Inman's quite a character. I've been reading The Oatmeal for several years now (I have his first book as well). In the last year or so his comics have really taken off, and have been copied by another website called funnyjunk.com. Matt politely asked them to stop re-posting his comics without permission, and dropped the matter. About a year later, he received a letter threatening to sue for $20,000 from funnyjunk.com's lawyer for defamation. As is Inman's style, instead of paying up, he said he would raise $20k, take a picture of it, create a picture of funnyjunk.com's mom seducing a Kodiak bear, and send it along to the lawyer. Oh, and donate the money raised to the National Wildlife Foundation and the American Cancer Society. And it just spiraled from there with more hilarity. You can read about all the shenanigans on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal_and_FunnyJunk_legal_dispute I'm not linking to The Oatmeal's pages on the lawsuit, there's lots of NSFW stuff on there--if you want to see it, you can find it easily enough. Dan On Oct 23, 2012, at 8:35 PM, daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote:
Ever drive under a high power line with your radio turned on? AC power lines act like radio transmitters. The power just drifts off into the air. A friend of mine in the radio industry says that the power loss of long distances is significant. DC transmission gets around this.
DT
________________________________ From: Brent Watson <brentjwatson@yahoo.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 6:28 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Science Friday: Tesla
The trick is to get high voltage for transmission and low voltage for users. Back in Edison's and Tesla's time the conversion from low voltage to high voltage and back for a DC system could not be accomplished easily like we do today. It is easy to convert AC voltages - you use a transformer. DC voltage changes require more sophisticated electronics. Edison could not convert the DC voltage and so had to use low voltage generators. Low voltage has significantly more loss than high voltage. Loss is inversely proportional to the square of the voltage, and is independent of whether the voltage is AC or DC. That's why Edison's system could not go long distances. Tesla and Westinghouse had the advantage of easy voltage conversion.
High voltage DC systems require smaller, simpler conductors than AC systems because of skin effect. The transmission line cost is lower. That is the reason DC is sometimes used for long distance power transmission.
Nicola Tesla - surely an unrewarded super-genius. We need someone like that today.
BTW, the telephone company does use the earth for a return path for the bell signal. It turns out that the earth really has a pretty low resistance. If the power company is getting "ground" currents, I suspect a fault in the transmission line.
Brent
________________________________ From: Larry Holmes <larry@kijoda.com> To: Utah Astronomy <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2012 5:53 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Science Friday: Tesla
Interesting point when comparing Tesla's DC system with Edison's DC. You out there may or may not know that the Intermountain Power Plant in Delta, UT generates AC but converts it to DC for transmission to Riverside. CA where a 2nd converter station restores it to AC. The line is, I believe, some 700+ miles long, and they experience less loss with DC than AC. Must have been quite sizable to pay for the 2 converter stations, but a drop in the bucket when compared to the total cost of the plant. So, we burn Utah coal, to furnish electricity to CA, because LA Water & Power could not get a permit to build a coal-fired station in CA. The Delta station is owned by a consortium of CA cities to which the electricity is distributed. This really does not have anything to do with astronomy (for which I apologize), but does tie in with the Oatmeal discussion of the two men. The author could use a little soap in his mouth. Anyone remember that one? I %%#@#&** sure do. 73
On 10/22/2012 6:14 PM, Wiggins Patrick wrote:
I just finished listening to a podcast of last Friday's edition of Science Friday. The subject was Nikola Tesla. In case you heard the piece and wondered about the Tesla cartoon they referred to, here it is:
http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
Caution, there are a few spots where the language is PG-13.
And here is the podcast.
patrick
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-- Daniel Holmes, danielh@holmesonics.com "Laugh while you can, monkey boy!" -- Lord John Whorfin