Evensong “Mr. Sandman”
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Temple of Zeus
Consolidated Financial Statements – June 2024: Net Position $19.548B (Page 4)
The Temple of Zeus is a popular café located in the Groos Family Atrium of Klarman Hall at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Established in 1964, it began as a modest coffee and donut operation in a basement storage room in Goldwin Smith Hall, designed as a neutral space for students and faculty to meet. The café’s name comes from plaster casts of statues from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, purchased by Andrew Dickson White in 1881, some of which still decorate the Arts & Sciences Career Development Center and Klarman Hall atrium.
Since moving to Klarman Hall in 2016, the café has grown significantly, serving nearly 900 customers daily. It offers a menu focused on healthy, locally sourced food, including creative soups (like Choklay’s Lentil, Tomato Garlic, and Curried Cauliflower), made-to-order sandwiches, salads, and baked goods. Beverages include locally roasted Copper Horse Coffee and Gimme Coffee, with a discount for bringing your own mug. The café is known for its vegetarian and vegan options, yogurt from Ithaca Milk, and seasonal fruit from local growers.
The current space is bright and spacious with 170 seats, a stark contrast to its original dingy basement setting with recycled Navy ROTC furniture. It’s a vibrant hub for students and faculty, fostering a communal atmosphere. The café employs four full-time staff, two student managers, and 50 student workers, and is managed by Keith Mercovich, who emphasizes high-quality, healthy food. It operates Monday through Friday, 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM, and is closed on weekends.
Historically, it was a gathering spot for notable faculty like Archie Ammons and Roald Hoffmann, and it remains a cherished part of Cornell’s campus culture, with a 2017 petition ensuring its name remained unchanged despite rumors of a potential rename. The café also faced a temporary closure in 2020 but reopened with a simplified menu focusing on classics like soups and scones.
For these two Cornellians, sustainable travel is in the “bag.”
Married couple Quinn Cox ’’5 and Lilia Karimi ;15 pioneered a simple — but ingenious — way for hotel guests to donate unwanted items
Read more about their efforts and how it all started on the Hill at… pic.twitter.com/WrLmLQZw5I
— Cornell University (@Cornell) June 5, 2025
Drip, espresso, americano, latte…
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Liber Abaci
Fibonacci numbers reflect standardization in nature through their consistent appearance in growth patterns and structures, embodying efficient, repeatable designs. These numbers (0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, …) govern the arrangement of natural forms, such as the spiral patterns in sunflowers, pinecones, and seashells, where seed or scale counts often match Fibonacci numbers.
This standardization optimizes space and resource distribution, ensuring maximum efficiency—e.g., sunflower seeds pack tightly without gaps. Leaf and branch arrangements (phyllotaxis) follow Fibonacci angles to standardize light exposure and growth. The sequence’s recursive nature mirrors nature’s iterative processes, like branching in trees or cell division, providing a universal template for scalable, stable structures.
The golden ratio, derived from Fibonacci numbers, further standardizes proportions in natural forms, from nautilus shells to galaxy spirals, revealing a mathematical blueprint that unifies diverse biological and physical systems.
Fibonacci numbers find applications in electrical power engineering through their mathematical properties, which can optimize design, analysis, and operation. Here are five applications:
- Power System Network Analysis: Fibonacci sequences can be used in graph theory to model electrical networks. The recursive nature of Fibonacci numbers helps in analyzing hierarchical or layered network structures, such as transmission and distribution grids, to optimize load flow or fault tolerance.
- Transformer Winding Design: The golden ratio, derived from Fibonacci numbers, can guide the geometric arrangement of transformer windings. This helps minimize electromagnetic interference and optimize the efficiency of power transfer by balancing inductance and capacitance.
- Signal Processing for Power Quality: Fibonacci-based algorithms, such as those using the golden section search, are applied in digital signal processing to analyze power quality issues like harmonics or transients. These methods efficiently identify optimal frequency components in noisy power signals.
- Renewable Energy System Optimization: In solar panel or wind turbine array layouts, Fibonacci-inspired spiral patterns (like the golden spiral) can optimize land use and reduce mutual shading or turbulence, improving energy capture efficiency in power generation systems.
- Control System Tuning: Fibonacci numbers can inform the design of control algorithms for power systems, such as in PID controller tuning. The sequence’s recursive properties help in iteratively adjusting parameters to achieve stable and efficient grid operation under varying loads.
These applications leverage the mathematical elegance of Fibonacci numbers to solve practical engineering challenges in power systems.
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When it comes to grilled cheese, butter is king. pic.twitter.com/mw38O6ikpC
— Jennifer (@LiLa__lee18) November 25, 2024
Fuel Cell Power Systems
Inventor of the fuel cell | CLICK ON IMAGE
We have been following the developmental trajectory of another “alternative energy” – related consensus product — NFPA 853 Standard for the Installation of Stationary Fuel Cell Power Systems — a document that sets the criteria for minimizing fire hazards associated fuel cells power generating technology installations; many of which are pre-engineered and pre-packaged by manufacturers.
Keep in mind that it is an installation standard and “agnostic” about the type of fuel cell technology. As such, it is likely referenced in energy project design guidelines and construction contract specifications. From the document prospectus:
Scope: This standard shall apply to the design, construction, and installation of stationary fuel cell power systems and shall include the following:
(1) A singular prepackaged, self-contained power system unit
(2) Any combination of prepackaged, self-contained power system units
(3) Power system units comprising two or more factory-matched modular components intended to be assembled in the field
(4) Engineered and field-constructed power systems that employ fuel cells.
The current edition of NFPA 853 is dated 2015
The NFPA Technical Committee on Electric Generating Plants has already begun work on the 2020 revision. A selection of First and Second Draft documents are posted below:
NFPA 853_F2019_ECG_AAA_SDmeetingagenda_04_19
NFPA 853_F2019_ECG_AAA_FDmeetingagenda_04_18
Response to the Second Draft Report under NFPA’s NITMAM process are due August 29th.
We normally collaborate with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee on consensus products of this nature because that is where the most informed locus of expertise lies. That committee meets online four times monthly in European and American time zones. We also host our own codes and standards for power and telecommunication systems teleconference every month. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Category: District Energy, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, Fire Safety, Risk Management, #SmartCampus, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Bill Cantor (wcantor@ieee.org)
Standards Massachusetts, Standards Texas, Standards Ohio
Homemade Guacamole & Avocado Toast
University of Illinois System: Annual Report 2023 ($10.4B)
Collective flex. No explanation needed. pic.twitter.com/YVHleKLljy
— University of Illinois Facilities & Services (@UofIFS) June 12, 2025
University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana Public Media
Facilities & Services at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
FinTech 200
“The most important role of technology is to create time.
Information technology epitomizes this role.
And wealth creation is ultimately about time,
freeing human time from labor.”
— George Gilder
L’italiano Luca Pacioli, riconosciuto come “Il padre della contabilità e della contabilità” è stato il primo a pubblicare un’opera sulla partita doppia, e ha introdotto il campo in Italia.
“Hatred of the rich is the
beginning of all wisdom”
— H.L. Mencken
Today we break down the literature that informs the finances of the real assets of education settlements. We examine a few publicly available university annual budget documents and, lately, have been looking ahead at innovation in distributed ledger solutions, digital currencies and blue sky conceptions of a circular economy which has captured the imagination of trendsniffers in every nation.
Since our 2016 estimate of $300 billion — triangulated from several private and public databases; the number that measures construction spend coupled with operations and maintenance — a fair estimate of growth is likely closer to $500 billion now. Based upon the US Census Bureau monthly construction spend reports we have seen a slight uptick in construction spend. We still see construction activity running at an $85-$90 billion clip.
During 2024-2025 we will be breaking down this subject into manageable segments as interest in it clarifies. For now it is enlightening to approach finance standards with an examination of a few operating budgets:
University of Michigan Budget Book 2024
Harvard University Budget Overview: September 2023
University of Minnesota 2022 Final Capital Budget Requests with Governor’s Recommendations
The 2022-2023 Budget: Overview of the Governor’s Higher Education Budget Proposals (California)
Prince George County Public Schools Operating Budget 2022
University of Illinois Deferred Maintenance
Central Michigan University Capital & Deferred Maintenance Budgets
Every dollar passing through the business or academic side of the education industry has rules for how it is received and tracked.* At the moment we track, but do not dwell, on the grant management standards asserted by state and federal funding agencies. When we do, we place them on the agenda of the appropriate colloquium.
Money, money, money… 😳 pic.twitter.com/Ssyz5PQPVV
— Agnieszka Herrmann (@AgaHerrmann) February 4, 2022
Appropriate use of public funding underlies some — but not all — of the accounting burden of the education industry. We steer clear of the grant management requirements public funding agencies place upon the education industry; maintain focus on the titles developed and published by organizations that have a due process platform. For example:
Accredited Standards Committee X9
Financial Industry Standards: Program of Work
Data Center OIX-2 Certification
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
There are several trackworthy non-ANSI accredited standard developing organizations:
Sustainability Accounting Standards Board
Real Estate Information Standards Board
Kuznets curve
Send bella@standardsmichigan.com an email for a detailed advance agenda. To join the colloquium today use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
“De armen en het geld” 1882 Vincent van Gogh
More:
Opinion AGB: What Do Our Accreditors, Auditors, and Bond Raters Do for Us?
Community FY22 Appropriations Request Letterdocx
Letter-Tax-Provisions-American-Jobs-Families-Plans-061421
Half the people working in schools aren’t classroom teachers—so what?
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR DOWNLOAD
A Blockchain-based decentralised university
Gm! 🟧
🎨Focus on the art not the noise 🙌PORDALS, pushes the boundaries of minimalism and narrative through a micro-to-macro approach, the smallest unit of measurement for digital color is a pixel. Inscriptions magnify the canvas to a visible size on Bitcoin. We create… pic.twitter.com/wsWNEqfZBq
— PORDALS (@pordals_) February 15, 2025
| Blockchain is a decentralized, immutable, and transparent digital ledger that securely records and verifies transactions across multiple computers or nodes. It operates through a network of participants who collectively validate and store each transaction, creating a chain of interconnected blocks. Each block contains a unique cryptographic hash that links it to the previous block, ensuring data integrity.
The distributed nature of blockchain eliminates the need for intermediaries, increases security, and fosters trust among participants. It has applications beyond cryptocurrencies, enabling efficient and reliable solutions in various industries such as finance, supply chain management, healthcare, education and accreditation. |
John Domingue | TEDxOpenUniversity:
“I believe that with blockchain technology we can create a radically new type of university: a DAO University. A DAO is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation which operates with no central control and no humans in the loop and are based on Smart Contracts: pieces of computer code on a blockchain which can represent and enact financial and legal contracts. ”
Miguel de Cervantes (Don Quixote): “Ladran Sancho, señal que cabalgamos”
“Let the dogs bark Sancho, it is a sign that we’re moving forward.”
On Democracies and Death Cults
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New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwB pic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
— USPTO (@uspto) July 13, 2023
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