Retirement ideas

Interesting perspectives on retirement. 

Especially traveling to volunteer - "Nomads on a Mission Active in Divine Service, or Nomads, and RV Care-A-Vanners, an initiative of Habitat for Humanity."

NYTimes: Increasingly, Retirees Dump Their Possessions and Hit the Road

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/30/business/increasingly-retirees-dump-their-possessions-and-hit-the-road.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

More retired Americans are getting rid of their homes and traveling, with 360,000 of them receiving Social Security benefits at foreign addresses.

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Solar off grid manufactured home

http://tinyhouseblog.com/park-model-homes/off-grid-solar-cavco/

The solar home has a $47,000 starting price, and this home shown here has options that top it out around $70,000... Still relatively unknown to most consumers, recreational park trailers or “park models” are 400-square foot movable resort cottages that are designed exclusively for part-time recreational use.
Options like Bamboo flooring, upgrade slate tile backsplashes, upgrade kitchen cabinets, 12’ sliding glass doors etc...
“We believe we are the first company in the RV business to produce a trailer product that can produce its own electrical power,”...

See also the Montainer
http://www.montainer.org/

and other homes built from repurposed shipping containers
http://inhabitat.com/index.php?s=shipping+container

Excerpts from Logue's diary...The King's Speech: George and Lionel's private thoughts

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/8246432/The-Kings-Speech-George-and-Lionels-private-thoughts.html


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Preserve fresh foods on your shelf longer

The Future of Food Preservation

To tackle food waste, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and partner Worrell Water Technologies developed a one-square-inch packet that extends the refrigerated life of fruits and vegetables by up to five weeks. Each permeable packet contains Curoxin vapor, a proprietary disinfectant that releases slowly inside a clamshell container and envelops fresh food in an antimicrobial cloud. The effect? Water loss and fungal growth are significantly arrested, which maintains produces' firmness, color, and taste. Currently in trials, Curoxin should be available in 2015. —MATT JANCER

Why didn't biodiesel take off?

The slow acceptance of biodiesel is surprising. Strictly speaking, I guess one is just temporarily sequestering the CO2 in the fuel until you burn it, but that is better than burning up petroleum reserves (especially when it requires massive devastation to dig up tar sands.)

I think people have a bad feeling using large quantities of plant products to fuel their life, that could alternatively feed starving thousands, especially when it takes "7.6 pounds of soybean oil required for each gallon of biodiesel." 

http://www.c2es.org/energy/source/renewables/biofuels/biodiesel

Again, it's better than digging up petroleum, but it can be hard to shake up the status quo when people feel they're stealing from starving children. 

In comparison, it takes about 1/4 of the energy in a barrel of oil to extract and refine it from tar sands, as this MIT thesis contends. Maybe that's more just a comparison of energy density - I wasn't able to find a comparison of the number of joules of energy to bring biodiesel versus tar-sands petroleum to market, but I suppose it would be similar. 

http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/29589/52906785.pdf?sequence=1

Also I understand that biodiesel can 'sludge' at subzero temperatures, making for tough cold-weather starts, though not an insurmountable problem as they mention in the paragraph. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel#Low_temperature_gelling

It's just unfortunate that, at the time when biodiesel was gaining traction, its cost was about 20% higher than regular diesel. (Fig 3 at http://www.c2es.org/energy/source/renewables/biofuels/biodiesel)

If only market conditions had been slightly different at the time, it might have taken off. 

I think biodiesel will take off once  mass production of biofuels from algae is sorted out, either in floating bags in the ocean (http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/OMEGA/#.U_0WY0CCPCQ)

or strung up in the desert 

(http://www.oilgae.com/algae/cult/des/des.html)(http://people.uwec.edu/jolhm/desertsouthwest/Posters/Algae%20Biofuel%20Production%20in%20the%20United%20States%20Southwest.pdf)

NYTimes: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Growing, and Growing More Dangerous, Draft of U.N. Report Says

A sobering report, with 3- to 6-foot sea rises expected by 2100. However, developing nations are so intensely focused on lifting themselves out of poverty that there is little political impetus to take global warming into account. 

"Emissions are now falling in nearly all Western countries because of an increased focus on efficiency and the spread of lower-emitting sources of electricity. But the declines are not yet sufficient to offset rising emissions in developing countries, many of whose governments are focused on pulling their people out of poverty."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/science/earth/greenhouse-gas-emissions-are-growing-and-growing-more-dangerous-draft-of-un-report-says.html?smid=nytcore-iphone-share&smprod=nytcore-iphone

The report says that warming has already led to food and climate crises, and that the failure to reduce emissions will lead to worse catastrophes.

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Can an EV tow it's own generator for long trips?

The Car Talk hosts' discussion of the dilemma of bringing along a generator to recharge an electric vehicle. 

http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20120616/PC2107/120619349

This page describes a home-made electric pickup conversion with an on-board generator that also tows a larger generator for long trips. 

http://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/portable-generator.html

Save $500 a year solar-charging your commuter car

Add extra solar panels to charge your car, which pay for themselves in 14 years in this example.
Since one's car spends most daylight hours at work, it makes more sense to install a solar charging station at work.

http://pureenergies.com/us/blog/charging-an-electric-car-at-home-how-many-more-solar-panels-do-i-need/


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