-The Freebie-
Geoff Dolbear’s Freebie Newsletter
Online Edition
- Issue 44. Sept. 2K1 -
Floating Definitions
I am often amused to watch the progress of well-defined terms as they are overtaken by the popular press. Meanings evolve rapidly, and soon it becomes difficult to remember just where things started. For instance, the nuclear disarmament movement of the 1950s invented a symbol that fused the semaphore codes for the letters N and D. It looked like a bird's footprint. The war protesters of the 60s appropriated it as the peace symbol, virtually ignoring the original meaning.
Much the same thing is happening to the term “technology.” Originally, I believe, the term was broadly applied to products or ways of doing things that grew out of applied science or engineering. Then it became “high technology” and began to refer to computers and applied biochemistry. Thus, when the evening news reports that technology stocks are down, it refers to Microsoft, Intel, or Amgen, ignoring hundreds of companies in dozens of fields that make their livings by developing new technical ways of getting things done.
I have tried without success to figure out what makes a company “technology.” I think others have, too, because being considered high tech automatically allows a company's stock to have a high (even infinite) PE multiplier. I have decided this is one of those “I'll know it when I see it” things, and just calling yourself high tech may not work. For example, fifteen years ago my former employer Unocal decided to increase its stock price by calling itself high tech. The market said “No, you're oil.” Unocal responded by selling off the most profitable part of its technology and abandoning most of the rest. Now they can be a REAL oil company. That did not work, either, and the stock is still stuck in the $30 to $40 range.
A Sage Observation
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Willson
The second thing everyone learns about coal is that it comes as anthracite, bituminous, sub-bituminous and lignite. These terms denote the property called rank. Rank goes along with energy content, with anthracite the highest and lignite the lowest; other properties vary along the series as well. These variations are all related to the chemical structure of the organic materials, and they are very important in guiding the usage of the coal.
Coals all started as plant materials that accumulated in swampy areas. Dead leaves, branches, and whole tree trunks fell into the water, where they were decomposed by microorganisms (initially aerobic, but later anaerobic). Lignin in the wood is difficult to digest, so most of what disappeared was the cellulosic and starchy materials. This left lignin and various resinous materials. Slowly over millenia the layers of undigested materials grew to tens or hundreds of feet in thickness. The layers also included sand and clay from soil washed into the swamp, as well as charcoal-like particles left over from forest fires.
Coal deposits typically got started 50 to 100 million years ago. Where the organic material became buried, the forces of pressure and heat transformed it. Water, carbon dioxide, and methane were produced, leaving behind solids relatively richer in carbon. Where the organic material was not buried, it remained as peat, which is harvested, dried, and burned in many areas of the world.
The combination of biological and physical processes is called maturation. The farther maturation proceeds, the higher the rank of the coal.
This picture of coal genesis explains why coals are found in layers, called seams. It explains why high rank coals have higher carbon contents and provide more energy per pound when they are burned. It explains why lignite deposits tend to be thicker on average than bituminous coal deposits, etc. It also goes far to explaining many of the differences in chemical behavior among coals of different ranks, differences that can be critically important in deciding what to do with a coal resource.
It does not, however, tell us a thing about sulfur levels or mineral (ash) content. Those two depend much more on where the coal formed and the environment of the original swamp.
Oh, and what is the first thing we learn about coal? That it is a dirty black solid, of course.
The color of ocean water in the tropics is beautifully blue, and the water is so clear that we can see great distances. That's not the case in more northern latitudes, where the color is much darker and more of a green. There's a good - and surprising - reason for this.
As explained to me over lunch by Warren Finley, darker water color is largely the result of biological activity. Photosynthetic organisms (phytoplankton) make it green, and much of the color density comes from the high concentration of organisms in the water. In the tropical ocean, the top layer of the water is almost devoid of nutrients and microorganisms, including both the phytoplankton and the zooplankton, the tiny shrimp-like species that feed on them and provide food for fish. In other words, the clear blue sea is a desert.
The lack of biological activity results from a lack of nutrients. In the open ocean, and anywhere near an island or atoll where the depths are more than a few hundreds of feet, the bodies of dead organisms fall to the bottom. Such bodies represent a high concentration of nutrients, and there is no simple mechanism for replacing those nutrients in much of the tropics.
In contrast, in those places where currents provide natural upwellings of nutrients from deeper areas to shallower ones, the oceans are rich in plants and animals. An example is the eastern pacific near Ecuador and Peru. For a detailed description of all of this, see the web sites listed under http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEAWIFS.html.
Twenty years ago, Warren found a way to overcome this problem, using long pipes floating vertically in the water. The pipes must reach from the nutrient rich depths to the sterile surface. He pumps fresh water down a small feeder pipe and into the bottom of the larger riser pipe. As the fresh water flows up the riser, it brings with it a much larger volume of nutrient rich salt water from the depths. The volume is larger due to the free energy of mixing, the same natural phenomenon that drives osmotic pressure. Warren tells me that the magnification observed in tests off Southern California can be more than 30:1. Warren envisions rigs floating at sea generating oases of sea life and providing a home for fish that could be harvested to provide food.
The technology is basically simple, and Warren has patents, now expired. What is needed now is a way to make money from the effort. Without that, nobody has the incentive to make the investment.
Two centuries ago, English clergyman Thomas Malthus argued that population grows geometrically while food and other resources grow arithmetically, dooming mankind to famine, starvation, disease, and general misery. Probably warts, too. This is not a pleasant picture, but Malthus did not foresee the influence of technology, which has both multiplied the availability of food and allowed a dramatic reduction in reproduction rates. Malthusians among us today still foresee an early end to civilization, mostly because they have little faith in the positive effects of technology. Perhaps they are wrong.
Ever think about forming your own corporation? There are lots of reasons for doing it, not all of them good. Separation of personal assets from business assets is a good one; that's the reason we formed our corporation a couple of years ago. There can also be good financial reasons to form a corporation, including minimizing tax liabilities under special conditions. Ads on the radio say that assets can be hidden from the tax man using a corporation, but much of that seems to me to be a bit shady.
If these ideas are interesting to you, you might want to read a book about it, and best-selling author Judith McQuown is glad to provide you the opportunity. Her books Inc. Yourself and Use Your Own Corporation to Get Rich provide a lot of information on creating and using a corporate structure to operate a business. She describes the different kinds of corporate structures such as C, S, LLC, professional, profit or non-profit, etc, and how and why to make use of them. These are easy to read books, and either will provide a reasonable background.
A solid alternative to McQuown comes from Nolo Press, publisher of books by lawyers that cover the same legal information and provide no-nonsense how-to information. We used How to Form Your Own California Corporation by attorney Anthony Mancuso. It comes with tear-out forms and a diskette of model documents you can print off and use. Similar books (www.nolopress.com) are available that cover other states (eg, New York and Texas) and other alternatives. State laws vary, and you can find a lot of information about each one by looking on the web.
Of course if you want to get very complicated, you need to hire a lawyer, but even then books can be a big help in getting you started.
Contact:
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