Dharmachakra: Life as a Wheel

You can blame Lidian for this post. She's the one who made the comment in the previous post which made me want to talk about personality and life-purpose some more. (As if Google would see any authority in a link from THIS sorry blog, right? Go visit her anyway. And comment on her posts. Harass her. That's a jest - do NOT harass Lidian. She is an introverted writer who lives in a Cabin in the woods. Wood. In the Yukon. Whatever.)

In my last post, I ridiculously put forth the notion that all of us fit into one of only three personality types. That was hogwash, of course; there are only two. All people are either Homer Simpson or Mr. Burns. Those who are gullible - clueless - and those who prey upon the gullible - assholes and politicians. Wait, those last two words mean the same thing. Sorry.

Seriously, though. If I may be serious. Ok, I will ease into the serious part slowly.

In my closely-guarded MUPPET system of human personality classification, there emerge, remnants of Mt. Olympus, superior beings who see it as their mission on earth to interpret the world around them - who even try to make sense out of life. These people are insane (of course) and they make me sick. As proof of its sense of humor, the Creator made me one. Thanks a lot.

Though my intentions were benevolent, I lied in my previous post when I said sculptors and painters and dancers and musicians were "Craftsmen-Artists". All artists are actually "Interpreters." So are photographers, those lazy painters among us. And ...YES!... so are introverted writers.

There are no extraverted writers. Not good ones, anyway. There are only introverted, tortured souls who write in solitude from inside a whiskey bottle. Or whisky bottle, if your name is Dylan Thomas. Ok, William Shakespeare was an extravert, but his writing was crap, right?

From their Poe-esque demented dispair in their lonely behind-in-the-rent garrets, they stare vacantly through the thick cigarette smoke and type at 2 a.m. with two fingers on old black Remingtons. No self-respecting introverted writers ever seem to learn to touch-type. And in their tragic liquor- and tobacco-shortened lives, they interpret the human condition.

As for me, I don't drink whiskey OR whisky, and I stopped smoking eons ago. My black 1938 Remington is retired to a dusty closet in the basement, replaced by a computer keyboard. Worse, I touch-type. But then, we all know I am not Dylan Thomas, either. "Interpreter-Lite," that's me.

If you've read this far down, hoping I'm about to devulge the meaning of life in the last part of the post, you should probably stop reading right now and go ask for your money back. I think I DO know why we are here on this earth. It isn't to be lawyers or politicians or telemarketers, just in case you thought that. The best advice this little doggie can give you is to find some sort of work that is congruent with your own personality and then grapple courageously from day to day. Find your passion. Something you care about. Let that passion provide your motivation.

Big letdown, eh?

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Jo Coudert (in "Advice from a Failure") wrote that our lives sometimes seem to follow the format for a theatrical play: in the first act, the protagonist is chased up a tree; in the second act, people throw stones up at him as he cowers on a limb; and in the final act he finds a way down out of the tree.

The only thing is (she writes) is that we have come to the theater late, or dozed off, and we've missed the first act. We know we're up a tree, all of us - hell, people are throwing rocks at us! - but we don't know why we're up there or why we are being stoned. So we go through our lives trying hard to learn why we are here and what we did wrong to deserve what we are getting, and, in any respite of the slings and arrows being thrown at us, we earnestly try to find our way down out of the tree.

May you find your own purpose in life, and may that knowledge lead you, finally, to peace.

Which one are you? No, really...

Have any of you ever checked out your personality profile? It seems to be all the rage now - at least there are tests all over the internet. You've got your Carl Jung and your Myers-Briggs. You have engrams and colors and... more.

Save your time - I've narrowed them all down into one condensed version for you. I call it the Max Unfailing Personality Profile Estimating Technique (MUPPET). You can forget about all your Introverted Thinking and ENTP The Mastermind and all that. The way I figure it, there are only three types of basic personality types in this world: Homer Simpson, Ned Flanders and Mr. Burns. Which is to say "Clueless", "Religious" and "Asshole".

Kidding. Rewinding.

My three REAL base personality types are "Investigator-Planners", "Craftsmen-Artists" and "Helper-Savers".

In the first group you have all the Scientists, Inventors, Planners, Engineers, Architects and what not - people who generally use their brains to make their living. Even Walmart managers are in this bin.

In the second group are the people who are only happy when their hands are making something. Machinists. Potters. Sculptors. Woodworkers. Surgeons. Maybe not surgeons.

In the last group are your Bishop Tutus, Ned Flanderses and Mother Theresas, of course, but also counselors, schoolteachers, crossing guards and homeless-shelter organizers. And surgeons, probably. And paramedics (unless they were just unemployed and needed to cross-train.)

Painters and dancers and photographers and musicians fall into the "Interpreter" personality type. Wait. There is no such type.

Four. FOUR personality types.

Never mind.

A very unusual way to boil water

In 1831, Michael Faraday discovered that if an electrical conductor (a copper wire, for example) is passed through a magnetic field, there will be an electrical current induced in that conductor. That's pretty much the essence of the story of electricity as we know it today. The refinements that we've learned since then are icing on the cake.

An electric generator is a device used to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy. That is to say, mechanical energy is used to pass that conducter through a magnetic field, and the electricity thus produced is sent through wires to your home.

"Mechanical energy" (the energy needed to spin the conductors around within that magnetic field) might be sourced from wind power or water power, but far more commonly that mechanical energy comes from steam power.

Steam is created by boiling water. The steam thus produced is blasted into a turbine which turns the electrical generator. The means used to boil the water can be oil or gas (or wood, or whatever) but by far the most common fuel used to boil water for electrical generation is coal.

Boiling water with heat made from coal is costly both in dollars and also to our environment. Janet can testify to the latter. Burning coal is also a dirty proposition and VERY expensive to make even half clean with scrubbers.

Another way to boil water is much cheaper and much MUCH cleaner (if guarded properly.) This is by using nuclear energy to produce the electricity.

A lot of people have a mental image that in order to produce electricity in a nuclear power plant, uranium fuel rods are somehow mysteriously rubbed together by scientists and electricity is given off in the process.

In reality, making the atoms in uranium excited (VERY excited!) in things called "fuel rods" simply makes the fuel rods very hot. Very hot indeed. But basically, if you cover the fuel rods with water, the water will boil and turn to steam like any other boiling water. Hence the title to this post: "A very unusual way to boil water."

Uranium is very cheap. Uranium is very efficient - it lasts for a very long time (a very long time indeed compared to coal.) Thus you have a cheap fuel that lasts for a long time which can produce steam and spin generators to make large amounts of electricity for a very long time. Very cost effective.

::Fran Drescher as The Nanny: "Sooooo....what's yer PRAHHHHH-blem???::

Well, the problem are the Homer Simpsons of the world employed at nuclear power plants who are too bored or too sleepy to do one simple thing: make sure they watch that the level of the water stays covering the uranium fuel rods. Even Dr. No knew enough to do that. (Although he, or Ian Flemming, were not all that clear on containment procedures.)

In a way this IS rocket science, but in a very real sense it is not: what idiots could not watch water level gauges and read sensors and look into tv monitors and cause water valves to be turned when needed?

What idiots? Well, the idiots at Three Mile Island for one. And the idiots at Chernobyl for another.

You see, when the water boiling on your stove boils away, the dry pan gets very hot indeed, and fires result.

When nuclear reactions are taking place and the hot fuel rods are not kept covered with water, they get very hot too. So hot they will melt anything they come in contact with. Metal. Concrete. Dirt. Ah. Dirt. They will continue melting all the way through the earth, all the way to China. The China Syndrome. That's a theory. It has never actually happened.

So, today, in the U.S., we still put up with 19th century methods of burning coal and other fossil fuels to boil water, rather than make sure idiots are properly trained and watched closely.

The last U.S. commercial nuclear power generator to go on-line was on February 7, 1996.

Of course something else happens when you don't properly keep the nuclear fuel rods and contaminated materials safely within the containment system, and that "something" certainly must not be overlooked.

[To be continued.]

[Yes, Dear A., I know all about France's fine 86% nuclear production. Just wait, please.]