A belated marriage as a 50th birthday gift

During the weekend I called home and talked with my nephew who is 24 years old this year. I asked about his girlfriend, and asked whether they were planning to get married. He said, 'we both felt that marriage is only a piece of paper. Maybe when we decided to have a kid, we might get married for that'. Okay, I agree. When I was in China, I seemed to agree that the legal marriage certificate is the most important sign for a married couple. When Mr. and Mrs. Aawara got married, a social wedding was regarded as much more important than the certificate. Your relatives and friends recognize you as a couple only if they witness the wedding.

Different countries have different culture. Here in the Netherlands, marriage seems to be even more treated as 'a piece of paper'. When we just came here, Mr. Aawara's office-mate told him that 'his girlfriend is pregnant, and he is going to take parental leave'. We were both shocked to hear. A friend's brother didn't like to get married although his kid is in high school. The lady wanted, but was ok to live without a certificate with him. Recently she had her 50th birthday, and he gave her the marriage vow as the birthday gift! They were both very happy. I have heard before that 50th birthday is very important for Dutch people.

All these are due to the partnership law in 1997. In the Netherlands, Once marriage stops being about binding mothers and fathers together for the sake of the children they create, the need to get married gradually disappears. Some argued that this was due to the successful campaign for same-sex marriage, in which they tried to differentiate marriage from parenthood. This also led to the spike in Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrates, which I don't feel it makes sense to calculate any more in the Dutch context. Convince the public that marriage is not about parenthood, and increasingly parents simply stop getting married. Being registered as partners in the city hall, you have the full range of benefit that the legal married couple have: welfare benefit and tax breaks as well.

When we first moved in this current apartment, our landlady asked me, are you bf-gf, or couples. I hurriedly said, 'we are married'. And I also added, ' you live together without getting married?' Why not? Many people are like this in the Netherlands. Now thinking back, my questions was really not a question here in the Netherlands.

Since I mentioned a little about the same-sex marriage, really I haven't noticed any gay/lesbian couples here. I remember in US, people would like to announce their existences, by either putting a rainbow sticked on their car bumper, or raising a rainbow flag out of their windows. I have seen their signs many times in Providence, where the city mayor was a gay. I remember that in Denver there was a gaylord street where they liked to live. There is a 'King-sooper' grocery was called 'Queen-sooper' since you could see lots of gay couples there. However in the Netherlands, I haven't noticed any sign. I asked my Dutch friends, she said you know it exists if you know them personally. They are just part of everyone. Since their rights are protected well, there is no need to show up. Netherlands was the first country that legalized same-sex marriage in 2001.

The picture is from here.

Can Gymnasium become a power plant?

We have all seen today's world economy is depended highly upon resources, especially energy resources. Much of the world political conflict are around the competition of natural resources. The development of green technology to generate energy power thus becomes the top priority in most countries' development agenda. It is a recent news about a young kid designed a man-powered washing machine. So my idea came from two parts of recent technology development:

First is about collecting the man power. It is an exciting field, but actually nothing new. In the Netherlands, most bikes have a dynamo to generate enough power to light up for bikes, both front and back light. It is just a little dynamo touching the inside surface of the rolling front wheel. You can control whether to let it work or not just by moving it towards or away from the wheel. So it is easy to let it work when it is dark. So this power is generated and used immediately. It is not saved for other uses.

Recently, similar dynamos are designed to attach to human body's move. US and Canadian scientists have built a novel device - a bionic dynamo that effortlessly harvests energy from human movements. It can generate enough energy to power a mobile phone for 30 minutes from one minute of walking. The basic idea is similar to the design of the hybrid car. When you walk, the part of your stride that is before your foot hit the ground, there is power used for braking to slow your steps down. That part can be collected.

The second part of my idea is about selling electricity back to the grid. It seems that in UK it is already a possibility if you can generate more electricity than you needs. When you have a wind mill or solar panel that is possible to generate more than your own needs, you can set up a meter and monitor how much you refill back to the grid. The energy company will pay you back for the amount you created.

So my idea is about collecting and selling electricity back to the grid. Isn't the gymnasium the great place for this invention? There is not need, maybe, to collect individual muscle power. But all those treadmills are the most powerful collector of man-power. There must be a way to collect them. The gym can be operated together as a generator for the national grid. Currently all these energy were wasted if not making all those treadmills worn out. The amount of money it generated might be quite enough to cover the operation cost. It might be necessary to attach a meter to calculate how much power you produce, rather than how much calories you burned. If you produce a certain amount of power, you can use the gym for free. Isn't this great? People would feel like to going to gym because they are also contributing to the society, and it is free!

Let me know if you think this is a great idea. Also let me know if you want to start to explore it. I haven't done enough calculation to prove it really economic feasible. It is just an exciting idea in my mind recently.

The image is from here.