Congratulations on The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman securing the future of Nikolai Tesla's lab for posterity. Encouraged by some lawyer monkey backlash that saw him swimming in money on his blog, Inman took the same philanthropic vector to save Tesla's legacy. Here's an interview with the man behind The Oatmeal in New Scientist.
I've always wanted a Tesla Coil on Wellington's waterfront during summer, but with all this interest in rebuilding after the Otautahi earthquakes, I've got a better idea. Instead of building another church on the rubble of the last one, how about something a bit more secular, awe-inspiring and versatile? How about... a large Tesla Coil or two?
Just look at its uses:
Good for Yanks en route to Antarctica:
Brits:
Otautahi's infamous boy-racers:
Or pretty much anything, as this 2001: A Space Odyssey / Ghostbusters / Jean-Michel Jarre etc. medley shows:
I'm pretty sure it can do Exponents songs too.
The only Tesla Coil I know of in NZ sits on Alan Gibbs' private estate. If Tiwai Point goes tits up, the Mainland will be sitting on a heap of cheap electricity which cannot get up north through the Cook Strait cables, even after the latest upgrade.
Tesla Coils for the Otautahi CBD makes more economic sense than a covered stadium, whatever way you look at it. Less collateral damage too, as Russell Brown recently observed.
2 comments:
In fact if Tiwai goes tits up the taxpayer will be faced with a bill of several hundred million to connect Manapouri to the National Grid, of which it is not currently a part and to which it is not presently connected.
Manapouri and Tiwai are symbiosis in motion. They exist because of each other. Neither one would exist without the other, because both were built with the other in mind and their mutual purpose for being.
You may not know that, as many of the younger generation may not, but it is truth, and that is why Manapouri was never connected to the grid. It never needed to be, and couldn't fulfill its intended purpose if it was. Manapouri is connected to Tiwai Point and not to anything else.
Tiwai takes a flow of water from Lake Manapouri, which would otherwise go out to sea, and turns it into electricity. That electricity is then turned into a billion dollars worth of export receipts and four billion dollars into the Southland economy, along with 5000 direct and indirect jobs, via the smelting of Australian bauxite into aluminium.
Do you really want to get rid of all that?
It's not up to me; it's up to Rio Tinto. It might be high grade aluminium and lots of jobs, but if there's a commodities glut, what do you do?
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