COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, February 20, 2012

Micro-hydropower

32 comments:

  1. One hundred year old technology. Better later than never. Interesting the support to electrify these villages comes from Germany, not their home politicians.

    My dad's family put in the first electrical plants in some small towns in central Nebraska. Then Iowa-Nebraska Light and Power came in, got REA money, and took over. Economies of scale. Grandpa got sued when my dad broke a big Dutchman's nose when he caught him stealing light bulbs from the city street lights. That was probably around 1919, or so.

    The Edison Power House in Big Creek still had a little Pelton Wheel generator on the turbine gallery floor last time I was there. They said they used it to powerup the windings and so forth in the big generators. It looked out of place.

    The steel penstocks in the early Big Creek system were imported from Germany about a hundred years ago. Still in use.

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  2. 151.7 million Americans paid nothing in Fed Income Tax in 2009. By comparison, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes in 1984.

    Whitney had a gold-handled platinum coffin. I'm sure the other corpses will be SO impressed. Meanwhile there's children starving in Japan.

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  3. Eli Whitney? Thought he'd a been more practical.

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  4. LT: The steel penstocks in the early Big Creek system were imported from Germany about a hundred years ago. Still in use.

    A hundred years ago in Seattle the biggest industry was coal, not Starbucks and Boeing. This is Red Town Dam which made a reservoir of water for the steam hoist to move the miners and coal out of the hole. Now it's a funny looking waterfall.

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  5. Oliver Stone's Muslim convert son is already whining about "Islamophobia" (wait til he gets tired of that fad and tries to convert to Scientology).

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  6. He's Sharon Stone's nephew, right?

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  7. I saw The Quick and the Dead. I thought the whole purpose of the movie was to provide a venue for Sharon to wear some nice leather shirts and skirts and vests. Stuff like that. Can't remember the plot, just that it seemed stupid.

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  8. If you are Ms T, then I want to wish you a full and quick recovery, and if you've already recovered, then congratulate you. If you're not her, pass on my best wishes. Please.

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  9. Thank you, LT. I had a mastectomy and when they had me open they only found three lymph nodes that had cancer, when they feared more than ten. I had my radiation already, and I'm still getting herceptin ($270 out of pocket every three weeks, ouch). But things look very good now. All credit to God.

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  10. In today's Religion of Peace update:

    A mob of some 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned a group of Christian tourists atop Jerusalem's Temple Mount on Sunday morning. Three of the Israeli police officers who acted to protect the Christian group were wounded by the stone-throwers.

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  11. Artificial hamburger meat successfully grown in vat of bovine fetal cells; You want some fries with that?

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  12. They have their waterfalls. We have that big, old, honking Mississippi River that we could be using.

    "Clean" is cheap. Wind, Solar, Wave, Current, gravity is free.

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  13. .

    "Clean" is cheap. Wind, Solar, Wave, Current, gravity is free.


    There is no such thing as a free lunch.

    .

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  14. No, but some lunches are much cheaper than others.

    Wholesale Ethanol: $2.21/gal

    Wholesale Unleaded: $3.03/gal

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  15. At the Detroit Economic Club, Sen. Santorum explained his position on income inequality between the rich and the poor saying:

    "There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be."

    There's a reason he lost his last Senate bid by 16%.

    This fool is just idiot enough to be the Republican nominee. A perfect fit.

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  16. Hot Air gives a ridiculously biased, and unrealistic slant on the Solar industry in Germany.

    Here is a much more Realistic Assessment of German Solar.

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  17. Of course what he is saying Rufus is he doesn't want a society where the government insists on equal outcomes, where a creative guy like Bill Gates has the same financial outcome as a beer drinker in Mississippi or a fly fisherman in Idaho. Society would end up crippling itself taking this outlook too far.

    He ought to concentrate on Obama. Also stay away from the Bible, it is too tricky to deal with.

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  18. That's the point, Bob; he Can't stay away from the Bible. It's "who he is." He's a Loon.

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  19. Iceland’s special prosecutor has said it may indict as many as 90 people, while more than 200, including the former chief executives at the three biggest banks, face criminal charges.

    Larus Welding, the former CEO of Glitnir Bank hf, once Iceland’s second biggest, was indicted in December for granting illegal loans and is now waiting to stand trial. The former CEO of Landsbanki Islands hf, Sigurjon Arnason, has endured stints of solitary confinement as his criminal investigation continues.

    That compares with the U.S., where no top bank executives have faced criminal prosecution for their roles in the subprime mortgage meltdown. The Securities and Exchange Commission said last year it had sanctioned 39 senior officers for conduct related to the housing market meltdown.

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  20. Don't forget good ol' Snoqualmie Falls power, T.

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  21. But the most important difference between human spaceflight then, and now, is that back then sending a man into space, however crudely, was viewed as something that only the government of a superpower could do. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen with the recent push back from some in the space community against the new commercial providers, that mindset often remains firmly in place.

    But to anyone closely following the industry, it is clearly no longer true. Half a century after the first harrowing orbital flight of a brave Marine test pilot, we are on the verge of a new era of competition with multiple private providers, in which flights into space are truly routine, relatively safe, and affordable to large numbers of people, with comfortable destinations.

    Space is finally becoming a place, rather than a program, thanks in part to pioneers like John Glenn.


    John Glenn

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  22. I'd forgotten the British blew some up in Australia.

    That desert outside Vegas must be like Swiss cheese.

    What message does all this send to E.T.?

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  23. Please put us out of our misery.

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  24. Samsung Electronics Co. plans to spin off its liquid-crystal display operations into a separate company in an effort to revive its unprofitable flat-panel business, and said it is considering merging the new entity with affiliates within the Samsung group.

    The restructuring by the world's biggest supplier of LCDs by sales comes as the South Korean firm is pushing a more advanced technology called OLED, or organic light-emitting diodes, after sharp price falls for conventional displays put its LCD business in the red.

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  25. Here’s what the president not only believes but is committed to:

    (1) America is an unjust and deeply unfair country. “The basic bargain that made this country great has eroded,” Obama said at Osawatomie.

    ...

    (2) A looming debt crisis? Forget it. Obama hardly mentioned the deficit or the national debt in the State of the Union, though his budget has a $1.3 trillion deficit, and the debt is rising past $16 trillion into a fiscal danger zone.

    ...

    (3) Government spending is better at spurring the economy than private investment. “Yes, business and not government will always be the prime generator of good jobs,” he said at Osawatomie.


    The Real Obama

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