Six Ways

Blog

  • Frozen Waste Bins

    Cridge Council tweeted today:

    Please be aware that bins and their contents have a tendency to freeze, meaning the contents gets stuck and we can’t empty them. It is most common with green bins but can happen to all. We can’t return to empty frozen bins so here are some tips for preventing this:

    •Wrap food waste in newspaper or paper liners
    •Put a piece of cardboard at the bottom of the empty bin
    •Place a small stick under the lid from becoming frozen shut
    •If possible, place your bin in the sun during the day

    Note to self: Check the weather the night before and implement the suggestion about putting a stick under the lid. Too late to put a piece of cardboard in the bottom of the bin. The option to put the bin in the sun is limited. Would a kettle of boiling water into the bin the night before offset the cold?

  • The Destruction Of Luton Town Hall

    The original Luton town hall was destroyed in 1919 during Peace Day celebrations at the end of the First World War. Dr. John G. Dony, author of The Flora of Bedfordshire told his history students at Luton Grammar, predecessor of Luton Sixth Form College, that during the 1950s he had broken the last intact window of the old town hall during the 1919 riots.

    Local people, including many ex-servicemen, were unhappy with unemployment and had been refused the use of a local park to hold celebratory events. They stormed the town hall, setting it alight and destroying it.

    Noticed in Wikipedia entry for Luton

  • Michael Nesmith Of The Monkees

    Michael Nesmith of The Monkees was born in Houston, Texas, in 1942. His parents divorced when he was young, and he was brought up in relative poverty by his mother, Bette, who worked as a secretary. While at work, she invented a correction fluid, which she sold to other typists. Her son helped her bottle it in their garage. But her business soon outgrew the garage and in 1979 Bette sold Liquid Paper for almost $50m.

    Spotted in The Week

  • Type 2 Diabetes

    Diabetes is a chronic condition where the level of glucose in the bloodstream builds up. Normally, a hormone – insulin – helps to move glucose from your bloodstream into your cells. Once inside your cells, glucose is used to make energy.

    But with type 2 diabetes, your body’s cells don’t respond to insulin as well as they should. And in the later stages of diabetes, your body also might not make enough insulin.

  • Indonesia Stops Sending Coal To China

    In these days of countries trying to do away with dirty fuels, spare a thought for this.

    In October last year, Bloomberg reported the China had loosened the restrictions on imports to tackle its power crisis and that Indonesia supplies about two-thirds of China’s total imports and is China’s biggest overseas supplier, supplying 17 million tons of coal in August, and 21 million tons in September.

    And now as the new year of 2022 comes in, Reuters reported that Indonesia, whose biggest customers for its coal are China, India, Japan and South Korea, has banned coal exports until it has evaluated whether it has enough for its own needs.

    For comparison between China, Japan, and Korea, these are figure I have been able to pull out.

    • In 2019, coal made up 58 percent of China’s energy use.
    • In 2017, coal made up 24 percent of Japan’s energy use.
    • In 2021, coal made up 28 percent of Korea’s energy use.

    Plainly, of the three, China needs coal like no other country – whether supplied by Indonesia or from elsewhere.

    Indonesia has a population of over 275 million, so its own needs are not insignificant on a world scale.

    The USA has a population of 332 million, to give you a comparison.

    And The Russian Federation that has a population of just 146 million.

    Indonesia is going to look at how its reserves are coping at the end of January and then decide what to do next to make sure it can plan for enough reserves through to the end of 2022.

    I didn’t include India in the listing – my oversight. The figures is 56 percent, but India has its own state-owned Coal India Ltd, which supplied 38 million tonnes in August 2021. So while it imports from Indonesia, I don’t know how ultimately reliant India is on imports.

    Imagine

    If we could fast forward to 2042, imagine if China had no coal and no way of making up the shortfall from other kinds of fuels. Indonesia is about 7,000 miles as the crow flies from Mainland China, so a task force to capture coal would stick out like a sore thumb. But China would be fighting for its life, so who knows. Pray that it doesn’t come to that.

  • The Meaning Of Elaphine

    Definition of elaphine: of, relating to, or resembling the red deer. From the Latin name of the Red deer Cervus elaphus From the Greek for deer, which is ἔλαφος (élaphos)

    But why? The suggestion is that elephants have tusks, which are allied to horns, and at one time the language and classification of animals was loose and imprecise – so deer and elephants and cows and walruses and antelope would all be the same category.

    That doesn’t really explain it because if that was the explanation then lost of animals besides deer would be called élaphos, which they are not. Elephants, for example, are Loxodonta – although they are in the family Elephantidae. I could elephants could have been reclassified at some later date, but then why stick poor old deer with the name of something that they are clearly not? And what about antelope, which have horns – they are bovidae. The Rowan antelope, for example, is Hippotragus equinus.