It’s amazing that both the homeowner and the architect thought that a design, built as it is around stubbing toes, was a solid idea.

This is the advice I give people who want to build energy generation systems centered around technologies that are, at this point, totally impractical.  You can do it, but why?

I still see business plans for hydrokinetics, biomass, small wind, microbial fuel cells, solar thermal, or any of a dozen other concepts.  Many of these made sense 15 years ago, before the plummeting price of solar PV and wind, but by now, the winners have won and the losers have lost.

Life’s tough enough without embracing the ill-conceived.

 

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Someone sent me the meme here and wrote: “A GOP strategist rebranded global warming as “climate change” because it sounds far, far less dangerous, problematic, severe, worrisome. The usual network of right-wing think tanks and media outlets immediately — as if by design — began to use it. And the rest is history. By now, all of us use a term that a Republican strategist came up with to make global warming sound less dangerous and wonder why we can’t fix the planet.” (more…)

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From this:
Witness this line from his July 3 speech in Sarasota, Florida:  “If you say it enough and keep saying it, they’ll start to believe you.” 
Trump was talking about alleged disinformation directed at him and other Republicans. But WOW does that quote explain everything you need to know about his approach to the presidency and life.

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From this:

Justice Elena Kagan ripped her conservative colleagues on the Supreme Court on Thursday in a blistering 41-page dissent, accusing them of ignoring the legislative intent of the 1965 Voting Rights Act as well as the high court’s own precedents. 

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Someone sent me this, noting: I’ll make ’em a casserole first night and show ’em all the good places to shop.

At the bottom of every discussion on immigration reform are people, human beings who have lived rich, complicated lives, just like you and me.  We seem not to be able to understand this.

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Trumpers often point out how unenthusiastic Joe Biden’s fans are, and mistakenly infer that their support for the president is weak.

Here’s a short video of the reception Biden received yesterday as he drove through tiny Antrim County in Michigan.  I’ll be the first to admit that’s a pretty staid and sober bunch of people. (more…)

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Young people and those outside the U.S. might not know that this is Dan Quayle, vice president under Bush 41, and yes, he was a true moron.  I remember very well how terrifying it was to know that he was just a heartbeat away from the presidency. You may want to take a moment and look back on how monumentally unqualified intellectually he was to lead even a boy scout troop.

Now, of course, the threat to the United States that was represent by Quayle is at least an order of magnitude greater.  In the years 1988 – 1992, no one could have possibly imagined that, a mere 25 years later, we’d elect a criminal conman who would take us to the very brink of authoritarianism.

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As the planet’s fragile ecosystems continue to collapse at an ever quickening pace, our society, rightly I believe, has growing contempt for those whose net worth is north of $100 billion, and who are racing one another to get to Mars, rather than investing in alleviating the suffering of the world’s people and the stemming of environmental decay.

Below is a song I came across recently that speaks to this. A woman is talking to an amoral rich man, who really could be any or all such persons, asking him if he sees that the ax is about to fall, as all the hungry, angry people start to pull together and go after him.

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Barry Richard McCaffrey received three Purple Heart medals for injuries sustained during his service in the Vietnam War, two Silver Stars, and two Distinguished Service Crosses — the second-highest U.S. Army award for valor. He was inducted into the U.S. Army Ranger Hall of Fame at U.S. Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning in 2007. (more…)

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The basic content of the meme here is true, and I’m sure it’s a sentiment most of us share.  But when we think about it for a moment, it’s clear that this is not “either/or.”  The first two of the equations here are taught to fewer than 1/1000 college students and exactly zero high school students. Music can and should be taught to 100%. We can accommodate both.

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