Fun with bananas!

Someday, Australia will rule the world...

Bananas could power Aussie homes

Australian engineers have created an electricity generator fuelled by decomposing bananas, and hope to build a full size fruit-fired power station.

At present, much of Australia's annual banana crop goes to waste, because the fruit are too bruised or small.
But rather than just letting them rot, the researchers would like to put the rejects to good commercial use.
If all goes according to plan, a banana-fuelled power plant capable of powering 500 homes could be built.

Engineering lecturer Bill Clarke, from the University of Queensland, said he hit upon the unusual idea when the Australian Banana Growers' Council approached him, looking for ways to use a mountain of waste fruit.
"In North Queensland, bananas are abundantly available and could be a great source of renewable energy," Dr Clarke said.

About one third of tropical Queensland's banana crop - which is more than 20,000 tonnes a year - never makes it into the shops.

Normally they are just left to rot on the ground, but Dr Clarke says this damages the soil - and wastes a potentially useful resource.

He has successfully used bananas to generate electricity in the laboratory, and is assessing whether a power plant could be commercially viable.

Bill Clarke, University of Queensland Dr Clarke lets the bananas decompose in sealed vats and uses the methane from the rotting fruit to power an electricity turbine.

So far so good, but the real test is whether this idea can be a commercial winner.

"We don't know yet whether bananas are a cost-effective energy source," said Dr Clarke. "So my research parameters are designed to discover how long it will take to convert the bananas to methane, and how much methane is produced."

His work involves mashing, pulping and shredding waste bananas to find the most efficient way to make them decompose - as well as adding enzymes to speed things up.

Dr Clarke says he will know by February of next year whether bananas are a viable energy source.
If they are, the banana industry will consider building a banana-fuelled power plant that could bring power to 500 homes.

Electricity generated at the plant would be sold to the national grid, providing banana growers with an additional source of income.

However Dr Clarke admits this technology has a flaw: it takes an awful lot of bananas to generate a small amount of power.

He said: "60kg of bananas are needed to power a household appliance such as a fan heater for 30 hours."

- BBC News, Friday, 27 August, 2004, 13:40 GMT 14:40 UK.

Things I have learned today

1) It is possible to survive on nothing but bananas for a very long time.
2) There is no one to save you from taking the Required Literature Classes in third year. They're good like spinach for you.

This may be more concisely summed up as follows:

Bananas are good.
Little Blue Duck is doomed.

!Pirateduck!

http://www.zydecogifts.com/html/ducklist.htm

Duck Ahoy!

A short time ago, Little Blue Duck found herself presented with a very big opportunity. When she first saw the email from her history professor, she couldn't believe her eyes:

Subject: Visit a Defense Ship on Thursday

(well, it was actually in Icelandic, but you get the idea..)

It was all that she could do not to break out into a hornpipe in the computer lab.

*~*~*SOME TIME PASSES SLOWLY*~*~*

It was snowing on Thursday of course. It was snowing for the first time in weeks, killing all the spring flowers which had naively poked their little purple buds out of the black earth only to discover that it is indeed a cruel world after all. And it was not only snowing. It was also very windy, even for Iceland, and cold. And there were icebergs in Bakkafjörður.

It was the perfect weather for a trip on the high seas.

Or Reykjavík city harbour, as it so happened.

The Duck waddled through security with the line that she was a harmless university student on a tour - security: higher in many parking lots - and then, with mounting excitement and a bad pun, up the REAL LIVE GANGPLANK onto the REAL LIVE DECK with all the SHINY METAL NAVAL-LOOKING THINGS and the BIG GUN. She thought fondly of her comrade Parley the Pirate and wished that she too could be there to enjoy the sight.

After this, she went BELOW DECK to investigate some ICELANDIC SECRET PIRATE WEAPONS and hear an OLD SEA CAPTAIN tell PIRATEY ICELANDIC TALES of the COD WARS. The Cod Wars are the favourite subject of Blue Duck's history professor, the closest thing Iceland has ever had to actual wars, involving disputed territorial boundaries and fishing rights. Skemmtun, skemmtun.

After a good dose of PIRATEY ICELANDIC TALES and PORTHOLES, the Duck and her companions went on to tour the rest of the ship, including the MESS, BRIDGE and ENGINE ROOM, and significantly increased her Icelandic ship vocabulary in the process, although not in fact enough to understand much of what was being said. Despite her state of confusion, she was VERY HAPPY, and thankful to her very nice history professor and the PIRATEY CREW of the DEFENSE SHIP TYR.

She sung a little SHANTY all the way back to Tjörnin.

Cure for Happiness?

For all those ducks out there suffering from an extreme overdose of happiness (the dangers of happiness to one's health are underappreciated in today's society), may we present the tongue-shivering taste of cod liver oil, Icelandic-style.

Icelandic Lýsi: the only substance in the world known to cure happiness and depression at the very same time.

103 Ways not to do Homework

Hmm... maybe this should be a feature here: Little Blue Duck teaches people how not to study. Is this a problem in your life? Do you sometimes feel as if your life is a dry and educational desert crying out for water and and random flash movies about frogs named Grog? Do you finish your homework on time?

Little Blue Duck is here to help.

103rd way not to do homework: Bother Lithuanians!

Atsiprašau.. = Excuse me..
Gal galite man padėti? = Could you please help me?
Mano vardas Maža Mėlyna Antis = My name is Little Blue Duck.
Aš pasiklydau! = I'm lost!
Kur aš esu? = Where AM I??

Nesuprantu.. = I don't understand..
Aš nekalbu lietuviskai = I don't speak Lithuanian
Mano vardas Maža Mėlyna Antis = My name is Little Blue Duck.
Aš tave myliu! = I love you!

(crickets a'chirpin')

true confessions of a happiness junkie

The Duck decided to improve her Icelandic skills recently by reading something educational. Her definition of educational is quite broad, as the only reading material she has in The Pond is bread bags and hot-dog wrappers. These are admittedly very informative but tend to get a tad repetitive at times, so she was excited to spot a newspaper floating in the water one morning last week. She swam over to educate herself.

It was really only one sheet of newsprint and the ink was soggy and unreadable, but she was still more or less able to make out one article. The headline read: Alsæla leiðir til þunglyndis.

Blue Duck blinked. Popular ways to depression? Blue Duck was confused. She blinked again and realized that she had read the sentence wrong. What it *actually* said was utter happiness leads to depression. This is not what Blue Duck thought it said in the three seconds before bashing her head repeatedly against something solid and flat, such as a wall, in the hopes of better arranging her grey matter. No. If Blue Duck had owned a dictionary to look up words in with, it would have told her exactly the same thing: utter happiness leads to depression.

The Duck continued to read in a daze, trying to wrap her neurons around the concept of happiness leading to unhappiness. It did not compute:

Utter happiness leads to depression

Cambridge University researched 124 individuals and came to the conclusion that persons with a gene composition demonstrated strong signs of depression after using the drug utter happiness - a happiness otherwise known as Ecstasy...

Blue Duck burst into uncontrollable laughter.

It took several days for the surgeons to put her back together again.

WARNING: Extreme happiness is bad for your health.

Reykjavík: Capital of Cool

(Cosmopolitan downtown Reykjavík, feb '05)

Due to popular request

Blue Duck has been under pressure as of late to include a picture of herself in this blog in order to.. well, she suspects that it is to demonstrate to her loved ones at home that she is not starving away to nothing in the hectic world of Reykjavík pond life.

She assures them that she is, in fact, turning into a little butterball, but just so they can see the proof for themselves:


(is she not the sætasta little butterball you ever did see?)