Loading...Brian's Morning Newsletter
December 10th 2009
Unidentified artist – Eighteenth century
Landscape (View of a Town)1, after 1753
Oil on Eastern white pine panel
Good Morning
Roaming the slippery slope of massive duality so early in the morning, I just love the term "Flat Plate Heat Exchanger," while exploring super early American Art history. Maybe you've heard the term heat exchanger and perhaps you recall that I've written about the FPHE before. Well, I dug one out of the tin shed, along with all the rest of the waste veggie oil (WVO) – straight veggie oil (STO) equipment I took in trade a few years ago for rebuilding the electrics for a diesel Chevy Blazer. The operative word I'm using is took. I told that woman many times that truck wasn't worth all the work it needed, but she wouldn't listen, and had it towed here anyway.
Obviously I don't feel too good about the deal, but we now own the major pieces to an alternative fuel diesel. Before I get too far away and deep into the reasons why I'm talking WVO in the Winter, let me say a few words about the image you are seeing first thing in the morning. Now according to the museum web site http://www.worcesterart.org/Collection/Early_American/ this image is over mantle painting done on White Pine. I assume by mantle they mean fireplace mantle. So it is even more remarkable that these pieces survived. You know those first fireplaces smoked like crazy, and this work was right above the fire.
The artist isn't identified for this work , and in my opinion the technique is anything to write about, but I do enjoy an artists view into history. Depending on what the artist wanted to depict we are still looking at a very early American river scene. If you think about it the landscape 250 years ago looks nothing like it does now. we don't know which river that is, but notice the lack of elm trees, or the more one delves into this scene the more one feels the virginity of the scene. In simple terms, European man hasn't screwed it over too badly yet. It may just be me, but I like the painting because it is America not too long after white people started changing it.
Unidentified artist Seventeenth century
Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary, about 1671 and 1674
Oil on canvas 42 x 36 3/4 in. (108 x 93.3 cm) Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Albert W. Rice, 1963.134
———–
Hey at least this one is painted on canvas, too bad Europeans couldn't have shown the native Americans some of thier long history of culture, before they started obliterating everything. Who knows, I'm sure all white people weren't ugly, it's just that history lessons seem to single out the Custers and Buffalo Bills as notable, when it would seem more likely they were mass murdering fuckheads to coin an Eddie Izzard phrase. Ah, see how easily I digress? My cousin is right, I am not proud to be American. In the only way I know how I do what I can to make my life mean more.
When I look at history I don't see anything different, take a look at the headlines:
Barack Obama's Nobel peace prize – latest news
The US president is in Oslo to receive an award that many thought premature. Misgivings have increased since he announced a troop surge in Afghanistan.
—————-
I had a different link and story in mind, but I lost it somehow, the closet I could relocate is posted below: Obama to note irony of peace prize in wartime. From what I've been reading Obama is pretty much following the same path as all of the American presidents, war, war, lunch break, war war, afternoon tea, retire for the day with a nice presidential ball. What happened to the radical American revolutionaries from the 70s? Where are The Weathermen? I hope are all dead, or in insane asylums, because if they could see what I see, they wold be violently shaking this generation about the throat, all the while screaming, what the hell happened to you? We opened people's eyes for a minute, and the establishment closed them so securely and firmly that you'll sleepwalk right into Afghanistan to murder whoever they tell you to.
This is seriously fucked up people, we have backslid to Nixon's Vietnam, except now there are no more American protesters. This is a slap in the face to anyone who chooses to see a truth other than what the government tells us the truth is. Sad sad sad
So before I cry, I want to tell you about what I am doing to get off the Middle East oil nipple, because I know some of you haven't already forgotten what the invasion of the Middle East is about. Right, it has nothing to do with bringing democracy or paying the proverbial "Them" back for 9/11 it is still about the oil people. You still want to drive a big car, right? figuratively you can go ahead and reach back in time to Berkley California during the anti-war protests, and pick out a nice college girl or boy and slap em a good one, for being such idiots, and hoping for peace.
While we are at it let's not forget the Chicago Democratic National Convention and 1968 Chicago Riot Left Mark On Political Protests now that was a war and we the people lost.
What's happening today? Well besides the protesters in Oslo questioning when the Change is going to take place, I don't know what else matters. I will pick up Nell from the hospital this morning, and then try to figure out how I'm going to get her home with out bumping her unduly from the snow drifts all over our driveway. I know I said I wasn't going to read the Internet news anymore because it is too negative, but besides being snowed in up the hill here, for unknown reasons the county hasn't ployed the road up the valley to San Ignacio, and we found out that yesterday the Post Office told the mail lady if the road isn't ployed she can't deliver the mail. So I'm really isolated, and my only contact is through the Internet, and people the news ain't good.
Whatever screwed up mess the government made of healthcare reform seems to have been twisted beyond everyones recognition. The good news is whatever it is minus the whole abortion issue, it appears to be going through. I'm really looking forward to the day that healthcare for all becomes reality, ha I had you going there for a minute, didn't I? The government under Obama is worse than ever. At least Bush was just an idiot. What's Obama's excuse?
Below, the fabled HPHE, mounted on the firewall of the Isuzu Trooper.
A heat exchanger as you may know removes heat from one source and adds the heat to a another medium, in this case it will use engine coolant to heat the biodiesel/ dinodiesel mixture which has been clogging up fuel filters with the cold weather and costing us much money in replacement filters. The larger hose nipples on the top are going to be connected to a hose coming from the water pump and returned to the same pipe. I thought about using the heater hose, but the fluid in that pipe doesn't flow when when the heater is off. I thought maybe that wouldn't be bad. Do I need heated fuel in the Summer? Not really, but from what I have seen, hot biodiesel burns way better than cold or even lukewarm fuel. That issue hasn't been decided yet, I can still tap in where ever I want to. The lower brass nipples are for the fuel.
I had fun fabricating the three metal brackets which hold the FPHE to the firewall. The snow covering everything outside including all of my metal stashes made locating the proper pieces difficult, so I cut this metal from a salvaged electrical box. I'm just getting used to the metal cutting bandsaw that Louie lent us. It cut through this metal making strips which I then shaped on our homemade anvil and further bent and formed the metal with a chisel and the vise. The color is brass, which I used to weld (braze) the whole thing together.
This is the fuel filter that came from the WVO setup. I looked this up online (the website is posted right there on the label, I love the Internet) http://www.davcotec.com/ not a great site, and I figured out most of what I know on my own about this amazing filter. Fist off it says right on the label that it is a WVO and or biodiesel fuel filter. Sweet. This almost made me employ this thing, except for two issues: 1: I just ordered two Isuzu fuel filters at $25 each. 2: this thing is huge. It was going to be a tight fit getting this in the engine compartment.
Afgter examining this Davco filter I see that this is a heated filter. So I went back to the original idea of using the FPHE on the Trooper to heat the fuel before it goes into the filter, because everything I've read suggests that the cold weather makes biodiesel turn into waxy flakes and this is what plugs the filters. This seems true from me experience. When try to clean out a plugged filter it is full of flakes, and lately frozen moisture.
Above, are miscellaneous parts from a WVO two fuel tank system.The filter on the left is a water separator that I had installed a month ago, and it did work, only thing is the water it removed from the fuel was frozen solid in the bottom f the clear plastic tube, and this was the cause of the Trooper breakdown last week. Good idea, but didn't work. It is however what caused me to realize that whatever small amount of biodiesel which remains in the fuel tank now that I have filled up three time with dinodiesel is still wrecking the expensive fuel filter because of the extreme cold.
The silver thing is a 12 volt DC electrically operated valve. There are usually two, for switching between the two seperate fuel systems, since WVO-SVO absolutely need to be used hot only, otherwise the thick liquid would get stuck every where. Oil get thinner when heated.
So that's all I have time for this morning.
I need to go get my wife
Thanks for listening.
Brian Rodgers
Obama to note irony of peace prize in wartime
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is accepting the world's best-known peace award as a wartime president, an incongruity that he will directly speak to when he receives the Nobel Peace Prize on Thursday, White House officials say.
The president departed Wednesday to Oslo in an overnight flight, in time to be there for the award ceremony and banquet, and not much more. His minimalist approach reflects a White House that sees little value in touting an honor for peace just nine days after Obama announced he was sending 30,000 more troops to the war in Afghanistan.
The contrast has been stark for weeks. Obama won the award in early October, just as his review of a revamped war plan was intensifying. He and two speechwriters pivoted attention to the Nobel address the very day after Obama announced he was escalating the U.S. forces in Afghanistan to their highest levels.
So Obama, honored for strengthening international diplomacy, will use his speech to discuss what goes into the decision to expand a war.
Asked if Obama was excited about the award, national security aide and speechwriter Ben Rhodes responded: "I think he feels as if it places a responsibility upon him."
"It's the company that you keep as a Nobel laureate that I think makes the deepest impression upon him," said Rhodes, who is helping craft the president's speech. "That kind of adds an extra obligation to essentially extend the legacy."
The president is expected to outline his vision of American leadership and emphasize the responsibilities of all nations to advance the cause of peace.
He was considering lots of ideas for the speech and was likely to winnow them and hash out a final draft aboard Air Force One on the flight to Norway, where the peace-award-in-wartime irony hasn't gone unnoticed.
Peace activists in the Norwegian capital plan a 5,000-person anti-war protest on Thursday. Protesters have plastered posters around Oslo featuring the image of Obama from his iconic campaign poster, altered with skepticism to say, "Change?"
Demonstrators plan to gather in sight of Obama's hotel room balcony — where he is expected to wave to a torchlight procession in his honor — and chant slogans playing on Obama's own slogans, foremost among them: "Change: Stop the War in Afghanistan."
Obama's selection for the award by the Norwegian Nobel Committee was such a stunner that even the White House had no idea it was coming. Obama quickly said he didn't think he deserved it, and that it was really meant to boost a new U.S. approach to world affairs.
The list of Nobel peace laureates over the last 100 years includes transformative figures and giants on the world stage. They include heroes of the president, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela, and others he has long admired, such as George Marshall, who launched a postwar recovery plan for Europe.
"The president understands and again will also recognize that he doesn't belong in the same discussion as Mandela and Mother Teresa," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said while discussing the president's speech Wednesday.
Obama is writing much of the speech himself. He has been reading the Nobel speeches by past winners to help shape his thinking.
Amid the enormous worldwide reaction to Obama's win, the prevailing response was almost confusion: He won for what, exactly?
The Nobel panel cited Obama's work toward freeing the world of nuclear weapons, combatting global warming, embracing international institutions and leading based on values shared by most of the people around the world. On that front, he was deemed nothing less than "the world's leading spokesman."
But back home in a nation struggling with war and recession, the White House is respectfully but quietly viewing this as a one-speech trip, in and out.
Obama will not do a full-scale news conference or a traditional post-ceremony interview with CNN.
As part of the festivities, Obama will offer remarks at a formal dinner banquet, where he will be joined by Norwegian royalty. Yet Obama leaves Oslo on Friday and will be long gone by the time an elaborate concert featuring celebrity musicians takes place in his honor.
The Nobel honor comes with a $1.4 million prize. The White House says Obama will give that to charities but has not yet decided which ones.
Associated Press writer Ian MacDougall in Oslo contributed to this story.
-- Visit the forum at: http://outfitnm.com/forum/ Read the BMN online at: http://outfitnm.com/category/brians-morning-newsletter Oh yeah, I turned the comments back on at http://outfitnm.com
Recent Comments