Realities
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Realities are only real to the mind when the idea has been confirmed to be true. Ideals or realities are not necessary real but both stand out in the mind as realities. Some realities may be considered as fiction or even as falsehood when the ideals become unreal.
symbolism
Singlish to get a basic prospective POV
or various worldviews used here on web-pages herein) {{trying to make sense}} {{trying to make sense}}
The Great Expanse, the earth and All in it, the whole Cosmos designed and created formankind to live and survive? Let it be, said the great I AM !
In the 
ning..GOD
the heavens and the earth plus all we ever seen here
under the expanse
goto mind and speculation
Must goto see real
Contents |
[edit] Ethanol: Myths and realities
With high gas prices making alternative fuels increasingly attractive, no alternative fuel has received as much attention as ethanol. Some hail the fuel, which can be derived from plants including corn, wheat, barley and sugarcane, as a savior of American energy policy, while others see it as a fad popularized by its heavily subsidized corporate backers.
The reality is complex. Though still a tiny industry compared to gas, ethanol could become a more prominent part of the U.S. and world fuel supply in coming years.
Still, as ethanol's public profile rises, there's plenty of misinformation swirling around and a host of questions. What exactly is ethanol? How is it made and used? And is it really a viable alternative to gas? Here's what you need to know now.
What exactly is ethanol? The fuel is derived from plants through a fairly straightforward process. In one common method Corn, is first ground into a fine powder, mixed with water, and then heated. An enzyme is then added to convert the mixture into sugars before yeast is added to ferment it. The resulting liquid, called "beer," is about 10% alcohol. A distillation process then separates the alcohol from the rest of the mixture before the remaining water is removed. The result is essentially pure alcohol. A small amount of gas is added to render the liquid undrinkable. Then the fuel can be used by itself or as a supplement to gasoline to power cars.
Ethanol has three advantages, at least in theory: It's renewable, it can be domestically produced, and it burns cleaner than gas. The world's largest producers of ethanol are the U.S., which makes it primarily from corn, and Brazil, which mashes the stuff out of sugarcane.
Beyond high gas prices, why is everyone talking about ethanol? It's becoming an increasingly important part of the fuel supply, and has the potential to become still more crucial. President George W. Bush and members of Congress have expressed support for ethanol use. And this spring, refiners in parts of Texas and the Northeast have been replacing a gasoline additive called MTBE (for methyl tertiary-butyl ether) with ethanol. MTBE, a chemical used to oxygenate fuel, can contaminate drinking water. And Ethanol which does not present the same danger, can serve the same purpose in fuel.
FUEL FACTORS
• Ethanol Cars You Can Buy• The Truth About Hybrids• Easing Oil Dependence• What, Me Save Gas?• Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts• Why You Should Worry About Big Oil
That's not all. The 2005 energy bill requires that the U.S. boost its ethanol production to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, up from about 4 billion in 2005. This sounds like a whole lot of ethanol, but bear in mind, last year the U.S. slurped up almost 140 billion gallons of gas.
Are there any problems with ethanol? Oh, yes. Ethanol can't travel in pipelines along with gasoline, because it picks up excess water and impurities. As a result, ethanol needs to be transported by trucks, trains, or barges, which is more expensive and complicated than sending it down a pipeline. As refiners switched to ethanol this spring, the change in transport needs has likely contributed to the rise in gas prices. Some experts argue that the U. S. doesn't have adequate infrastructure for wide ethanol use.
Also, ethanol contains less energy than gas. That means drivers have to make more frequent trips to the pump.
Doesn't producing ethanol on a large scale use a great deal of energy? Yes. Some ethanol skeptics have even argued that the process involved in growing grain and then transforming it into ethanol requires more energy from fossil fuels than ethanol generates. In other words, they say the whole movement is a farce.
There's no absolute consensus in the scientific community, but that argument is losing strength. Michael Wang, a scientist at the Energy Department-funded Argonne National Laboratory for Transportation Research, says "The energy used for each unit of ethanol produced has been reduced by about half [since 1980]." Now, Wang says, the delivery of 1 million British thermal units of ethanol uses 0.74 million BTUs of fossil fuels. (That does not include the solar energy -- the sun shining -- used in growing corn.) By contrast, he finds that the delivery of 1 million BTUs of gasoline requires 1.23 million BTU of fossil fuels.
Producing ethanol could get more efficient soon as new technologies help farmers get more corn per acre of land and allow ethanol producers to get more of the fuel from the same amount of corn. The companies developing new corn technologies include chemical giant Dupont and Monsanto, which sells genetically modified seeds as well as chemicals for protecting crops.
So where can I find ethanol? There's a good chance you're using it already. It's mixed into gas in many regions of the country including the corn-belt Midwest, and states like California and New York which had already banned MTBE. The regions making the transition this spring are the Northeast and parts of Texas.
Cars in the U.S. can normally drive on E10, a mixture of 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline, that is sometimes called gasohol. It's how Americans usually take their ethanol. Relatively few cars available here are "flex-fuel," meaning that they can run on much higher concentrations of ethanol. The fuel E85, which is 85% ethanol, is sold at some gas stations concentrated in the Midwest.
Is ethanol cheaper than gas? Surprise, surprise, it isn't. The move this spring by more regions to use ethanol means that demand has spiked, driving up prices. On Monday, the New York harbor price was around $3 per gallon compared with about $2.28 for gasoline (before being mixed with ethanol). In other words, for now ethanol is helping to increase prices at the pump, not to push them down.
So ethanol production and distribution are also controlled by market forces, right? Only to a certain degree. In addition to heavily subsidizing the ethanol produced domestically, the U.S. government levies a 54 cent per gallon tariff on imports from other countries, such as Brazil, a lower-cost producer. This, of course, discourages the U.S. from importing cheaper ethanol.
Why not eliminate the tariffs? Well, the idea behind the tariffs is to foster domestic production of ethanol. But amid the ongoing furor over high gas prices the idea of repealing the levy has gained momentum in Washington. Though it would probably annoy ethanol producers like agricultural giant Archer Daniels Midland, removing the tariffs could have some benefits. It would help ease price pressures and would likely encourage Brazil to boost its ethanol production. However, it's probably not a short-term solution.
Brazil is undergoing an ethanol revolution far more drastic than that in the U.S. Flex-fuel cars which can run solely on ethanol are widely available and the ethanol supply is short enough that the government recently reduced the mandatory ethanol content in gasoline from 25 to 20 percent.
"Brazil is the model" for how ethanol can be brought into use, wrote Citigroup analyst P. J. Juvekar in a recent report. But while buying ethanol from Brazil could be useful in the future, it's not going to reduce the pain of a road trip this summer.
What companies stand to benefit from increased ethanol use? There is a crop of American ethanol producers. ADM is by far the largest, pumping out about one-quarter of the U.S. total. MGP Ingredients is one of the many smaller companies involved. Verasun Energy and Aventine Renewable Energy, two other producers of note, have recently filed to go public.
What can we expect to change in the future? At present commercial corn-based ethanol comes from corn kernels. One of the more exciting ethanol prospects on the horizon is cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from a number of plant by-products, including cornstalks. Although it's unlikely to be commercially available for at least a few years, cellulosic ethanol eventually could help substantially reduce costs. In other words, your car in the future could run on the refuse of farms across the U.S.
[edit] Religious myths and realities
Sacred objects are found in all religious traditions: this topic generates far more myths than in other fields <viz.Politics, Geography, Sciences,History etc… Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism and Islam have all developed religious world views based on, or incorporating, philosophical investigation. There are separate entries on Jewish philosophy, Christian philosophy,Buddhist philosophy and Islamic philosophy. The following statistics show the number of adherents in all known approaches, both religious and irreligious worldwide. Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are the largest world religions today. Approximately 75% of humanity belongs to one of these 4 religions. Christianity is the religion with the largest number of professed religious adherents, followed by Islam. The third-largest group of approximately 1 billion people adhere to irreligious approaches which include Humanism, Atheism, Rationalism, and Agnosticism. Hinduism with 900 million adherents is the third largest religion followed by 19 smaller groups of religious adherents. These figures are necessarily approximate. [1]. They are as of 2005.
Religion is commonly defined as a group of beliefs concerning the supernatural, sacred, or divine, and the moral codes, practices, values, institutions, and rituals associated with such belief. It is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system"
The words "belief system" may not necessarily refer to a religion, though a religion may be referred to as "belief system." In the course of the development of religion, it has taken many forms in various cultures and individuals.
Occasionally, the word "religion" is used in the more restrictive sense of "organized religion" — that is, an organization of people supporting the exercise of some religion, often taking the form of a legal entity (refer to religion-supporting organization).
What are myths and what are realities?
- Religious knowledge, according to religious practitioners, may be gained from religious leaders, sacred texts (scriptures), and/or personal revelation. Some religions view such knowledge as unlimited in scope and suitable to answer any question; others see religious knowledge as playing a more restricted role, often as a complement to knowledge gained through physical observation. Some religious people maintain that religious knowledge obtained in this way is absolute and infallible (religious cosmology). The particulars of religious knowledge vary from religion to religion, from sect to sect, and often from individual to individual.
Daily doses of quarks in Sciences or propaganda in Politics
- People like us are bombarded with all kind of news in our multimedia global system, and it is sometimes hardly possible to distinguish between the facts and the realities behind it. Different interested parties generate daily myths to convince the public as a kind of mis-information. In Singapore the Strait Times daily gives us the official version of every event happening on the little Island, and what is the truth? It is the official version which could well be just mere interpretation,<or falsehood> but the unsuspecting undiscerning public could never tell the difference!
[edit] The touchstone and the acid test of Science
Finding the truth, the real and the genuine is not an art but a skill which few of us Singaporeans specialized. Why bother? They all said it! However, with certain people that is a very important, and a priority for them and their trades. For instant, in our times the prices of certain things have gone up skyrocket high just like in prices for both Gold and platinum. If a person goes to the pawnshop to pawn a piece of gold jewelry, how much would the pawn shop give him?
The Method
How much would the Pawnshop person gives that person who needed some instant cash? It would depend on whether if the article is worth and for how much, and they would usually give about 75 per cent of what it is worth their while until <the likelihood> the person will redeem it.
Every jewelry had that sentimental value which cannot be measured, but not the Gold metal. Gold is worth what its weight and can be measured in terms of how much per oz or gram
Sometimes you bring a piece of gold with any standard marking <gold stamps> on the piece. It could be used to certify gold as genuine or not, but it could never determine the antique value<or sentimental> for ascertaining the worth for pure subjective worth.
Gold stamps probably dated from the 16th Century before gold stamps were officially widely in use. How would the pawnshop person determine its worth? You can also made a piece of jewelry yourself and you have not gone to the Assayer office to get it stamped, but the pawnshop person will know for sure how much it is worth before you pledge the article. How?
Well in his shop every pawnshop owner has a piece of black stone, which he would rub some of your precious gold shine <metal rubbings> onto the stone, then he also carry a small bottle of acid. He would add a tiny drop on the rubbings, and the results?
It will tell whether your gold jewelry is fine gold 100 per cent or 91.6 per cent or 80 per cent or even as little as 15 per cent. They will mark it as PURE, 916 or 815 or 22K, 18K or 15K according on the piece of pawn paper <you take away for the future redemption>.
That- by the way BTW is the objective value of the article.
[edit] playing with realities via ..
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[edit] The Science of Metaphysics?
With Gold its task to determine the value is quite straightforward, but with Religions it is not that simple.All religions are metaphysical phenomena
Some clever people endeavour to label this field of studies as meta-physical meaning that which is beyond the standard objective observation methods as in determining the genuineness or reality of certain things. Religions however, are not technological realities nor scientific ones.
Its is spiritual and got to do with one's belief.
It has no possible scientific proofs available to determine whether a person is true or although it may well be as real as the facts of ABC with someone who believes
However, it need be said that there are certain methods used to determine the veracity of certain facts in religious beliefs. For instance, both Archaeology and History are common disciplines where certain facts in the events can be determined as accepted <universally> or just by some sects or small group of believers. We know that dinosaurs used to roam the earth and we have the proofs of the bones to show! WE also know Julius Cesar was the not first empire builder** though he was the conqueror of the ancient world and had established the ancient Roman Empire. Some facts are likely, some unlikely and perhaps falsified, and no amount of scientific proofs can certify it as real as a historical event that had happened, even though they are accepted as universal facts. The simple fact is the resurrection of Jesus or the reincarnation of Buddha or a certain so and so who came back to tell all his grand children that Hell is a very hot place!...and
- All these so called simple facts are simply accepted as beliefs by people who believes and therefore, very hard to verify!
It is just asking the pawnshop person to determine the value of an ancient piece of artifact even though it is pure gold or some Buddha tooth found by someone in old Ceylon monastic places![[User:Terry How|: Terri talk 01:12, October 8,2005 (UTC)]] 09:41, 22 May 2006 (SGT)
- See**there were others like Alexander the Great who built the great Grecian <Macedonian> Empire**
[edit] How to be Annoying to your neighbors
.. what's to be annoying?
Okay, someone said,
- I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.
Rita Rudner US comedian..tah-tar..okay
Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.
- Aristotle..
Let’s get one thing very straight: The vast majority of people you meet at work are nice, caring and considerate. They go out of their way to be polite, they help if they can and they truly care about the well-being of people around them.
Yes, there are inconsiderate, annoying jerks out there sure, but they are a minority. They may seem like they’re everywhere (just read Bob Sutton’s excellent book The No Asshole Rule for some great examples), but that’s only because we tend to let annoying people take up more mindspace, making them more visible than their numbers warrant
Outside of work, you can walk away. If your cab driver is a jerk, you can get off and take another cab - odds are you’ll never see him again. If the person sitting next to you in a bar is annoying, you can get up and leave. At work though, you’re not free to leave that easily. In most cases you’re more likely to want to stay and resolve the issue.
The very best strategy is to become less angry. If you can fix it so that it takes more to trigger your anger reflex, you will enjoy greater peace of mind and be more free to act decisively and constructively when you are treated badly at work. You will also be less affected by any petty annoyances
1: Staying calm means you don’t do something you regret later
Sometimes when you get really mad, you may end up doing something rash. If you can stay calm, you’re more likely to choose constructive actions.
2: Getting mad often means staying mad
If you get annoyed here and now, that bad mood may last for a long time.
3: When you stay calm, you really annoy those who want to annoy others
If that person is truly out to annoy you, the very best way to annoy them back is to stay cool. Deny them the satisfaction of getting you riled. They hate that.
4: You only harm yourself
Getting annoyed really harms no one but you.
5: Getting annoyed makes it easier to get mad the next time
You start a cycle of anger - which means it takes less and less to set you off.
6: Dreaming of revenge is bad for you
This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
- Francis Bacon..okay
7: Getting annoyed makes the me..
I love being married. It's so great to find that one special person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.:[[User:Terry|wowowow|]] 09:09, 12 March 2008 (SGT)
