Let the Sunshine, Let the Sun Shine In, The Sunshine In

The title comes from the 1969 hit single by the Fifth Dimension, often erroneously called the Age of Aquarius. It was actually a medley of two songs from the musical Hair, "Aquarius" and "The Flesh Failures (Let The Sunshine In)". The Age of Aquarius is an astrological concept, referring to the shifting of the stars in the sky as the Earth continues through its 26,000 year precession, i.e the slow turning of where in the stars the north pole of the Earth points. Once every 3000 years this slow precession shifts which zodiacal signs are associated with which months by one. These are called Ages. Before 500 BC was the Age of Aries, The Age of War and Fire, which was followed by the Age of Pisces, an era dominated by Monotheism and Spirituality (whether that was that predicted or post-dicted, I think you can guess). The Age of Aquarius should start in roughly 2654, and should supposedly be a time of Freedom and Peace. While it is nice that Astrologers noted the precession, it doesn't seem to bother them that it means that the sun is not actually in the sign it was 2000 or so years ago, when much of Astrology was codified. A Taurus does not have the sun in Taurus at their birth. It is actually in Aries. Still, if I decide to freeze myself I think I will set the alarm to defrost me in 2654 when universal harmony will abound and all haircuts will be banned.

When planning to freeze oneself for centuries, you might want to keep track of how much Solar Irradiance is striking your potential cryogenic site, perhaps using a handy map like the one above. To put it another way, this map shows the average amount of solar energy -- sunshine -- that strikes each region of the Earth, including nights and periods of cloudy weather. This is also the sort of map you would want to consult when trying to decide on the best places to build Solar Energy collectors. The entire Earth is being constantly bombarded by roughly 150 PetaWatts (150 billion MegaWatts) which can be compared to the entire energy use of the human race, around 15 TeraWatts (15 million MegaWatts), roughly a factor of 10,000. The little black circles on the map show how much area one would need to cover with photovoltaic cells if they operate at 8% efficiency (light to electricity): roughly 910,000 square km. If that area were collapsed into one circle, it would be roughly 600 miles in diameter.



While not outside the realm of possibility -- the human race has already built structures and paved over even greater areas -- it is still a bit daunting. What would really help is if we could up that light-to-energy efficiency. Say, to at least
42.8% efficiency? This new solar cell record is not only impressive because it beat the old one by over 2% in a field where 0.1-0.2% has been the norm, but because they did it using a relatively simple system that should be much more easily placed in something thin, portable, and easily manufactured. Now don't get me wrong, cells of this efficiency are still clearly at the prototype stage, but a path to a mass-produced, reasonably priced 50% efficiency photovoltaic cell suddenly seem a bit closer today than yesterday. See how happy it made these scientists? Oddly enough, one of the team members appears to be a 14-year old girl... or a scientist that continually gets crap about her youthful appearance, anyway.

And what would a 50% efficiency do for us? Well, for starters that 600-mile diameter collecting area now only needs to be 250 miles across to power the whole Earth. For the United States (which uses roughly 1/5 of the world's energy) that circle only needs to be over a hundred miles across, or about 30,000 square kilometers. The U.S. has a lot of empty desert, people. For those panicked about Global Warming, solar energy seems like a fairly workable answer.^

One might rightly say, ok Bigshot, put your money where your mouth is. Put some panels up on your own damn house. Sigh. While that was in our original plans, the cost of everything skyrocketed to a point where we just could not afford it, at least not at this stage. Rest be assured it is in our long term plan to put them on the roof of our addition, once we figure out how to pay for stuff like electrical wiring and plumbing. Plus, I may want to wait for some fancy-dancy, high-efficiency panels that I heard rumors may be just around the corner...



Turns out our contractor was a bit late from returning from his trip. I believe there was a funeral involved, so I can't be too grumpy about it. The upshot of that is that there has not been much done on the Colbert estate this past week. To tide you over here are a series of pictures of the rough plumbing that has been-oft mentioned, but little displayed.

We start with a typical section of plumbing from our bathroom. The big black pipes are waste pipes out, the thin copper pipes the water lines in. You will also notice that the big black pipes go both up and down. Turns out you have to ventilate your waste pipes, otherwise nasty gases can build up. You don't want a methane explosion in your house, do you? I didn't think so.



Here is a close-up of that rough copper plumbing from the home of my future shower stall. The big white doohickey in the center is the main valve that controls all the water flow. It not only mixes the hot and cold water coming up from below, but it has a diverter valve that can send water to either the main shower head or a hand sprayer. The actual shower head, hand sprayer, and knob handle are all what is called "finished plumbing". Rough plumbing is what goes on inside your walls, while finished plumbing is what happens once the walls have been put on. Needless to say, rough is the tough part and where you actually spend most of your money.



Which brings us to our bathtubs. We will have two full bathrooms in the final house. A minimal guest/kids bathroom and our ultra-posh master bathroom. The first photo is the new kids tub, which is a very standard cast iron tub. So standard we literally pulled it off the shelf at Home Depot.




This beauty is our fancy-schmancy jacuzzi tub in the master bath. If you look underneath you can see all the various tubes that will carry air and water to the jacuzzi nozzles inside the tub. The tub is presently covered by several layers of tarp and cardboard to protect the tub interior. Not only is this a good idea generally, but it became essential after the tub was one of the early victims of our vandals (see the Space Toilet entry). Our poor contractor had to spend two hours gently rubbing off spray paint with a damp towel, so there was no way he was going to risk it again.



One of the great things about having twins is that each baby has a built-in playmate. I am sure when they get older they will be able to interact with cildren of all ages, but they are developing so rapidly right now that only a baby very close in age is really going to be on the same wavelength. Growling is fun this week, eating books is fun next week, wrestling in the crib is fun the week after that. These two monsters regularly crack each other up and that is really a hell of a lot of fun.






This series of photos all take place in one of the two cribs. For over three months now the babies have been sleeping in separate cribs as they have just gotten too big and too rambunctious to try and sleep together anymore. On our rare trips out of town they have slept in the same crib and no one got a lot of sleep. Being in separate cribs has hardly impeded their socializing. It is a rare morning when I don't walk into the nursery and find them both standing on the end of their repsective cribs, like two neighborhood ladies chatting over a fence.



Still, getting to be in the same crib for any length of time is a treat. If Rylie and Kayla don't have something more important on their agenda (i.e. food), they love nothing better than to crawl all over the same crib, climbing up the sides, and then falling all over each other in the center of the crib. They can build themselves into such a frenzy that they race each other to get back up onto their feet again so they can fall down and produce one more solid bounce on the firm crib mattress. I must admit I encourage this behavior, which I really shouldn't, as it more often than not ends in tears as one of the girls bumps her noggin or gets pinned to the sheets. But then again, they are usually squealing with delight again moments later, so I can't be too bad of a father.

Finally here are the twins in one of their more serious moments. I think they are posing for an album cover for their group, The Two Dimensions. I hear they are thinking of calling the album The Age of Gemini once they work out a few minor copyright issues.





^Caution: If it seemed like too many numbers or too much solar talk at the top you won't like this end note one bit. The situation is even better than described. First of all, roughly 10% of all the world's energy is already being produced by non-greenhouse producing methods. 3% Hydroelectric, 6% Nuclear, 1% solar + wind. Second, electricity production represents only about a third of that energy usage. While it is true that how the energy is being used does nothing to stop Greenhouse gases, it has a big effect on the practicality of solutions. For all our electricity needs we only require 10,000 square km. A big hunk of that we could generate locally, right on our own roofs, which helps further as 27% of electricity is lost in the transmission from the power plants to people's homes. If solar panels can get cheap and efficient enough we could see individual citizens driving the conversion from the bottom, rather than government struggling to impose it from the top. None of this takes into account increases in energy efficiency, which have been marching along nicely. Unfortunately the population has also been growing... which is another nice thing about the solar roof idea. More people, more roofs, more power. It scales.