night all! gonna try to catch a bit of shut eye… but before i go an update. hugh is up to 304 on his list and i just did a word count (i have no idea why – but actually microsoft did the counting) and he’s written almost 61000 words.
Since Slowhand, it’s always been Clapton. That man can reach right in and grab my guts. The Lou Rawls version is too up tempo for me, but really it isn’t even fair to put the two up against each other. Not stylistically equal.
That’s well over novella size. He needs to publish that offically. It would really be something. And a bit of a shocker to see just how big a paperback that would make.
Just to let Y’all know that January 22nd is national call in day for the horses. We have managed to close the slaughter houses in the US but now they are trucking the wild mustangs over the border in crammed trucks to Mexico to a gruesome death there. If everyone makes a call to their senator and representative between now and the 22nd and let them know we want to pass HR 503 & S 311, we can make it illegal to pack horses into trailers and send them to Mexico or Canada to become steaks or sushi (yes, sushi…the Japanese find it quite delicious and pay top dollar).
Leave ‘em on the range, wild, where they belong.
Thanks. I KNOW you all will make the calls. Please.
I wish i did! I wonder if Jane and the rest might have an idea. They got Marcy’s book published after all. That list alone is an epic undertaking. Hugh’s been at it how long now? WITH all those added details on top of it. I remember when he started that list–then it got way too big to confine to comments…
will do, spidey. there was an article in the latimes this weekend (or was it the nytimes) about how the drought is affecting the horses and how so many are being sold now, for as low as $10. made me sick inside.
Some of my friends have noticed that I have not been posting as much as I used to. Well, there’s a good reason – I’m writing a book! It is called “The Price of Right” and it is about why we can’t afford conservatism if we want a democracy. It’s being published by Sterling and Ross and it’s slated to be out in March of 2008.
When Edwards gets in, I hope the first thing he does is lower the price of a gallon of gas. I can’t believe I paid $2.79 for one dozen eggs the other day.
Gee when did that ass @ the FCC change the rules ab media ownership??
Well Diane our esteemed senator from California finally answered my e-mail… I don’t what she has proposed will change any thing:0)
Dear Mr. :
Thank you writing about changes to media ownership rules. I appreciate hearing from you.
Ya right!!
The effects of allowing a smaller number of companies a larger share of the media market concerns me. Any loosening of media ownership rules could seriously impact both the structure of the media sector and the relative negotiating power of individual companies. I am concerned that deregulation will put more power into the hands of media conglomerates, which could lead to neglect of local programming, eliminate competition, and reduce diversity of programming in the broadcast industry.
I have introduced legislation with Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) which would force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to postpone any changes to media ownership rules until it takes steps to promote the broadcast and carriage of local programming by broadcasters, and to increase independent women and minority ownership representation. It would also require the FCC to wait at least 90 days before voting on a proposed rule change and to provide at least 60 days for public comment on it.
Please know I pay close attention to all proposed changes to media ownership rules and I will do what I can to ensure a competitive, pro-consumer marketplace. If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to call my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
The original dreamgirl, Jennifer Holliday, singing “And I am telling you, I’m not going” at the Imperial Theatre in 1980 something. Dedicated to John Edwards.
I saw a movie on a late-nite flipthrough and even though it was only a coupl’o years old, the gas price in the background was about $1.35….wha’the hell happened to us?
My po’ widdle waptop doesn’t like You Tubes in posts on blogs for some reason.
It freezes up on them and says ‘Reading You Tube’.
There are two ways I have found to get around this.
I can either hard refresh and scroll like mad and hope it goes by,
or when it freezes, sometimes I can scroll the wheel on the mouse several times, then go up and hit my bookmarks link and it will jump past them. once I get to text it’s fine.
If I want to watch them, then it’s option number one.
Guess I am dating myself but….. my dad owned a Gulf gas station for a few years and the the price was TWENTY FIVE CENTS a gallon…like I said I am dating myself…. guess what year.
Naw,…I kept getting too conflicted for not exploiting the system for personal gain. Other than than that possiblr profit motive, the whole yjing makes me ill to follow any more.
I saw a movie on a late-nite flipthrough and even though it was only a coupl’o years old, the gas price in the background was about $1.35….wha’the hell happened to us?
reply
Gotta admit cow tipping was never up my alley besides where I was living there were no cows in sight.
Suz did you get the reply this afternoon I sent you?
If’n any of us gets tired of tweaking Tweety and ordnancing O’Donnell, we can always find a home for self-flagellation at the Association For the Study of Peak Oil. These guys are redefining “killjoy”. Much to my heartfelt appreciation.
Another excellent energy related blog is the Energy Bulletin.
I never thought I’d live long enough to see this headline:
That was in 1953 prices were high because they were ythe only station for 20 miles…. but three more stations were put in and the price got so low my dad sold it to his brother, funny thing is the building was still there when I went back last March. He went back to work as a machinist..
I remember working in a new (at that time) self serve station in the 70s and the price went up so fast, the pumps were never capable of pricing over $1.00 a gallon. There was some simple-minded, double the half price at the pump system that caused all kinds of grief and …lol…altercations.
I was going through some old boxes of checks and bills and stuff and found aome atatements where I would cash a check for $5 or $10 for the week’s spending money…lol…that’s not even enough to afford me to pay attention these days.
Damn! I remember those block-long gas lines after the Yom Kippur War in late 1973. It seems that the oil-producing countries didn’t appreciate Nixon sending Israel a new tank force after Egypt and Syria had destroyed what Israel had on hand.
Hi Margot!
A beautiful two inches… and more to come. I just had my daughter make me a facebook page that I don’t know how to use. Will you “friend me”?
I just got off the phone with my best friend, the Seattle bronze sculptor, Peter Bevis. He says it now costs $14,000 for a ton of bronze, which is the smallest weight that qualifies for free shipping.
Am I mistaken or do I recall several great conversations on wind energy here some months ago?
If I have the right train of thought…there’s an interesting project coming to fruition (I think) in the lower Laurel range in NE WV that would help the market image and local enviro-economy.
I was very young then, but I remember my parents complaining and having to plan their driving carefully so my father could get back and forth to work. The gas was sold to people based on their license plate. If it ended in an odd number, you could only buy gas on an odd numbered day. Maybe. It’s been a long time.
Mostly what I remember was people were really mad.
Shit I should know that from memory… maybe shortly after the embargo was over and the market was flooded with oil.. so that would be around 1975 or 1976 as home heating was at 19 cents a gallon in Maine in 1978 when I moved here to California
i remember the even and odd thing for gas and gas lines. for some reason, gas lines make me think of those gosh awful brown plaid pants (ala steve martin on snl).
Excellent! Yes, TOD is really lively and worth a bookmark. I just was rolling through my bookmarks and was about to get to that…. (wink)
And another great educator about the awl patch is Matt Simmons who is a hero of mine and a friend of George Bush. Go figure. Simmons maintains an extensive library of presentations that are well worth understanding for anyone who plans to be alive and financially viable in 5 years. http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/…..msspeeches
I did like the polkas during faushing in Germany, a few good German beers and an Ompa band and hot dam spinning around the beer hall with a pretty frauline in your arms what memories…
I had a 1962 black VW with the funny sunroof. I drove that wonderful car for years, until I went to University of Delaware in 1970. My Dad sold it then. And I still miss it.
41 at the little cottage by the creek tonight. had gloreous sunshine today and this afternoon it clouded over and looked like rain but was just a fake-out.
I was driving 5k a month for Xerox then in Maine and New Hampshire… that took a lot of planing as some of my accounts were 120 miles apart… but scenery was great, Old Man in the Mountain was still hanging around then
my boyfriend taught me how to drive his vw when i was 14 – and how to drive his motorcycle. i could never get the bike outta 2nd gear but the car driving came naturally to me.
Isn’t it crazy to see TV commercials pimpin’ out silver and gold these days? The only folks I can see making on those metals now are ‘them’s whats already gots ‘em’…and the TV commercial folks.
I remember being all proud in buying a small amount of gold in the late 70s…at about $400 or more per oz…ha!…guess I just didn’t wait enough decades.
What neck of the woods would you be in? We here in the beautiful exurbs of San Diego, aka Central Oregon are enduring 50 degrees today in town, 20 miles from our climatically challenged Mt. Bachelor ski resort.
Woah, that must have taken some serious planning! My father drove around 60 miles a day round trip, but the car was a mid 60’s behemoth that got 8-10 miles per gallon. And the American car companies wondered why anyone wanted a little Japanese car that got 25 or 30 mpg. What morons!
Ray,
We’re in Ohio. I’m about 60 miles east of the capital, Columbus. The ground is supposed to be frozen now, and we had dandelions sprouting up a week ago.
Wow, Ray. Damn good stuff. For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to fuel supplies, the site Ray suggests is a good resource, especially the powerpoint entitled “Do We Face and Energy Crisis.” But then you gotta read Kirk Murphy’s ecohorrors about the continued use of fossil fuel. Even if we had an abundant supply of fossil fuel, so much that it was free, we couldn’t afford to burn it. We are simply bringing too much subterrian carbon to the surface of the planet, and the planet is gagging on it, the land, the oceans, and the atmosphere. Bummer!
I did a few calculations about solar and my data showed that to generate the 15 terrawatts that the human race now consumes via ten-percent efficient photovoltaic cells, we’d have to cover .6% of the earth’s land area with such cells. (However, I won’t guarantee my late-night arithmetic.)
A friend of mine had about the same model but it was the full convertible….aw, man…was that ever fun…flying down the backroads (SW PA at the time) and just trying to outrun the drafts that were in the air at the time. I fell in a fortunate spot, by lucky birthdate, but it was always so damn close that life just seemed to be appreciated a little more…lol…this coming from a guy that had drills in grade school to hide under a desk to avoid nuclear obliteration….I was always just a tad too ‘trusting’…lol
was pleasant hill, california in the late 60’s early 70’s – during the ‘gas wars’. no glasses but i did get my choice of s&h green stamps or the blue stamps.
Another friend of mine, Barry Clay, found this at his gold mine up near Ruby, in 1998. It’s the biggest gold nugget ever found here. Our dughter was staying with them when they came up with it. It was worth $206 per ounce then. It’s actually worth far more as a nugget – 294.1 troy ounces – than if you melt it down. It is locked up.
It seems that the oil-producing countries didn’t appreciate Nixon sending Israel a new tank force
Yes, it would seem that way to anyone reading the mainstream media of the day. But it didn’t seem that way to George Bush and other pilots who were flying over the Gulf of Mexico and seeing dozens of oil-laden tankers loitering beyond the horizon of anyone looking out from Padre Island. The oil was out of the hands of the Arabs and so what was going on?
According to F.W. Engdahl who happened upon the 1973 agenda/synopsis for the Bilderberger Group meeting that year, the decision to withhold oil from the American market was taken by our own oil corporations who had two very important discoveries that could not be economically developed at the then current price of oil, as of the spring of 1973. Those two projects were Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea offshore fields. Both required a huge increase in crude oil prices in order to justify their development. The Saudis were more than happy to go along with the deception because it meant fantastic fortunes for them.
Hey Ray, I’m down here in the Bay Area exurbs, aka Ashland. I have a lift ticket good for 10 rides at Bachelor sitting in my ski pants, not sure when I’ll make it up there, but hopefully soon.
Great link to those Simmons speeches, I bookmarked it.
Hi Suzanne, thanks for the tunes. Anyone link a BB King or Allman’s version of Stormy Monday yet? Dare I go off topic and link to a YouTube filmed by moi last week? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elFdBY3sHlE
It was in Massachusetts in early fifties and I do remember getting all those glasses there was a complete collection… Also Sunaco had a dial on the pump and the higher the number higher the octain,,, then ther was Amaco and the premium was just over 100 octain…we called it airplane fule… my 58 chevy ran best Amaco or Sunaco 260 Of course it was a race between the speed odometer and the gas gauge,,, I think I was getting 5- 10 MPH if I didn’t punch it…these were the days when cars were cars…
Actually, when crude oil was selling out of the East Texas oil fields for 10 cents was in 1930. There was so much oil that the Texas Railroad Commission had to step in and prevent bootleggers from hauling it across the state line for free, just so that they could earn the refinery markup in Tulsa. There’s a good write-up of this spectacular bonanza era in Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”.
Unfortunately, the extreme surplus of oil was of no benefit to the nation as it was sliding inexorably into the Great Depression.
i remember my mom buying laundry soap that had a towel in the box, the larger size box, the larger the towel. banks would offer toasters for opening a christmas club account.
companies actually tried to build customer loyalty. whatta concept (/snark)
…my conversion skills aren’t that great but isn’t that upwards of a 10lb chuck/nugget/…freakn’ ‘rock’ of gold? Neil Young was on it, wasn’t he?…been a miner for a heart o’ gold.
I’m naive, I know, but how could that be worth the same as a year’s worth of groceries for a family somewhere?
…borrow a ’sigh’ from another thoughtful poster here.
That’s an interesting thing about the dandelions. We’re not quite to them yet. The crocuses should be out in a month. And a couple weeks ago I discovered that we have some robins apparently over-wintering here. I find that quite unusual.
the nugget is almost twice the size of a large Florida grapefruit. It has quartzite mixed in with it in a beautiful way, but that made it less valuable, which goes to show you how little respect for the whims of God nugget collectors have.
I once worked with a guy who would insult people’s fashion choices by asking “Where’d you get that shirt, a box of Breeze?” At least that was the brand of soap with towels in it in the midwest.
I told you I was guessing …but ya know I remember reading that somewhere some time… Dam too much stuff swirling around in my Grey matter to get it all organized and cross referenced…need a modern day data base to make sense of all that stuff… any one have a DBA in Grey matter???
One of the most promising developments in solar today is the first production runs of printed solar panel materials. This is revolutionary and a 90% reduction in the cost of the basic building blocks of photovoltaic cells.
Nanosolar seems to be the industry leader at the moment. Sadly, no way for the public investor to participate at present…
…lol…I was kinda hoping ’survival’ might be an adequate nuclear deterrent,…but mebbe not, these days.
I can’t understand, and never could, really, the fear of even a ‘rogue’ entity/nation offering a credible, first strike threat…I grew up with 2 older sisters…I had, and optioned my ‘first strike’ arsenal every chance I had, in serious but purely mischievous ways…and they consistently pummelled the shit’outta me every time…lol…I did not win, regardless of first strike capability…they made me pay dearly for my insolence.
Yeah, was passing through S.F. on Sat. (on our way home from Maui) when I saw they had made the call for this years Mavericks competition. Great stuff. Did you happen to see the footage from last month when Flea survived a wipeout in an 80-footer? Those guys are insane, but I admire their quest. I was showing my daughter some footage of Pipeline and she asked if she could do that when she got better. Surfing and skiing both give some powerful natural highs, that’s for sure.
Suzanne, I love Oregon, and now is a pretty good time to buy. Good luck with selling your house!
Well if your worried by a little radiation this company is printing flexible solar panels… just wrap them around and you can be a walking talking energy source: http://www.nanosolar.com/
It’s a pity the picture doesn’t provide any sense of scale. I’d guess the nugget to be half way between the size of a clenched fist and skull? Would that be about right?
***
Also, did you get my link to pianist Aziza Moustafa Zadeh?
Ah shit Ray you stole my thunder… I have been looking at Nanosolar for my house… had heard about it from an article about a proff in Colorado… they have sold out their first years run….. shouldn’t be too long before we can get some…
I actually have a ton of tinfoil for the most extensive protection…:-D
…but I’ve been looking for some serious alternative energy sources to incorporate in my upcoming business season projects. Is that a good one or just a random grab?…looks good at a glance…fwiw
I have a lift ticket good for 10 rides at Bachelor
Your email to rayd95 at yahoo dot com is good for one free beer at the Bend Brewing Company. Else, you buy the ride and I’ll buy the lunch up at mid-mountain. :)
I read the Dkos diary on that product a few weeks ago. That was what got me to calculate lookup the required land area to provide the human race’s current consumption. The data I looked up indicated that it would require about twice as much land as there is on earth. So i decided to cross check the calculations of the author (from the University of Oregon) and it turned out he was off by 1000x. And, I think I know where he went wrong. I think that he saw km2 and interpreted it as k(m2) rather than (km)2 — made that same mistake myself a few decades ago.
In any case, one of the Dkos commenters has some very interesting cautionary considerations regarding that technology. Also, with solar energy, you need a way of storing it, if it is to be a full solution.
I had thought about going over to watch… but with two decent ways to get there I knew better traffic was snarled as bad as during the pumpkin festival. Now Suz coming up 1 might have had better luck at least until she hit 92 + 1
What I have been able to find out the process used also yields a higher efficiency rating than current silicone panels, they are also printed so once they get both factories up to speed the cost will come down. worth the wait IMO
I worked there for 2 1/2 years then. It was interesting country “Land of Enchantment” all the enchantment you can handle with Hopi’s, Navajos spirituality and sand storms. My first encounter with the Southwest was Albuququ had 50K pop it exploded. Lots of outer space stuff. I went to U of N.Mexico for a while. Live in Central Coast California last 12 years. Lots of great places and people in USA. I never met any warmongers in my travels. Bushco is unamerican.
Also, with solar energy, you need a way of storing it, if it is to be a full solution.
The way forward is with solar thermal collectors. The photovoltaics are an evolutionary dead end for grid applications, though they will clearly become viable for producing peaking power.
I used to study CAISO in relationship to my research into the scamming of the California energy system by our notorious predatory capitalists. (KEN LAY: May You Rot In Hell Forever!)
The typical pattern is that the peak load on the California grid, which is probably close to the national experience is that the hours of peak electricity consumption occur between 4-7 PM daily. This doesn’t match the Sun’s maximum at between 11 AM to 1 PM. So the shift can be accomodated by using parabolic reflectors to heat water for steam, salts or other exotic phase changeable chemicals used to drive rotary turbines. Storage can be added to the system to shift some of the energy production into the nighttime hours.
Thanks for bringing up an interesting topic.
***
FWIW, a few years ago I fell in love with the comcept of using the Sun to drive Sterling Engines. This seemed a great idea at the time. From reading in between the lines of their press releases, I think this idea is proving to be economically impractical. Too bad, it makes for a wonderful sculpture.
I’ve been watching the science channel – they have a show called invention nation that features alternative energy in all forms. pretty interesting stuff. that show is usually followed by one called ‘eco tech’ about technological stuff that helps the environment. i’ve seen nano stuff on both shows explained well in ‘lay person’ that makes it all seem possible.
Check oput this months Scientific American great article in using solar and compressed air to over come the problem of storing the energy produced… :400 billion invested by 2050 and using current technology authors are saying we could stop importing oil…. I like that idea… no more oil wars… hear that Cheny!!
science geek or scfi geek whats the difference…. it has been fun watching scfi coming true … at least for me…started reading scfi in first grade lots of dreaming about what might be… still do it…oh well
At our family Christmas party, my brother-in-law was telling me about a compressed-air car he had seen on TV. The way he described it, it was basically a perpetual motion machine. I expressed mild skepticism, but he wasn’t exactly sure about the details of what he had heard. After dinner, we went to the family room to watch our new TV and almost instantly that same program came on. And sure enough the announced essentially described that compressed air car as though the air itself was the fuel.
i was a biology major in high school (if there could be such a thing) took bio in 10th grade, then took bio 2 junior year and loved it – we did field research out on the delta, up on mt diablo, bolinas bay. my senior year, i was bio x, which was ta to bio 2 glass and worked on independant project.
i dissected my first frog in 8th grade science class (that was heavily leaning in life sciences). twas back in the day, back when california led the nation in school rankings.
What do we call these people? Idiots? Dumkopfs? Morans? It makes me so g-damned angry that the military is pissing away billions of our taxpayer dollars on this and other completely brain-dead concepts.
Matt Simmons notes, and others have corroborated, that the U.S. production of conventional natural gas peaked in 1973 and has been in decline ever since. On-shore conventional natural gas in the Continental U.S. is for all practical purposes depleted. We are now predominantly sourcing natural gass from the Gulf of Mexico, for unconventional sources like coal bed methane in the Continental U.S. and rapidly diminishing imports from Canada. So with natural gas prices set to explode due to lack of supply and substitution value vis a vis crude oil, the military men are setting on a course that cannot result in anything other than bankruptcy for the Treasury or completely useless facilities development due to a lack of feedstocks, whichever comes first.
Groucho Marx had it right, to paraphrase… ‘whoever came up with the term military intelligence didn’t know shit from shinola.’
Watching some of the SciFi come true scares the shit out of me. When I was quite young my father brought home a copy of The Space Merchants (Kornbluth and Pohl). Too much of it is coming true. Same for 1984 and many others.
first of all…I’d like to thank everyone here for a great evening of stimulating conversation, laughter and interaction…I like to think that these benefits are well worth all of the DARPA-related inconveniences that allow so many divergent worlds to co-exist peacefully and productively. Y’all are some really good people here and I hope to continue the conversations I found again here this evening…
…as to the alternative energy issues…without too much technicality…isn’t the main problem simply storage for use during times of unavailability for primarily residential needs? What’s been done, if anyone is familiar, in running the storage technology similar to the new automobile energy issues of storage? Wouldn’t addressing the issue of residential collection/storage actually help out on the energy grid coll/stor issues by putting the supply closer to the point of individual demand?
…anyone ever wonder about the folks through the years that were the friend of the carpenter-rocking chair maker? The ones who were asked to try out each new chair that came as a prototype?…someone had to go ass backwards for the goal of properly sized rockers on those chairs….:-D …are there any programs out for field testing these alternative energy products?
HiRay. Thanks. I have a friend who has been in the photovoltaic business for the past 30 years. I should buy him dinner soon for several reasons, and this is enough to get me to move on that project. ;-)
Hey i remember those authors some of my favs were Azminov .Clarke.. Andre Norton wrote a great series of books including Beast Master Shit like I said earlier… too much stuff roaming up in the grey matter for me get at all of it when I won’t to it sometimes just pops up for no darn good reason
late nite is where i regain my sanity after dealing with the insanity of the day. tis my favorite time to spend at the lake – dont get me wrong, i love the live blog threads and the legal porn – but the nite time, when we are all sitting around the lake’s campfires, telling our stories is the perfect way for me to end my day.
I have a friend who helped his son start an investment company about $1 Billion of investor money. He is something of bright mind and studies the markets.
He knows of a generator that runs of off gravity.
Would you be familiar with that technology? he said a “big energy company” is sitting on the patents. They buy up any alternatives that challenge big oil. We beat the vertical trust but never finished them off.
chambord, ahhhh.
Key ingredient in my favorite raspberry pie recipe (even makes plastic grocery store rasps taste good).
Unfortunately I end up buying a new bottle every time as it just kinda gets consumed between pies. If anyone wants the recipe, will be happy to dig it out.
I went to Boston Technical High School, they stuck me in the special math class ha ha I did shitty in the math class but using the math in physics I was a wiz go figure.. we also had a good grounding in machine shop sheet metal(tin knocking) wood working and 1+1/2 of both physics and Chemistry… lot of work but I made it through,,, had to work at night which provided me close proximity to the main library in boston Copley Square … they had a great collection of scfi.. read more than half of their collection… riding the MTA gave me lots of time for reading..
sn’t the main problem simply storage for use during times of unavailability for primarily residential needs?
The primary problem is the central station model for profitability that has been developed by energy marketers and sold to an unsuspecting public. The utilities essentially want alternative energy schemes to fail. Oh, they won’t tell you that in public, of course. But that’s the reason that we have got schemes afoot for a couple dozen new nuclear power stations and why coal is going to predominate in base station development for the foreseeable future.
Re:
What’s been done, if anyone is familiar, in running the storage technology similar to the new automobile energy issues of storage?
I don’t have a link handy, but the City of Fairbanks, AK has the country’s and possibly the world’s largest battery backup system. But the problem is that we’ll never be able to rely on such a system standing alone. The electrical system of the U.S. is a hybrid model and will remain so. Hydroelectric, such as is provided by BPA is the best model for energy storage. Just stop the turbines and let the reservoir fill. Nuclear and coal are best for steady baseload generation. Wind is eccentric, with about a 35% availability at any one location in the U.S. Solar is on again, off again and subject to being “really off” again if the cloud cover lasts for days.
Whatever we have in the future will be a mix. Some are speculating on using fuel cells in vehicles to power up the grid. Some also say the moon is made of green cheese. There’s lots of crackpot ideas. But there’s clearly a lot of brilliant ones as well out there to be developed.
Re:
Wouldn’t addressing the issue of residential collection/storage actually help out on the energy grid coll/stor issues by putting the supply closer to the point of individual demand?
Alternative energy gurus, environmentalists and public power advocates have been arguing this for years. OTOH, private utility executives have been wringing their hands and asking “What part of Greed don’t you understand?”
For inquiring minds…microwave oven is a fave method of cooking for me. Occasional egg in soup or beans takes three minute.
Tonight something very interesting happened…for some reason unknown I put some water in a bowl, added a raw egg, set the timer for usual three minutes and put in the bowl with the water and egg. I sware in 30 seconds or so I heard an explosion in the oven so I opened it and the egg was cooked…the yolk had exploded but was ready to eat. I had saved a lot of energy was it the water?
Suz watch out for the slippery parts where you already waxed the floor …
I feel like a pumpkin myself .
Night and thanks all you firepups
for the great conservations as usual I always seem to go away with more info in my head… dam where the hell does it all go…
See ya all later on the flip side1
I should buy him dinner soon for several reasons, and this is enough to get me to move on that project. ;-)
Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to be the fly on you wall when you get together. I’ve got a couple of old-time EEs that I love to spend time with. One in particular is a gadget wizard. He made his fortune with the first iteration of those little wands that FedEx drivers use to track packages. I loved his pooh-poohing all the fancy CPUs we use today. His favorite device is the Intel 186 processor. He says it lets him “get down on the iron”. Love it. :)
I was enthralled by the early William Gibson stuff. Quite a prophesy of the dystopias of the future. Unless you happen to live in a Third World slum, then it’s pretty much “been there, done that”.
Midi …a compressed air car made in France…retail about $19k need to develop the stations that produce very high PSI compressed air. Comes in 2,4 or 6 cylinder, The Midi website http://www.zeropollution.com/z…..index.html
…lol…I think I see a major part of the problem here.
I understand and appreciate the different points you brought up and I also think it is the same basic problem that most Americans are fedthef&*^kup with in regard to energy prices. The solution can be sold a variety of ways, depending on the specific market, and the major energy (traditional) power brokers could be in a place to still get their fair share of investment back. That traditional power ‘investment’ interest would have to be considered due to the enormous amount of paper equity it holds for retirements, investments, long term contracts…
…By placing a reasonable percentage of energy collection and consumption at the hands of consumers, with a reasonable investment, the advantages could be sold as… a way to protect against future terr-attacks on the energy grid (as has been predicted for years) by supporting individual self-sufficiency while being simultaneously interdependent, or incorporated, into the larger protected grid of society supplied energy/community
The power co’s will bilk us anyway, any way they can, but this would provide a very necessary need for the future…the illusion of (and slight economic) individual control over some aspects of our lives and survival.,
by the way…g’night to the folks I missed leaving earlier.
and the major energy (traditional) power brokers could be in a place to still get their fair share of investment back.
One of the reasons I consider Dennis Kucinich to be a political hero is that he was willing to stand up to the banking elites in Cleveland who attempted to steal the City’s public power system in the late 1970s. The bankers were absolutely scurrilous scoundrels and I’d really appreciate if you’d do some reading on how most of the private utilities in this nation were cobbled together by swindles, fraud and devious and unethical business practices. It’s a heck of a story.
When you talk about private power, you should never forget Enron. I have friends whose family members were 30 year employees at Portland General Electric when it was bought up by Enron. In one instance, a very dutiful saver/employee was forced by Enron, as were all PGE employees, to invest his entire pension exclusively in Enron stock. He lost $500,000 from that account while in the prior years Ken Lay had cashed in stock worth more than $50 Million knowing full well that he waa perpetrating a fraud.
So when you talk about a ‘fair share for power brokers’ I have to tell you I don’t think there is one. They mostly deserve jail time for being swindlers.
Well…I agree with you completely, but, what actual political/business powers have we had to hold the crooks in check? Even if an occasional verdict is achieved, I don’t think justice is ever served to the consumer or investor public. Corporate heads still get multiple times a reasonable salary, in bonuses, for negative performance. Enron and the energy price scam that was allowed to thrive was done in the blind eye of govt oversight, yes?
When I say…‘fair share for power brokers’, I’m only being realistic to the flawed system we’ve all had to accept as SOP. I’m not much of a somebody to effect a serious change but that’s only due to my lack of opportunity.
…personally, I can’t buy the timing and circumstances of Lay’s demise…yes, I’m a cynical bastard.
Maybe you could put up John Lennon’s “(All we are saying is) Give Peace a Chance” in honor of the Clinton & Obama ‘truce’ and to remind us all of the importance of ending the war in Iraq.
Guess I am dating myself but….. my dad owned a Gulf gas station for a few years and the the price was TWENTY FIVE CENTS a gallon…like I said I am dating myself…. guess what year.
wow, I’ll take Lew
hey spidey
..or rather Lou
hey suzi, just sneaking in for a minute
Hi Suzanne
i found it a very tough choice, spidey. looks like its just you and me right now – everyone must be still watching the videos
hey neuro
Hey Suzanne!
Lour Rawls for depth, Fresh Cream for, uh, for, uh, for reminding me of the night after the day I got out of the Army?
well I can see why you put them both up
Cream.
wow
hey tex and ET
Oh, Cream
Can’t get much better than this…
ET, did you get the thank you note downstairs?
hey christine… that cream blew me away but dayam, lou brings something to the song that i had not heard before.
Very cool, Suz!
Cream. Love Lou’s voice, but this isn’t even a close call. If only Cream could find a decent geetar playuh…….
hey alicia. speaking of cool, when’s your book publishing again – March?
My brother pulled me out of the “British Invasion” to see bands like this. He was a drummer.
If anyone missed David Sirota’s smackdown of Lawrence O’Donnell for trashing John Edward, it’s a very good read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..81400.html
{{{{{TexBetsy}}}}}
night all! gonna try to catch a bit of shut eye… but before i go an update. hugh is up to 304 on his list and i just did a word count (i have no idea why – but actually microsoft did the counting) and he’s written almost 61000 words.
I like Lou… but it is definitely CREAM for me!!
Here is something for the wingnuts out there
http://users.telenet.be/leukelinks/flash/queen.htm
Suz,
I do love him too.
g’nite selise
304? dang, it seems like just yesterday it hit 300
nite selise
Since Slowhand, it’s always been Clapton. That man can reach right in and grab my guts. The Lou Rawls version is too up tempo for me, but really it isn’t even fair to put the two up against each other. Not stylistically equal.
That’s what they tell me…:-) I’ll be meeting my publisher face-to-face for the first time at the end of this month.
G’nite Selise. I wish you lots of sleep.
suz, i could listen to this all night. eric in real form.
Bloody hell, selise!
That’s well over novella size. He needs to publish that offically. It would really be something. And a bit of a shocker to see just how big a paperback that would make.
spew!
I’m spoiled by the excesses of my whim’s-ability
I simply, want it all
;)
…..do I really have to choose?
Just to let Y’all know that January 22nd is national call in day for the horses. We have managed to close the slaughter houses in the US but now they are trucking the wild mustangs over the border in crammed trucks to Mexico to a gruesome death there. If everyone makes a call to their senator and representative between now and the 22nd and let them know we want to pass HR 503 & S 311, we can make it illegal to pack horses into trailers and send them to Mexico or Canada to become steaks or sushi (yes, sushi…the Japanese find it quite delicious and pay top dollar).
Leave ‘em on the range, wild, where they belong.
Thanks. I KNOW you all will make the calls. Please.
newton, the he is all over the utubes – i found a clip with him and pavarotti (iirc)
do you know any publishers or editors?
alicia does – she’s gonna have her book published in March.
Come on Suz I sure have had to deal with your share of those!!
But they really are c-babies
is that fiction or nonfiction?
I wish i did! I wonder if Jane and the rest might have an idea. They got Marcy’s book published after all. That list alone is an epic undertaking. Hugh’s been at it how long now? WITH all those added details on top of it. I remember when he started that list–then it got way too big to confine to comments…
will do, spidey. there was an article in the latimes this weekend (or was it the nytimes) about how the drought is affecting the horses and how so many are being sold now, for as low as $10. made me sick inside.
he’s had it on line since april 9th. and he still has over 370 days to go.
I will.
from her blog, it sounds like it is non-fiction.
love to say and talk all night with you all.. but got try for sleep. night again.
When Edwards gets in, I hope the first thing he does is lower the price of a gallon of gas. I can’t believe I paid $2.79 for one dozen eggs the other day.
crap, forgot to include that this was in response to selise at 39
And assuming that ChimpCo isn’t able to destroy every single piece of paper, the scandals will continue to mount for looooong after they are gone.
sleep well selise
Time for snack.
Gee when did that ass @ the FCC change the rules ab media ownership??
Well Diane our esteemed senator from California finally answered my e-mail… I don’t what she has proposed will change any thing:0)
Dear Mr. :
Thank you writing about changes to media ownership rules. I appreciate hearing from you.
Ya right!!
The effects of allowing a smaller number of companies a larger share of the media market concerns me. Any loosening of media ownership rules could seriously impact both the structure of the media sector and the relative negotiating power of individual companies. I am concerned that deregulation will put more power into the hands of media conglomerates, which could lead to neglect of local programming, eliminate competition, and reduce diversity of programming in the broadcast industry.
I have introduced legislation with Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) which would force the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to postpone any changes to media ownership rules until it takes steps to promote the broadcast and carriage of local programming by broadcasters, and to increase independent women and minority ownership representation. It would also require the FCC to wait at least 90 days before voting on a proposed rule change and to provide at least 60 days for public comment on it.
Please know I pay close attention to all proposed changes to media ownership rules and I will do what I can to ensure a competitive, pro-consumer marketplace. If you have any further questions or comments, please do not hesitate to call my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Freedom toast is getting priced through the roof.
-G
P.S. The Russian soldier who placed the Communist flag over the Reichstag in 1945 has died.
Late, late nite gives me an opportunity to let the day’s stress evaporate, and NO Chris Matthews. Right?
FWIW, gas prices around the world as of six months ago: http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/2653
oooow, kewl cake tex. surreal even
Dali cake!
great video here…
The original dreamgirl, Jennifer Holliday, singing “And I am telling you, I’m not going” at the Imperial Theatre in 1980 something. Dedicated to John Edwards.
Q – Which came first; the chicken or the egg?
A – The chicken; it could walk.
:-D
I saw a movie on a late-nite flipthrough and even though it was only a coupl’o years old, the gas price in the background was about $1.35….wha’the hell happened to us?
Of course Daling!
You seen exxon’s profits for last year??
Hey isn’t that from The TWILIGHT ZONE???
I can’t link youtubes but google it over there. It’s worth it for sure. Good night all!
My po’ widdle waptop doesn’t like You Tubes in posts on blogs for some reason.
It freezes up on them and says ‘Reading You Tube’.
There are two ways I have found to get around this.
I can either hard refresh and scroll like mad and hope it goes by,
or when it freezes, sometimes I can scroll the wheel on the mouse several times, then go up and hit my bookmarks link and it will jump past them. once I get to text it’s fine.
If I want to watch them, then it’s option number one.
Heh, heh
Nope, that’s tomorrow night :)
I learned how to link earlier but I still can’t link youtubes. It is so sad to get old.
g’nite ccmask
I did want to say thanks, again, to every one who stopped by my buddies place, you guy’s are pretty cool.
Here’s one for all my lovely new lakeside (((friends))).
Guess I am dating myself but….. my dad owned a Gulf gas station for a few years and the the price was TWENTY FIVE CENTS a gallon…like I said I am dating myself…. guess what year.
its pretty easy. copy the url, paste it in the submit comment section.
that’s the easy, non embedded way :)
i remember buying gas at 19 cents a gallon.
Naw,…I kept getting too conflicted for not exploiting the system for personal gain. Other than than that possiblr profit motive, the whole yjing makes me ill to follow any more.
…lay the bad news out there for us.
;-)
What’s the price of gas got to do with autoeroticism?
It’s called the Hubbert peak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
to friends
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq4uc9b2s1o
Thanks Suzanne. I did it!
ohmystars, that worked ccmask, and i LOVE that video. saw it back when i was on dialup and it was worth the load time (several hours)
Do you mean going to watch the submarine races at the beach??
ouch!…lol…me too.
that was always more fun than cow-tipping.
Mo’ Betta. Thanks for the link. I forgot how great the original was.
my guess would be somewhere around 1964-69
…just a guess
I hated it when I was the gullible one that said ’sure…I’ll catch it’ when we we were out cow tipping.
Gotta admit cow tipping was never up my alley besides where I was living there were no cows in sight.
Suz did you get the reply this afternoon I sent you?
IIRC, the last time I bought gasoline for 20 cents per gallon was in early 1968.
not even warm
i did.. been busy today and then took a nap before late nite posted
Dam I was in Germany in 68 and we had gas stamps… had to go to ESSO only, we were getting them for 10 cents a gallon at the px…
well, then…what’s the right answer?
I was hoping for a prize, but enlightenment works
:-D
Can’t says I blame you for taking a nap with all waxing you had to get done….
25 cents a gallon – i guess 71
If’n any of us gets tired of tweaking Tweety and ordnancing O’Donnell, we can always find a home for self-flagellation at the Association For the Study of Peak Oil. These guys are redefining “killjoy”. Much to my heartfelt appreciation.
Another excellent energy related blog is the Energy Bulletin.
I never thought I’d live long enough to see this headline:
General Motors embraces electrics as oil slips away..Joshua Dowling, The Age
The world’s biggest car maker, General Motors, believes the global oil supply has peaked and a switch to electric cars is inevitable. Published January 14, 2008.
Back from my day serving the corporate overlords. Blech. I’ve got a pitcher of French Martini’s if anyone would like some.
1959?
That was in 1953 prices were high because they were ythe only station for 20 miles…. but three more stations were put in and the price got so low my dad sold it to his brother, funny thing is the building was still there when I went back last March. He went back to work as a machinist..
what a difference the ‘embargo’ made…huh?
I remember working in a new (at that time) self serve station in the 70s and the price went up so fast, the pumps were never capable of pricing over $1.00 a gallon. There was some simple-minded, double the half price at the pump system that caused all kinds of grief and …lol…altercations.
Good night friends.
Today’s news and blog posts at Reality Based News Feed
A question for all our armchair activists…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9Gjd_EAa64
what makes em french?
I remember high school in 1970, gas for a full tank for my VW was $3.50.
Nite, TexBetsy. Sleep well and long.
I paid $.13.9 at a gas station grand opening in 1965. At that time a McDonalds burger coast $.11, and a cheeseburge cost $.15.
g’nite tex and pain free sleep wishes
Would love one. Can handle only one, though.
The chambord I guess. It’s Chambord, vodka and pineapple juice.
yer blues
Well here is another one… my introduction to the Beatles on AM radio
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouzndIEbEsc
Here ya go!
For anyone interested in energy markets and technology, the place to go is http://theoildrum.com/
i love chambord – a splash or two in a glass of champagne, or over ice cream (which is more than a splash or two)
Wowza! Didn’t find that in France in 1978.
….and I’ll bet that sucker would run forever on that little bit of cash
:-D
g’night Betsy
We used to go sled riding on our old back WV roads with a spare VW we ‘found’ in someone’s yard. …life was so much simpler then…and so were we.
Nite betsy sleep well
Christine,
We got snow today and it’s supposed to snow all week. How is it in your area?
And this one is what we were praying for week ago Friday here in the bay area
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related
Yes, we were. I had a sunroof that was a piece of canvas. We used to drive all over Wilmington and shoot photographs out the sunroof. Sigh.
margot, weren’t you saying last week about how balmy it was? or am i misremembering?
hey there ET,…how ya been?…long time no see
I was going through some old boxes of checks and bills and stuff and found aome atatements where I would cash a check for $5 or $10 for the week’s spending money…lol…that’s not even enough to afford me to pay attention these days.
Damn! I remember those block-long gas lines after the Yom Kippur War in late 1973. It seems that the oil-producing countries didn’t appreciate Nixon sending Israel a new tank force after Egypt and Syria had destroyed what Israel had on hand.
It’s quite tasty in champagne. Never tried it on ice cream, but it sounds good. *TOW makes a mental note to buy ice cream tomorrow*
Hi Margot!
A beautiful two inches… and more to come. I just had my daughter make me a facebook page that I don’t know how to use. Will you “friend me”?
OK nahant,
Here’s a question for you or anyone.
What year did the price of a barrel of crude oil fall to 10 cents F.O.B. Tulsa?
This is what we are wishing for …won’t need that messy wood stove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkiIB41Xe8g
Actually she looks good in the video..
Same here. WLS-AM Chicago. It was so exciting to find that the music world consisted of more than polkas on Lawrence Welk.
Hiya, Rumi!
I just got off the phone with my best friend, the Seattle bronze sculptor, Peter Bevis. He says it now costs $14,000 for a ton of bronze, which is the smallest weight that qualifies for free shipping.
They lie to us about inflation, don’t they?
heya wigwam!
Am I mistaken or do I recall several great conversations on wind energy here some months ago?
If I have the right train of thought…there’s an interesting project coming to fruition (I think) in the lower Laurel range in NE WV that would help the market image and local enviro-economy.
I was very young then, but I remember my parents complaining and having to plan their driving carefully so my father could get back and forth to work. The gas was sold to people based on their license plate. If it ended in an odd number, you could only buy gas on an odd numbered day. Maybe. It’s been a long time.
Mostly what I remember was people were really mad.
tow, vanilla.
is also a great starting place for heating with berries of choice then spooning over ice cream.
Shit I should know that from memory… maybe shortly after the embargo was over and the market was flooded with oil.. so that would be around 1975 or 1976 as home heating was at 19 cents a gallon in Maine in 1978 when I moved here to California
…lol….I’m embarrassed to admit some of the things we shot through the sunroofs of those beautiful, versatile, economic, unkillable Bugs.
:-D
…photos would have been an excellent choice.
i remember the even and odd thing for gas and gas lines. for some reason, gas lines make me think of those gosh awful brown plaid pants (ala steve martin on snl).
Excellent! Yes, TOD is really lively and worth a bookmark. I just was rolling through my bookmarks and was about to get to that…. (wink)
And another great educator about the awl patch is Matt Simmons who is a hero of mine and a friend of George Bush. Go figure. Simmons maintains an extensive library of presentations that are well worth understanding for anyone who plans to be alive and financially viable in 5 years. http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/…..msspeeches
It was balmy, it was 68 degrees just a few days ago. Weird.
I did like the polkas during faushing in Germany, a few good German beers and an Ompa band and hot dam spinning around the beer hall with a pretty frauline in your arms what memories…
All week, weird temps, and then last night and today, WINTER.
I had a 1962 black VW with the funny sunroof. I drove that wonderful car for years, until I went to University of Delaware in 1970. My Dad sold it then. And I still miss it.
41 at the little cottage by the creek tonight. had gloreous sunshine today and this afternoon it clouded over and looked like rain but was just a fake-out.
Re:
Hey now! I’m still simple:
Equality… Good…….Predatory Capitalism… Bad
Liberty….. Good…….PATRIOT Act…………… Bad
Fraternity..Good…….Sororities……………… Better
I was driving 5k a month for Xerox then in Maine and New Hampshire… that took a lot of planing as some of my accounts were 120 miles apart… but scenery was great, Old Man in the Mountain was still hanging around then
my boyfriend taught me how to drive his vw when i was 14 – and how to drive his motorcycle. i could never get the bike outta 2nd gear but the car driving came naturally to me.
Isn’t it crazy to see TV commercials pimpin’ out silver and gold these days? The only folks I can see making on those metals now are ‘them’s whats already gots ‘em’…and the TV commercial folks.
I remember being all proud in buying a small amount of gold in the late 70s…at about $400 or more per oz…ha!…guess I just didn’t wait enough decades.
There was great power about driving stick shift in the Bug, almost euphoria.
Margot,
What neck of the woods would you be in? We here in the beautiful exurbs of San Diego, aka Central Oregon are enduring 50 degrees today in town, 20 miles from our climatically challenged Mt. Bachelor ski resort.
i get the feeling ray would does not cotton to CA folks moving up into oregon.
Hey Margot,
See 123
chrstine, whats your f/b link? stick it in the thread and i’ll friend ya too
Woah, that must have taken some serious planning! My father drove around 60 miles a day round trip, but the car was a mid 60’s behemoth that got 8-10 miles per gallon. And the American car companies wondered why anyone wanted a little Japanese car that got 25 or 30 mpg. What morons!
19 cents a gallon and if you fill up you get a case of glasses…had to be New Mexico int the late 50’s
chistine, it is worth joining f/b just to see the artwork margot does on her page. eye candy that soothes is how i think of it :)
Ray,
We’re in Ohio. I’m about 60 miles east of the capital, Columbus. The ground is supposed to be frozen now, and we had dandelions sprouting up a week ago.
Wow, Ray. Damn good stuff. For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to fuel supplies, the site Ray suggests is a good resource, especially the powerpoint entitled “Do We Face and Energy Crisis.” But then you gotta read Kirk Murphy’s ecohorrors about the continued use of fossil fuel. Even if we had an abundant supply of fossil fuel, so much that it was free, we couldn’t afford to burn it. We are simply bringing too much subterrian carbon to the surface of the planet, and the planet is gagging on it, the land, the oceans, and the atmosphere. Bummer!
I did a few calculations about solar and my data showed that to generate the 15 terrawatts that the human race now consumes via ten-percent efficient photovoltaic cells, we’d have to cover .6% of the earth’s land area with such cells. (However, I won’t guarantee my late-night arithmetic.)
A friend of mine had about the same model but it was the full convertible….aw, man…was that ever fun…flying down the backroads (SW PA at the time) and just trying to outrun the drafts that were in the air at the time. I fell in a fortunate spot, by lucky birthdate, but it was always so damn close that life just seemed to be appreciated a little more…lol…this coming from a guy that had drills in grade school to hide under a desk to avoid nuclear obliteration….I was always just a tad too ‘trusting’…lol
was pleasant hill, california in the late 60’s early 70’s – during the ‘gas wars’. no glasses but i did get my choice of s&h green stamps or the blue stamps.
bigbrother,
I’m from New Mexico, I remember that.
Are you from there too?
…oh yeah!!!…I forgot about the prizes, rewards and trading stamps.
woohoo!!!
(blushing) Thanks Suz
Another friend of mine, Barry Clay, found this at his gold mine up near Ruby, in 1998. It’s the biggest gold nugget ever found here. Our dughter was staying with them when they came up with it. It was worth $206 per ounce then. It’s actually worth far more as a nugget – 294.1 troy ounces – than if you melt it down. It is locked up.
Re:
Yes, it would seem that way to anyone reading the mainstream media of the day. But it didn’t seem that way to George Bush and other pilots who were flying over the Gulf of Mexico and seeing dozens of oil-laden tankers loitering beyond the horizon of anyone looking out from Padre Island. The oil was out of the hands of the Arabs and so what was going on?
According to F.W. Engdahl who happened upon the 1973 agenda/synopsis for the Bilderberger Group meeting that year, the decision to withhold oil from the American market was taken by our own oil corporations who had two very important discoveries that could not be economically developed at the then current price of oil, as of the spring of 1973. Those two projects were Prudhoe Bay and the North Sea offshore fields. Both required a huge increase in crude oil prices in order to justify their development. The Saudis were more than happy to go along with the deception because it meant fantastic fortunes for them.
See more at the entry titled “The Fake Oil Crisis of 1973″
You put it in easily understood and simple terms Ray…thanks, :-D…I appreciate that.
Energy source of the future:
– http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/…..ome-n.html
– http://www.nextenergynews.com/…..2.17b.html
Hey Ray, I’m down here in the Bay Area exurbs, aka Ashland. I have a lift ticket good for 10 rides at Bachelor sitting in my ski pants, not sure when I’ll make it up there, but hopefully soon.
Great link to those Simmons speeches, I bookmarked it.
Hi Suzanne, thanks for the tunes. Anyone link a BB King or Allman’s version of Stormy Monday yet? Dare I go off topic and link to a YouTube filmed by moi last week?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elFdBY3sHlE
The power of the ocean!
It was in Massachusetts in early fifties and I do remember getting all those glasses there was a complete collection… Also Sunaco had a dial on the pump and the higher the number higher the octain,,, then ther was Amaco and the premium was just over 100 octain…we called it airplane fule… my 58 chevy ran best Amaco or Sunaco 260 Of course it was a race between the speed odometer and the gas gauge,,, I think I was getting 5- 10 MPH if I didn’t punch it…these were the days when cars were cars…
Ray, thanks. Interesting stuff.
not tonight :)
surf on!
Hi Nahant,
Actually, when crude oil was selling out of the East Texas oil fields for 10 cents was in 1930. There was so much oil that the Texas Railroad Commission had to step in and prevent bootleggers from hauling it across the state line for free, just so that they could earn the refinery markup in Tulsa. There’s a good write-up of this spectacular bonanza era in Daniel Yergin’s “The Prize”.
Unfortunately, the extreme surplus of oil was of no benefit to the nation as it was sliding inexorably into the Great Depression.
i remember my mom buying laundry soap that had a towel in the box, the larger size box, the larger the towel. banks would offer toasters for opening a christmas club account.
companies actually tried to build customer loyalty. whatta concept (/snark)
holy-moley!
…my conversion skills aren’t that great but isn’t that upwards of a 10lb chuck/nugget/…freakn’ ‘rock’ of gold? Neil Young was on it, wasn’t he?…been a miner for a heart o’ gold.
I’m naive, I know, but how could that be worth the same as a year’s worth of groceries for a family somewhere?
…borrow a ’sigh’ from another thoughtful poster here.
Re:
Not at all. I was just commenting on how balmy and spring-like it was today. :)
aww…geeze…now everyone is gonna want one too
:-D
I was just getting ready to pursue the mandatory buyback/sellback to my local power Co. …now, the whole block will be glowing in the dark
Great for her looks she is a quick learner:)
here in Princeton they have the Mavericks competition…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czFEwVn72Bk
ok (whew) cause, oregon is on my short list of move to places when (and if) this place of mine ever sells.
Hi Margot,
That’s an interesting thing about the dandelions. We’re not quite to them yet. The crocuses should be out in a month. And a couple weeks ago I discovered that we have some robins apparently over-wintering here. I find that quite unusual.
the nugget is almost twice the size of a large Florida grapefruit. It has quartzite mixed in with it in a beautiful way, but that made it less valuable, which goes to show you how little respect for the whims of God nugget collectors have.
Be the first in your ‘hood to have your own nuclear deterrent.
I once worked with a guy who would insult people’s fashion choices by asking “Where’d you get that shirt, a box of Breeze?” At least that was the brand of soap with towels in it in the midwest.
Sigh. Good times.
dang – i bet traffic was horrible
I told you I was guessing …but ya know I remember reading that somewhere some time… Dam too much stuff swirling around in my Grey matter to get it all organized and cross referenced…need a modern day data base to make sense of all that stuff… any one have a DBA in Grey matter???
Mad Magazine had a nuclear chemistry kit skit in the late 50’s that bragged “Be the first kid on your block to RULE THE WORLD!”
wigwam,
One of the most promising developments in solar today is the first production runs of printed solar panel materials. This is revolutionary and a 90% reduction in the cost of the basic building blocks of photovoltaic cells.
Nanosolar seems to be the industry leader at the moment. Sadly, no way for the public investor to participate at present…
World domination, dirty business but someone has to do it.
…lol…I was kinda hoping ’survival’ might be an adequate nuclear deterrent,…but mebbe not, these days.
I can’t understand, and never could, really, the fear of even a ‘rogue’ entity/nation offering a credible, first strike threat…I grew up with 2 older sisters…I had, and optioned my ‘first strike’ arsenal every chance I had, in serious but purely mischievous ways…and they consistently pummelled the shit’outta me every time…lol…I did not win, regardless of first strike capability…they made me pay dearly for my insolence.
Yeah, was passing through S.F. on Sat. (on our way home from Maui) when I saw they had made the call for this years Mavericks competition. Great stuff. Did you happen to see the footage from last month when Flea survived a wipeout in an 80-footer? Those guys are insane, but I admire their quest. I was showing my daughter some footage of Pipeline and she asked if she could do that when she got better. Surfing and skiing both give some powerful natural highs, that’s for sure.
Suzanne, I love Oregon, and now is a pretty good time to buy. Good luck with selling your house!
Of course! Just click on the little f by my name here.
Well if your worried by a little radiation this company is printing flexible solar panels… just wrap them around and you can be a walking talking energy source:
http://www.nanosolar.com/
Hi ET,
It’s a pity the picture doesn’t provide any sense of scale. I’d guess the nugget to be half way between the size of a clenched fist and skull? Would that be about right?
***
Also, did you get my link to pianist Aziza Moustafa Zadeh?
just out of curiosity…
did we get FB links posted? My kiddo has me hooked on that place
;-)
Ah shit Ray you stole my thunder… I have been looking at Nanosolar for my house… had heard about it from an article about a proff in Colorado… they have sold out their first years run….. shouldn’t be too long before we can get some…
hey…thanks nahant!
I actually have a ton of tinfoil for the most extensive protection…:-D
…but I’ve been looking for some serious alternative energy sources to incorporate in my upcoming business season projects. Is that a good one or just a random grab?…looks good at a glance…fwiw
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Your email to rayd95 at yahoo dot com is good for one free beer at the Bend Brewing Company. Else, you buy the ride and I’ll buy the lunch up at mid-mountain. :)
I read the Dkos diary on that product a few weeks ago. That was what got me to calculate lookup the required land area to provide the human race’s current consumption. The data I looked up indicated that it would require about twice as much land as there is on earth. So i decided to cross check the calculations of the author (from the University of Oregon) and it turned out he was off by 1000x. And, I think I know where he went wrong. I think that he saw km2 and interpreted it as k(m2) rather than (km)2 — made that same mistake myself a few decades ago.
In any case, one of the Dkos commenters has some very interesting cautionary considerations regarding that technology. Also, with solar energy, you need a way of storing it, if it is to be a full solution.
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You have got to get up pretty early in the afternoon to keep up with this duffer.
I had thought about going over to watch… but with two decent ways to get there I knew better traffic was snarled as bad as during the pumpkin festival. Now Suz coming up 1 might have had better luck at least until she hit 92 + 1
now that i’m retired, i have to get up at the crack of noon
…dang…there’s almost too much…too many great comments and interaction to keep up with in one thread…
…could y’all please type jus’ a lil’ slower…please?
:-D
Ray, email sent. I’m still kind of awake (still on Island Time), but need to get up and go to work, so g’nite.
What I have been able to find out the process used also yields a higher efficiency rating than current silicone panels, they are also printed so once they get both factories up to speed the cost will come down. worth the wait IMO
g’nite ratbastahd
I worked there for 2 1/2 years then. It was interesting country “Land of Enchantment” all the enchantment you can handle with Hopi’s, Navajos spirituality and sand storms. My first encounter with the Southwest was Albuququ had 50K pop it exploded. Lots of outer space stuff. I went to U of N.Mexico for a while. Live in Central Coast California last 12 years. Lots of great places and people in USA. I never met any warmongers in my travels. Bushco is unamerican.
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The way forward is with solar thermal collectors. The photovoltaics are an evolutionary dead end for grid applications, though they will clearly become viable for producing peaking power.
I used to study CAISO in relationship to my research into the scamming of the California energy system by our notorious predatory capitalists. (KEN LAY: May You Rot In Hell Forever!)
The typical pattern is that the peak load on the California grid, which is probably close to the national experience is that the hours of peak electricity consumption occur between 4-7 PM daily. This doesn’t match the Sun’s maximum at between 11 AM to 1 PM. So the shift can be accomodated by using parabolic reflectors to heat water for steam, salts or other exotic phase changeable chemicals used to drive rotary turbines. Storage can be added to the system to shift some of the energy production into the nighttime hours.
Thanks for bringing up an interesting topic.
***
FWIW, a few years ago I fell in love with the comcept of using the Sun to drive Sterling Engines. This seemed a great idea at the time. From reading in between the lines of their press releases, I think this idea is proving to be economically impractical. Too bad, it makes for a wonderful sculpture.
Good night from me too. See everyone tomorrow. *yawn*
Email replied to. :)
I’ve been watching the science channel – they have a show called invention nation that features alternative energy in all forms. pretty interesting stuff. that show is usually followed by one called ‘eco tech’ about technological stuff that helps the environment. i’ve seen nano stuff on both shows explained well in ‘lay person’ that makes it all seem possible.
g’nite TOW thanks for the french martinis
Check oput this months Scientific American great article in using solar and compressed air to over come the problem of storing the energy produced… :400 billion invested by 2050 and using current technology authors are saying we could stop importing oil…. I like that idea… no more oil wars… hear that Cheny!!
Here is a somewhat skeptical comment on the NanoSolar stuff: http://www.dailykos.com/commen…..d=371#c381
I’m in no position to judge such things.
here is a link to the article: http://www.sciam.com/article.c…..grand-plan
The energy density of compressed air is quite poor, but the price is right. It’s all a matter of how strong you can wind the tanks.
In any case, thanks for the reference. I’ve got to look that up.
wigwam, i’m in no position either but i find the whole subject enthralling. i guess this is where i disclose that i am an armchair science geek.
http://www.sciam.com/article.c…..grand-plan
Linky thing again if you missed the first one..:)
science geek or scfi geek whats the difference…. it has been fun watching scfi coming true … at least for me…started reading scfi in first grade lots of dreaming about what might be… still do it…oh well
At our family Christmas party, my brother-in-law was telling me about a compressed-air car he had seen on TV. The way he described it, it was basically a perpetual motion machine. I expressed mild skepticism, but he wasn’t exactly sure about the details of what he had heard. After dinner, we went to the family room to watch our new TV and almost instantly that same program came on. And sure enough the announced essentially described that compressed air car as though the air itself was the fuel.
i was a biology major in high school (if there could be such a thing) took bio in 10th grade, then took bio 2 junior year and loved it – we did field research out on the delta, up on mt diablo, bolinas bay. my senior year, i was bio x, which was ta to bio 2 glass and worked on independant project.
i dissected my first frog in 8th grade science class (that was heavily leaning in life sciences). twas back in the day, back when california led the nation in school rankings.
Hi Nahant,
This isn’t starting out at all well:
Scientific American: “In December the U.S. Air Force flew a C-17 transport plane across the country powered in part by a new propellant: natural gas transmuted into a synthetic liquid fuel. Heat and catalysts converted methane into syngas (carbon monoxide and hydrogen) which were then transformed into liquid hydrocarbons (otherwise known as oil and its derivatives): petroleum, gasoline and, in the case of aviation, kerosene.”
What do we call these people? Idiots? Dumkopfs? Morans? It makes me so g-damned angry that the military is pissing away billions of our taxpayer dollars on this and other completely brain-dead concepts.
Matt Simmons notes, and others have corroborated, that the U.S. production of conventional natural gas peaked in 1973 and has been in decline ever since. On-shore conventional natural gas in the Continental U.S. is for all practical purposes depleted. We are now predominantly sourcing natural gass from the Gulf of Mexico, for unconventional sources like coal bed methane in the Continental U.S. and rapidly diminishing imports from Canada. So with natural gas prices set to explode due to lack of supply and substitution value vis a vis crude oil, the military men are setting on a course that cannot result in anything other than bankruptcy for the Treasury or completely useless facilities development due to a lack of feedstocks, whichever comes first.
Groucho Marx had it right, to paraphrase… ‘whoever came up with the term military intelligence didn’t know shit from shinola.’
Here is one for all the rethuglian candidates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLCX5Ph17ys
Watching some of the SciFi come true scares the shit out of me. When I was quite young my father brought home a copy of The Space Merchants (Kornbluth and Pohl). Too much of it is coming true. Same for 1984 and many others.
hey ray, can you try to make those links a wee bit shorter?
Nanosolar: Here’s my original research workup on this which a friend has kindly posted for me at his technology wonk forum:
http://siliconinvestor.advfn.c…..d=24145270
first of all…I’d like to thank everyone here for a great evening of stimulating conversation, laughter and interaction…I like to think that these benefits are well worth all of the DARPA-related inconveniences that allow so many divergent worlds to co-exist peacefully and productively. Y’all are some really good people here and I hope to continue the conversations I found again here this evening…
…as to the alternative energy issues…without too much technicality…isn’t the main problem simply storage for use during times of unavailability for primarily residential needs? What’s been done, if anyone is familiar, in running the storage technology similar to the new automobile energy issues of storage? Wouldn’t addressing the issue of residential collection/storage actually help out on the energy grid coll/stor issues by putting the supply closer to the point of individual demand?
…anyone ever wonder about the folks through the years that were the friend of the carpenter-rocking chair maker? The ones who were asked to try out each new chair that came as a prototype?…someone had to go ass backwards for the goal of properly sized rockers on those chairs….:-D …are there any programs out for field testing these alternative energy products?
How can I argue:( never said our military was/is smart
I did read some of that article … oh well
OK. Try this .
i like that scarf (laughing)
HiRay. Thanks. I have a friend who has been in the photovoltaic business for the past 30 years. I should buy him dinner soon for several reasons, and this is enough to get me to move on that project. ;-)
(grin)
…oh, hell yes…now that’s a shorter link
your smartass is coming along quite nicely, I might add.
:-D
Hey i remember those authors some of my favs were Azminov .Clarke.. Andre Norton wrote a great series of books including Beast Master Shit like I said earlier… too much stuff roaming up in the grey matter for me get at all of it when I won’t to it sometimes just pops up for no darn good reason
I have to sign off now. Thanks, everyone, for the great conversation.
late nite is where i regain my sanity after dealing with the insanity of the day. tis my favorite time to spend at the lake – dont get me wrong, i love the live blog threads and the legal porn – but the nite time, when we are all sitting around the lake’s campfires, telling our stories is the perfect way for me to end my day.
g’nite wigwam
I have a friend who helped his son start an investment company about $1 Billion of investor money. He is something of bright mind and studies the markets.
He knows of a generator that runs of off gravity.
Would you be familiar with that technology? he said a “big energy company” is sitting on the patents. They buy up any alternatives that challenge big oil. We beat the vertical trust but never finished them off.
chambord, ahhhh.
Key ingredient in my favorite raspberry pie recipe (even makes plastic grocery store rasps taste good).
Unfortunately I end up buying a new bottle every time as it just kinda gets consumed between pies. If anyone wants the recipe, will be happy to dig it out.
hey sunny – tis summertime in a bottle the french bottled up in that little crown bottle.
ok, that entire sentence demonstrates what happens when i type beyond my expiration label. i know what i was trying to say there (laughing)
g’nite all – time for me to head off to bed because – tomorrow, more (spitting) cleaning
I went to Boston Technical High School, they stuck me in the special math class ha ha I did shitty in the math class but using the math in physics I was a wiz go figure.. we also had a good grounding in machine shop sheet metal(tin knocking) wood working and 1+1/2 of both physics and Chemistry… lot of work but I made it through,,, had to work at night which provided me close proximity to the main library in boston Copley Square … they had a great collection of scfi.. read more than half of their collection… riding the MTA gave me lots of time for reading..
I understood perfectly :-) Nite Suz
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The primary problem is the central station model for profitability that has been developed by energy marketers and sold to an unsuspecting public. The utilities essentially want alternative energy schemes to fail. Oh, they won’t tell you that in public, of course. But that’s the reason that we have got schemes afoot for a couple dozen new nuclear power stations and why coal is going to predominate in base station development for the foreseeable future.
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I don’t have a link handy, but the City of Fairbanks, AK has the country’s and possibly the world’s largest battery backup system. But the problem is that we’ll never be able to rely on such a system standing alone. The electrical system of the U.S. is a hybrid model and will remain so. Hydroelectric, such as is provided by BPA is the best model for energy storage. Just stop the turbines and let the reservoir fill. Nuclear and coal are best for steady baseload generation. Wind is eccentric, with about a 35% availability at any one location in the U.S. Solar is on again, off again and subject to being “really off” again if the cloud cover lasts for days.
Whatever we have in the future will be a mix. Some are speculating on using fuel cells in vehicles to power up the grid. Some also say the moon is made of green cheese. There’s lots of crackpot ideas. But there’s clearly a lot of brilliant ones as well out there to be developed.
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Alternative energy gurus, environmentalists and public power advocates have been arguing this for years. OTOH, private utility executives have been wringing their hands and asking “What part of Greed don’t you understand?”
For inquiring minds…microwave oven is a fave method of cooking for me. Occasional egg in soup or beans takes three minute.
Tonight something very interesting happened…for some reason unknown I put some water in a bowl, added a raw egg, set the timer for usual three minutes and put in the bowl with the water and egg. I sware in 30 seconds or so I heard an explosion in the oven so I opened it and the egg was cooked…the yolk had exploded but was ready to eat. I had saved a lot of energy was it the water?
Suz watch out for the slippery parts where you already waxed the floor …
I feel like a pumpkin myself .
Night and thanks all you firepups
for the great conservations as usual I always seem to go away with more info in my head… dam where the hell does it all go…
See ya all later on the flip side1
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Just let me know if there’s anything I can do to be the fly on you wall when you get together. I’ve got a couple of old-time EEs that I love to spend time with. One in particular is a gadget wizard. He made his fortune with the first iteration of those little wands that FedEx drivers use to track packages. I loved his pooh-poohing all the fancy CPUs we use today. His favorite device is the Intel 186 processor. He says it lets him “get down on the iron”. Love it. :)
I was enthralled by the early William Gibson stuff. Quite a prophesy of the dystopias of the future. Unless you happen to live in a Third World slum, then it’s pretty much “been there, done that”.
Ya mean when you got down to the single component?? cut my teeth on them
Good night once again…closing laptop so I can’t see replies …
Midi …a compressed air car made in France…retail about $19k need to develop the stations that produce very high PSI compressed air. Comes in 2,4 or 6 cylinder, The Midi website http://www.zeropollution.com/z…..index.html
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I haven’t run across that one. But I have a friend who edits Electrifying Times . He’s up on all the conspiracy theory stuff about suppressed technologies. You might contact Bruce here: http://www.electrifyingtimes.com/staff.html
“What part of Greed don’t you understand?”
…lol…I think I see a major part of the problem here.
I understand and appreciate the different points you brought up and I also think it is the same basic problem that most Americans are fedthef&*^kup with in regard to energy prices. The solution can be sold a variety of ways, depending on the specific market, and the major energy (traditional) power brokers could be in a place to still get their fair share of investment back. That traditional power ‘investment’ interest would have to be considered due to the enormous amount of paper equity it holds for retirements, investments, long term contracts…
…By placing a reasonable percentage of energy collection and consumption at the hands of consumers, with a reasonable investment, the advantages could be sold as… a way to protect against future terr-attacks on the energy grid (as has been predicted for years) by supporting individual self-sufficiency while being simultaneously interdependent, or incorporated, into the larger protected grid of society supplied energy/community
The power co’s will bilk us anyway, any way they can, but this would provide a very necessary need for the future…the illusion of (and slight economic) individual control over some aspects of our lives and survival.,
by the way…g’night to the folks I missed leaving earlier.
:-)
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One of the reasons I consider Dennis Kucinich to be a political hero is that he was willing to stand up to the banking elites in Cleveland who attempted to steal the City’s public power system in the late 1970s. The bankers were absolutely scurrilous scoundrels and I’d really appreciate if you’d do some reading on how most of the private utilities in this nation were cobbled together by swindles, fraud and devious and unethical business practices. It’s a heck of a story.
When you talk about private power, you should never forget Enron. I have friends whose family members were 30 year employees at Portland General Electric when it was bought up by Enron. In one instance, a very dutiful saver/employee was forced by Enron, as were all PGE employees, to invest his entire pension exclusively in Enron stock. He lost $500,000 from that account while in the prior years Ken Lay had cashed in stock worth more than $50 Million knowing full well that he waa perpetrating a fraud.
So when you talk about a ‘fair share for power brokers’ I have to tell you I don’t think there is one. They mostly deserve jail time for being swindlers.
PUBLIC POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
got it suz – belated thanks for the link.
Well…I agree with you completely, but, what actual political/business powers have we had to hold the crooks in check? Even if an occasional verdict is achieved, I don’t think justice is ever served to the consumer or investor public. Corporate heads still get multiple times a reasonable salary, in bonuses, for negative performance. Enron and the energy price scam that was allowed to thrive was done in the blind eye of govt oversight, yes?
When I say…‘fair share for power brokers’, I’m only being realistic to the flawed system we’ve all had to accept as SOP. I’m not much of a somebody to effect a serious change but that’s only due to my lack of opportunity.
…personally, I can’t buy the timing and circumstances of Lay’s demise…yes, I’m a cynical bastard.
Jeez Suz, I just can’t decide, no matter how many times I listened to them. Rawls or Cream? Cream or Rawls?
Lou Rawls, definitely. Cream has Clapton’s guitar, but the vocals are nowhere up to Rawls’ interpretation.
The true answer is NEITHER. The Allman Brothers took this song from T-Bone Walker and defined it THOROUGHLY for all time. All other versions pale.
Maybe you could put up John Lennon’s “(All we are saying is) Give Peace a Chance” in honor of the Clinton & Obama ‘truce’ and to remind us all of the importance of ending the war in Iraq.
I’ll guess 1970. Close?