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Category: Educational (Page 3 of 27)

Educational topics and useful things to know.

The IRS Expansion


IRS Logo

The organizations paying for ads opposing the IRS expansion and the hiring of more IRS agents are telling on themselves. They’re calling it a “shakedown”.

Let’s think about this for a minute. The IRS doesn’t take any more than they are legally allowed to, which in the U.S. these days is very little. This is the amount legally owed. Anyone who would call expansion of the IRS a shakedown is admitting that they are a tax cheat. They’re admitting to breaking the law and not paying their fair share. All such people are in the top ten percent of wealth in this country.

So who is paying for these ads? The ones I’ve seen are paid for by an organization called “Americans for Prosperity”. Great sounding name but who are they? Americans for Prosperity is the Koch Brothers’ propaganda outlet, funded by them. Are you a billionaire? A millionaire? No? Then this expansion doesn’t apply to you.

Americans for Prosperity produces ads that try to get normal middle-class people and the poor angry about issues that have nothing to do with them but do concern the Koch Brothers and their billions. Unless you’re a billionaire or expecting to become one soon, you’re being played. Keep this in mind the next time you see an ad from Americans for Prosperity.

The ads imply that the IRS engages in theft, when it’s the reverse. All the IRS does is enforce the tax code as set forth by Congress, nothing more. Those who cheat are the thieves, robbing the government of funds that would come to the middle-class and poor in the form of roads, highways, education, assistance, medical care, and security.

Ironically, it’s the richest people who can easily afford to pay their taxes that complain. The poor pay little tax, as it should be, but the Koch Brothers still want you to vote for things that benefit them, not you. Don’t be fooled by the name Americans for Prosperity. Whose prosperity? Yours? No.

Will the IRS be targeting the billionaires? Of course they will. Why would they come and audit you if you’re an ordinary wage earner, who pays their taxes with every paycheck? It would be a waste of time. It’s the ones who owe tens of millions of dollars on a hundred million in income that is worth the effort. These cases also require more manpower and smart auditors to untangle complex tax-dodging arrangements. That’s what those agents will be doing — exactly what the Koch Brothers and hundreds of others don’t want.

Tax rates in the U.S.A. are very low when compared to the rest of the developed world. They are very, very low when compared to the 1950s and 1960s when the U.S.A. was at it’s most prosperous. Republicans have been gutting the IRS for 30 years by reducing IRS funding and staff. Why? The intent is to hobble the IRS so their wealthy donors can cheat with impunity.

What’s more, it’s not even an expansion of the IRS if you look back 30 years. It’s the intent of Congress to restore funding and restore the IRS to an appropriate level. Again, unless you’re a billionaire or millionaire, none of this concerns you.

To Support Coal Buy an EV


What? Yes, it’s true. Read on.

This post is intended for my fellow West Virginians. West Virginia is coal country so a lot of West Virginians support the coal industry.

I look at the big picture as an engineer. Now that the pollution problems associated with coal were mostly solved decades ago, I see coal as just another fossil fuel that we burn to obtain energy. It also happens to be what we have an abundance of in West Virginia.

I’ve watched climate change coming since 1990 and it’s going to bring huge difficulties. We ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. The bottom line is humans have to eventually stop burning things to obtain energy. Achieving this goal is going to take a long time. I don’t like it but I’m a realist. Weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels is going to take far longer than we can afford but that’s how it’s going to be. We’ll be burning coal for a long time to come.

However, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do to reduce our CO2 output. In fact, there’s something we can do to reduce CO2, save our hard-earned money, and support the coal industry, all at the same time. Sound impossible? It’s not.

Power Plants and Efficiency

To explain this we need to talk a bit about engineering, but this is something anyone can and should understand. It’s not complicated. Engineers who design machines or electronics are always interested in efficiency. In simple terms, efficiency means how much “input stuff” do you have to put into a device or system to get a certain amount of desired “output stuff” and how much is lost along the way.

In the simple case of an electric motor, if you put in 100 watts of electric power and get 75 watts of mechanical power out, the motor is 75 percent efficient. The other 25 percent is wasted/lost as heat. Nothing is ever 100 percent efficient. There are always losses.

If you have two or more devices one after the other (in series), you multiply together the efficiencies of each device to find out what the total system efficiency is. So, taking some typical figures, if we have a gasoline engine that’s 25 percent efficient, followed by a transmission (geartrain) that’s 80 percent efficient, the total efficiency at the output of the transmission is 0.25 times 0.80 equals 0.20 or 20 percent efficiency. The other 80 percent is lost as heat. This principle will become important below.

Power plant technology has improved continuously since the steam engine was invented. Efficiency is, by far, the most important factor in the design. Power plant efficiency means how much of the chemical / thermal energy in the fuel ends up coming out of the plant in the desired form and how much is lost as heat. Early steam engines were horribly inefficient. Only a few percent. Coal-fired power plants built in the 1970s achieve an efficiency of around 35 percent. So 35 percent of the thermal energy in the fuel leaves the plant as electricity. It may not seem like it, but this is pretty impressive. Modern coal plants built in recent years reach 45 percent efficiency and this is probably close to the maximum possible.

As an aside, natural gas power plants can employ designs that are not possible with coal. The most advanced natural gas plants can reach an unbelievable 60 percent efficiency. But, we’re not talking about natural gas here, we’re talking about coal. But since a lot of people in the U.S. get their electricity from gas-fired power plants I’ll mention this figure once more at the end of the article.

It probably goes without saying but I’ll point it out anyway. The more efficient a power plant is, the less fuel it consumes, but also the less CO2 it produces to generate a given output. This will become important below.

Internal Combustion Engines (ICE)

Now let’s look at internal combustion engine (ICE) cars. The overall efficiency of modern cars ranges from 12 to 28 percent. That’s the system efficiency measured from the energy in the fuel to moving the car down the road. The 28 percent figure only applies to certain cars under certain conditions. My little Corolla probably gets close to that 28 percent figure when on a flat highway, at a reasonable speed, no headwind, I’ll get 38 mpg. When city driving, that figure drops way down and I get 24 or 25 mpg. Many cars, SUVs, pickups, do much worse. At no time does any ICE powered vehicle reach the efficiency of the oldest coal-fired power plant. Most of the time the coal plant is 2 to 3 times as efficient at turning fuel into usable power.

Besides all the frictional losses of all the moving parts in an internal combustion engine, a fundamental problem with internal combustion engines is something called the “power curve”. An IC engine produces maximum power at a certain RPM, maximum torque at a different RPM, and maximum efficiency at yet another RPM. At low RPM it produces little power or torque. At idle, it produces no usable output but still consumes fuel. To get optimal efficiency from an internal combustion engine it must be run a constant RPM.

Vehicles must operate over a wide range of speeds starting from zero miles per hour with loads that can vary widely, up and down hills, over a wide range of temperature and humidity. All of this is in direct conflict with the “power curve” problem mentioned in the above paragraph and results in the low efficiency of internal combustion vehicles. This problem can’t be fixed. It’s not going to get better.

Electric Motors and Cars

Modern electric vehicles are powered by 3-phase induction motors. Small electric motors achieve 70 or 80 percent efficiency but the efficiency rises rapidly for larger motors. At the 100 horsepower level, such 3-phase motors are more than 95 percent efficient. Larger ones are even more efficient. And that’s running on fixed mains power at a fixed voltage and frequency.

The 3-phase motors in cars are powered by a sophisticated motor controller that varies the voltage and frequency as the motor’s speed and load changes. That gives these motors a flat power curve and even higher efficiency. At low RPM / low speed they produce lots of torque. At high RPM / high speed they produce the horsepower the car needs. The efficiency stays almost constant at all speeds. The “power curve” problem described above doesn’t exist with electric motors.

So what’s the system efficiency of an electric car? The lithium batteries used in today’s electric vehicles have a charge/discharge efficiency around 85 percent. So 85 percent of the electricity you put in comes back out to power the car. Fast charging pushes that number down towards 80 percent. Charging slowly at home pushes it up close to 90 percent.

The motor gives at least 95 percent efficiency, the motor controller is 98 percent efficient, the battery 85 percent, there is no transmission. Multiplying those together we have around 79 percent efficiency from the charger plug to moving the car down the road. I’m ignoring regenerative braking that harvests the energy from braking to charge the battery. No ICE vehicle can do that, harvest the energy from the brakes and convert it into gasoline.

The electrical grid that transports electric power from the power plant to the home or charging station is very efficient. Over the short distances found in West Virginia, it’s nearly 100 percent efficient and can be ignored.

Conclusion

Let’s pull all the numbers together here: older vintage coal-fired power plant at 35 percent efficiency and 79 percent efficiency in the vehicle means 27 percent system efficiency from a pile of coal to moving the vehicle, any vehicle, down the road. All the time, city, or highway. That’s equivalent to my Corolla under rare perfect conditions. With a more modern coal-fired plant, it’s 36 percent efficiency from a pile of coal to moving the vehicle down the road. Well beyond what an ICE vehicle can ever achieve. “Fueling” an EV from coal generates, on average, one-half to one-third the CO2 of burning gasoline or diesel in an internal combustion engine.

What’s more, the cost of that energy is much lower than buying gasoline or diesel. For example, a high-end Tesla Model S with the big battery pack option, completely discharged, at the electric rates we pay in West Virginia, costs about $12.00 to “fill up”. On top of that, your money isn’t going to a company in Texas, Mexico, Venezuela, The Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, or Russia. It stays right here in West Virginia. West Virginia generates about twice as much electricity as it uses locally. The rest is sold to out-of-state utilities. Availability of locally generated power is not a problem.

For those of you not in West Virginia or coal-country, if your electricity comes from hydro, wind, solar, or nuclear, like in the Pacific Northwest, no fuel is burned and no CO2 generated to power an EV. If your power comes from a modern gas-fired plant like in Florida, efficiency is 2 to 4 times that of an ICE vehicle and about one-third the cost.

As soon as I can solve the charging-at-home problem, I’ll be getting an EV and it will have a bumper sticker that says “This Car is Powered by Coal”.

tl;dr version: It’s more efficient, cheaper, and produces less CO2 to “fuel” an EV with coal-generated electricity than an equivalent ICE vehicle burning gasoline or diesel. Roughly twice as efficient and at one quarter the cost.

A Brief History of Birthday Celebrations


The celebration of birthdays is common and taken for granted today. But the celebration of birthdays is a recent phenomenon, a product of the Industrial Age.

The Egyptians

There are instances of birthdays being celebrated since ancient times, but only by important people. The oldest known birthday celebrations took place in Egypt about 5,000 years ago. When a prince was made pharaoh, that moment was considered the transformation of a man into a god and was considered his “birthday”.

The Ancient Greeks

The ancient Greeks observed birthdays, not as a celebration, but because they believed that a spirit is present when each person is born, and that this same spirit was nearby around the same time each year. They also believed that a person was susceptible to evil spirits around the time of their birthday. Family and friends would gather and light candles to ward off the darkness, and make loud noises to frighten off evil spirits. Dates were not precise by modern standards because an accurate calendar had not yet been invented in Europe.

Birthday Celebration for Commoners

The Romans were the first to create holidays to honor famous persons, usually around the approximate date of their birth. The Romans were the first to create a birthday celebration for commoners but it wasn’t an annual thing. When a Roman man reached the age of 50, he was honored with a cake made with cheese and honey. Birthdays of women were ignored for another thousand years.

Birthday Celebrations Prohibited

For hundreds of years, the early Church frowned on the observance of birthdays. It was seen as a pagan practice, something done by pharaohs and heathens. Birthday celebrations were considered evil. Needless to say, the birth of Christ wasn’t celebrated either. Nobody knew the date anyway. From the information in the Bible one can guess it was during tax time in the Roman Empire, which was in the spring.

Common folk found this prohibition easy to abide by. Most didn’t know their date of birth. Common people didn’t have access to calendars and the modern Gregorian Calendar wouldn’t be invented for another thousand years. If a person was baptized, the Church would sometimes record the date, but such dates were approximate, like “the second week of harvest AD 532”. Nobody celebrated their date of baptism. Birthdays were not a thing.

Creation of Christmas

The Church’s ban on birthdays came to an abrupt end when it was decided to celebrate the birth of Jesus coincident with the ancient pagan celebration of Saturnalia.1

The plan was to use the existing celebration of Saturnalia to recruit people into the Church. This is how the date for Christmas was chosen.

Modern Birthday Cakes

Turning the clock forward 1,300 years, the Germans came up with the idea of celebrating children’s birthdays with a birthday cake decorated with one candle for each year of life.2

This celebration, Kinderfeste, was only for young children. The idea of blowing out the candles and making a wish appeared at the same time.

The Industrial Revolution

Another 50 years brings us to the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800s, about 160 years ago. Several things happened that resulted in the popularity of birthday celebrations for all ages.

The most important change was that people began to have fewer children. Children were seen less as an economically valuable army of working hands and more as emotionally valued members of the family. More attention and emotional energy was invested in each child. Celebration of birthdays became important.

Before this time, the price of the materials needed to make birthday cakes, like sugar and butter, were expensive. Fancy cakes were something for the well-off. The Industrial Age brought prices down and birthday cakes became affordable.

Clocks and printed calendars became affordable and commonplace. People became more focused on time and dates because of the Industrial Age. For the first time, people began to work hourly shifts and needed to know the date and time to be at work, catch a train, and so forth. Education improved and common people learned to tell time and read calendars. People knew their birth dates. Doctors started to record the age of patients as an important parameter. Schools began to group students by ages. All of these changes and much more came very rapidly over a period of just 40 years.

Together, all of the factors above resulted in the widespread celebration of birthdays that continues today. Some people resisted, arguing that celebration of birthdays was self-centered, materialistic, and took attention away from God. But this didn’t become an important point of view.

⊂•⊃

Fun Fact: The Greeks were the first to put candles on a cake, but it wasn’t to celebrate birthdays. A crescent shaped cake was made and decorated with candles to honor the goddess of the hunt, Artemis, who was closely associated with the Moon. Blowing out the candles while making a wish was seen as sending a prayer to Artemis.

Donald Trump


Yes, I admit that I’m a sucker for good writing. I love it. Good wordsmithing can give me goosebumps like good music. Shakespeare and Mark Twain are two of my favorites. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address is superb and considered by some to be the finest bit of wordsmithing in all the English language.

One fine example I ran across recently is an eloquent summation of my own sense and observations of Donald Trump and his followers. It’s so good I’ll just quote it (without permission) along with a link to where you can find more writings of this caliber.

Talented and well-practiced in every vice, a stranger to compassion or empathy, a liar and a cheat so complete in perfidy that he has elevated his dishonesty to hold it up as an ersatz oral principle, violent, so long as he can order someone else to do the dirty work, grotesque in body, graceless in action, in possession of a wounded self-regard so colossal as to smother any spark of grace, treasonous, not only to country, but to every ally he has ever had, the poisoned fruit and rankest flower of racism and contempt for women, and utterly devoid of shame for his oral and spiritual bankruptcy.

That is your leader. That is to whom you give your money. That is who you follow and laud. That is whose banner you willingly carry. Why? Because he is a mirror, not a lighthouse. You see yourselves in him. He is what you would be if you had inherited money and could shed the last vestiges of conscience and shame.

No, I do not “respect your choices,” nor do I admire your loyalty and dedication to this miserific, demoniac vision. You have demonstrated not only a lack of civic virtue, loyalty to the Republic and to the rule of law, but a willingness to engage in violence and sedition at his slightest expressed wish. And you will never, ever admit you were wrong. Because you see your dark, twisted, resentful dreams in him. And to renounce him is to renounce yourselves.

Advocatus Peregrini

More writings from the same pen, writings of many kinds, and from different authors can be found here:

WESTVIRGINIAVILLE.COM

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