have got a mere reprimand if he'd shit on the Bible. I am tired of the rights of the majorities being ignored in favour of the minorities. I do not wish the latter to be persecuted but they need to understand their rank in society.

As I have said before, I am white, male, heterosexual, English, Protestant (well, by upbringing) so you can piss on me with impunity.

Interbreeding

This is a big ‘no-no’ for human beings on religious grounds and supposedly genetic grounds too. Despite a lack of desire, indeed no impulse, to have sex and babies with my wonderful and beautiful daughter, I still have to question the logic of the opposition to interbreeding.

I am not a geneticist. Don’t know much about it but it seems to me that both genetic disabilities and benefits would multiply rapidly with interbreeding. So that way the bad guys would be quickly wiped out in a few generations while the good guys would be successful. Seems to work with animals. Several species have been restored from a small breeding stock to healthy populations.

Yes, I do know about biodiversity; even travelled with a lady who did a Ph.D in the subject. All I am doing here is asking a question.

Alternator Suppresor Module

Maybe 15 or 20 years ago, Jaguar cars asked us to make a component called an Alternator Suppressor Module. (I think it was about 1992.) It was a dumb idea for it was designed to filter out the audio hum caused by defects in the alternator. My attitude was to say fix the bloody alternator but these people never listen so we developed it.

As Sales & Marketing Director, I made sure that they paid well for they were desperate. Think we got a 40% gross margin on it. It consisted of a bloody large capacitor with a small pcb, all housed in a plastic case. The capacitor was huge, say 1.5 inches in diameter and 6 to 8 inches tall. Note that if you short circuit that, you will get an explosion.

So here I am, in the age before the cell phone, innocently driving on a routine journey to Jaguar. I get there and check in to the Purchasing Dept and a man comes out, a Buyer, and grabs me by the throat with some question like ‘What the hell do think you fuckers are playing at?’ Seems like our Chief Electronics Engineer had faxed him whilst I was enroute saying that any water ingress could cause the unit to explode. I can understand that. We tried our best to make products reliable but you simply don’t put observations like that in writing. The press will hang you for it if anything happens.

So we made our modifications. Inhibited water ingress but that’s all you can do when rain is flowing under the bonnet at 100 mph; water will get in anywhere. Sat the module on top of a punt and provided drain holes at the bottom.

And so to volume production. Our MD at the time was very concerned about quality and assigned each member of the Management Team to be the ‘champion’ of each new Jaguar product. I got the Alternator Suppressor Module.

First stop, the two girls who were making it. Nice young ladies so I asked them how it was going. They told me that pretty much was OK but that they did not like the heating equipment that shrunk and sealed the terminals: they thought it was unreliable. And so it was for it was later to be revealed as a major source of failure in the field.

Well, cutting a long story short, we worked together and over a few months got it all sorted. Thereon, for 2 or more years, we never had a single failure on delivery or in the field. Perfection. The only subsequent failure came when some dumb arsed team leader switched the girls for an untrained team on night shift.

I bought my girls Christmas presents (from my own money) and they got ribbed by that from the other girls.

So what’s the lesson? If you can build a team be it big or small, you can win!

Irish dancing

I do find Irish Dancing totally erotic. Maybe, it's those flashing legs and short skirts.

My daughter did it once and it had little effect on me. So maybe it's a case of growing older. Today, I do find them quite ravishing.