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Forgot to mention last entry that I got something in the mail earlier this week from Tampa Bay Water. It was a one page letter with an attachment that turned out to be a printout of the first chapter of this report from California. It gives an overview of the various types of desalination methods and a brief analysis of their pros and cons. The letter from Tampa refers me to the bit where it shows that distillation uses about half the electrical energy of reverse osmosis, but then explains that the thermal energy required to boil the water is not counted in those figures and actually makes distillation the costlier method in many cases. Which I knew and which wasn't my point.
My actual point was addressed two paragraphs down from there, where the report explains that both reverse osmosis and distillation can benefit from cogeneration plants (which produce water and electricity), and goes on to say that the choice needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. Depends on the design of the plant, the environmental impact, the local conditions, etc. What's good for the middle east (where fossil fuels are abundant but fresh water is scarce - making distillation plants relatively popular) may not work so well in, say, parts of California (where it's actually cheaper and easier to pump in water from further inland).
I don't know, however, where the author of the letter from Tampa got the figure of 33% efficiency in converting thermal energy into electricity. That depends greatly on the design and maintenance of the plant, and in any case doesn't change the fact that it's exactly what the vast majority of power plants do.
On a completely different note, I also forgot to mention that I realized something about the dream I wrote about last entry. It involved me gliding around an urban area looking to stop crime, and also not just pushing off buildings, but in one part (which I forgot to include in the write-up, which was lengthy enough as it is) climbing up the side of a building to regain altitude. Oh, and the super strength involved in hoisting the unconscious bad guy. Put it all together and I can't help but think that I was actually in some way dreaming that I was one of the Gargoyles. They've been on my mind recently after I encountered this book whose description bears a striking resemblance to certain aspects of the series. (I plan to read it... once I get through all the stuff I downloaded from Project Gutenberg.)
Speaking of project Gutenberg... I recently finished a book I got off the site, An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne. It turns out that there was an earlier book by Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (included in this online volume). There's a Wiki article about the book, for whatever that's worth.
Going by the Wiki (grain of salt!), Arthur Gordon Pym is a thinly-disguised stand-in for Edgar Allan Poe, who went on fantastic adventures that Poe never did in distant locales that Poe had only read about. The book is presented as if it was a true accounting, and portions of it are actually taken from actual maritime incidents.
Verne, it seems, greatly enjoyed this book. But the story ended rather abruptly and Poe himself died not too long after its publication. So Verne took it upon himself to write An Antarctic Mystery, in which a new narrator finds himself swept up in a mission (led by a captain who turns out to be the brother of the captain of the ship on which Pym sailed) to discover the true fate of the people from Poe's book. The narrator originally believes that the captain is insane because everyone knows that Poe's book was fictional (though he does repeatedly tell us how good a book it was and how great Poe's writing was and how popular etc etc), but events quickly convince him otherwise.
An Antarctic Mystery was written without Poe's knowledge or permission, continues the story, clears up some continuity errors, is told in the style of the original work, and rewrites the fates of several key characters (with explanations of why Poe would have had cause to have written otherwise).
You can debate whether or not Arthur Pym was a Mary Sue, but I don't see any reasonable way to challenge the assertion that Jules Verne wrote a novel-length fanfic.
(Sorry to disappoint, ladies, but no, there is no slash.)
ETA: No, wait. I stand corrected. Pym's faithful companion appears in Verne's book, and spends most of his time staring fixedly out at the horizon in the direction where he believes Pym (whom he hasn't seen in 11 years) to be. He repeatedly goes on about "Pym, my poor Pym!" He's so focused on his longing that he apparantly breaks into someone else's cabin to whisper about "poor Pym" while the other sleeps. And, as for the ending...
Okay, yeah. Slash may not be so hard to infer.
My actual point was addressed two paragraphs down from there, where the report explains that both reverse osmosis and distillation can benefit from cogeneration plants (which produce water and electricity), and goes on to say that the choice needs to be made on a case-by-case basis. Depends on the design of the plant, the environmental impact, the local conditions, etc. What's good for the middle east (where fossil fuels are abundant but fresh water is scarce - making distillation plants relatively popular) may not work so well in, say, parts of California (where it's actually cheaper and easier to pump in water from further inland).
I don't know, however, where the author of the letter from Tampa got the figure of 33% efficiency in converting thermal energy into electricity. That depends greatly on the design and maintenance of the plant, and in any case doesn't change the fact that it's exactly what the vast majority of power plants do.
On a completely different note, I also forgot to mention that I realized something about the dream I wrote about last entry. It involved me gliding around an urban area looking to stop crime, and also not just pushing off buildings, but in one part (which I forgot to include in the write-up, which was lengthy enough as it is) climbing up the side of a building to regain altitude. Oh, and the super strength involved in hoisting the unconscious bad guy. Put it all together and I can't help but think that I was actually in some way dreaming that I was one of the Gargoyles. They've been on my mind recently after I encountered this book whose description bears a striking resemblance to certain aspects of the series. (I plan to read it... once I get through all the stuff I downloaded from Project Gutenberg.)
Speaking of project Gutenberg... I recently finished a book I got off the site, An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne. It turns out that there was an earlier book by Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (included in this online volume). There's a Wiki article about the book, for whatever that's worth.
Going by the Wiki (grain of salt!), Arthur Gordon Pym is a thinly-disguised stand-in for Edgar Allan Poe, who went on fantastic adventures that Poe never did in distant locales that Poe had only read about. The book is presented as if it was a true accounting, and portions of it are actually taken from actual maritime incidents.
Verne, it seems, greatly enjoyed this book. But the story ended rather abruptly and Poe himself died not too long after its publication. So Verne took it upon himself to write An Antarctic Mystery, in which a new narrator finds himself swept up in a mission (led by a captain who turns out to be the brother of the captain of the ship on which Pym sailed) to discover the true fate of the people from Poe's book. The narrator originally believes that the captain is insane because everyone knows that Poe's book was fictional (though he does repeatedly tell us how good a book it was and how great Poe's writing was and how popular etc etc), but events quickly convince him otherwise.
An Antarctic Mystery was written without Poe's knowledge or permission, continues the story, clears up some continuity errors, is told in the style of the original work, and rewrites the fates of several key characters (with explanations of why Poe would have had cause to have written otherwise).
You can debate whether or not Arthur Pym was a Mary Sue, but I don't see any reasonable way to challenge the assertion that Jules Verne wrote a novel-length fanfic.
ETA: No, wait. I stand corrected. Pym's faithful companion appears in Verne's book, and spends most of his time staring fixedly out at the horizon in the direction where he believes Pym (whom he hasn't seen in 11 years) to be. He repeatedly goes on about "Pym, my poor Pym!" He's so focused on his longing that he apparantly breaks into someone else's cabin to whisper about "poor Pym" while the other sleeps. And, as for the ending...
Okay, yeah. Slash may not be so hard to infer.