From this article in The Independent:

The Trump administration announced two more payouts Monday for energy companies to walk away from U.S. offshore wind projects under development.

Bluepoint Wind and Golden State Wind have agreed to end their offshore wind leases in exchange for reimbursements totaling nearly $900 million. Both companies have decided not to pursue any new offshore wind projects in the United States, the Interior Department announced Monday.

Bluepoint Wind is an offshore wind project in the early stages of development off the coasts of New Jersey and New York, while Golden State Wind is a floating offshore wind project proposed off California’s central coast.

Trump is hellbent on destroying the renewable energy industry so as to benefit his billionaire friends in fossil fuels.

He’s on course to be remembered as the most destructive person in world history, with the possible exception of Adolph Hitler. We’ll have to wait and see what happens.

 

 

 

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What was our locker number at the HVCC swimming pool?

Who was the portly kid in your class at PC who once did a weekend sleep-over at someone’s house and beamed the next Monday: “And we had steak for dinner!”

What was Mom’s middle name before she married Dad?

What was the length of the 2nd hole at HVCC from the whites?

Who drove the 14th creek?

What did Peter Ervin ask Ralphie to do bring him when he returned from Vietnam?

Until the 70s, the phone system used two-letter abbreviates as part of the prefixes, e.g., TU for Turner. What did the following stand for?  IV, OL. OR, VE, VI, WI?

What was the name of Dad’s secretary?

What were Dad’s two office phone lines?

What’s the town just south of Hartsville?

What’s the former (long defunct) stop on the Reading Railroad between Fern Rock and Wayne Junction?

Before Mom quite smoking cigarettes, ca. 1965, what was her brand?

What was the name of the train conductor whom we gave an initial-embroidered handkerchief as a Christmas present?

What’s the name of the place on the Delaware River due east of City Hall in Philadelphia?

What’s the address of PC?

In what year was that building constructed?

What was the first year of HVCC?

Who was president that year?

What is the name of the fabulous Christmas dip that Kim makes from (guessing) chutney, cream cheese, and some sort of hot sauce?

Which friend of ours went from stoner/bass fisherman to geology Phd to spokesperson for NASA?

What was the middle initial of Joe Perrot?

Who was the business manager at PC?

What bomber group was Dad in?

I asked Dad if he felt any exhilaration parachuting out of his B-17.  What do you think he told me?

Besides Sam Schmidlac, what other fake names did it have for males?

For females?

Which friend of our parents made an eagle on the 11th hole, canning a shot from the bunker left of the fairway?

Which one of Dad’s high school friends ran the Texaco station on Old York Road, just north of his office?

The Snack Shop (just south?)

Who was an officer (soon to become chief) of the Abington Police Department?

Where was the Abington incinerator?

At which park did Dad fall of a log, and thought that he had broken his leg?

Where did Dad and his men go when they were captured after having been shot down?

At which altitude his Dad fly?

How many of his four engines had failed when he knew he couldn’t get back into France?

Dad was offered an incentive to stay in the military when the war was over.  What was it?

Why, according to Mom, did Baba consider sending to college far into the south?

Baba had siblings.  What were their names?

How did Beep get his name?

How many acres constituted the farm in Hartsville (before some of them were taken by eminent domain)?

Why did we have to stop swimming in the pond?

When we first to LBI for summer vacation, which town did we choose?

On LBI, which town lies between Barnegat and Harvey Cedar?

Where had we gone before LBI?

Which bridge did we cross to get there (which terrified me because I thought we have to drive over the superstructure)?

Approximately, what was the toll on the PA Turnpike to get from Willow Grove to Ohio?

Which one of us was the first to kiss Ann McConnell?

What were the three roller-coaster rides at Willow Grove Park?

Who lived near us on Horace Avenue?

Who lived just south of us on Cloverly Lane, famous for their barn?

Who lived just south of them?

The kids’ names?

What did we try to catch in the stream in back of that mansion?

When they moved, who bought the place?

What were the names of the Ickler kids, whose house fronted on Susquehanna?

What restaurant did we all like on the west side of York Road in Abington?

Until the Abington Pharmacy came along in the late 60s, what was the only drug store in town?

What was the main difference between Jenkintown and Rydal station?

Which 8th grade U.S. history teacher at PC, earlier in his life, was in the U.S. Park Service, and arguably at the bottom of the barrel at our old school?

Which 5th grade teacher tossed Alexis Sommaripa out the door of his classroom?

Can you name any of the stuff we sold at the Lower School bazaar?

What was the kindergartners’ Color Day event?

Long before the June Fete was held where it is today, where was it sited in the early 20th Century?

Dad grew up there, of course.  What was the name of the baseball game he used to play with his friends in the late 1920s?

When you went through that front door and walked to your left, what musical instrument as in that room?

Have you ever seen a larger dining room? A scarier basement? A more bizarre bedroom than Uncle Art’s, with the low ceilings? A toilet that was flushed by pulling a chain?

Whom did Dodo marry after her husband died?  Hint: he made Dad’s real estate signs.

What did I find when Dad let me climb up into the attic above Dodo’s garage at age perhaps 10?

What did Dad tell me when I looked down from the attic to where he was standing below and showed him one?

 

 

 

 

What is said here about Pete Hegseth is clearly true.

But keep in mind that he’s fiercely loyal to Donald Trump, and Trump couldn’t possibly care what happens to the United States, as long as he can stay out of prison and enrich himself and his family.

 

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Here’s an article that outlines how the EU has lowered energy prices via its investment in renewables.

In truth, the economics of all this is complicated.  In most of the world, there are subsidies for clean energy, just as there are subsidies for Big Oil.  If you want to remove the environmental regulations of coal-fired power plants and let them make fortunes by turning our atmosphere into their own private sewers, you can probably make coal-powered energy very inexpensive.

One thing is clear though, looking through all this complexity: the countries whose people actually care about the future of life on Earth are aggressively decarbonizing their energy and transportation sectors, and there is a great deal to be said for this.

In the United States, we’re rapidly going in the other direction.  Shame on us.

 

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These guys have an innovation in small wind: their turbine “furls up” in dangerously high wind conditions, making it “perfect for your backyard.” Check out this video. The competition has to shut down to avoid having their product destroyed in such circumstances.

Think about this for a second.  How often do you have hurricane-force winds blowing through your backyard?  What if it’s a tornado?  (It’s a twister! It’s a twister!) What would be the cost to you if your mini-turbine actually did have to shut down a few hours each year?

These guys are looking for investors.  If their pitch resonates with you, jump on in, by all means.

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The vast majority of Americans want Donald Trump removed from office but I would guess that most of us don’t really care how, or by what means, this happens.

When I see photos like the one at left here, however, I become concerned that it will be his dementia that takes him out, and that bothers me.

This country is in the process of falling apart because of one thing: its president is a criminal.  Until and unless that becomes clear to all Americans–and to everyone on this planet–the United States will remain under a black cloud of a trampled democracy.

 

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Trump wants us to believe that there have been three legitimate attempts to assassinate him.  For that reason alone, it seems quite possible that he’ll die soon.

 

 

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There is much speculation floating around as to what lies ahead for the United States after Trump leaves office, through whatever means.

In particular, our traditional trading partners, e.g. Canada are hard at work replacing us, given that our leader is a criminal sociopath. But what if the next U.S. president is a sane human being?  Will they remain gone, or will they come back?  At what rate?

No one knows, but most of us figure that the sooner we remove Trump, the sooner normalcy returns.

 

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Once one understands that science is not a body of truths, but our best method of finding truth, one realizes that there is no reason to “question” it.

For a moment, think of the most rapidly evolving arenas within the totality of the domains of science.  Let’s take epidemiology and climate change.

My mother went to her grave believing that Dr. Anthony Fauci should be indicted for crimes associated with the medical advice he gave re: COVID-19.  Her sole source of (mis)information was Fox News, and, from listening to what they had to say on the subject, she’d tell me, “He’s constantly changing his mind!” as if this were evidence of incompetence, or, more dastardly, corruption.  Was he in cahoots with the communists hellbent on destroying American capitalism? If not, he must have been making himself a billionaire by selling his own remedies.

Here, we’re talking about an extremely senior medical professional who had served successfully under five presidents, working on a brand-new pandemic that very little was known about.  We’re also talking about a “news” source known for its support of conspiracy theories that support the ultra-right-wing.

In cases like these, science is constantly “changing its mind,” as new studies come in that blow apart older data, and better represent the current understanding of the problem at hand.

The situation is the same with climate science. Newer models associated with the warming of our atmosphere and oceans are constantly replacing those of previous decades.  Is that evidence that scientists are corrupt, or, rather, that we are always learning more about an extremely complex set of information?

 

 

 

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Yes, Trump’s a failure, but he wouldn’t be so roundly reviled by the American people if he weren’t so blatantly dishonest, and if we were following the advice of experts re: international relations, the economy/tariffs, the war in Iran, education, healthcare, etc.

 

 

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