Stamp of the Day: Can you see the stars?

Maybe not, it depends on where you live.  And soon you might not see many stars in most places, due to light pollution.  There is a great article about this on Design Observer: Starry Night. The most stars I have seen recently were in Costa Rica.  It is amazing to think that all those thousands of stars are here in New Jersey too, but we flood them out with lights.  Our township, for example, have parking lights on at the highschool even in the evening when nobody is there.  Neighbors sleep with floodlights on.  Princeton glows with a pink haze some nights. Imagine how many northern lights are being missed because of our electricity obsession. Most of those lights are just wasted electron movements created by coal, oil, gas, or nuclear power.  The article is great, and a good read, so take a look and check out the maps too (Europe included).

 

Stamp of the day are two Swedish stamps from 2009, a star map with the Crab Nebula and a polarimeter.  Nice designs as usual from the Swedish postal service. (Information in Swedish about these stamps)

You are charged!

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Stamp of the day: Power tower

Not that many stamps have radio towers on them...
"The VLF transmitter Grimeton was used until the 1950's for transatlantic radio telegraphy to Radio Central in Long Island, New York, USA. From the 1960's until 1996 it was used for transmitting orders to submarines in the Swedish Navy." read more here...

The Power of Electricity and Weather

Some photos from the last couple of days chaos in New Jersey. On Saturday it rained huge amounts, and then the wind came. Soggy grounds couldn't keep the trees up, so they fell. All roads to our house were closed for about 24 hours, and we still have no power, phone or internet, and it is now Tuesday. They estimate that they will manage to get the downed electric lines up maybe Thursday, but I doubt it. It is so many places that needs to be fixed, and at least 50 000 houses still have no power in NJ.

The photos are of a tree on our road (the only road to our house that has been opened, two roads are still closed). The damage in the vegetable garden when the cold frame glass tops flew up in the air, the fantastic gas-powered generator we were allowed to borrow from our wonderful neighbors (thanks DL and JL!!!! you are the best!).

Using siphon lines out through the basement door to drain the sump pump by gravity - it works!!!! (at least when it only rains moderately..) Our battery backup for the sump pump only lasts for 7 hours, and without this and then the generators our basement would have been flooded. Never mind that we live at 350 ft above sea level, we get flooded too. The ground is so soaked and with the clay soil, no water goes anywhere except into our basement, into our driveway and so on... Our juryrigged tarp to protect the sump pump generator (also borrowed from our fantastic neighbors). My boots...

This is the longest we have been without power ever. Next time we will be more prepared. We have already bought a crank-powered radio, and we will get our own generator and setup for it. We will have enough gas on hand so we don't have to try to get out and drive under half-fallen trees only held up by a powerline about to burst. We will have some bottled water, just in case.

The problem is that when the power goes we have only our cell phones and the gas stove - no heat, no water, no phone, no internet. It has been an interesting couple of days, but we have managed to cook some great dinners and our frozen food supply is safe, nobody got hurt, the basement didn't flood (much), and we even got to take hot showers after two days due to our wood furnace and the generator powering the water pump. But tonight we are going out for dinner!!! (I am at work writing this).