Sydney, Nasrallah, Omega-3, Solar power

A beautiful clear winters morning in Sydney. Dont ever come here, unless you are bombed out of your home country. Australia is the pits, fine & clear it may be. The blacks are interesting, but tend to drink more cheap wine in the morning than I do. To paraphrase the Hibbing bard: "The Blacks dont need you, and Man they expect the same"

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kansascity Jul. 29, 2006 Warren P. Strobel and Shashank Bengali
JERUSALEM - Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah declared victory on Saturday after Israel announced it was withdrawing its forces from the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbail where Israeli troops found unexpected difficulty in dislodging the guerrilla group from its strongholds.

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hammorabi
The only reason why Israel attacked the multistory building and killed at least 55 innocent civilians most of them children is because of the Israeli failures to achieve any sort of victory on Hizbullah. Israeli forces have been defeated in the ground with Hizbullah and failed to achieve any advances yet the government lied to its citizens that it achieved its aims. This is why they attacked and killed and destroyed the Lebanese children and infrastructures.

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“Israel is far from a decisive victory and its main objectives have not been achieved,” wrote the country’s most respected military analyst, Zeev Schiff, in the daily Haaretz.

Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah has said, “needs only to survive to win.” That seemed increasingly likely by week’s end.

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thisfuckingwar millblogging:
The U.S. has turned Iraq into an example that runs contrary to America's values, beliefs and assumptions.
Why isn't there a single wise man in the world's mightiest country capable of telling the White House that America's enemies, whether in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East, are a result of U.S. policies? The world's only superpower gathers, nourishes and fortifies its own enemies, and as a result, U.S. policies in the region are leading toward oblivion.

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NYT clips:
the Basij paramilitary force — organized, trained and equipped by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to provide a ready-made Iranian network of 90,000 full-time forces, 300,000 reservists and a mobilization base of up to a million men that would dwarf the insurgency bedeviling American efforts in Iraq
...
And on Wednesday, in Bint Jbail, a town the Israelis said they controlled, a well-laid Hezbollah ambush pinned down infantrymen from the elite Golani Brigade for hours. At times the firing was so heavy the brigade’s soldiers could not return it; eight Israelis were killed. The highly advanced Merkava tanks were reduced to ambulances and several were destroyed.

Weird Science

Fish Oil
But it had to be the right kind of fish, and prepared the right way. No effect on the heart's electrical activity was seen with fried fish, such as fish burgers or fish sticks. Those commercial products do not increase blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids.
And people who think they can take a shortcut by using fish-oil supplements are mistaken, said Alice H. Lichtenstein, prof public health Tufts U.."Recent studies have cast doubt on the belief that fish-oil supplements are beneficial," Lichtenstein said.
- I dont believe her

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abc Solar power
..Things are about to change dramatically thanks to the installation of a new hybrid solar-thermal power plant. The sun’s heat will preheat the water and thus cut the amount of coal used...
Once we learn how to manufacture these arrays on a very large scale,.. we’ll be able to built plants with their own turbines without any fossil fuel.
..planning is already underway for a 100% solar-thermal facility based on this technology, at Moree NSW
..Dr Keith Lovegrove: Yes that’s the world’s biggest paraboloidal dish solar concentrator Paul.
..the initiative of the Australian National University. They’ve been working on solar since 1971. They think big dishes are the way to capture the sun’s heat, as opposed to the long, flat mirrors we saw at Liddell...We can make steam at the same temperatures and pressures as you’ll find in a coal fired power station. ..
.. Another form of solar power on the cusp of going mainstream is solar photovoltaics. ..
Dave Holland: We concentrate the sun 500 times into a very small amount of very specialised high-grade ultra efficient photovoltaics. And .. on small grids in central Australia where we are complementing the existing diesel generators.
And it’s our intention to build a 150 megawatt power station in northern Victoria ..
..One way to store solar energy is in the form of a gas. ..at the Solar Tower facility at the CSIRO in Newcastle. .. methane is pumped in and the sun’s concentrated heat forms new chemical bonds, trapping the energy.
Mr Wes Stein: Solar energy then becomes both transportable and storable..
..Another storage option is using ammonia The sun’s heat splits ammonia into hydrogen and nitrogen. .. As they change back into ammonia they give off the heat that was originally trapped.

..50 kilometre by 50 kilometre square, in the centre of Australia somewhere, to supply all of Australia’s electricity needs in 2020.

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future
aug 2004 [I suppose the adhesive problem is solved by now?]
he standard mirrors currently in use on the Big Dish reflect 86% of the solar radiation. If they could fitted with the low-iron glass mirrors this would be lifted to 92%."
..'glass on metal laminate' or GOML... adhesive film.. bond the 1mm back-silvered, low-iron glass on to thin metal sheet.
..the concave shapes needed for solar concentrators, results in the glass always being under compression. ..[hard to clean? need some sort of cherry-picker-robot cleaning arm ]

HAPS stands for Combined Heat And Power Solar, and instead of using a single large paraboloidal dish .. CHAPS uses arrays of paraboloidal mirror troughs to concentrate the sunlight into a line along which a string of high-quality solar cells are arranged. Behind the cells are pipes carrying water. The concentrated sunlight generates both electricity and heats water at the same time.
..silicon solar cells are very expensive. Mirrors, on the other hand, are extremely cheap ..
..between a third and two thirds of the annual hot water needed to heat the new building..
the new system can achieve up to 100 times normal intensity.

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"Our biggest problem at the moment is the material that holds our solar cells onto the receiver. It needs to be thin and a good heat ..it also needs to be an electrical insulator ..

Sydney Nasrallah 3 power