Trivial Pursuits

In which I argue that power companies are saving the planet.

I'm kind of unnerved by this sudden concern over coal ash. The 60 Minutes report that seems to have sparked this trend was just breathless paranoia with a clear "you can't trust the power companies!" message. Well, duh. You can't trust the power companies. And coal ash isn't identical to dirt. Obviously, we need to look at how we store coal ash and at what we do with it—and we should be working our asses off to get the hell away from coal.

But consider this: 2 billion tons of Portland cement will be made this year, and 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide will be released as a result. (The answer is not cleaner energy, by the way. Even if cement plants used 100% clean energy to heat the clinker, which they don't, the chemical reaction involved in making cement still releases about half a ton of CO₂ per ton of cement.) Fly ash, one of the constituents of coal ash, is a natural pozzolan which can replace up to 30% of Portland cement in concrete in most applications. And concrete, just to remind you all, is the single most widely used man-made material in the world—and I seem to recall it beats out just about every natural material except water.

Now, I don't know anything about any of the other recycling techniques being used, like the making of geopolymers, but I do know a thing or two about concrete. And even if coal ash is potentially dangerous, even if using it as a replacement for natural soil in backfill or embankments is a bad idea, once you encase it in concrete, what the hell is it going to do? It's not like the rest of the ingredients in concrete are particularly good for you—if you're cutting or grinding concrete, the traces of arsenic in the 3% or so fly ash content is the least of your concerns. And even the workers dealing with raw fly ash should be at least as concerned about the cement, which is every bit as fine as fly ash with the added bonus of being quite capable of causing severe chemical burns.

Right now, 43% of the ash being produced is reused, much of it in concrete. Like I say, it's quite possible that coal ash shouldn't be used untreated as backfill—I don't know enough to say, though my understanding of the science is that there's no really convincing argument that it's particularly dangerous. But if the EPA does decide that coal ash should be regulated as toxic waste, then it can't be reused for anything. It'll pile up even faster and we still won't have a particularly good way to store it. Why not use some of it to make concrete greener?

(Mind you, there are lots of other pozzolans, some of which—like blast furnace slag and silica fume—are also recycled industrial waste products. My company doesn't really use any pozzolan-extended cement, because we mostly make architectural products and most pozzolans will affect the color of concrete. If we did decide to go that route, I would recommend blast slag over fly ash, because it requires the least tweaking in the mix design. But I don't think there's any real reason to take fly ash off the table for the thousands of concrete producers who would choose differently from me. And until we kick the coal habit, all that fly ash is just lying there, with no way of disposing of it—why not shove it in some concrete?)

enigmatically posted by Martin Marks at 10:19 in the evening // two comments by:

• Fafner
• Liz

 

I haven't really found a good solution for getting back up.

Here's the thing: I mean, obviously I want to live in a house with a secret passageway, but it's kind of hard to do that effectively. Unless you have like a mausoleum or something in the back yard, there's not much point—I mean, a secret shortcut from the kitchen to the living room isn't actually that awesome. Better to have an entire secret room, but that's kind of obvious to anyone paying attention. I think the real trick is a secret basement. You can even call it the [your name here]-cave, though whether you can pull that off depends on what your name is. Now, even with the secret basement, you've still got to hide it. You can use the old bookshelf door, naturally, but a quick Google indicates there are dozens of places selling them, to the point where they're almost a bit tacky. Besides, none of them that I see work like in the movies, where you grab a candlestick or a suspiciously out-of-place book, preferably with some kind of pun in the title, and the whole thing whirls around with a groan of shifting counterweights. They're just doors you can put books in. No fun at all.

My solution, and I think you'll all agree I'm onto something here, is simple and, dare I say, elegant: fire pole. (Okay, maybe not that elegant.) It's relatively simple to block out a 4' by 4' square on each floor; inside that you have a vertical shaft running all the way down. Ideally you would have it so that there was an electric sliding door inside the master bedroom closet so that by pressing a hidden button the door would open and lights would come on all down the shaft, preferably in a wave with a cool thunking noise like lights never seem to make in real life. Then you just slide on down to your [x]-cave and it's party time. (Possibly bachelor party time, since you will have that convenient pole right in the middle of the room.)

begrudgingly posted by Martin Marks at 11:20 at night // three comments by:

• Tim
• Tori
• the old feller

 

"With feelings of gratitude for all that is good in this world, I put down my pen. Well, I'll be leaving now." — Satoshi Kon

Satoshi Kon—the "David Lynch of anime", as TV Tropes calls him—died yesterday at the age of 46. I have mentioned him a couple odd times on my blog. The first time I watched Paranoia Agent, I got as far as the opening titles and I knew this was not going to be like any other show I'd ever seen. It's not that it's a mind screw; it's easy to make a mind screw. But it's a mind screw that's not just compelling but actually enjoyable to watch. The quintessential Paranoia Agent episode, called "Happy Family Planning" for no apparent reason (there's a brief shot of a condom machine at the end, but that doesn't explain it), is a complete mind screw with a twist ending that you have to actually work to figure out. But it's still just a genuinely funny black comedy about two men trying to kill themselves without letting the little girl who's tagging along after them kill herself too. You can enjoy it as that, get confused by the twist ending, enjoy it again trying to figure it out, get the twist ending the second time, then enjoy it a third time trying to find all the clues you missed. It's very rare that you find someone who can reliably give you that kind of experience—and David Lynch, for the record, definitely can't.

He wasn't a prolific creator; he directed only four feature films, plus Paranoia Agent, and was working on a fifth when he died. I've seen all four, though it's been a couple years. Each of them is a very different animal, from the right-down-to-the-titlely Lynchian Perfect Blue to the deceptively light Tokyo Godfathers. I'm going to try and watch as many of them as I can over the next week or so. I guess it's the least I can do.

defiantly posted by Martin Marks at 9:33 in the evening // three comments by:

• Martin
• Martin
• Tim

 

Biff! Bam! Kapow! Movies aren't just for kids anymore!

The plan today was to take my sister to see Scott Pilgrim vs. the World at the halfway-decent Regal theatre in Bel Air. Unfortunately, we were running late, and then traffic on 95 put the proverbial icing atop the proverbial cake, so we used our ninja-like smartphone and satnav skillz to find another theatre—but the only one showing it at anything close to a reasonable time was the immensely sketchy Eastpoint 10 in Essex. We didn't get shot, which was nice, but there were only like six people in the audience, and I think that a movie like this really needs to be watched in a much more crowded theatre for the full group-think experience.

However, that is totally not a problem, because I WILL BE WATCHING THIS MOVIE AGAIN. Because it was awesome. It lacks the depth of the novels, obviously, and it's more of an 8-bit romantic comedy rather than the coming-of-age story with fight scenes that the Scott Pilgrim books manage. But it's an amazingly good distillation, better than I dreamed to hope to imagine thinking about, and it's really quite excellent in its own right. I felt like it got across both the goodness and dickishness of both Scott and Ramona—especially Michael Cera's Scott, who really couldn't have been better cast. Also, he's surprisingly good at slicing up ninjas with a flaming sword. (I mean, we all knew he had serious moves with a curtain rod, but still.) Anyway, awesome movie, go see it, and possibly consider taking me with you.

quintessentially posted by Martin Marks at 10:29 in the evening // comment? by:

 

I logged that one under "OTHER".

So my boss has decided I need to fill out a timesheet, which has so far only proven that I do way too much stuff. (Most people are using one timesheet a week; I'm consistently going onto two or three every day.) But it does have its benefits, like when my other boss decided to give the drafting department an impromptu juggling and sleight of hand lesson at the end of the day today, because it was that kind of day at the end of that kind of week, and I had the opportunity to write down "LEARN TO JUGGLE: 16:17-16:23".

cannily posted by Martin Marks at 10:31 in the evening // comment? by:

 

Technically, they are considered "sleep shorts".

I took the day off of life today. I made a mental to-do list this morning, and all it said on it was, in big bold letters, "Things To Do: bugger-all". If I could have actually stopped my heart for 24 hours, I would have. I'm wearing my Hopeless Degenerate boxer shorts—as far as I can tell they're specifically designed for slacking off, and have both a drawstring and pockets—and sitting around watching The Wire while feasting on ice cream and beer. It's one of those days, because it's been one of those weeks.

aimlessly posted by Martin Marks at 11:57 at night // comment? by:

 

Did you know that Maryland's marriage licenses have a line on them for "bride's relationship to groom"?

I did just get back from a wedding, in fact—but it was my aunt's, so my previous blog post holds true. It was a really fantastic day, and a somewhat exhausting one. I can't imagine how tired Sally and Jim must be, especially since this was an almost entirely DIY wedding. Mind you, I did volunteer for the most immensely tiring wedding setup job ever, namely the hanging of streamers across the ceiling. About three quarters of the way through we got so sick of it we convinced Sally she didn't actually want any more. I certainly didn't hear anyone complain about inadequate streamering, so I don't feel too guilty.

I did have quite a good time. I had plenty of opportunity to hang out with my aunt Lucy (something I don't do enough of) because we were pretty much the youngest people there apart from her sons. And, more importantly, I got to see the culmination of a love story as old as I am, which is pretty cool indeed.

Oh, yes, I can now say that the name of this aunt, who is in fact the same aunt who just signed with a literary agent for her first novel, is Sally Shivnan (now, possibly, Gerfin, though I don't know if she's actually changing it, and I'm guessing she wouldn't change it for her writing in any case). Set your Google Alerts now, because she's a fantastic writer and this novel is going to be off the hook when it comes out, which it will, because she is awesome and the publishers will be fighting to get their hands on her.

clandestinely posted by Martin Marks at 10:33 in the evening // two comments by:

• Tania
• Tanya

 

I think it's because everyone's afraid I'll look sexier than the groom.

It occurred to me today that I'm 80% of the way through my 20s, and as far as I can recall haven't been invited to a single wedding of my peers in that entire time. What's up with that? I'm 28, I should be stuck at someone's wedding every other weekend in the summer. It's not that I don't have friends, but the ones who aren't single are in domestic partnerships, the ones who aren't in domestic partnerships all eloped or had little mini-weddings, and the ones who didn't elope all got married either before I knew them or while we weren't really in contact. I'm not actually sure if I'm complaining or not about this, but it's still kind of bizarre.

mechanically posted by Martin Marks at 10:05 in the evening // seven comments by:

• Moss
• Martin
• Tanya
• Neil
• Libby
• Liz
• Julia