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Utility poles

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Re: Utility poles

#191

Post by MagerValp »

nabeards wrote: post #184
mjd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Can I suggest that you might enjoy following my blog regularly? In addition to utility poles, I have also discussed this year: Samuel Johnson's feud with James Macpherson, a fraudulent poet; the panicked history of England in 1533 after Henry VIII's mistress got pregnant; the Slaughter electric needle injector; how plutonium is used to power medical devices; equivalents of "Joe Blow" in Turkish and Hebrew. Al…

I realize this may be a silly question, but how do I follow your blog? Is there an email subscription? Do I need some app to access your RSS feed? I feel like this should be easier to solve than it is. (:

You'll need an RSS reader, such as newsblur.com

Re: Utility poles

#192

Post by mirimir »

jackhack wrote: post #176
dogecoinbase wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of astonishing how far people will go in the absence of a punitive regulatory environment. One of my favorite books in Project Gutenberg is this 1820 treatise on the adulteration of foods: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19031 Everything from copper to make pickles green, to molten lead to clarify wine.

>It's kind of astonishing how far people will go Indeed it is. This is a widespread practice: What comes to my mind is the Chinese milk & baby formula "sweetener" (melamine) incident from 2008 with 300,000 victims. 54,000 babies hospitalized! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal Related: it was also in pet foods. 1 dog and 9 cats died during "taste test trials" and Petco pulled chinese-sourced prod…

Yeah, it sucks.

And melamine. It wasn't added as a sweetener. It was added to boost apparent protein content, because it was less expensive than actual protein. As I understand it, the simple test for food protein content reported melamine as protein.

Re: Utility poles

#193

Post by mirimir »

gumby wrote: post #189
dogecoinbase wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of astonishing how far people will go in the absence of a punitive regulatory environment. One of my favorite books in Project Gutenberg is this 1820 treatise on the adulteration of foods: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19031 Everything from copper to make pickles green, to molten lead to clarify wine.

Oh, but surely the market will sort it out, right? Who needs those pesky regulations?

I get the sarcasm :) But in fact, markets are great for many things. However, they're clearly vulnerable to information asymmetry and outright dishonesty, at least in the short term.

I mean, demand for PCB-tainted oil for dust suppression did decrease dramatically after PCB content and toxicity were widely known. And demand for melamine-supplemented baby food also decreased dramatically after people discovered the issue.

The problem was that more-or-less irreversible damage had already been done. Damages could be recovered through litigation, perhaps. But that doesn't fix poisoned ecosystems and children.

So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty.

Re: Utility poles

#194

Post by ars »

dustinmoorenet wrote: post #173
gunzel wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think New Zealand is the same as Australia with 5 wires: the 3 phases, neutral (the central return wire) and earth. Grabbing a random location in Auckland off Street View shows 5 wires: https://goo.gl/maps/wz1W73uWAiz

That just seems odd to me to have a wire for earth... carried above the earth. I can understand having earth wires in houses made of concrete and wood since they have to get to the earth through those materials, but what makes a common earth ground better than just lots of many grounding points? All that wire has got to get expensive.

See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-wire_earth_return

Re: Utility poles

#195

Post by ars »

M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #170
PhantomGremlin wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most household uses ... they want single-phase power!? In 1910, maybe. Huh? In the USA all residential is single-phase. Although there's a center tapped transformer involved, which is what gets you both 120 V and 240 V from one phase. This arrangement is called "split-phase": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power#Nor... Name one "household use" in the USA (which is where the author lives) that does…

It is strange though, that residential three phase is so uncommon there, especially when the single phase voltage is only 110, further sacrificing efficiency for high power applications.

High power applications use both sides of the split phase, for 240v.

Re: Utility poles

#196

Post by adonovan »

aaron695 wrote: post #164
adonovan wrote: post #47

Those cans are filled with transformer oil, which until relatively recently consisted mostly of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Imagine how many of those cans exist across the United States and you get a sense of how big the PCB industry used to be, and why rivers such as the Hudson in New York [1] and the Housatonic in Massachusetts [2] are polluted with olympic swimming-pool sized quantities of the durable oily…

> In recent years, thieves in Kenya (which has yet to replace PCBs with something less toxic) have been vandalizing [3] transformers and selling the oil to street vendors I see no confirmation on this. Sounds like an urban legend. All reports come from the one source which also talks about the legitimate reason of scrap stealing. The doctors quote should be the biggest tip off. If it makes people sick(Off what seems…

After further digging I think you're probably right. Variants of this story seem to have been reported in many countries over many years but none cites an actual authority such as government report or scientific paper. Copper theft does seem more likely.

Re: Utility poles

#197

Post by rothrock »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #163
rothrock wrote: post #155

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformer_oil c'mon really? you didn't even look? What is this? You're "interested in utility infrastructure" !? 7000 Volt lightning? most household uses ... they want single-phase power!? In 1910, maybe.

most household uses ... they want single-phase power!? In 1910, maybe. Huh? In the USA all residential is single-phase. Although there's a center tapped transformer involved, which is what gets you both 120 V and 240 V from one phase. This arrangement is called "split-phase": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split-phase_electric_power#Nor... Name one "household use" in the USA (which is where the author lives) that does…

My apologies. I conflated split-phase with 2 phase.

Re: Utility poles

#198

Post by gumby »

mirimir wrote: post #193
gumby wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but surely the market will sort it out, right? Who needs those pesky regulations?

I get the sarcasm :) But in fact, markets are great for many things. However, they're clearly vulnerable to information asymmetry and outright dishonesty, at least in the short term. I mean, demand for PCB-tainted oil for dust suppression did decrease dramatically after PCB content and toxicity were widely known. And demand for melamine-supplemented baby food also decreased dramatically after people discovered the is…

> So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty.

That's not the only source of problem. Another is managing the game theory of externalities. For example, if every transformer manufacturer is dumping its PCBs into rivers, no one manufacturer can afford to make "clean" transformers that dispose of PCB byproducts in a more ecological way as transformer buyers will presumably buy the cheapest one that meets the necessary performance characteristics. Regulation can add management of the ecological externality as a mandatory performance characteristic, disadvantaging no manufacturer relative to all others.

Re: Utility poles

#199

Post by pasbesoin »

Dangeranger wrote: post #110
adonovan wrote: post #47

Those cans are filled with transformer oil, which until relatively recently consisted mostly of polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs. Imagine how many of those cans exist across the United States and you get a sense of how big the PCB industry used to be, and why rivers such as the Hudson in New York [1] and the Housatonic in Massachusetts [2] are polluted with olympic swimming-pool sized quantities of the durable oily…

The story about Kenyans selling PCB oil is truly sad. I cannot imagine the damage that is doing to children and families in that country. It reminds me of the Vice News story about the illegal oil refineries which are present in the Niger River delta and the environmental and humanitarian destruction they are causing. Additionally when authorities find illegally refined oil they simply dump it on site, contaminating…

I used to know a fellow who spent some years working for "the oil industry" in the far east. That would be a couple of decades ago.

He really enjoyed the street food. But, as he told me, you had to be careful. How did a vendor have fresh fare without power nor evident means of fresh supply and cooling?

Well, per him, some vendors kept supplies submerged in formaldehyde.

I've never looked up independent confirmation of this, and I haven't been there and so had to worry about it. But he was, in my experience, a straight shooter and not one inclined towards tall tales.

Re: Utility poles

#200

Post by mirimir »

gumby wrote: post #198
mirimir wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sarcasm :) But in fact, markets are great for many things. However, they're clearly vulnerable to information asymmetry and outright dishonesty, at least in the short term. I mean, demand for PCB-tainted oil for dust suppression did decrease dramatically after PCB content and toxicity were widely known. And demand for melamine-supplemented baby food also decreased dramatically after people discovered the is…

> So we need regulation to punish market manipulation through dishonesty. That's not the only source of problem. Another is managing the game theory of externalities. For example, if every transformer manufacturer is dumping its PCBs into rivers, no one manufacturer can afford to make "clean" transformers that dispose of PCB byproducts in a more ecological way as transformer buyers will presumably buy the cheapest on…

True. Good point.
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