Mo Dowd - Curtain Lights, Small City

Mo has a few good lines in her latest effort.

Bering Straight Talk - NY Times - 13 Sep 08

"The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra. Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as naïve when Obama took it."

Mo Dowd - Curtain Lights, Small City

Mo has a few good lines in her latest effort.

Bering Straight Talk - NY Times - 13 Sep 08

"The really scary part of the Palin interview was how much she seemed like W. in 2000, and not just the way she pronounced nu-cue-lar. She had the same flimsy but tenacious adeptness at saying nothing, the same generalities and platitudes, the same restrained resentment at being pressed to be specific, as though specific is the province of silly eggheads, not people who clear brush at the ranch or shoot moose on the tundra. Just as W. once could not name the General-General running Pakistan, so Palin took a position on Pakistan that McCain had derided as naïve when Obama took it."

Energy in the Times

Two excellent pieces in the NY Times. Tom Friedman column and a very detailed and fascinating article on the development off-shore wind in Delaware of all places.

Making America Stupid by Thomas Friedman - NY Times - 13 Sep 08

"Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of 'drill, baby, drill!'

I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — 'Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!' — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. 'Typewriters, baby, typewriters.'"

Readers may recall that Dr. Willett Kempton is also the guy who came up with the "Vehicle-to-Grid" (V2G) concept for using electric vehicles as a mass distributed electricity grid storage and regulation system.

Wind-Power Politics - NY Times - 12 Sep 08

"One of the first things Kempton and his class did was go down the list of clean-energy options for Delaware — 'It was a pretty short list,' he said. Solar power was still far too expensive to be economically sustainable. And the state had no land-based wind resource to speak of. But a team of students, led by Amardeep Dhanju, became curious about measuring the winds off the coast to determine whether they might serve as a source of power.

What he found was that Delaware’s coastal winds were capable of producing a year-round average output of over 5,200 megawatts, or four times the average electrical consumption of the entire state. 'On the wholesale electricity markets,” Dhanju wrote, “this would produce just over $2 billion' in annual revenue.

It so happened that the day Dhanju’s semester-long research project was discussed, Kempton had invited several wind entrepreneurs to class. Mandelstam was the only invitee to show up in person. It was then that Mandelstam had his eureka moment. The amount of power Dhanju was describing, Mandelstam knew from Kempton, was but a small fraction of an even larger resource along what’s known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight.

This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This was, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand — not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.

The Mid-Atlantic Bight was particularly attractive to Mandelstam because offshore winds blow strong and steady throughout the day, which means offshore wind is more likely than land-based wind in the Northeastern United States to generate electricity when demand is high. More important, offshore wind farms, Mandelstam explained, can be built close enough to big, power-hungry cities — or 'load centers' — to avoid construction of expensive and politically unpopular transmission lines."

Energy in the Times

Two excellent pieces in the NY Times. Tom Friedman column and a very detailed and fascinating article on the development off-shore wind in Delaware of all places.

Making America Stupid by Thomas Friedman - NY Times - 13 Sep 08

"Imagine for a minute that attending the Republican convention in St. Paul, sitting in a skybox overlooking the convention floor, were observers from Russia, Iran and Venezuela. And imagine for a minute what these observers would have been doing when Rudy Giuliani led the delegates in a chant of 'drill, baby, drill!'

I’ll tell you what they would have been doing: the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan observers would have been up out of their seats, exchanging high-fives and joining in the chant louder than anyone in the hall — 'Yes! Yes! Drill, America, drill!' — because an America that is focused first and foremost on drilling for oil is an America more focused on feeding its oil habit than kicking it.

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. 'Typewriters, baby, typewriters.'"

Readers may recall that Dr. Willett Kempton is also the guy who came up with the "Vehicle-to-Grid" (V2G) concept for using electric vehicles as a mass distributed electricity grid storage and regulation system.

Wind-Power Politics - NY Times - 12 Sep 08

"One of the first things Kempton and his class did was go down the list of clean-energy options for Delaware — 'It was a pretty short list,' he said. Solar power was still far too expensive to be economically sustainable. And the state had no land-based wind resource to speak of. But a team of students, led by Amardeep Dhanju, became curious about measuring the winds off the coast to determine whether they might serve as a source of power.

What he found was that Delaware’s coastal winds were capable of producing a year-round average output of over 5,200 megawatts, or four times the average electrical consumption of the entire state. 'On the wholesale electricity markets,” Dhanju wrote, “this would produce just over $2 billion' in annual revenue.

It so happened that the day Dhanju’s semester-long research project was discussed, Kempton had invited several wind entrepreneurs to class. Mandelstam was the only invitee to show up in person. It was then that Mandelstam had his eureka moment. The amount of power Dhanju was describing, Mandelstam knew from Kempton, was but a small fraction of an even larger resource along what’s known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight.

This coastal region running from Massachusetts to North Carolina contained up to 330,000 megawatts of average electrical capacity. This was, in other words, an amount of guaranteed, bankable power that was larger, in terms of energy equivalence, than the entire mid-Atlantic coast’s total energy demand — not just for electricity but for heating, for gasoline, for diesel and for natural gas. Indeed the wind off the mid-Atlantic represented a full third of the Department of Energy’s estimate of the total American offshore resource of 900,000 megawatts.

The Mid-Atlantic Bight was particularly attractive to Mandelstam because offshore winds blow strong and steady throughout the day, which means offshore wind is more likely than land-based wind in the Northeastern United States to generate electricity when demand is high. More important, offshore wind farms, Mandelstam explained, can be built close enough to big, power-hungry cities — or 'load centers' — to avoid construction of expensive and politically unpopular transmission lines."

Alaskans Against Palin

Seems like the press only reports the rock star status of Sarah Palin these days. Looks like there may have been more antis out than pros in Alaska. Includes videos and photos from the rally.

"Alaska Women Reject Palin" Rally is HUGE! - Mudflats Blog - 14 Sep 08

Alaskans Against Palin

Seems like the press only reports the rock star status of Sarah Palin these days. Looks like there may have been more antis out than pros in Alaska. Includes videos and photos from the rally.

"Alaska Women Reject Palin" Rally is HUGE! - Mudflats Blog - 14 Sep 08

More On The "Bush Doctrine"

The Reich-wingers are putting on quite a spin show trying to demonstrate that Palin actually answered the question in an appropriately vague way.  This Salon article attempts to debunk a lot of their windy business.  Some seem to have selective memories on their own understanding of the issue.  (You have to eat an ad for access to the article.)

Where is the Debate Over The Bush Doctrine - Salon - 14 Sep 08

"Before it became clear that Sarah Palin had never heard of it, nobody -- including the presidential candidates themselves -- ever had difficulty answering questions about what they believed about the Bush Doctrine, nor ever suggested that this Doctrine was some amorphous, impossible-to-understand, abstract irrelevancy.

Quite the contrary, despite some differences over exactly what it means, it was widely understood to constitute a radical departure -- at least in theory -- from our governing foreign policy doctrine, and it is that Doctrine which has unquestionably fueled much of the foreign policy disasters of the last eight years."

"George Will today went on ABC News' Sunday Show and defended Sarah Palin by claiming that even he, Will, didn't know what this bizarre, confusing thing called 'the Bush doctrine' is -- that's the same George Will who, in 2003, wrote an Op-Ed entitled 'The Bush Doctrine at Risk' in which he understood the term perfectly well and defined it exactly how Gibson did: namely, the right of the U.S. to attack even in the absence of an imminent threat.

For years, controversy over 'the Bush doctrine' fueled our foreign policy debates. Now, Sarah Palin reveals she's completely ignorant of the term and, suddenly, right-wing hacks everywhere are screaming, in unison: 'The Bush Doctrine? What is that?'"

More On The "Bush Doctrine"

The Reich-wingers are putting on quite a spin show trying to demonstrate that Palin actually answered the question in an appropriately vague way.  This Salon article attempts to debunk a lot of their windy business.  Some seem to have selective memories on their own understanding of the issue.  (You have to eat an ad for access to the article.)

Where is the Debate Over The Bush Doctrine - Salon - 14 Sep 08

"Before it became clear that Sarah Palin had never heard of it, nobody -- including the presidential candidates themselves -- ever had difficulty answering questions about what they believed about the Bush Doctrine, nor ever suggested that this Doctrine was some amorphous, impossible-to-understand, abstract irrelevancy.

Quite the contrary, despite some differences over exactly what it means, it was widely understood to constitute a radical departure -- at least in theory -- from our governing foreign policy doctrine, and it is that Doctrine which has unquestionably fueled much of the foreign policy disasters of the last eight years."

"George Will today went on ABC News' Sunday Show and defended Sarah Palin by claiming that even he, Will, didn't know what this bizarre, confusing thing called 'the Bush doctrine' is -- that's the same George Will who, in 2003, wrote an Op-Ed entitled 'The Bush Doctrine at Risk' in which he understood the term perfectly well and defined it exactly how Gibson did: namely, the right of the U.S. to attack even in the absence of an imminent threat.

For years, controversy over 'the Bush doctrine' fueled our foreign policy debates. Now, Sarah Palin reveals she's completely ignorant of the term and, suddenly, right-wing hacks everywhere are screaming, in unison: 'The Bush Doctrine? What is that?'"

Slime Update

No, not politics this time.   I took a break to wheel my bikes out to the patio and slime their tubes.  It went pretty well and I didn't get a lot of green goo on my hands, air gauge or pump.  It's pretty simple. 

Put the tires up so that the stem is about 11:00 position.  Use the cap that comes on the Slime bottle to remove the core from the stem and release all the air.  Then take the plastic protective bit off the bottle, put the pointy top back on and add the bit of plastic hose to the point.   That hose slides over the threads of the stem to seal things up.  Then you turn the bottle upside down and start squeezing the slime into the tube.  There's a mark on the side of the bottle that tells you were the halfway mark is at for the first tire.  Then you just add the rest for the second.  Easy peasy.

I over-inflated the first tire a bit and got a bit of green stuff blow out at me snot-like as I let the air out to bring it down to a more appropriate pressure.  No biggy.  Most of it wiped off with a paper towel I had handy.  I had a little bottle of water with me to do a brief clean-up.  No explosions with green stuff flying all over the place.  It's all good now.  :)

I was warned that it wasn't good for "snake bite" flats.  That's where you let the air get too low and the rim pokes a hole in the tire by the pinching action.  Also the big blowout type events of pot holes and other such catastrophic events are not helped.  Evidently this is primarily for sealing holes up to about an 1/8 of an inch that are along the tread side of the tire.  Sidewall and rim side failures not included.

It adds a bit more weight and ran about $10 a bike to add but if it saves me just one flat, that will be worth the bother and cost for me.

Slime Update

No, not politics this time.   I took a break to wheel my bikes out to the patio and slime their tubes.  It went pretty well and I didn't get a lot of green goo on my hands, air gauge or pump.  It's pretty simple. 

Put the tires up so that the stem is about 11:00 position.  Use the cap that comes on the Slime bottle to remove the core from the stem and release all the air.  Then take the plastic protective bit off the bottle, put the pointy top back on and add the bit of plastic hose to the point.   That hose slides over the threads of the stem to seal things up.  Then you turn the bottle upside down and start squeezing the slime into the tube.  There's a mark on the side of the bottle that tells you were the halfway mark is at for the first tire.  Then you just add the rest for the second.  Easy peasy.

I over-inflated the first tire a bit and got a bit of green stuff blow out at me snot-like as I let the air out to bring it down to a more appropriate pressure.  No biggy.  Most of it wiped off with a paper towel I had handy.  I had a little bottle of water with me to do a brief clean-up.  No explosions with green stuff flying all over the place.  It's all good now.  :)

I was warned that it wasn't good for "snake bite" flats.  That's where you let the air get too low and the rim pokes a hole in the tire by the pinching action.  Also the big blowout type events of pot holes and other such catastrophic events are not helped.  Evidently this is primarily for sealing holes up to about an 1/8 of an inch that are along the tread side of the tire.  Sidewall and rim side failures not included.

It adds a bit more weight and ran about $10 a bike to add but if it saves me just one flat, that will be worth the bother and cost for me.