Investing in Wind

A few years back I put my savings into the Stroud and Swindon Building Society. It gave a good return. The Stroud branch was a dusty and shabby relic from the 1970s. The good times didn't last and while the boss got a £334,550 pay-off I ended up with half a percent interest.

Now the building is being refurbished for Ecotricity and giving it a much needed makeover. It is beginning to look very fine.

In case you don't know, Ecotricity are responsible for many of the wind turbines going up around the country. Now certain people around here hate wind turbines because it will mess up their panoramic photographs they sell as Giclée prints. They would cite people like Prof. Robert Carter to support their claim that global warming is not caused by humans. However, many of his assertions can be shown not to match the evidence. Besides that there is the fact that even if we can continue to burn fossil fuels without guilt, these fuels are going to run out. We are already importing coal and relying on Russia for our gas and this is a poor state of affairs.
So here is your chance to help make more wind turbines. Ecotricity have four year Eco Bonds that pay a very generous annual 7%. How do they do this? Where is the catch? I have no idea, it is a matter to discuss with your financial advisor. The money invested goes into financing development of more green energy. The return is about double the Stroud and Swindon's best rate. This is only open until December 10 so you have to hurry.
I have the feeling that some of my money will return to the same building. I hope this time Dale will look after my money a bit better than the Stroud and Swindon.

Tift Theatre

Last year we went for a dinner and a night at the theatre. Not as sophisticated as it sounds. It was a quick bite in Krystal followed by three one act plays in the Tift Theatre by the local am. drams. How Krystal operates is that it serves very small plain burgers, almost bite sized. They are extra compact because they are square and so they tessellate better. And because they are so small you buy them in multiples.

Then we drove the last mile to the Tift Theatre. This is a fine 1930s art deco style cinema that despite all the odds has survived. Curiously, it uses the European spelling of theatre rather than "theater". Fortunately over the years the interior was covered with heavy drapes and so all the original details survived. Once the drapes were removed the bright design was revealed, bold colours and shapes borrowed from the circus. The exterior is brilliantly restored too and the animated neon marquee and bright sign boards are splendid. A very far cry from the mundane "Cinema 6" at the Tifton Mall.

Inside you can imagine that you have gone back to 1937. If I was a location manager who needed a period movie theatre this would be ideal. We were shown around by Mack Freeman who was setting up for the night's show. The stage was set as a cafe for the first of three one act plays.

The audience sits on metal framed tip-up seats with deep upholstery. The tipping is controlled by metal springs that creak and twang. Looking up you'll see that the projection window is empty. Instead there is a small data projector suspended halfway down the room that looks a bit feeble for that space.

That night we hurried our Krystals and arrived at the theatre with the marquee sparkling and announcing "Three One Act Plays". We were only just in time. The auditorium was completely dark as the lights had been turned off at the start. We made our way near the front and groped our way into the creaking seats. The lights came up and we found ourselves in in a largely empty theatre. John Tibbetts powerfully projected his voice in the way of actors, and this fitted the part well as he was playing God. I didn't understand a word of Roslon's Southern accent but I was probably the only one as everyone else in the audience was local.

The scenery ingeniously used the same brick wall prop for all three plays. In the interval we went and bought candy at the entrance desk and they asked us who we were connected to. Everybody else in the audience were friends and relatives of cast and crew. We had no such connection and we were there because I wanted to experience the theatre. The plays were certainly no Broadway hits and were more like school plays but they were charmingly performed.

You could imagine the cinema a couple of years after opening. Every seat filled, and the first reel of "Gone With the Wind" started. The crackly sound coming through and the projectionist cranking the focus to get the picture as sharp as possible.

Afterwards Tammy took some night pictures and the cars parked in front of the Tift Theatre went one by one as the cast went home.

Click here for Tammy's Pictures

South Georgia Ice Company, Tifton

The coolest place in Tifton has to be the ice house. The South Georgia Ice Company in Tifton GA has been making ice for a very long time. The ice would have been used everywhere in cool boxes in homes, shops, fisheries and even air conditioning. The most exclusive railway carriages had big ice trays and electric fans to cool the early railroad tycoons. The factory doesn't actually look like it is still operating as the building has a shabby abandoned air to it. But as we took pictures of it a worker popped out. He was keen to show us around the operation. Inside was a big hall where the whole floor was made of ice moulds. The workers hopped around like bees on a honeycomb. Some remains of rusting machines were left in place after retirement. It was probably too much bother to remove them. No attempt at hygiene was made and the notice on the door stated clearly that the ice was not food grade. Hoists and hydraulics help lift the moulds and send the ice through to a storage room. Outside you could still see remains of the train tracks and imagine trucks full of blocks heading across the state. A big propane powered engine in a frame in the loading bay powered an ice crusher which delivers the product from a large hose. It must be very noisy when a customer wants crushed ice. How does it survive today when refrigeration is commonplace? I have no idea who the customers are. Click the picture to see the whole gallery.

South Georgia Ice Company

Jeff Korson Synapse Fail

Now I'm going to focus on Tifton. Tifton proudly claims to be the heart of south Georgia, which is a bit like saying that Acton is the heart of west London. Around the USA there are people who are in the "Tea Party" and Jeff Korson in Tifton has an interesting article about climate change. His key idea is that climate change is not caused by the billions of tons of CO2 being added to the atmosphere by energy hungry humans. He starts the evidence with a link to a paper famous for bad science reporting, the Daily Mail!

The rest of the article goes through to state that warming is caused by all sorts of things including cosmic rays and vegetable decay. This is a decoy as these things have always been around. Jeff Korson is picking at small inconsistencies while completely ignoring the masses of real evidence.

His conclusion is that we can burn as much fuel as we like because global warming isn't our fault. But should you trust the scientific judgement of somebody who writes "final synapses". Doesn't he know the difference between synapses and a synopsis? And even if he meant synopsis it is the wrong word. Surely he intended "theory". But to compound the problem Jeff doesn't understand that there is never a "final" theory, just the best one that fits the evidence so far.

All about kites

reposted from the family website:

More about kites.

The first kite I remember making was at school. I was hoping that this would be a practical introduction to aerial exploration. I followed the instructions carefully and cut out the traditional kite shape that I had marked out with a ruler. I thought it was a bit small and the card too heavy but I continued. The colouring went well and I did a four quadrant scheme. Then the tail was made of woollen yarn and paper twist bows attached with sticky tape. Finally the flying line was attached, one metre of wool by which time I had realised that we had wasted our time making ornaments. We were allowed to “fly” our kites, which meant exiting the classroom by the big glass doors and running up and down the lawn with these fluttering kites never going higher than we could lift them.

Since then I have constructed a few kites. The most ecological one was made from Fenwicks department store plastic bags. It uses inflatable air channels to create the rigidity so as long as the wind blows it flies high. When the wind stops it collapses. It conveniently rolls up for carrying in a coat pocket.

In 1967 we stayed at Hing Hon road and I would go up to the roof. One day in the gentle breeze there were kites flying from the other roofs. This seemed reckless to me as there was nowhere to run if the kite drooped and needed some extra lift. And if it did fall out of control it would probably be lost on another building or street.

In the Bahamas kids would make kites and fly them from trees to sell them for pocket money.

I never used a Chinese kite but I did admire the fact that mere paper was good enough and the bold red, green, yellow and blue dragon print. Then there was the ornamentation that seemed only to make the kite heavier with tails and flaps. The delicate bamboo splints didn’t look like they would survive a collision with the ground. Even the flying line was delicate and looked like something that mum would have in her sewing box. But one day we went up to Barn Hill and Dad flew the kite. It went up in a gentle breeze and stayed up high almost still. In the same conditions the German kite would have stayed on the ground.

My usual kites were German mass produced plastic ones and were typically printed plastic film with an eagle or similar bird of prey. They were tensioned by flexible wooden spars and plastic brackets. The line was 100m of monofilament nylon on a Jürgens plastic reel with pivoted crank handles that I still use today. These kites needed a good wind. It usually required a good run to loft them high enough to catch the faster air away from the drag of the ground. And preferably somebody on the other end to pick it up and relaunch after the inevitable crash.

My smallest kite is palm sized and is made from a mylar and bamboo splints. It flies well on a short string of a couple of metres and in the lightest of breeze. My largest kite was a nylon sledge kite and was magnificent, but it was lost on the very windy day when it snapped the line.

The other type of kite flies near our house over the common.The red kite stays hovering in one spot matching the speed of the wind while watching the ground. Soon it will spot something and make a rapid dive, Then there will be one less baby rabbit or mouse on the common.

Cut backs

In these days of cuts it looks like Comet have cut back on their spelling. On this product page there are four spelling errors.
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Gloucester Citizen kills 435 people

Researching history comes up with some unexpected links. Telford's stone bridge at a place confusingly called "Over" should have been made of iron but the influential people in Gloucester forced Telford to use stone. This is a case where the influence was used wisely as the bridge is very sturdy and elegant. An iron bridge would have rotted away by now. The bridge got replaced in the 1970s with a wide modern road bridge. This is the bridge in the 1970s.

From G1761

And this is the A40 replacement bridge being built.

From G2001

In the background of the 1970s pictures you can see buildings. It turns out that these are the Over Isolation Hospital where tuberculosis patients were sent. Looking up history of disease in Gloucester revealed smallpox and cholera were occasional hazards. Smallpox broke out every few decades and patients were sent to other hospitals.

So we come to Samuel Bland, the founder of the Gloucester newspaper "The Citizen". He was very influential and led a successful anti-vaccination campaign. By 1887 he had managed to stop compulsory vaccination. Everything was OK until 1895 when a smallpox epidemic swept Gloucester. At the height of the epidemic he hosted an anti-vaccination meeting with Dr Walter Robert Hadwen as the speaker. Hadwen believed that innoculation was harmful and that sanitation was the proper remedy. There was even a riot in quiet leafy little Oakridge against the use of the pest house for Smallpox victims. The judge in that case criticised the local authority for the failure to innoculate and so intensify the epidemic. The Dr Hadwen Trust website fails to mention his connection with smallpox. 435 people died and of these 280 were children because they had never been vaccinated. The compulsory vaccinations were resumed. Incompetence did not hurt Bland's career and he was elevated from J.P. to Mayor a few years later.

Fast forward to 2010 and Andrew Wakefield and the media frenzy about the MMR vaccine. Again children died although nowhere near as many. Add to that AIDs deniers and other conspiracy theories propagated by irresponsible mass media. As happened a century ago and again now, when the media reports science incorrectly or badly, lives are at risk.