Almost there, home ain't that far away now

Friday May 8, 2009

. . . .The playlist! Diversity rocks folks, just listen and enjoy!

. . . .Back in play

. . . .Time for solutions people. I'm gonna ask you to scroll down and refresh yourself on what I was referring to on two things, chaos theory, which isn't about chaos at all, and the ability to see nodal points, those points where all the information flows together to give an image of what's really going on.

. . . .The figures came in yesterday. Another half-million jobs lost in April, to bring the grand total now since the "recession" officially started to 5.1 million jobs lost. The other startling figure from yesterday is that 20% of American homeowners are now listed as having "negative equity", that is their mortgage obligations are now larger than their listed home.
. . . .So, the scamsters are at work now attempting to make money off people's misery and put them into a worse position. The only 'official' Governmental site for troubled homeowners is Making Home Afffordable.gov. If you're in trouble on your mortgage, or know someone who is, have them check the site out and see if they're eligible for relief.
. . . .As a skilled tradesman, as someone who always worked with his hands and is first and foremost, before anything else, an electrician, I recommend a site called Blue Collar and Proud of It, started by a tradesman himself, a great resource for getting trained in a trade and finding a career in it. The only way we're going to recover this economy is if we start to produce something again. We've had 30 years of Reaganomics and a trickle-down "service" economy and we all can see what it's gotten us, a global Depression. What made us great ws manufacturing and buildingand we have to start doing that again to make the dollar a dominant currency again.

. . . .The results of the bank "stress" tests are in, and the results are grim. It looks like the banks will need at least another $65 billion in capital, you can check out this interactive chart from the Wall Street Journal this morning here, along with the full report.

. . . . .I've said it before, I have an extreme distaste for bailing out the banks, especially since their "toxic assets" are the results of their buying ito AIG's Joseph Cassano's derivative scheme (read earlier entries for the history of how this whole mess started), but we have to, period. That's what most people don't understand, we don't have a system in place in this country in order to move away from a banking based credit system, and aren't ready to move to a cash or barter economy, which would be the alternative.

. . . . And with the dollar worthless, it's not a viable option anyhow. The Chinese yuan is right now the dominant currency, they've won and never fired a shot. The Chinese literally right now cannot spend the U.S. dollars they own fast enough, and are buying the world up; real estate, ships, mining equipment, buying U.S. and other county's debt, it's incredible.

. . . . .Star Trek opens tonight and I'm geeked, as an old Trekkie myself and an admirer of J.J. Abrams work on Lost, I wanna see what he's done with it. Also the rumors of Leonard Nimoy's appearance as Spock Prime makes me wonder just where they're taking this plot.

. . . . . .One of the most important things you can do with your dollars is watch your credit cards. The proposed credit card legislation was introduced in the House and was put on the Senate floor this week. The legislation is consumer-friendly and is designed to make the companies ease up on late fees, the fine print in the agreements, etc. you can track the legislation at Open Congress.org.
The House Version is at H.R. 2007 on Open Congress,
The Senate Version is at S.414 on Open Congress
Two others I'm tracking right now through the same site:
H.R. 1728, the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act
S.909 The Matthew Sheppard Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

. . . .And yes, I'm completely disgusted with the North Carolina congresswoman who called Matthew's death a "hoax", she needs to be voted out next term.

. . . . .I really, really don't care what your opinion of global warming, global cooling or climate change is. If you live in the United States and have lived through the weather the last couple of weeks and don't understand that our climate is changing and it's not for the better, and it is the largest threat we face to our children and grandchildren, you're a fool or lying to yourself and others, it's that simple. I work in the Gulf of Mexico, many of my friends live in the Deep South, and I live in the Upper Midwest on the Great Lakes, I get to see it all. Floods from Kansas to West Virginia, an unending rain storm in the upper Midwest, stronger and stronger tornados, temperature extremes, and now, a brand new type of straight line tornado that the media is trying to pass off as old hat, and having been here all along, a 'derecho', which is a straight line storm with winds in excess of 70 MPH that can stretch on a front 250 miles long. No, it's not old hat and it's new, I don't care what the TV says. You'd have to be blind, ignorant fool to sit there and say "Hey, the climate's not changing, what are they talking about?"
. . . .Sure, that's why the National Security chief delivers a separate report to the President every morning on climate change and it is now listed as the #2 threat to National Security.

. . . . .Part 2 here of the series I started last week from NPR on upgrading the grid, which is the most economical, efficient and fastest way to get some energy savings and efficiency going in this country. Remember, the actual figures are simple, around 4% of the energy required to light a simple light bulb in your house is what makes it there from the power plant. Around 96% of the energy that is initially required is lost along the grid due to inefficiencies:

The Obama administration wants to rebuild the national electric grid that delivers power to everyone's toasters and televisions. One reason is that the grid can't handle all the new solar and wind power the president wants to build to create a greener energy economy.

Here's the problem: Solar and wind power are intermittent. Sometimes it's sunny, sometimes it's not, and it's the same for wind. But the grid needs constant and reliable sources of power.

What's the answer? One solution, says Imre Gyuk, a researcher at the Department of Energy, is to store that energy. Gyuk and engineers at power companies have an idea for how to do that.

"You put a large number of small batteries around a neighborhood," Gyuk says, "just like the neighborhood transformers — just a little green box that's innocuous."

By small, he means about the size of the battery in a hybrid car, and it would be hooked up to the grid. In fact, DOE and American Electric Power, a large utility, plan to use batteries made for hybrid plug-in vehicles to create such a constellation of storage sites. The batteries are charged when there's surplus power — say, on an especially windy day —and then tapped on a cloudy or windless day.

"If you have these storage units sitting throughout the community, then you can simply withdraw half an hour's worth of storage to make up for the wind," Gyuk says.

Spinning Storage

The Department of Energy is plowing more than $600 million from the government's stimulus package into storage technologies. Another possible solution is something called a "flywheel" — a spinning metal rotor, floating in a vacuum inside a steel cylinder.

Gene Hunt, communications director at Beacon Power in Massachusetts, says one of the company's flywheels spins at 16,000 revolutions per minute.

"It's the same principle as that of a potter's wheel," he says. "The potter's wheel is powered by the human foot, pumping the pedal up and down. It turns this wheel which has a certain weight, it brings it up to a speed, and when you take your foot away, it continues to spin. It's using the energy that's stored in there."

A small amount of electricity is needed to keep the flywheels spinning, and the machines store that power as rotational energy. Beacon is building flywheel "farms" that can return that energy as electricity in short bursts when operators need to meet a spike in demand on the grid.

Sharing Power

There are other ways to store electricity for the grid: Water can be pumped up into an elevated reservoir when electricity demand is low (and electricity production is in excess); then it can be released to flow through turbine generators to make more electricity when demand is high.

But all these devices need software to keep them linked to the grid. That's something a company called GridPoint does. Karl Lewis, the company's chief strategy officer, says the idea is to allow utilities to draw on electricity in household storage devices when customers don't need it, much like a virtual power plant.

That "shared" power could extend to electric cars. As the car wanders around the grid, Lewis says, "we know where the car is, where it's plugged in, how much energy it needs. And what happens is that the car becomes a smart charging asset available both to the consumer and the utility."

Lewis acknowledges that some people may not want the utility to know where they are all the time. He says people would have the choice to participate in a program like this. But, he adds, hooking up to the new grid as an energy partner may ultimately mean cheaper utility bills, and more wind and solar electrons running Americans' appliances or cars.

. . . .I think it's because people don't know, but you're probably spending between 300 and 500 dollars a year on your own electricity bill at home by not calling up me, or someone like me, to come into your home and for around 200 dollars, having us go through it and do some simple checks and work that would make your home that "electrically efficient". Call me, or your local electrician, it'll be worth it in the long run, and save you money back in your wallet you need.

. . . .Cognitive dissonance, thank you Dave P. for that wonderful discussion around that this week. Cognitive dissonance is holding two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time, and making an attempt to believe both. In that light, my buddies from the extreme Right, those who would see this country destroyed because they're no long able to exert their imperialist power:
Rush Limbaugh, Idiot #1 on Colin Powell
Joe (not his real name) The Plumber (no, he's not a plumber): "I don't want my children growing up near queers."
One of my favorite nutbags and hate-monger morons, Rep. Michelle Bachman of Anoka, Minnesota, a summary of her best moments.
And of course, we can't forget Sean Hannity, who this week finds fault with the President actually putting mustard (for God's sakes!) on a hamburger.

. . . . I'll update more throughout the day. Good to be back. Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do, seize the precious moments before they slip through your hands, this rodeo is a one-way ticket and none of us gets out alive, and we don't get to dictate the terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched, so it's not about yesterday or tomorrow, it's about right fucking here and now, this ain't no dress rehearsal.
This is the sight, the sound and the words of me taking a chance and putting it out there, regardless of what people think, what have you done for yourself lately? This is me changing my life.
Love you all, got your back

The Desolation Angel