Extracting Gold from Old Electronics

How To Mine Gold From Electronics | World Wide Waste
Business Insider

Gold! My mouth salivates at the prospect of getting my hands on some, especially if I can get it for free from old junk. Of course it's not so simple.

Trying to make a living by extracting useful materials from electronic waste is an iffy proposition, if you are just looking at the financial aspect. The 150 grams of gold they are extracting every week using their pilot project is worth about $9,000 (at today's price of $57.58 per gram), which might be enough to pay the bills. Whether it could scale up to make an industrial scale version a viable business is still an open question.

They mention a couple of points that could impact the business:

1. Gold is becoming more difficult to extract from the ground, which should make this bio-recycling more attractive, and
2. Electronics manufacturers are looking for ways to use less gold, which is will make this project less attractive.

They also talk about how recycling methods in third world shit-holes use polluting techniques that are unhealthy for the workers. But these people depend on this wretched business to make a living. Maybe we need to find a way to make those third world shit-holes less shitty. Yeah, good luck with that.

I hate to say it, but maybe we need a disposal tax on all electronics, shoot, for that matter, maybe we need such a tax on all manufactured items. Wouldn't Waste Management, AKA the Mafia, love to get their hands on that kind of revenue stream? You might think it would be a bad idea to let a corrupt organization like the Mafia into a legitimate business, but are they any worse than the jackholes running the highest levels of our federal government?

Jim Puckett (the guy they show in the old, fuzzy video clips) is an Executive Director and Founder of Basel Action Network and has been an environmental health and justice advocate for 28 years.

Mint Innovation (the outfit running this pilot program) has a website.

The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog | Official Teaser | Netflix
Netflix

Stupid, boring and irritating. But my wife liked it. We've got two brothers running a successful ranch in 1925 Montana. Their parents got old and moved away, to the big city presumably. 

Giant Frigging House in the Middle of Nowhere

Two brothers, one smart, full-on cowboy, one not so smart, but solid and reliable, live together is a giant frigging house in the middle of nowhere. The brothers are in their 30's. Solid up and marries the widow who runs the restaurant in the nearby crossroads. Smarty was perfectly comfortable with the way things were and doesn't take kindly to having his applecart upset. Widow has an effeminate teenage son who is studying to become a doctor. Eventually we see smarty's true colors, and now it starts to make sense. It's still stupid, but hardly anybody gets to live a smart life full of adventure and happy, smiling people. 

Cattle drive on the Great Plains - Castaigne, J. Andre - 1892

The scenery is cool, but the cattle look a little too fat. Pictures of cattle on old time trail drives look like they are skin and bones, relatively speaking. I suppose fat cattle is what they raise now. Oh, there is murder by anthrax, a common disease with cattle. That's kind of interesting.

Oh yeah, it was shot in New Zealand. 

The Stolen

The Stolen - Official Trailer
YouTube blurb:

In 1860, Charlotte Lockton has settled in the South Island of New Zealand with her wealthy husband, David. But her life’s dreams are shattered when he’s murdered on their farm and her baby son is kidnapped. A month after paying a ransom, frustrated with the apathy of the authorities and distrusting of her staff, she decides to track him down on her own. And so begins her journey through the wild untamed New Zealand, at the beginning of the Gold Rush.

She joins a convoy of whores, ex-cons and a Maori warrior heading for the rough mining community of Gold Town. There she meets Joshua McCullen, the owner of the town, a man who is key to uncovering the truth behind the disappearance of her son, forcing her to fight to the death for what she holds most dear.

Charlotte is unbelievably naive, or unbelievably sheltered. Here she is half around the world from home and seems to be totally lacking in any common sense. However, she can play the piano, not that it does her much good. Whatever. The man behind the crimes (robbery, murder, kidnapping) is fully engaged in building a town at the site of the latest gold rush, but he takes the time to travel two weeks overland to commit this outrage, and then travels two weeks back. He must have been plotting vengeance for a very long time, but we are given only a vague explanation.

Not too awful. We do have a plausibly authentic gold rush town, and at least one big gunfight, so it wasn't a complete loss.

Adventure

Crossing the river

My nephew and his buds are out traipsing around in the wilds of New Zealand.

Nevis Road - Duffers Saddle sign

Lots of big rocks in that area.

Car of the Day

Jaguar Race Car from New Zealand

What kind of maniac would take a vintage Jaguar sports car and turn it into a Frankenstein monster? Must be some kind of nuts. Turns out the whole thing is custom built, the body is fiberglass and the frame is tubular steel. How they got to this point must be a tortured story. I'm not sure I want to know.

New Zealand seems to have more than its share of racing extremists.

Via Just A Car Guy

Showgirl

Leda Petit by Jocelen Janon

The photo of this woman is exceptional. I am not sure if the cabaret setting contributes much, but it certainly doesn't hurt. I came across this photo while looking for one for an earlier post. I like to cite the source for photos I post, but this one I found on Pinterest, that members-only den of inequity. I wasn't going to get any source info there, so I asked Google, which delivered up a copy with a watermark, which was a pretty good indicator of being the original. Couldn't find any info about the pic. An inquiry produced a link to a very entertaining and enlightening story about photography in the age of the internet. You can read the whole thing here.

You can buy a print of the photo here. It's a couple of bucks, but then it's a heck of picture.

Update September 2024 replaced missing photo.

Britten V1000 Model

Britten V1000 Model Kit, prepped for painting.

The picture of the Britten V1000 motorcycle I posted the other day is a picture of a scale model, not of the actual bike. I chose that picture because of the clean background. All the other pictures I saw had cluttered backgrounds which made it difficult to see some parts of the bike. When I first saw the image I thought it was a real bike. Only when I got to the source page did I realize it was a model, but I figured if it was good enough to fool me at first glance it's good enough for my post.
     But now my curiousity is aroused, so I do a little checking. The model was developed by Jim Wylie, another New Zealander. He made the masters and then he and his crew cast some number of kits in pewter using a 'spin-casting' process, whatever that is. Some kits were sold, but then THE EARTHQUAKE hit and their stock of kits was destroyed. The molds still exist, so it is possible that someday, someone may cast another batch of kits. The kits, when they were available, weren't cheap, $330 was the list price.

George Barber and John Britten

Britten V1000 Motorcycle

George H. Barber founded a dairy in Alabama back in the 1930's. He was an early proponent of pasteurization. Given the way the media treats the South these days, it's hard to believe that anything intelligent ever came out of Alabama, but here we are. George's son, George W., as befits the son of a rich man, took up automobile racing. Eventually he inherited his father's business and sold it for a large fortune. Now what's he gonna do? I know, he says, I'll open a museum, the Barber Motorcycle Museum in Birmingham, Alabama.
    I had never heard of it before Stu told me about it. It's only been in business for 25 years or so, and it's in Alabama of all places. They have an impressive collection, including a Britten V1000 (picture above, sort of).
    John Britten designed and built his V1000 motorcycle in the 1990's in New Zealand. The thing is totally custom, engine, frame, suspension, body work, all hand made. They may have bought tires and maybe brakes and carburetors. Probably bought nuts, bolts and light bubs. Okay, I'm picking nits. The point is that John and his crew designed and built all the big, important stuff. And it would probably still be competitive today if anyone was willing to spend $1,000,000 for a racing bike. This YouTube video gives a good overview.

The Dead Lands

Lawrence Makoare as The Warrior / Monster

Here we go back to the stone age which only ended a few hundred years ago in the Americas and New Zealand, which is where this movie is set. It's basically a tale of deception, murder and revenge, as you might expect from blood-thirsty, stone-age savages. There are some things that look a little odd to the modern eye, but they might be accurate portrayals. Hard to tell though since there's been 500 years of cross-cultural contamination.
    A group of Maori warriors comes to visit another village on the pretext of visiting a 'graveyard' and paying their respects to their ancestors. It quickly becomes obvious that that is just an excuse and they are actually looking for a fight. The chief mollifies them with some clever words, but that only works for a bit. They come back in the middle of the night and massacre all the men in the village, all except for one boy who gets pushed down a hill and manages to hide until the killers have departed.
    Most of the rest of the movie is fight scenes. We'll have one or two guys facing down a group of a dozen or more, but the dozen won't rush them all at once, and they don't use their spears. They'll come at him, one or two at a time using their slashing clubs. Perhaps they have some code of honor that requires they make it something of a fair fight, at least when the sun's out. There is a lot of posturing and grimacing prior to the actual fighting, but the old guy dispatches most of the younger warriors easily. Could it be they haven't had enough experience and / or practice and so haven't learned any good fighting skills? Or maybe they are just stupid and didn't think they need any skills. Being big and strong and full of bravado had gotten them this far, why would we need to learn any skills? Wrong lunkhead, whack! and down he goes.

Super Pressure Balloon

Super Pressure balloon shortly before release. Note the yellow machine on the ground.

While reading about some NASA balloon projects, I came across this picture of the launch of a balloon from an airport in New Zealand. I thought it gave a pretty good idea of the size of the thing.

Super Pressure balloon being inflated. Now you can see how big that machine is.

Especially when you find out that the little bitty yellow device on the ground in the top picture is actually a giant frigging 80 ton crane.

Super Pressure Balloon's route around the bottom of the world.

This was a Super Pressure balloon, designed to maintain a constant altitude for days on end. This one managed to stay aloft for a month before a leak prompted them to bring it down in Australia.
     Most high altitude balloons are zero pressure - the pressure of the helium inside is the same as the air outside. During the day the balloon warms up, the helium expands and the balloon goes up. During the night, it cools off, contracts and the balloon loses altitude. With a Super Pressure balloon, the volume is fixed. It stays the same day and night. Since the volume doesn't change, the altitude doesn't change, at least not as much as a conventional balloon. These things are flying around at an altitude of about 25 miles, three times as high as your typical jetliner.
    I suspect the term 'Super Pressure' is a bit of a misnomer. I suspect you would be hard pressed to be able to measure the pressure in the balloon when it is at altitude. Since there is almost no air at that height, it wouldn't take much to keep the balloon inflated. Just how much pressure? At 33.5 kilometers, which was this balloon's nominal altitude, the atmospheric air pressure is about 19 millibars, so one millibar of pressure is probably enough to keep this thing happy. (Ground level air pressure is around 1,000 millibars.)

Pic of the Day

Five Vickers Vincent biplanes flying over the clouds, Royal New Zealand Air Force, ca. 1940. 

Via Posthip Scott. How small man, how big the world.

The Long Way Round

Boeing 314

Great story about a flying boat that circled the world at the outbreak of WW2. Getting across the Pacific took some doing. The aircraft did not have the range to reach across the really long stretches, so they set up refueling stops at otherwise uninhabited islands.

Pan American flying to New Zealand used Kanton Island. Not much there.

The would send a schooner with fuel in advance of the flight. God forbid you made an error in navigation. Photo by Ken Barber 1944.

Canton Island. British base buildings in background.

The Long Way Round

Update February 2019. Clear Lake, California appears on the above map, but it isn't mentioned in the story. A quick check turns up this bit:

Clear Lake was used as an outlying seaplane base for Alameda Naval Air Station during World War II and the early years of the cold war. Flying boats could land on Clear Lake when landing conditions were unsafe on San Francisco Bay. - Wikipedia

KFC Hugo and Holly

This is just the weirdest thing I have seen in long time. From long ago and far away (New Zealand) via Dustbury.
Update January 2016. Replaced missing video.

Top of the Lake

Mini-series murder mystery, 7 episodes, set in a small town in New Zealand where everybody carries a big gun, even the 12 year-old girl who is at the center of the story. She carries what looks and shoots like a double barreled rifle, though it might have been a shotgun. I got to thinking about this and I'm wondering what kind of big animals would you have in New Zealand? I mean, it's an island, and a long way from anywhere. I'm thinking the biggest animals would be sheep. So I checked. Seems the place is overrun with critters, deer mostly, that the Europeans imported in the 19th century. They didn't import any predators, so the place has become a mecca for hunters. Before humans showed up (around 1300) the only mammals on the islands were bats.

Economic Doubletalk

    I suspect most economists of new speak, they just make up stuff as they go because no one really understands how this financial business actually works. Right now Cyprus seems to be having some kind of problem. Paul Krugman wrote about it his column a couple of days ago. In it he mentions Iceland. Remember Iceland? Not me, I had forgotten clean about it, but it had a financial meltdown a few years ago. It is recovering. Now that you mention it, I do sort of remember hearing about this. People were saying it was some kind of miracle because the government did not bail out the banks. They didn't say was what did happen. What happened was that the banks failed and those people who had put up capital to start those banks lost their investment. Poof! Gone. So the taxpayers didn't have to foot the bill, but some of the movers and shakers took a palpable hit, or so I surmise.
    One reason places like Cyprus and Iceland get so much business is because of their bank secrecy laws. They don't have to tell nobody nothin'. So people with ill gotten gains like them. If you were a bank doing business with the mob, you might want to be careful with your money, and not go making risky loans to your brother-in-law in Florida. I mean, if your bank were to go bust, there are some not-very-nice-people who are going to be very unhappy with you. I wonder how many bank managers have died in mysterious circumstances since the Iceland debacle happened?
   Rooting around for some evidence to support my wild speculations, I stumbled over this little bit on the Recovery Partners dot biz blog:

    Under capitalistic forms of economic organization, Banks must ordinarily be held accountable to deal with their distressed credits promptly and the public balance sheet must not be used to subsidize bad risk decisions nor to prop up zombie companies at public expense and to the ultimate detriment of employees, taxpayers and other more efficient and productive entities.
    However, this departure from the norm in order to favor creditor interests is exactly what has been happening.
    These policies of Financial Repression have been followed before. The most obvious examples are failed communist states many of whom had to abandon the experiment over twenty years ago with the fall of the Berlin Wall and more recently, hyperinflationary Zimbabwe. Some examples in the developed economies include New Zealand in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s before the 1984 collapse and Germany in the immediate Post WWI “Weimar” period. In every instance, the outcome of these episodes was negative. Today, the Europeans (and  North America and Japan) are conducting policies of Financial Repression in a variety of formats.

"Financial Repression". What a fine term.

Pic of the Day

Igloo made of ice "bricks" colored with food coloring. Where else but New Zealand?

Update May 2019 replaced missing picture.

Mosquito Takes To The Air

Newly restored British WWII Wooden Fighter-Bomber takes to the air in New Zealand. Bunch of photos here.

Another Mosquito reference.

Via Earth-Bound Misfit.