Desalination plants utilizing solar / wind power
Q & A Inputs for the ABC Program chaired by Tony Jones
Preamble
We are now experiencing a global economic downturn and serious environmental concerns about the future of the planet. The obvious solution to both problems is to invest in the construction of minimal cost Green Projects that yield everlasting benefits.
The question
In that context why do we spend money toward cleaning coal (a pie in the sky project) and insulating homes when we could be spending money constructing Green Desalination Plants that utilize wind and / or solar energy?
Background information
The Kwinana desalination plant located just south of Perth yields 140,000m3 of drinking water per day and is powered by 48 wind turbines located in the Emu Downs Wind farm. The attractive features of this Green Desalination Plant are:
(i) The technology is available NOW.
(ii) The energy is renewable
(iii) The construction of several Green Desalination Plants would employ thousands of construction workers / engineers / scientists.
(iv) The water can be utilized for irrigating large areas of land also, thus producing more crops.
(v) The benefits are everlasting and very visible – Such projects can easily be the Snowy Mountain Schemes of the 21st century
(vi) Additional benefits are the generation of electricity. The Emu Downs Wind Farms for instance generates 270 GWh/year but the Kwinana Green Desalination Plant uses only 180 GWh/year.
A proposal for the construction of the Point Paterson Green Desalination Plant utilizing solar energy near Port Augusta, in South Australia is in the planning stage but capital for its construction (estimated about 450million$ ) is not forthcoming. The plant is to produce 5.5 gigalitres of water per year.
Australia, the sunburn country, has cheap coal and abundant sunshine. Wind power is also available for harnessing in many parts of the country. Cleaning coal is not a technology we possess now while the technologies for harnessing solar / wind power are available now.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Creative use of cliches
To cliché or not to cliché, that is not the question.
An essay
Nicholas Fourikis
‘I’m a Nazi when I see clichés,’ Helen told me the other day. Is she right or should I assume she has a blind spot?
Helen is a long standing friend. She is also an interesting writer with a degree in creative writing under her belt. I admire her in many ways but she can’t stand anyone using clichés.
In many ways she is right because clichés express something that has become overly familiar or common place, stale, stereotypical and timeworn. Writers are supposed to be creative, and we are expected not to use words that have a timeworn ring to them.
As John Simon notes in Paradigms Lost, Vanity of a peacock is to imagery what a twenty-times-used blade is to shaving.
‘I love the twinkle in your eyes.’ Is a tired cliché that is too generic to be useful? It could apply to a cockatoo, for instance.
The trouble is that we all use clichés in our conversations. It’s natural therefore to allow our characters to use clichés. Moreover the clichés our characters use define their socioeconomic milieu, their frustrations or exhilarations. In many ways clichés reveal character.
Writing a novel without using clichés would be like describing a world that has no cultural resonances. In a less abstract way our book would be like a beautiful empty house waiting for carpets and pictures. It would have all possibilities. It could become a palace or a brothel.
If there was a way we can use clichés creatively we will have the best of all possible worlds. No one could accuse us of not being creative and we would be mining the cultural treasures clichés offer. Is this quest a pie in the sky misadventure? The answer is a firm and unequivocal “No.”
In passing, and it’s only in passing, did you notice how creative Simon was with the title of his book Paradigms Lost? (Remember Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost?)
If this example is too literary try the following:
She is the cow in the ointment.
It was lust at first bite.
He is a legend in his soup.
These are clichés that some creative writer tweaked – twichés. Here are some more from reference [1]
A media guru described Madonna’s latest diet Footloose and Fat-Free.
George W Bush has gone from abject wealth to riches, Jon Stewart quipped.
A legend in his own mind
‘A good tweak,’ the author of reference [1] writes, ‘leads readers one way, then jerks them into the delight-giving realm of surprise.’
Is that all we can do to infuse life into timeworn clichés? Definetely “Not” because creativity knows no bounds.
Tom Skinner an Australian author wrote Round Fish, Square Bowl - a children’s book full of clichés [2]. It’s OK to be different was the message of Tom’s book.
As you can imagine I cannot reproduce all his clichés in this essay but here are some samples that would elate you.
If you are as slow as a tortoise don’t worry because the tortoise often beats the hare.
If you are mad as a hatter, the madder the merrier.
If you are an ugly duckling, remember ugly ducklings turn into beautiful swans.
I’m sure you get the drift of Tom’s beautifully illustrated book. Parenthetically it is worth noting Tom abandoned his boring day job, sold his house, and educated himself to become a great writer. He dedicated his book
To Mum
For the immovable belief that being different was my virtue rather than my millstone.
Thank you Tom and Helen. Nazi or not I owe her a lot for inspiring me to take time off and reflect on clichés.
[1] A. Plotnik. Twist worn expressions into winners. The Writer. Aug 2006. p15
[2] T. Skinner. Round fish, square bowl. 2006. New Frontier Publishing
An essay
Nicholas Fourikis
‘I’m a Nazi when I see clichés,’ Helen told me the other day. Is she right or should I assume she has a blind spot?
Helen is a long standing friend. She is also an interesting writer with a degree in creative writing under her belt. I admire her in many ways but she can’t stand anyone using clichés.
In many ways she is right because clichés express something that has become overly familiar or common place, stale, stereotypical and timeworn. Writers are supposed to be creative, and we are expected not to use words that have a timeworn ring to them.
As John Simon notes in Paradigms Lost, Vanity of a peacock is to imagery what a twenty-times-used blade is to shaving.
‘I love the twinkle in your eyes.’ Is a tired cliché that is too generic to be useful? It could apply to a cockatoo, for instance.
The trouble is that we all use clichés in our conversations. It’s natural therefore to allow our characters to use clichés. Moreover the clichés our characters use define their socioeconomic milieu, their frustrations or exhilarations. In many ways clichés reveal character.
Writing a novel without using clichés would be like describing a world that has no cultural resonances. In a less abstract way our book would be like a beautiful empty house waiting for carpets and pictures. It would have all possibilities. It could become a palace or a brothel.
If there was a way we can use clichés creatively we will have the best of all possible worlds. No one could accuse us of not being creative and we would be mining the cultural treasures clichés offer. Is this quest a pie in the sky misadventure? The answer is a firm and unequivocal “No.”
In passing, and it’s only in passing, did you notice how creative Simon was with the title of his book Paradigms Lost? (Remember Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost?)
If this example is too literary try the following:
She is the cow in the ointment.
It was lust at first bite.
He is a legend in his soup.
These are clichés that some creative writer tweaked – twichés. Here are some more from reference [1]
A media guru described Madonna’s latest diet Footloose and Fat-Free.
George W Bush has gone from abject wealth to riches, Jon Stewart quipped.
A legend in his own mind
‘A good tweak,’ the author of reference [1] writes, ‘leads readers one way, then jerks them into the delight-giving realm of surprise.’
Is that all we can do to infuse life into timeworn clichés? Definetely “Not” because creativity knows no bounds.
Tom Skinner an Australian author wrote Round Fish, Square Bowl - a children’s book full of clichés [2]. It’s OK to be different was the message of Tom’s book.
As you can imagine I cannot reproduce all his clichés in this essay but here are some samples that would elate you.
If you are as slow as a tortoise don’t worry because the tortoise often beats the hare.
If you are mad as a hatter, the madder the merrier.
If you are an ugly duckling, remember ugly ducklings turn into beautiful swans.
I’m sure you get the drift of Tom’s beautifully illustrated book. Parenthetically it is worth noting Tom abandoned his boring day job, sold his house, and educated himself to become a great writer. He dedicated his book
To Mum
For the immovable belief that being different was my virtue rather than my millstone.
Thank you Tom and Helen. Nazi or not I owe her a lot for inspiring me to take time off and reflect on clichés.
[1] A. Plotnik. Twist worn expressions into winners. The Writer. Aug 2006. p15
[2] T. Skinner. Round fish, square bowl. 2006. New Frontier Publishing
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
The 8th International Conference on Greek Research
The abstract of a paper I am to present to the 8th International Conference on Greek Research. To be held at Frinders University in South Australia from the 2nd to the 5th July 2009.
Aristarchus and Hipparchus
Nicholas Fourikis PhD
Aristarchus the Samian (310-230 BCE) proposed the Heliocentric System because he could not conceive that the Sun, a massive star, rotates around tiny Earth. Cleanthes, a philosopher, thought the Greeks ought to prosecute Aristarchus for setting the Earth in motion.
Hipparchus of Nicaea (190-120 BCE) assembled the first catalogue of 1000 stars with their magnitudes and calculated the distance between Earth and the Sun.
His crowning achievement was the calculation of the precession of the Earth’s axis using his observations, the observations of Timocharis & Aristillus taken 150 years before his time and the observations of the Babylonians taken over 2000 years.
His calculation of the precession was astonishingly close to the correct value of 50.26 arc seconds.
Aristarchus pursued high risk / high yield research while Hipparchus pursued low risk / high yield research.
2009 is the Year of Astronomy
Aristarchus and Hipparchus
Nicholas Fourikis PhD
Aristarchus the Samian (310-230 BCE) proposed the Heliocentric System because he could not conceive that the Sun, a massive star, rotates around tiny Earth. Cleanthes, a philosopher, thought the Greeks ought to prosecute Aristarchus for setting the Earth in motion.
Hipparchus of Nicaea (190-120 BCE) assembled the first catalogue of 1000 stars with their magnitudes and calculated the distance between Earth and the Sun.
His crowning achievement was the calculation of the precession of the Earth’s axis using his observations, the observations of Timocharis & Aristillus taken 150 years before his time and the observations of the Babylonians taken over 2000 years.
His calculation of the precession was astonishingly close to the correct value of 50.26 arc seconds.
Aristarchus pursued high risk / high yield research while Hipparchus pursued low risk / high yield research.
2009 is the Year of Astronomy
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Nicholas Fourikis Portrait
Sue Heinemann, a recent friend, organised five painters to "do" me in March 2009. I sat in front of them for a total of five hours with short intervals.All portraits were excellent but I could only afford the portrait done by Michael Hocking.Apart from being an excellent portrait painter Michael is also a phychologist. A very gifted young man. indeed.
Thank you Sue and Michael
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