Sorry, I must complain about the Oilers arena deal again.

1. Darryl Katz proposes to help revitalize downtown with a new arena, pledging $100M of his own money ("He's throwing in his own money! What a guy!")

2. The deal with the city involves the City borrowing the aforementioned $100M, and Katz repaying the loan over 35 years; with interest, it's about $5.5M per year. Also, the City will spend $20M in "advertising" costs over the term of the lease. ("You can't expect a businessman to have that much cash just sitting around. Plus it's going to make downtown better! What a guy!")

3. The Katz Group goes back to city council 10 months later and extorts demands asks that the City pony up $6M a year in operating expenditures AND that the City will lease office space in an attached business tower. ("He needs to make his financial commitment in a building from which he will reap 100% of the revenue absolutely ZERO in order to make his financially profitable business profitable. You just don't understand what a guy he is!")

Wow.

I love the Oilers as much as anyone, but this is crazy. In a city that sells out games and sells out jerseys while finishing an average of 29.6th place out of 30 teams for the past three years, you're going to move because you're not making a profit in the city building an arena for you? Eh, fuck off.

Also, following Tony's line about Mike Winters' comics... He's spreading this one across Twitter right now. It is definitely NSFW, but entertaining in the way of his old Gateway ones (i.e. a bit too much information, and a fair bit too graphic). ;)

https://twitter.com/Mike_Wntrz/status/246323644433838080/photo/1/large.

Oh, the good ol' days...

That's fair, Par. "Less bad" is definitely a step forward. ... a baby step, but a step nonetheless. I'm just wary that the processing, which is a good number of extra steps beyond pulp & paper, is rather exorbitant. And none of the article went into the question of where we get all those fancy chemicals etc. in order to make the nanotubes.

For me, it's a matter of trade-offs. Are we making something out of wood because "hey, it's made from wood now!"? Or are we making it because it's actually a less resource-intense process? If we made a similar product from petrochemicals that used fewer steps, required fewer chemicals, and resulted in smaller waste streams, I think I'd probably vote for that. Yeah, it's not made of wood, but what did we have to do to the wood to turn it into not-wood anyway?

I dunno, this bizarre line of work that I'm in has resulted in me looking at full lifecycles of products, from the petroleum refining used to make the fuel to truck the raw materials to the manufacturing facility (be it a sawmill or a farmers' field), to the consumer products (paper, broccoli, etc.), to the resulting waste streams. It's fascinating and infuriating. There are too many variables to compare, and no clear metrics as to HOW to compare them. ... not to mention a great scarcity of data.

rant rant... In the end, I agree. Less bad is better. It's just a matter of PROVING it.

Alison, regarding the nanotubes, I agree that we should treat these kind of change-the-world announcements with skepticism (we've all read way more of them than things that actually change the world exist.)

That said (and recognizing I have little background in these kind of industrial processes), I'm not sure that this production process sounds a whole lot different than, say, pulp and paper production. Maybe I'm wrong, but that, at least, is scalable. (Its environmental impacts are still questionable, of course.)

Still, as far as solutions go, I'm willing to take "less bad" as progress.

Mike Winters' excellent interview regarding his latest illustrated work.

GUYS! Guess what! Perry Bible Fellowship has some new comics up!!!


I am unreasonably excited about this.

Austra- painful like

And Jesse, I agree with you: friends make a world of difference to your life. I'm grateful Ed and Mary are here in Calgary, too. This city would be a lot more lonely without them.

I hope you and Merin meet some great friends in T-dot, that the city starts to feel like a home to you both, and that your adventures go smoothly, whether it's internet contracts, or job searching, or the (rumoured to be dubious) joys of cycling in the city.

Par, I'm biting on that "cheaper than aluminum" link. I think it's a load of hooey. Or, well, maybe only half a load... but still, there's some pretty serious hooey involved. The article quotes the researchers/industrialists as saying:
"It is the natural, renewable version of a carbon nanotube at a fraction of the price,"

But by the time they're done all the chemical processing, there's nothing left to be actually called "natural". I mean, what else does this tell us besides 'we're grinding wood up, and putting it through a series of highly toxic chemical baths."? And then, a fraction of the price? really? ... Something is subsidizing this process. Maybe something else gets produced (cellulosic ethanol maybe??) that turns a profit, but nanotubes alone are not going to be cheap just because they come from wood.

Mind you, I am cynical, and perhaps I've misinterpreted this:
"Production of NCC starts with "purified" wood, which has had compounds such as lignin and hemicellulose removed. It is then milled into a pulp and hydrolysed in acid to remove impurities before being separated and concentrated as crystals into a thick paste that can be applied to surfaces as a laminate or processed into strands, forming nanofibrils. These are hard, dense and tough, and can be forced into different shapes and sizes. When freeze-dried, the material is lightweight, absorbent and good at insulating."
All of that speaks of lots of chemicals and energy, and money.

When all is said and done, how much non-renewable stuff has gone into one tree (and what percentage of that tree comes out as usable??) just to get the desired end product? I'm definitely not sold. There's a reason this isn't being produced at a commercial scale, and it's got a lot to do with the capital costs of production like all the chemicals used to create the nanofibrils.

However, it is fascinating, all the same.

This reminds me of Andy's basement:

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