If the last-minute polling trends showing a powerful Republican comeback carry through the Nov. 7 elections, the end of America as we have known it for more than two centuries will be at hand.
Too strong? Alarmist? Can’t happen? Won’t happen? Read this well written piece by Robert Parry and you decide.
Whether the American people will understand what they’re doing or not, the Nov. 7 elections will either ratify or reject Bush’s plan for terminating the American Republic.
Get out and vote tomorrow, it’s important. Here are the symptoms of a government run amok: torture, indefinite detention without habeas corpus, spying on citizens, irresponsible fiscal management, invasion of the government into private lives, breach of trust from public officials, graft, sexual misconduct, wars of conquest and occupation, and manipulation of faith. That list isn’t a set of allegations, it represents a set of hard facts based on events of the past 5 years. Make your voice heard. Vote.
12 days to OSU/Michigan
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 10-0 Next up: at Northwestern 11/11
Tune: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack
Technorati Tags: Election | Vote | Totalitarianism | Mike Harding Blog
US Citizens, don’t forget to vote tomorrow. It’s important and you should participate.
Isn’t it ironic that the leaders of the “family values” cadre, the people who most want to intrude and control your life, appear to be practicing the values of sin? I mean, keep your friend close and your enemies closer is one thing, but having your enemy as the leader of your morality movement, doesn’t that go just a tad too far?
I guess we’ll see how perceptive the far right is in this election. If they can perceive how they’ve been used, many family values politicians won’t survive the outcome. Despite the polls, I’m not hopeful – you know, “lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Let’s hope our votes count. It would be a travesty to have a democracy where one’s vote doesn’t count. Voting irregularities are not welcome.
Proof that voters have short memories is that Arnold Schwartzenegger is likely to be reelected as governor of California. It was just springtime when his reactionary proposition suite failed miserably and he was on his way out. However much things change, they remain the same. I guess term limits are a good thing.
This morning in a local strip mall, a group of 3 women were canvassing the sidewalk to advertise the coming doomsday. Everyone needs a hobby it seems.
The movie Flushed Away is clever and well worth taking your child to see. It has humor for you too.
I’m not much of a professional football fan, but I’ll tell you, I feel badly for Peyton Manning, QB of the Indiapolis Colts. Their team went into Foxboro last night and beat the Patriots. A tough road win. However, it doesn’t mean anything. He’s one of these statistical wonders, but until that team wins the Superbowl, so what? If the Colts had lost, Manning’s a goat. Now they’ve won, so what? What did they win? Brady’s won Superbowls…..
George W’s got a plan for Iraq. Isn’t that special. One would think we might have seen evidence of that plan in the time between March, 2003 and now. I much preferred Montana senate candidate Burn’s claim that there was a “secret plan” for Iraq and that Tester, his challenger, wasn’t trustworthy enough to be clued in. Now that’s entertainment. Too bad it’s a big snuff film at the end of the day – 2,800+ Americans – we can at least keep track of that number.
All big supermarkets are the same, but recently we’ve lost the competitor market in this area leaving only one big supermarket in the area. You know what that means, prices are going up, service is deteriorating, and it’s a challenge for them to keep the shelves stocked. Competition is a good thing, hope another market sees the chance to make some money.
Of all the football teams in the world, I wouldn’t want to be Northwestern on Saturday. Let’s just say they will have the full attention of a certain machine like team that will be reminded ad naseum about the last visit to Evanston (a last second loss, first in 20 some years) and still smarting from a lackluster performance a little further south last Saturday. No quarter will be given in this one. Expect a blowout.
Deja vu all over again. US Citizens, don’t forget to vote tomorrow. It’s important and you should participate.
12 days to OSU/Michigan
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 10-0 Next up: at Northwestern 11/11
Tune: Nosotros by Jose Feliciano
Technorati Tags: Vote | Participate | Irony | Mike Harding Blog
Every so often we have a weekend like this. Yesterday, there were some pretty bizarre results:
Upsets happen every weekend, but it’s usually only one or two. It’s rare to see so many lines on top teams so wrong…I thought it might be a disease limited to college football, but it spread to the pros today too:
Same deal, there are upsets every week. But come on, Miami at 1-6 beating Chicago at Soldier Field by 18? One thing is sure, the underdog was hungry this weekend and displayed some bite.
13 days to OSU/Michigan
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 10-0 Next up: at Northwestern 11/11
Tune: Underdog World Strike by Gogol Bordello
Technorati Tags: Ohio State | Football | Underdog | Mike Harding Blog
In an earlier post, I wrote that I expected this to be a letdown game for the Bucks, and it was. Although, it was much closer than I thought it would be in the end. Hats off to the fighting Zookers, they gave it their all and clearly wanted to win more than the Bucks. The defense played very well as did special teams. The offense seemed to go AWOL after Beanie Well’s fumble in the second quarter. The offense was plain offensive throughout the second half playing very sloppy and giving up turnovers. That is not the way a team with championship aspirations performs. Well, at least we know they’re human.
There is a silver lining in this game I’m convinced: The Bucks won’t be thinking about hype or Michigan this week, they’ll be thinking about Northwestern. And that is a good thing.
14 days to OSU/Michigan
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 10-0 Next up: at Northwestern 11/11
Tune: Gimme Three Steps by Lynyrd Skynyrd
Technorati Tags: Ohio State | Illinois | Football | Mike Harding Blog
That’s right, geothermal resources (hot fluid and/or gas) can and is being used to generate electricity the world over. Geothermal literally means “heat from the earth.” The first successful geothermal electricity generation installation was in Larderello, Italy in 1904. The largest is the Geysers in Northern California where 21 plants generate around 3% of California’s electricity.
Geothermal resources can also be used for heating, cooling, and industrial pursuits by circulating the resource through chillers, heat exchangers, etc. This type of use mitigates the need to spend so much other energy in those processes and allows for the use of temperate (<75C) geothermal fluids. Beneath the crust of the earth is a large convection circulated body of magma. In weaker and thinner areas of the earth's crust (typically faults) heat from the magma in the mantle is transferred to rocks in the crust and then in turn to water in proximity to the rocks which creates the geothermal resources.
When generating power from geothermal resources, the resource needs to be rather hot >110C. There are 3 methods of tapping the resource: direct dry steam (rare,) direct flash steam (more common,) and binary (increasingly common.) Dry steam is used where the geothermal resources are extremely hot transforming the liquid in the geothermal well directly to gas which then is directed through a separation process to weed out non-steam (rocks, minerals) then routed into a turbine which generates power. The steam is then cooled back into liquid form and then typically reinjected into the geothermal field through an injection well.
Flash steam also requires a very hot resource, though cooler than dry steam, which follows the same process generally as dry steam with an extra step of routing the resource from the production well into a lower pressure area which allows the super-heated liquid to “flash” into steam (this may be repeated a series of times to gather the most steam possible at different pressures) before the resource is cooled and reinjected into the geothermal field.
Perhaps the most interesting and useful of the conversion technologies is the binary plant which uses a series of heat exchangers to transfer the geothermal fluid’s heat energy to a working fluid in a closed system. Typically, the working fluid has a boiling point that is less than that of water (~75C) which is then converted to steam and run through the turbine system, cooled, and recirculated through the system. In this way, the geothermal resource is never in direct contact with the turbine which extends the lifetime and reduces the maintenance associated with the system. The lower operating temperature makes a number of geothermal resources feasible that wouldn’t work with either dry or flash steam approaches.
NREL estimates that with current technology there is around 80GW of geothermal production potential in the US alone. Currently, 2.2GW is in production, primarily in California, Nevada, Utah, and Hawaii.
Another promising, though early development technology is called “hot dry rock” which is being pioneered in Australia. The theory here is to find an area of heat exchange in the crust that lacks water, boring into it, then injecting water to create a man-made geothermal resource.
Properly managed, geothermal is the most cost effective, least polluting, and most predictable of all the renewable energy sources. Disadvantages of the geothermal approach are primarily cost related, it costs around $2.5M/MW at scale to locate an appropriate site, establish the infrastructure, connect to the grid, and begin operations. But the advantages are truly amazing, virtually no emissions from the technology, 90% capacity factor, saleable by products from the dissolved solids (typically silica and zinc,) relatively small plants, and very predictable output. Areas like the Geysers have seen reduced production as the geothermal resource has been removed at a rate greater than natural (and later human assisted) replenishment. That’s where proper resource management comes into play.
Of all the renewable technologies, geothermal has the best chance to compete at scale with traditional fossil fuel plants on the basis of cost, predictability, and reliability.
15 days to OSU/Michigan
Ohio State’s 2006 record: 9-0 Next up: at Illinois 11/4
Tune: Fools in Love by Inara George
Technorati Tags: Energy | Geothermal | Electricity | Mike Harding Blog
