The Future of Solar Panels - for class

I figured I should put my sources somewhere.

I’m talking about the future of solar panels. The cost of solar power is getting cheaper (1), and some estimates say that it could be practically free by 2030 (2). In fact, even now solar and wind facilities are now the least expensive option for new power worldwide, except in Japan, according to Bloomberg NEF, a consultancy firm (3). There are some places where solar power won’t be very useful, of course. For example, cars. In terms of physics, solar panels wouldn’t provide energy at a low enough cost to be worthwhile for powering cars, despite many efforts by car manufacturers (4). Solar Roadways also aren’t as viable as they seemed at first glance, as they don’t generate as much power as advertised, nor enough to compensate for the price of installation (5). But there have been other recent innovations and developments in solar panels and solar energy that should make further dependence on solar energy more viable.

Let’s start small and move on to bigger news as we go. In some areas, like in boroughs of New York, there are a lot of renters or low-income residents. Due to their financial status, using solar energy isn’t very viable for them. Or at least, it wasn’t. There have been start-ups for community solar energy. A solar farm will be placed in the community, and residents can pay a subscription fee to be hooked up to the grid, a fee that could replace their electricity bill. If these people can’t place solar panels on their home, for whatever reason, they can take advantage of this community solar power (6). Moving on to California, a state which has a goal of 100% solar energy by 2030, has a mandate that requires all new homes to have solar panels installed, thus normalizing getting solar energy (7).

Remember when I said that solar power couldn't provide enough energy to power a car? Well, it can’t, not on it’s own. But Hyundai is installing solar panels on some of their cars to augment the internal combustion or hybrid engine. This can improve fuel efficiency of the vehicle (8). There’s also an electric vehicle by Sion that has a 155-mile range, and with the solar panels on top that can charge it, an extra 18 miles are added to that. Expected to be available in the second half of 2019, it will be priced similarly to traditional cars (9).

After the last hurricane in Puerto Rico, the power grid was going down on a regular basis. A firefighter from Las Vegas, wanting to do some good, decided to take a small solar system down and give it to a fire station in one of the poorest region, so they could make use of it when the power went down. He found later that they were using the solar system all the time. Since the grid went down frequently, they couldn’t afford to be down at any moment. This shows that, provided the money and the infrastructure could be installed, solar power could end the hazardous power outages after hurricanes, outages that continue to plague Puerto Rico (10).

Another really cool thing that renewable energy can help - wind and solar in particular - is with desertification. Computer models have shown that having solar and wind power can increase rainfall and reduce temperature, thus reducing desertification. As climate change continues, desertification is going to continue to be a problem. Having a potential solution could buy us some time to mitigate the impacts of climate change (11).

One issue that we’ve been having with solar panels is recycling them. In order to make solar panels cheaper, manufacturers have been reducing the amount of silver in them. This makes them more difficult to recycle, since the silver was valuable and thus desired by recyclers. And while it’s cheaper to put them in a landfill than to recycle them, in some places, it’s illegal to dispose of solar panels in a landfill (12). Most solar panels have a lifespan of 25-30 years, so we have a little time to come up with a recycling method, but cheap ones made in China have only a 5-year lifespan (13). Researchers at Case Western Reserve University have been working on a longer-lasting solar panel, with a lifespan of 50 years, by decreasing the degradation of the materials. Hopefully, we will find a method of recycling solar panels, but having them last longer gives us more time to work on that problem (14).

Solar farms require a lot of land in order to generate a worthwhile amount of power, but this also contributes a lot to the cost of solar farms. Land is particularly expensive, and some land might also be good for crops or other uses. So there’s a new method that involves installing solar panels on water. This means that land can still be used for other purposes, prevents excess evaporation of water sources due to high temperatures, solar panels can be installed more quickly - on land, the land has to be flattened before panels can be placed - and they work well in tandem with hydroelectric plants. During times of drought, the solar panels still provide energy, and when it’s cloudy or rainy, the hydroelectric plant can still produce energy (15).

There have been a number of developments in kinds of solar panels that are particularly exciting. My personal favorite is flower-shaped, and has a lot in common with flowers, the least of which is appearance - it does resemble a flower. The fixture also follows the sun through the sky, thus collecting 40% more solar energy than traditional panels. Also like a flower, it folds up at night or when it’s dangerously windy. it’s also portable, so you can put it on the back of your electric vehicle and charge it with the fixture (16). Then there are what’s called solar trees, now installed at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. There are five trees there, with 60 solar panels each. Not only do they provide power, their design means they can easily be integrated into urban landscapes. And for the Kennedy Space Center visitors, they provide a chance for people to learn about solar energy up close and personal (17). There’s also been a development in organic solar cells. Rather than being made of silicon, these cells are made of carbon and plastic. This makes them cheaper. They’re also flexible, paper thin, and have similar efficiency rates to traditional silicon panels (18). There are also solar cells made out of a material called perovskite, which can be found in the Earth’s mantle as well as produced in a lab. By making solar panels out of perovskite, this makes them flexible and thin, similar to the organic ones. This means that we can put them in more places, including in our clothes, meaning we can generate more energy (19). In some ways, producing these thin, lightweight solar technologies may be more expensive, but it can also improve logistics. The Navy in particular hopes that they can save lives - soldiers carry a lot of weight in supplies. If they can reduce that weight with thin solar panels, soldiers could move faster (20).

The last significant development I want to talk about is in storing solar energy. Generating solar energy is cheap and easy, but usually more energy is produced than is needed at that moment, so it needs to be stored. Storing that energy has been a bit of an engineering problem. So one solution has been storing solar energy as a liquid. One such battery achieved record efficiency in early October (21). The way it works is, the sunlight energy heats up the liquid in the battery. This changes the chemical bonds. These bonds store the energy even at room temperature. By using a catalyst, this energy can be released any time it’s needed, and it can be stored for more than a decade (22). Just recently, MIT engineers have conceived of a design for a system that could store renewable energy, called “Sun in a Box” (23). This system could conceivably deliver stored energy back into a power grid of a small city, for example, on demand.

The way it stores this energy is as heat.

While the “Sun in a Box” idea was conceived of this month (December), this method of storing solar energy as heat has been explored earlier in the year. It used to be more expensive to store solar energy as heat, but in late October, they started to use a ceramic-metal composite, called cermet , that was used by the Air Force after World War II. In order to store energy this way, the sun hits what’s essentially a giant magnifying glass, which focuses sunlight on the cermet, heating it to 550 degrees, which for reference is on the cooler side of lava. As it cools, the energy is stored in another form (24). There’s also a new composite material, made of ceramic and tungsten, that is stable up to 750 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning that even more heat energy can be gathered (25).

As a summary, in the future, I think that communities will become more and more dependent on even small-scale solar farms, like the community solar mentioned in New York. Getting power from solar will become far more the norm, especially as solar panels become cheaper. I also think that getting this power will exist in both the panel form and the heat energy form. On a small scale, storing solar energy in liquid batteries is perfect. It works just fine and can provide enough energy on that smaller scale - small being a relative term. But on a larger scale - the city or state scale, as well as large research laboratories like CERN - storing that energy as heat will be far better. And a method for recycling solar panels is certainly in the works, and should be more than ready by 2100.

Whatever happens, society will have to become more dependent on renewable energy. Fossil fuels are going to run out - they are by definition non renewable. When it comes time to fill the gap that will open up as we get closer to exhausting our fossil fuel reserves, solar power is more than ready, and more than sufficient, to fill that gap.

1.) Rogers, John. “The Price of Large-Scale Solar Keeps Dropping.” Union of Concerned Scientists. N.p., 14 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://blog.ucsusa.org/
john-rogers/large-scale-solar-gets-cheaper>
2.) Cook, Josie Rhodes. “Renewable Energy Could Basically Be Free by 2030, According to New Analysis.” Inverse. Inverse, 13 Aug. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.inverse.com/article/48017-by-2030-renewable-energy-costs-will-be-effectively-zero-says-ubs-researcher>
3.) Geman, Ben. “Why Solar Is Getting Even Cheaper.” Axios. N.p., 20 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.axios.com/solar-wind-renewable-energy-costs-down-6b3bc87f-b1f9-47a0-b965-e74f3764a5e5.html>
4.) Coren, Michael J. “The Physics of Why We Don't Have Solar-Powered Cars.” Quartz. Quartz, 15 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://qz.com/1423288/why-dont-we-have-solar-powered-cars-physics/>
5.)Ryan, Dylan. “Solar Panels Replaced Tarmac on a Road -- Here Are the Results.” The Conversation. The Conversation, 24 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://theconversation.com/solar-panels-replaced-tarmac-on-a-road-here-are-the-results-103568>
6.) Calma, Justine et al. “Solar Power Isn't Just for the Rich (Anymore).” Mother Jones. N.p., 9 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/09/solar-power-isnt-just-for-the-rich-anymore/>
7.) Chappell, Bill. “California Gives Final OK To Requiring Solar Panels On New Houses.” NPR. NPR, 6 Dec. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.npr.org/2018/12/06/674075032/california-gives-final-ok-to-requiring-solar-panels-on-new-houses>
8.) Gustafson, Sven. “Hyundai, Kia to Put Solar Panels on Vehicle Roofs.” Autoblog. Autoblog, 31 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.autoblog.com/2018/10/31/hyundai-kia-solar-roof-panels-official/>
9.) NowThis News. “Sion EV Electric Car Uses Solar Panels To Charge As You Drive.” NowThis. NowThis News, 11 Aug. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://nowthisnews.com/videos/future/sion-ev-electric-car-uses-solar-panels-to-charge-as-you-drive>
10.) Leber, Rebecca et al. “Power Outages during a Hurricane Can Be Deadly. Solar Could Fix That.” Mother Jones. N.p., 24 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2018/09/power-outages-during-a-hurricane-can-be-deadly-solar-could-fix-that/>
11.) Stevens, Alison Pearce. “Renewable Energy Might Be Able to Green a Desert.” Science News for Students. N.p., 26 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/renewable-energy-might-be-able-green-desert>
12.) McMahon, Jeff. “Innovation Is Making Solar Panels Harder To Recycle.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 4 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2018/09/04/innovation-is-making-solar-panels-harder-to-recycle/>
13.) Chen, Angela. “More Solar Panels Mean More Waste and There's No Easy Solution.” The Verge. The Verge, 25 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/25/18018820/solar-panel-waste-chemicals-energy-environment-recycling>
14.) Scott, Mike. “Making Solar Panels That Last Half a Century.” The Daily. Case Western Reserve University, 30 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://thedaily.case.edu/making-solar-panels-last-half-century/>
15.) Geuss, Megan. “Floating Solar Is More than Panels on a Platform-It's Hydroelectric's Symbiont.” Ars Technica. Ars Technica, 3 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/floating-solar-is-more-than-panels-on-a-platform-its-hydroelectrics-symbiont/>
16.) Barber, Megan. “Flower-Shaped Solar Panel Now Sold in the U.S.” Curbed. Curbed, 11 Sept. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.curbed.com/2018/9/11/17845638/solar-panel-power-smartflower-united-states>
17.) Tuttle, Brittani. “Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex Unveils Solar Trees to Showcase Renewable Energy.” Attractions Magazine. N.p., 28 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://attractionsmagazine.com/kennedy-space-center-solar-trees/>
18.) Shen, Alice. “Organic Solar Battery Sets Record for Converting Sunlight to Energy.” South China Morning Post. South China Morning Post, 13 Aug. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2159495/organic-solar-battery-sets-record-converting-sunlight-energy>
19.) Urry, Amelia. “Thin, Flexible New Solar Cells Could Soon Line Your Shirt.” Wired. Conde Nast, 19 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.wired.com/story/thin-flexible-new-solar-cells-could-soon-line-your-shirt/>
20.) Fialka, John. “Solar Industry's Future Lies in Lightweight Technology.” Scientific American. N.p., 30 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-industrys-future-lies-in-lightweight-technology/>
21.) “Solar Cell, Married to Liquid Battery, Achieves Record Efficiency.” Science and Technology Research News. N.p., 3 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <http://www.scienceandtechnologyresearchnews.com/solar-cell-married-to-liquid-battery-achieves-record-efficiency/>
22.) Miley, Jessica. “Scientists Develop Liquid That Can Store Solar Energy For More Than a Decade.” Interesting Engineering. N.p., 6 Nov. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://interestingengineering.com/scientists-develop-liquid-that-can-store-solar-energy-for-more-than-a-decade>
23.) Chu, Jennifer. “'Sun in a Box' Would Store Renewable Energy for the Grid.” Scienmag: Latest Science and Health News. N.p., 5 Dec. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://scienmag.com/sun-in-a-box-would-store-renewable-energy-for-the-grid/>
24.) Jeung, Tiffany. “A Hot-as-Lava New Composite Could Revolutionize Solar Energy Affordability.” Inverse. Inverse, 28 Oct. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.inverse.com/article/50240-new-composite-for-large-scale-solar>
25.) Texas A&M University. “New Solar Panel Material Can Take More Heat.” Futurity. N.p., 4 Dec. 2018. Web. 8 Dec. 2018. <https://www.futurity.org/solar-panels-material-1923352/>

There's a new sheriff in town

My theories on Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

Merry Christmas, everybody. Happy holidays, whatever your view on the holidays of the winter season, have a lovely time of it. Figured since you haven't heard from me in a while, thought I should post something. But not just any something.

I've said before, I'm a freak for science. I've earned any number of sideways "Katie shut up" glances for scientific analyses of things. Because it's fun for me, what can I say? So of course I'm a biology major in college now - were you expecting anything different? My finals were finished up Tuesday before last, on the 13th, so I've still got a lot of the content fresh in my brain. Not that it would stop me from doing scientific analyses if the information wasn't as fresh in there. Anyway.

The other day, my brother and I were watching Christmas cartoons in the basement and Rudolph was the first on the list. If you could hear the running commentary we have on everything we do, you'd understand completely why I am the way I am. And that commentary doesn't stop for anything, certainly not classic Christmas movies. And that particular day (and this particular day) my brain is tuned in to the possible genetics of a luminescent red nose on a member of the species Rangifer tarandus, or the reindeer.

Something like that would still be tied into genetics, right? My brain quickly computed that Mr. and Mrs. Donner were heterozygous for the gene for nose color - they had both the dominant and the recessive gene for nose. Let's say T is the dominant for black nose and t is the recessive for red nose. That means there was a 25% chance that you'd end up with a red nosed reindeer, and they hit that sweet spot. That's acceptable. But here's the big question - why aren't there more red-nosed reindeer around?

Sure, a recessive gene is less common than a dominant in a lot of cases, and given the prevalence of Abominable Snowmonsters of the North, a glowing red nose would be a genetic disadvantage. It's easier to find something that glows and emits a loud high-pitched noise. (I'm not even going to bother with the science behind a light making a high-pitched noise like that - one thing at a time.) But then it might also be a genetic advantage. Can you imagine how many snowstorms the frozen North Pole gets? (Yes I am just considering the North Pole population of reindeer. They are a geographically alienated population, so population genetics dictates that I only focus on the factors of this specific region. These are the rules environmental science follows.) A glowing nose of any color could aid in the finding of food on foggy Christmas Eves, not to mention the other times of year that storms occur. So as for the usefulness of a glowing red nose, the jury is out. But the point I started out making is that, sure a recessive allele is going to be less common than its dominant mate, but that doesn't mean it only occurs two times out of the entire population of North Pole reindeer.

And we have to assume that there are more reindeer in the North Pole than just Santa's reindeer. A man who delivers toys all over the globe for all the good children has to know a thing or two about maintaining a population of flying reindeer. He also has to know that you've got to have a way to maintain the population once the core deer die. There might be longer lifespans up North, but that doesn't mean the rules of mortality are suspended. Magic does not make one immune to the laws of science. You just... amend them. So Santa is going to have more than just the eight tiny reindeer that allow his sleigh to fly. Otherwise inbreeding occurs and after a few centuries, you've got mutated deer who can't fly, riddled with genetic disorders - it's just a mess all around. So there has to be an appreciable pool of recessive alleles for a red nose. Are these deer just not breeding? Why is Rudolph the first and only red-nosed reindeer?

And this afternoon, I think, what if the gene is linked to the X-chromosome? Then the gene could be dormant for most of the reindeer population. And that would explain how the gene shows up in a male reindeer first. Mrs. Donner is without a doubt XTXt in this case, so there's a 25% chance for a red-nosed reindeer son.

But dormant does not mean absent. How many other red-nosed reindeer have Santa and his elven ilk ostracized from their cheery Northern society? What is this seedy underbelly of the North Pole society?

Away from the doom and gloom, though, I'm telling all this to Mom, and she says, "Maybe it's not genetic, maybe it's a birth defect." Not all birth defects are genetic. Cerebral palsy, for example, is caused by the fetus not getting enough oxygen. Not genetic at all - circumstantial.

New hypothesis - a freak solar flare sometime during the seven-month reindeer gestation period cause a mutation in the fetus of Rudolph leading to the specialized genes that code for his nose to code a bioluminescence gene. This would cause his nose to light up. The atmosphere is thinner up there in the polar north - solar radiation could indeed have this effect. Granted, this solar flare is causing one hell of a mutation, but unlikely does not mean out of the question.

The next question that arose, then, was how Rudolph has control over this glowing. Bioluminescence occurs frequently in deep sea fish - we're talking DEEEEEP sea where it's dark beyond belief. This luminescence helps attract prey. The animals, presumably, don't have conscious control over this glowing. So how does Rudolph? My first thought was to write that off as Santa's magic.

"Now, hang on, stop the presses!" you cry, "You reeled me in with this purely scientific discussion of one of Christmas' most popular icons. This is something I've been waiting for my entire life, and thank God you delivered it. But now you're throwing out this bullcrap about Santa's magic? Why didn't you just write it off as magic from the beginning?" Oh, come on, you can't use magic as the be-all, end-all deus ex machina till the end of time. No fantasy story does that. Otherwise the story would be over too quickly. "Bilbo's got a magic ring that needs to be destroyed?" Gandalf comments, "I'll just poof it to Mount Doom! Problem solved!" "What's this?" the White Witch of Narnia remarks, "The Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve are coming through a portal near the home of the faun Tumnus? No matter, I'll just use my freezing magic to freeze the portal before they can come back! No problem!" (I tried to come up with a Harry Potter example, but J.K. Rowling does a good job by applying the minimum amount of rules and taking magic to its best and furthest limit before the rules apply. Well done, dear lady.) See how quickly everything falls apart when you use magic to solve absolutely everything? There are rules in each story, and magic follows rules, too.

"But science!" Well, if you would have let me finish when I said "Santa's magic", you would be appeased. Mom, not letting me explain things away with magic (which I was reluctant to do) mentioned something that, in hindsight, I probably got wrong on the bio final: Some genes are only encoded for under certain conditions. Like high activity levels - anaerobic respiration occurs in your muscles. Or stress. The body under stress is a brilliant thing. You may feel totally immobilized when under stress, but your body is doing spectacular things. Raising your adrenaline levels, increasing your rate of respiration, increasing your heart rate and revving you up for a fight. Or to run, whatever happens, you know. Your body prepares you to do all sorts of things when you're under stress. The same is true throughout the animal kingdom.

And think about this: Rudolph and Hermy are being chased by a vicious Bumble. That's a pretty stressful situation! And his nose doesn't stop glowing, not for a minute. Rudolph was just told by Clarice that he's cute, is praised by his teacher for a brilliant display of flying, and he starts a little play fight with his friend. Those fights are normal among reindeer males, his adrenaline is already up from the shock and heart going pitter-pat, of course his nose is glowing. Santa, the ruler of all good in the North Pole (who rejected me as a youth because of my physical deformity) has just asked me to lead his sleigh and save Christmas? That's a hell of a lot of pressure! Of course his nose is going to glow!

"But his nose started glowing when he was born! What stress was he under at birth?" You think I didn't do some research on reindeer? Shame on you, gentle reader! When a reindeer calf is first born, you should leave it be for about 4-6 hours, so say the reindeer farmers. Let the mother tend to it. And what do Mr. Donner and Santa do? They disturb the kid. I don't know what that would do, but I can imagine it would cause excitement, raise the heart rate, some degree of stress on the body, bam! Glowing nose.

See, now, perfectly scientific explanation to Rudolph's glowing nose.

If you want an explanation of talking snowmen, such as Sam and Frosty, then I implore you to look no further than the 2013 Doctor Who Christmas Special "The Snowmen". In short, they're leftovers from an alien invasion by snow that occurred in the 19th century.

Fa la la la la la la la la!!!!

Just to clarify for everybody out there...

I was typing today, since I finished my homework and felt like writing, when I noticed I still had Google open in the background from yesterday. It still had yesterday's Google Doodle of the letters playing tennis. "Well, that's distracting," I said to myself, so I hit refresh. And I saw that Google had a new logo. It's rather streamlined. Personally, I liked the old one. I liked how un-smooth it was, but I digress. It had a little link at the bottom, which I followed, and it lead to Google's blog, a place I've been before, but don't frequent. It's pretty nifty.

So I scrolled down on the comments, because even when I'm goofing off, I goof off. I have no legitimate reason. And I saw someone's comment saying she liked it- She said it was clean, simple, and skinny. Which it is. These are facts. Someone made a joke, which I liked-"real fonts have curves". It's a good joke.

But then someone attacked the OP (original poster). I'm posting the whole comment, and even though I'm not giving you the link to Google's blog, it's not hard to find, but please, whatever you do with this, don't troll this guy. He seems sad enough to me.

So you hate fat people? Just what I would expect from a racist. Look what America has become. Accept the lord as your master and savior! This is the only way those blacks will go to heaven anyway...   Screw your PC bullshit

So it seems a little hypocritical to me-calling someone a racist, then saying a racist comment saying Black people won't go to heaven unless they accept the Lord as their Savior. It's also really uncalled for, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Even if the OP said that she did hate fat people, that's not racist. Racist means, simply, a prejudice for or against a particular race. From Merriam-Webster-"racism-a belief that some races are by nature superior to others; also: discrimination based on such belief".  Weight is not a race. There is no shared fat-people culture, or skinny-people culture, they are not all from one country (and I've heard several variations of the "fat Americans" joke), and they are not all of one skin tone.

That's not to say that there isn't a word for prejudice against the overweight. When I was on iFunny the other day, I found a picture of an excerpt from a book called "Politically Correct Bedtime Stories" (you can just google "politically correct fairy tales" and get a PDF to read). I found myself a PDF and it was FUNNY! I won't tell you any of the stories, because they're just a pleasure to read, but it opens up with an introduction that tells you how silly the book is going to be (not in those exact words, of course). Here's the important part:

"If [...] I have inadvertantly displayed any sexist, racist, culturalist, nationalist, regionalist, ageist, lookist, ableist, sizeist, speciesist, intellectualist, socioeconimicist, ethnocentrist, phallocentrist, heteropatriachalist, or other type of bias as yet unnamed, I apologize and encourage your suggestions
for rectification."

Not all of those prejudices are words, I'm pretty sure. But my point is, there are so many types of prejudices out there, and they're not all racism, or race-oriented. Some people are just misguided, in fact, and dislike people. I always wonder how neo-Nazis can find anything admirable in the Nazi party to the point where they want to emulate it. (If anyone has any ideas, please tell me. I don't understand, seriously, and would like to.) But just calling someone a racist when they display (or you think they display) some kind of prejudice as the guy above did is wrong, and you lose a lot of credibility as a debater. (Not to mention the amount of Katie-points you lose by not carefully choosing your words!)

Anyway, that's all. Just thought I should clarify for everyone.

What voice part IS Adam Young?

So, I am a HUGE Owl City fan. The first thing I looked up when I started learning guitar was an Owl City song, and I was very disappointed that I couldn't play it because at the time I didn't know how to read guitar tabs. Now that I can, most of the songs in my tabs folder are Owl City songs, or Sky Sailing (which is basically Owl City except in acoustic rather than electronic medium). To state it exactly, I have 48 songs in my folder, and 24 of them are by Adam Young, the genius that is Owl City/Sky Sailing. Knowing that, I can get into my point.

This last week, Tuesday 'til Friday, I was at a singing summer camp which had no wi-fi. I typed this on my iTouch around 9 PM Thursday, and am posting it now.

Thursday, July 9, 2015, 9:10 PM
So, yes, I'm a nerd. Now that we've established that... Last February, I learned that there was an a capella summer camp in my area and it apparently had been there for 3 years and I had no idea. Awkward...

 

This is the 3rd and final night of it and I am lying in my room writing and listening to the sweet, sweet sounds of Owl City and associated Adam Young productions. I love the guy. 

On a related note, the a capella camp is actually more like a barbershop quartet camp. In barbershop, the parts aren't the standard SATB. From highest to lowest, you have tenor-flute like Soprano 1s; lead-they sing the melody line; baritone-the higher Altos with the trickiest and seemingly most random part, but it really makes the whole thing come together; and the bass-they sing bass, which for women ends at F-3, the F below middle C. That's what I'm singing (and it's turning out really fun but a literal pain-my chest hasn't hurt so much since I had to sing Alto with congestion). If I do this again, I'm going to try baritone. 

But anyway, so here I am lying in my room with my Owl City, and I'm wondering "What voice part is Adam Young, anyway?"

Usually, I'm pretty good at this. It's not exactly a difficult thing to determine. But I've become aware that your voice doesn't stop developing until you hit 35, and I'm pretty sure he's not that old. 

In his early Sky Sailing work, in everything but "I Live Alone", he's in the tenor range. As you move on through "Maybe Im Dreaming", "Ocean Eyes" and "All Things Bright and Beautiful", he's singing in the baritone range-lower than tenor but higher than bass. But in some of his more recent stuff, like his "Ultraviolet" EP, he has one song that's in E-flat, which is really low. For reference, "Fireflies" is in A-flat, and E-flat is a major fourth BELOW that. It's out of my range, but only just. Imagine "When Can I See You Again?", the song at the end of "Wreck-it Ralph", an octave lower. That is merely a half-step below the song in E-flat I'm referring to. (The song is called "This Isn't the End"--it is one of the best songs I've ever heard. Take a listen if you like.) The point is, it's in the bass range. 

So...Im at a loss here. On one song on the EP, he goes into some soprano notes, which throws me off even more. The guy is playing with my ears. It doesn't make me like him any less-it might, in fact, increase my liking for him. I like being thrown off my game in this mild way. Here's hoping he keeps me on my toes in the future.

Ahh, Science

Recently, Andrew, that historian brother of mine, has been taking a science class. I love science, and that's one of the reasons I know he's taking the class. The second reason is that when the book for this class arrived in the mail, I was home and present when it was unwrapped. The title-"Rare Earth"-was rather intriguing. The third reason I know he's taking the class is because he's having a lot of difficulty with it.

Thankfully, these difficulties are right up my alley. As I understand it, the assignment he's been working on as of late involves using the dates and times provided by the book to create a timeline of the history of the Earth. However, the book is riddled with inconsistencies. I haven't read it, and despite my interest before, I don't think I'm going to, but I've been reading the reviews on Amazon, both the positive and the negative ones to get a full perspective. At one point, the book says that it was take 300 Earths to match the mass of Jupiter, or fill it up (something like that), yet 3 pages later, it says that it would take 318, which, given the mass/size of the Earth, is a big difference. I wouldn't know which to believe, either. But there are also inconsistencies with the dates provided. At one point, it says that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, when in fact, it's 4.6 billion. It also provides false and conflicting information about when eukaryotic cells first showed up, how soon after the Great Oxygenation Event and Snowball Earth was oxygen first available, when the ice ages occurred, and so on. It contradicts itself constantly.

Apparently, the whole thesis of the book is that animal life like ours is rare because you have to have the perfect conditions to create intelligent life like us. In one sense, this is true. It's highly unlikely that there are any other species of humans wandering about the galaxy sending up satellites and whatnot. With the countless different ways that DNA could arrange itself, it is very unlikely that there is another species of human out there. And that's just if all DNA is carbon-based, and if all the conditions are exactly the same everywhere else. Here's an easier way to digest it. My dachshund is short-haired and brown (red in the right light). I have seen black shorthaired dachshunds, and just recently, I saw a tri-colored one. Not to mention that there are long-haired and wire-haired dachshunds. Now how could this be? They're all the same breed of dog. Because of DNA variations over time caused by mating, both selective and natural. Personally, I think that tri-colored dachshund is gorgeous, and stunning to look at, but I wouldn't trade my snoring, floppy-eared, red canine for anything. But even if you go as far back as to when the breed first appeared, when the conditions were relatively the same all over Germany, you had different colors, different sizes. I'm not yet a self-declared expert on the evolution of the breeds, but I'm pretty sure the different colors and sizes comes from the wolf genes still present and visible in the species of dog.

But to return to the point, because I could talk about dogs all day and not bore myself, it is also highly unlikely that we are the only form of intelligent life in the universe. We are the most intelligent that we are aware of, but that doesn't mean that, compared to everything else that might be there, we aren't bone-dead stupid. Right now I'm thinking of the Tralfamadorians from "Slaughterhouse-5". They could see through time and had humans in a zoo. They looked nothing like us, yet were clearly more intelligent than we. I also remember reading in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" about the Hooloovoo (I think it was), an "intelligent shade of blue". That's not even to mention the Buggers from "Ender's Game". They were clearly intelligent, at least enough to develop space travel, but we didn't understand how they communicated. If I remember right from the book, we didn't regard them as intelligent life. I always pictured the Buggers as space wasps, in my head. That's certainly not humanoid, unless I truly did miss something by covering up all those pictures of arthropods in middle school. It's highly unlikely that there are a lot of other humanoid species out there. Look how few humanoid species there are on Earth!

Humans aren't even the only form of intelligent life on Earth, and this I find fascinating. Octopi are the most intelligent, non-deuterostome on the planet. They play, just like we humans do. When lions play, it's really hunting practice, honing their predatory skills for later in life. Octopi play just to play, for fun, you might say. An octopus has accurately predicted the outcome of...some important sporting event, I can't remember which...for several years. And even among the deuterostomes like us, pigs are the 4th most intelligent animal. Dolphins are pretty high up there, too. The border collie is the smartest breed of dog. Elephants mourn their dead. Whale communication is a beautiful thing to hear. It's so complex, we can't crack it. The nonverbal language of dogs and chimpanzees is easier to grasp. And we're certainly not all that advanced in terms of sensory perception. Dogs, for example, can smell time. If you were to pull a petal off of a rose, a dog could smell the rate of decomposition, how long ago you pulled it off. They might also be able to tell who pulled it off. Dogs can smell fear, bombs, cancer...It's amazing, but here I am talking about dogs again.

The reason for the discrepancies in this book-I was talking about a book at the beginning, remember?-is that it was published 15 years ago. That may not sound like it's out of date, but science has drastically improved since then. As of the book's publication year of 2000, not very many exoplanets had been discovered. As of 2003, alone, over 100 had been discovered. As of March 3, 2015, 1821 confirmed exoplanets in 1192 planetary systems have been discovered, with 478 of those systems having more than 1 planet. And that's just in our galaxy, which is only 100,000 light years across. According to the best estimate of astronomers, there are at least 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. I know for sure that by 2000, we knew of at least 3000 galaxies.

All of this astronomy is difficult to grasp for the average person, and if that's false, then at the very least, it's very difficult for Andrew. He's not a science-y person like I am. All of that data in the above paragraph took a bit of research on my part. All the discrepancies in the book are throwing Andrew for a loop. They are a great source of frustration for him. But, like I said, all of those problems are right up my alley. Last year, Mr. Allchurch gave me, among other data files for AP Biology, a powerpoint about the history of the Earth. I trust Mr. Allchurch implicitly. So I gave Andrew the powerpoint and told him that it would be, without a doubt, absolutely correct. I also, as just a bit of fun for myself, looked up the history of animal evolution and sorted all of my animal figures in the order that they evolved in. Yes, I know, I'm a nerd. I bookmarked the website I got my dates from and sent him that, too. Hopefully they'll be of some use to him.

Blimey, I love science!

Silence and Laughter

This morning, I had the pleasure of viewing a conversation held entirely in silence. I know, it kind of seems like a contradiction in terms, but I'm telling you, the only words spoken from the time it began to the time it ended, the only words that were spoken were "Bless you" when somebody sneezed, and the sneezer was not one of the two conversationalists. For the purposes of this blog, they will be called E.G. and R.J. They know who they are, but all you guys will be left guessing. Ha-ha.

Today, in 5th period, which is Environmental Science, we had a test. (And believe me, that's a blessing all it's own. Have you ever had those moments where you just want to "kill" people? Like not literally kill but you just want to make them go away? That's basically 5th period for me. I love the class, but I can't stand my classmates. So there's a knife murderer that comes out. She basically looks like the guy from "Assassin's Creed". But, anyway, a test day is the day where no one talks. Which means, no one I have to silence with my soul-stealing blade, made of dragon tooth and igneous rock. Man, it's gorgeous.) On test days, one of the-I get the feeling they're not exactly special-ed, but that's really the best name right now-teachers takes several students (some of the ones that are most often subject to my Blade) to another room to take their test. This makes the room even quieter. I often get my test done, if not first, then second or third. So then I get about an hour to do whatever I want to, so long as it's quiet. Usually I choose to write. After all, it's a perfect time. Today, however, the teacher had a project she wanted us to get started on. So I grabbed everything I needed and got to work. Unfortunately, the person sitting across from me was making the only sounds in the room. He has a voice that you can easily pick out of a jumble of voices, so naturally when it's the only voice it's pretty distracting. So I had to stop working.

I don't know why, but after I stopped I spent some time just looking at the ceiling not doing anything. I guess I was just relaxing. But when I started paying attention to the room around me, the first thing I noticed was in my peripheral vision. I don't know what it was, but it was enough to catch my attention.  R.J. What on earth was he doing? So I followed his motion as he threw something across the room. E.G. caught it. I had just stumbled across a cross-room duel, which included spear throwing, upside-down gun shooting, and grenade throwing. 

Now, usually, interactions like this are accompanied by sound, and are just plain annoying. But when it's just the motions, all exaggerated and silent, it's ruddy hilarious. And I had to stifle all of my laughter because people were still taking their tests. 

Then, and this was the highlight, E.G. got ahold of a meter stick. R.J. had been moved across the room so as to discourage cheating (there were only 2 people per table), but had left his bag beside E.G. So he got ahold of it with the meter stick and tried to pick it up. Apparently it was really heavy, and it fell right to the floor. That was funny on it's own, but the teacher didn't even notice, which made it even funnier. Then he managed to bring the bag close and started digging through it. He would pull things out, glare hilariously across the room at R.J. and then place the object on the table. Except-He took R.J.'s asthma inhaler-at least I think that's what it was, I wasn't exactly nearby-and put it into the pocket of his hoodie. Then he pulled out a PopTart. Supreme glare. He shoved it into his hoodie, like you do when you're trying to hide something, you know? You hide it under your jacket? So he stuffed this PopTart into his hoodie. Then he pulled out a large black notebook, and he glared even bigger. Then, I don't know how, but he managed to stuff this notebook into his hoodie. Now perhaps I should say here, that he wasn't shoving this stuff into the bottom of the hoodie. He was shoving stuff into the head hole. And when your head's in the way, there's not exactly enough space for a notebook that big. Then he proceeded to make sure the bag was completely empty and then put it on his head. Later, when he held R.J.'s "heart" up to the sky, he looked like a priest worshipping some sun god. Blimey, it was hilarious! And I couldn't make a sound.

Also-and personally, I think this is the best part-they knew I was watching the whole time. So every time I laughed, they laughed. And every time one of them would look at me, especially E.G., I couldn't help but laugh.

Okay, maybe this was a "you had to be there" situation, but I just thought it was a gift to be able to watch a totally silent conversation take place, not to mention an absolutely amazing comedic opportunity.