Another mystery solved this week. I figured out why so much of teenagers' speech is peppered with "ya' know" and "like..." and "he goes". Believe it or not, the answer is quite simple. They simply do not have the vocabulary to speak any more succinctly. In fact, most teens will have given up at the end of the prior sentence because they will have no idea what "succinctly" means, and even if they have the dictionary skills to be able to look it up (electronically or merely stone age style ... in a book) they will be too lazy to do so. Okay, okay, the generalization besmirches the small percentage of teens to whom this does not apply, and to them, I am grateful and I apologize. I am guessing that this is lazy vocabulary is not news to many parents of teens who have encountered the waking up at noon, taking an hour to dress and shower (and another hour for hair, makeup, and clothing selection, which is no longer entirely exclusively restricted to females, in case you haven't noticed) and finally avoiding mowing the lawn because it is already time to get dressed for the Saturday night date.
It is a sad reflection on the state of education that teens assume such a commonality of experience that "Like, he goes, ya' know," constitutes an outpouring of verbal dexterity. I am well aware that in schools in our community the popular paradigm of writing is known as the "6 Traits" (note that they usually do spell out the "6" but not always, even in titular text on the posters). One of the guiding principles in the "six traits" rubric is "word choice", but often that is taught these days as using the computer's "thesaurus" feature in a word processing program. Actually looking up and comparing words from a dictionary, is not precisely frowned upon, but the quality of dictionaries supplied, while attempting to be suitable to the age of the readers fail miserably in reflecting the shades of meaning, or the subtleties of the language. Indeed, although these days a classroom may very well contain a whole class set of thesauri, those too are more extensive than intensive in exploring the language. The essence of using a thesaurus is in knowing the shade of meaning one is looking for, and choosing the best match... if possible, the "mot juste" as they say in French, the perfect word, conveying the precise shade of meaning the author intended.
Today (and I suppose like many an adult's tirade bemoaning the state of youth "today" this may well echo the sentiments well beyond Socrates in the history of Western Civilization) our young people do not even have sufficient vocabulary to understand which shade of meaning they are applying when they choose the "change" button on the computer's thesaurus screen.
I fear I am whistling in the windstorm on this subject, but I beg of you, if you have any influence in the matter (and as a parent or even as an elector, you doubtless do) please, encourage an evolution of the language at least from the devolved state of contemporary teens to something approaching that which existed a half century ago. Encourage reading. Insist on better dictionaries. Demand better education.
Brownback and Richardson tossed hats into the 2008 presidential race this week. Brownback is a ho-hum, from my point of view, but Governor Richardson of New Mexico was a former Secretary of Energy, and as such, could play an important role in shaping the Democratic platform. Indeed, unless Senator Clinton and Senator Obama form an alliance between themselves, he could be a factor in who carries more weight in the end. Of course, the bigger news was that Senator Obama, true to his word from last weekend's television appearance and Senator Clinton announced the formation of "exploratory" committees. I doubt that anyone really thinks that the nature of the inquiries of their explorations are in any doubt at this time, but it was interesting that both of them chose to announce their decisions via streaming videos from their own web sites, rather than through traditional press conferences, or channeled through any particular media network. The world changed again this week, it seems.
As any regular reader has doubtless gathered by now, I am constantly learning. This week I learned more about a process that has been around for a good while, but little spoken of outside of petroleum processing circles. This process is known as Fischer-Tropsch reforming. One really interesting part of this is that the process is actually "tunable" in terms of how long the chains of atoms it strings together from the constituent ingredients of hydrogen and carbon (or more precisely hydrogen and carbon monoxide).
This is just one of the catalytic reforming possibilities used in the petroleum differential distillation chain in processing petroleum, but it is a very promising one in the bio-generated gas from biomass. The paper I read, from Shell's research division (they actually call themselves Shell Global Solutions International) and the Energy research Center of the Netherlands (ECN) points out that the ratio of hydrogen to carbon monoxide is not nearly so critical to success as the mere total of hydrogen and carbon monoxide available in the source, considering the source in gaseous form. The other starting assumption seems to be that the overall process will be using what are known as "fluidized" gasification beds which treat the biomass at normal atmospheric pressures to very high temperatures that induce the thermal breakdown of the chemical bonds into fairly elemental ingredients.
However the paper's conclusion that seems to assume that existing fluidized beds are the only foreseeable practical solution seems to me very short sighted, if not unduly slanted to towards adoption of the methods already in possession of the Shell company. In fact, they talk in their concluding paragraphs about the possibilities of higher pressure and possibly anaerobic gasification this way.
"The challenge is now to improve the gasification and gas cleaning technologies to achieve higher energy efficiencies and reduce the costs. For example, oxygen-blown biomass gasification, required for high yield FT synthesis, is not yet well developed. Considering the system with an oxygen-blown gasifier and a consecutive tar cracker, one-step gasification at a high temperature in an entrained flow (EF) gasifier might prove to be more energy efficient."
"A further issue is the gasification pressure. Pressurised gasification can result in large cost reductions, as higher throughputs are possible with same scale installations, and because compression of syngas from atmospheric pressure to FT synthesis pressure is extremely energy intensive. Related to gasification at elevated pressure there are also important technical research questions, especially related to the biomass feeding and the use of inert gas, as well as the optimal pressure in view of electricity consumption."
Another discussion in this paper occurs in a footnote that attempts to "define" (or perhaps re-define) some of the key terms in biomass and biogas fields. Here is the paragraph long footnote in its entirety.
"In this paper "green diesel" refers to the high-quality ultra-clean diesel-like product produced with Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. This term is used to discriminate from "bio-diesel", which is a liquid product from esterfication of vegetable oils (e.g. rapeseed oil and sunflower oil). Furthermore, "biosyngas" refers to a gas rich in H2 and CO obtained by gasification of biomass. Biosyngas discriminates from "syngas", which is a comparable gas but from fossil origin, and from "biogas", which is gas produced by digestion of organic matter and consists mainly of CH4 and CO2."
I am not thrilled with the tone of what sounds like a somewhat elitist view that makes "green diesel" sound like the posh cousin of the (merely?) esterified vegetable oils that constitute "biodiesel", but "biosyngas" does have a certain ring to it, don't you think? On the other hand, "green diesel" also does sound like a consumer marketing level "top ten hit" especially on the heels of the GM green and yellow campaign for E85 ethanol. It does seem to capture the essence of consumer consciousness understanding of the central issues.
Here's hoping that we all have a higher consciousness to look forward to in the future, and that we can each do our part to make that happen.
love
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
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