Saturday (hot, summer, Saturday night, mmmmm!)

Saturday/Sunday June 28, 2009

. . . . .On this weekend in rock and roll history:
- In 1954, Sam Phillips, after several fruitless, disenheartening recording sessions, paired his new young singer, Elvis Presley, with Scotty Moore and Bill Black at Sun Studios in Memphis.
- In 2002, The Who's bassist, John Entwhistle, died of a heart attack in Las Vegas

. . . . .It's the weekend, so it must be time to catch the week up, so relax, grab a cup of coffee, or something cold, sit back, listen to the tune and catch up on your week. We've got another round of Truth/Lies, exposing the traitors and liars over at Fox News and on Rush's radio show, some reflections on deaths this week that really did count, some news for your own health and how you're killing yourself right now if you have a Diet Coke or diet soda of any kind in your hands, some things you can do right now that (a) can help your personal energy efficiency (b) put some money back in your pocket and (c) you can easily do. I'll start bringing together some of the disparate postings and thoughts that have been up here this week (which you can catch up on down below) and hopefully bring some understanding about that it really is all related.

. . . . On this weekend in history:
- The confrontations between police and demonstrators on the weekend of June 27-29, 1969 at the Stonewall Inn in New York City mark the beginning of the gay rights movement in the United States and were the first instance where members of the homosexual and lesbian community worked in a concerted action to protest a municipal, state and Federal system that persecuted people based on sexual orientation.

. . . .From Frank Rich this morning in the New York Times: 40 Years After Stonewall, Still Second Class Citizens:

. . . . .Then again, I didn’t know a single person, student or teacher, male or female, in my entire Ivy League university who was openly identified as gay. And though my friends and I were obsessed with every iteration of the era’s political tumult, we somehow missed the Stonewall story. Not hard to do, really. The Times — which would not even permit the use of the word gay until 1987 — covered the riots in tiny, bowdlerized articles, one of them but three paragraphs long, buried successively on pages 33, 22 and 19.

But if we had read them, would we have cared? It was typical of my generation, like others before and after, that the issue of gay civil rights wasn’t on our radar screen. Not least because gay people, fearful of harassment, violence and arrest, were often forced into the shadows. As David Carter writes in his book “Stonewall,” at the end of the 1960s homosexual sex was still illegal in every state but Illinois. It was a crime punishable by castration in seven states. No laws — federal, state or local — protected gay people from being denied jobs or housing. If a homosexual character appeared in a movie, his life ended with either murder or suicide. . . . . .
. . . . After the gay liberation movement was born at Stonewall, this strand of history advanced haltingly until the 1980s. It took AIDS and the new wave of gay activism it engendered to fully awaken many, including me, to the gay people all around them. But that tardy and still embryonic national awareness did not save the lives of those whose abridged rights made them even more vulnerable during a rampaging plague. . . .

. . . .The cultural climate is far different today, besides. Now, roughly 75 percent of Americans support an end to Don’t Ask, and gay issues are no longer a third rail in American politics. Gay civil rights history is moving faster in the country, including on the once-theoretical front of same-sex marriage, than it is in Washington. If the country needs any Defense of Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from the right-wing “family values” trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter. . . . .

. . . . .No president possesses that magic wand, but Obama’s inaction on gay civil rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness. The Justice Department brief defending DOMA has spoken louder for this president than any of his own words on the subject. Chrisler noted that he has given major speeches on race, on abortion and to the Muslim world. “People are waiting for that passionate speech from him on equal rights,” she said, “and the time is now.”

Action would be even better. It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places. . . . .

. . . . . .Read the entire piece here.

. . . . . .I'm fortunate in that, very seriously, I do see both race and sexual orientation. There's plenty of plastic progressive/liberal people who use the phrase "I just don't see race/orientation". I am a tattooed, pierced black wearing Irish asshole, who is as hetero as they come. I'm also not stupid, and realize that genetic differences are not something that just can't be "seen", they are obvious and overt. What I make a very adult choice to do is to understand that those things have not one fucking thing to do with a person's worth, value or character! They are things that just are, period, and don't have one damn thing to do with my friendship or relationship with them. The other thing that I strive to do is not to be insulting and say that I "understand" or that I "empathize". I can't, I don't have the genetic make-up to be a minority, I was born with white privilege, (yes, it does exist); I was born heterosexual, and don't have the genetic make-up for homosexuality, so I can't understand what it is to be in that minority group either, so I've never experienced that kind of discrimination. All I can do is what I do, love my friends and be willing to take a bullet for them, or walk down any dark alley with them to face the unknown. That's all I know how to do.

. . . . .I won't pretend to minimize the grief of Michael Jackson's family, his children, his brothers and sisters, his father. I've lost a family member myself, and no one, no one can tell anyone else how it feels, or minimize it. I will say that I don't understand the public hysteria, or the wall-to-wall 24/7 coverage of it by every news station. I don't understand breaking into broadcasts to tell the world that the autopsy results were inconclusive, or about his financial problems. There were other deaths this week. Deaths just as notable. Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Neda the young woman in Iran shot while getting out of her car, and for me, two more deaths just as important, if ranking death in significance is something that can be done.

. . . .There was another death this week. A significant one. Dr. Jerri Nielsen died early Tuesday. Don't remember her? Name doesn't sound familiar? It should, she captivated the American public's attention for a hot 15 minutes back in 1999 when she was trapped in the Antarctic winter, diagnosed herself with breast cancer, (gave herself a needle biopsy, try doing that to yourself), and gave herself chemotherapy with supplies parachuted in by the U.S. Air Force.
That's a hero, that's someone who demonstrated bravery, courage and who didn't know the meaning of the word quit.

. . . . .There was another death this week. Kaveh Alipour, a 19 year old Iranian who was engaged to marry his fiancee next week was leaving an acting class and got caught in the crossfire of the Revolutionary Guard, who were firing on protestors in downtown Iran. When his family went to the morgue to collect his body, they were told that there was the equivalent of a $3,000 U.S. "bullet fee" to collect his body. The family's earthly possessions don't amount to that much. When the morgue waived the fee, they told that family that Kaveh could not be buried in Tehran, and would have to be buried outside the city as retribution for being so poor as to not have the fee.

. . . I speculated yesterday, the very unintentionally, and quite by the nature of our society and it's short attention span, that Michael Jackson's death would inadvertently and wind up helping the Mullahs, the High Cleric and Ahmadenijad. It happened just that way. In the last 24 to 48 hours there is almost no information coming out of Iran, except that of the state-run media. No phones, no Facebook, no Twitter. The ray of hope is that as of Sunday, thousands had taken to street anyhow, and there are reports that the British Embassy staff has been arrested. That would be a huge, huge mistake.

. . . .I hope, desperately hope, that the world now sees, in Ahmadenijad and the High Cleric just what they are dealing with. Monsters, who only wanted to show the world the appearance of civil rights, the appearance of open elections. Tyrants who only want to keep their power, and keep their people under their thumb.

. . . .Only one problem with that. Their people have started something that will eventually, even if it takes decades, become a movement. Ahmadenijad and the High Cleric did something, started something that will be their undoing. They gave the people a purpose and passion, a belief and a movement. It will be their downfall.

. . . . And please people, educate yourselves. Start to understand the difference between the Taliban and Shariiyah law and Al-Quaeda. The Taliban, wherever they are located, wherever they live, want their province or their country, people who are already Islamic and living there, under Shaariya law. It doesn't make them Al-Quaeda. Al-Quaeda are far more dangerous, they are cosmic warriors, people who want an impossible goal, and know it's impossible, but are willing to die for it, that of a world, and entire planet as one Caliphate, and they understand that it can't be done, but are willing to die for it. They are like an infectious virus, that's the best way to think of them, that uses the Taliban as a host body.

. . . .If you remember one of the best and most brilliant shows to ever be cancelled from network television, Firefly, and the movie it spawned, Serenity:
Operative: "You've done remarkable things, but you're fighting a war you've already lost."
Mal: "Yeah, well, I'm known for that."

. . . .I have readers that get it, and readers that don't. Yes, there's always a lot of popular culture references in here. Lot's of rock and roll references, lots of Bruce, Bob Dylan, Hendrix et al. Lots of movie references. Lots of television references; Lost, Battlestar Galactica, Rescue Me, Deadwood, The Wire.
. . . It's simple, popular culture; rock and roll, TV, movies reflect who we are, who we really are, they're our reflections, and not our shadow selves, either. They're most of the time a reflection of who we aspire to be. It's cool, just relax, you'll get it. It's all part of the flow, all part of the web, the matrix.
. . . .There's nothing wrong with the fine arts, with culture, it's just that somehow, here in America, we seemed to get it and understand that the supposed "fine arts" were, are, the rock and roll and television of their time.

. . . .Fox News Lies vs. Truth alert! More Faux News lies. Let's get something straight, ACORN is not taking the census. They're one of more than 30,000 groups promoting the census. It's like I keep telling the Faux News sheeple all the time, check your facts!!!! Not the lies and distortions that Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann were spreading the other night, not the distortions that Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter and Limbaugh spread daily. The most reliable source? I use Fact Check.org

. . . .Fox News Lies vs. Truth alert! The President has not proposed a government-run health care plan, and in fact straight out on the White House's Health Care page, says straight up that government run health care is wrong. That would be the "single payer" option that was brought up, discussed and dropped. The crew at Faux News has very deliberately used the phrase "government-run" health care over and over, and it's simply not true. The proposal on the table is the public option, which is the exact same health care plan that members of Congress and their families have. (See why they don't want you to have it? It's a pretty good deal). That obnoxious ad from the Conservatives for Patient's Rights and Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity on the media side and Cantor and Boehner on the Congressional side have deliberately mischaracterized the public option as a Canadian style government run plan. Again, check the facts, and quit letting Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck do your thinking for you, they're laughing at you behind your back.

. . . . .And yes, it's been over 100 years since President Teddy Roosevelt, that's Teddy folks, called for health care reform.

. . . You know, I'm thinking right now that I could use listening to some old Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and some Derek and the Dominos.

. . . .Let's see. . .what else has the merry band of idiots been up to this week? Besides conveniently ostracizing Gov. Rick Sanford of S. Carolina for his impossible, romance novel style affair. Oh, that's right, John McCain had an affair on his first wife and got divorced to marry Miss Moneybags. Newt Gingrich, that would be twice he did the exact same thing, oh, and Senator Ensign, who got caught this week too! He was the one during the Clinton flap that stated that kind of moral perfidy had no place in Government. Soon, soon the band of idiots that is the Republican Party and their extreme Right wing media machine will completely self-destruct as they form up that circular firing squad. These guys really couldn't get installing a freezer in the Arctic right, really they couldn't. What gets these folks in trouble is their sanctimonious, hypocritical, holier-than-thou self-righteousness. Seriously, under their Brooks Brothers suits, these folks are kinkier and more twisted than any leather-wearing, spanking freak Victorian could hope to be, and everyone knows it. The only ones who don't see it are them! And greedy and corrupt? Do they think we just have conveniently forgotten Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, these idiots come cheap - that's a well-established fact.

. . . .Next up on the "Oh shit, we've got to start campaigning someone now for 2012, right now" GOP merry-go-round of mouthbreathers - Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty. Don't these fools get it? You're sacrificial lambs, having your throats cut at the altar of Newt Gingrich, by your own people!

. . . .Rush Limbaugh Lies vs. Truth Alert! Third hour of Rush on Friday - "There isn't any global warming." Alright, you sweaty, lying, traitorous Oxycontin-addled gasbag, here are the numbers ( I love numbers. Numbers are numbers, not opinions, they just are):
- From the report prepared for Congress by an interagency group and requested by the Bush Administration:
- Winter temperatures have increased by 4 degrees since the 1970's in the Northeast
-Spring rainfall down 30 percent since 1970 in the Southeast
- Overall ice cover on the Great Lakes has plummeted since the 70's, and winter temperatures have increased by an overall 7 degrees since then in the Midwest.
- Water levels have dropped by over 150 feet in the Great Plains
- Snowpack is down by 60% in the Pacific Northwest
- Alaska is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the U.S. Winter temperatures have risen over 6 degrees since the 70's.

. . .An Arctic ice melt of over 2 trillion tons has occured since 2003.

. . .From the intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - The Arctic air surface temperature change between 2005 - 2008 was 5 degrees Celsius higher than expected. This change wasn't expected to occur until the year 2070.

. . . And the report no one is talking about, because it scares the shit out of them, Republican and Democrat alike, ordered by the Bush Administration, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration on January 19th, and left on Obama's desk for him:
"Climate change is likely irreversible"

. . . Short form - "We're fucked".

. . . . .Understand that the previous administration, the Bush White House, in truth and in secret understood the serious challenges that irreversible climate change presented. When Obama took office, he kept the same National Security Advisor. Who still, as he did for Bush every day for two years, prepares a daily National Security briefing for the President on climate change, which right now is ranked #2 in the listings of threats to National Security. The short answer on that is simple, a loss of water and a loss of arable land pose threats to food supplies. A rise in coastal sea levels means a loss of habitable land, since that's where most of ours, and the worlds, populations live, within 100 miles of coasts. Large migrations of hungry, thirsty people in search of a place to live means one thing - war. That's what all wars are fought about in the end; land, money or religion. Can you see a perfect storm coming?

. . . .What you need to ask yourself are some questions: (a) If the Bush White House knew it, and asked for the reports daily, why did they deny it's reality? (b) Why aren't your media heroes; Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly not talking about it when they're supposedly "smarter" than you ( that is why people listen to these raving maniacs isn't it, to have their world spoon fed to them by an "expert" so they don't have to think for themselves? Hmmm?) and able to absorb the pure dispassion and non-opinions of numbers? Numbers don't have an opinion, they're either a 1 or 0, either black or white, there's no opinion involved. (Psst! Here's a clue to the answer to b, it's because they do know, and they don't give a shit about you, or your kids, or your grandkids) (c) If those numbers are staring you in the face, why do you deny their logical conclusion?

. . . . Sheer idiotic Republican alert! Joe the Plumber, nee Samuel Wurzelbacher who is not a plumber by any stretch of the imagination, of the Toledo, Ohio area (Thank God, if you're from Michigan, you understand the Toledo reference, given his area of residence, he's pretty typical!) on Thursday at one wingnut rally or another in reference to Senator Chris Dodd - "Why hasn't he been strung up?"
. . . .This follows a March appearance at another conservative rally where he told his audience that they "were making him horny".

. . . .Attn.!!! Would the aliens who used to abduct people on a regular basis, seemingly, at least, please return and start again? We have a list for you, with names and addresses.

. . . . .Sheer unmitigated fly-in-the-face of reality Republican gall alert! Sen. John Boehner this week on the economy and stimulus packages. "Where are the jobs?". Uh, John, dude. It's only been 4 months, and the money is tied up in Senate committees whilst hypocrites like you, who said you didn't want it, fight like starving mongrels over bigger and bigger pieces of it. At this rate, it won't start getting parceled out this Presidential term, much less before the end of the fiscal year, thanks to you all.

. . . .OK, so as long as we're on a roll at getting your mind cleared up, let's work on your body. If you're sitting there with a Diet Coke in your hand, or a Diet drink of any kind, you're killing yourself. It's that simple. Aspartame, a sweetener developed by Monsanto, was originally developed as a pesticide. It was decided, by Monsanto, that it had better uses as a sweetener. There has been an extensive Internet war over whether or not Aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet, etc.) was safe or unsafe. I'm not going to go there. What I will do, is run the numbers, and let you decide for yourself:
Aspartame, approximately 10% by mass, breaks down into methanol while in your body, which in turn, due to metabolic processes in the body, breaks down into formaldehyde, which is absorbed into the soft tissue of the intestinal tract. which leads to a build-up of formic acid, again due to natural, normal body processes. Understand, that I'm saying that the metabolic processes are natural and normal. The presence of methanol, formaldehyde and formic acid aren't. Now you know, use your own mind, and make a decision. Do your own fact checking, at Fact Check.org, or at any reference website as to numbers and processes I used above. Then go ahead pour yourself another Diet soda of some kind.

. . . .While you're at it, do your own investigation on Bing or Google on the phrase "asparagus and cancer". Get some information, I think you'll be surprised, pleasantly, and make your own mind up.

. . . .While we're on the human body and mind, let's stop back in at KurzweilAI.net and continue the series that we started a couple of days ago on the continuing leaps in the evolution of the human consciousness:

Nanotechnology and the Human Brain

The most important and radical application particularly of circa-2030 nanobots will be to expand our minds through the merger of biological and nonbiological, or “machine,” intelligence. In the next 25 years, we will learn how to augment our 100 trillion very slow interneuronal connections with high-speed virtual connections via nanorobotics. This will allow us to greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of computer intelligence. The technology will also provide wireless communication from one brain to another.

In other words, the age of telepathic communication is almost upon us.

Our brains today are relatively fixed in design. Although we do add patterns of interneuronal connections and neurotransmitter concentrations as a normal part of the learning process, the current overall capacity of the human brain is highly constrained. As humanity’s artificial-intelligence (AI) capabilities begin to upstage our human intelligence at the end of the 2030s, we will be able to move beyond the basic architecture of the brain’s neural regions.

Brain implants based on massively distributed intelligent nanobots will greatly expand our memories and otherwise vastly improve all of our sensory, pattern-recognition, and cognitive abilities. Since the nanobots will be communicating with one another, they will be able to create any set of new neural connections, break existing connections (by suppressing neural firing), create new hybrid biological and computer networks, and add completely mechanical networks, as well as interface intimately with new computer programs and artificial intelligences.

The implementation of artificial intelligence in our biological systems will mark an evolutionary leap forward for humanity, but it also implies we will indeed become more “machine” than “human.” Billions of nanobots will travel through the bloodstream in our bodies and brains. In our bodies, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to enhance our physical well-being. As a result, we will be able to live indefinitely without aging.

In our brains, nanobots will interact with our biological neurons. This will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses, as well as neurological correlates of our emotions, from within the nervous system. More importantly, this intimate connection between our biological thinking and the machine intelligence we are creating will profoundly expand human intelligence.

Warfare will move toward nanobot-based weapons, as well as cyber-weapons. Learning will first move online, but once our brains are fully online we will be able to download new knowledge and skills. The role of work will be to create knowledge of all kinds, from music and art to math and science. The role of play will also be to create knowledge. In the future, there won’t be a clear distinction between work and play.

The Robotic Revolution

Of the three technological revolutions underlying the Singularity (genetic, nano-mechanical, and robotic), the most profound is robotic or, as it is commonly called, the strong artificial intelligence revolution. This refers to the creation of computer thinking ability that exceeds the thinking ability of humans. We are very close to the day when fully biological humans (as we now know them today) cease to be the dominant intelligence on the planet. By the end of this century, computational or mechanical intelligence will be trillions of trillions of times more powerful than unaided human brain power. I argue that computer, or as I call it nonbiological intelligence, should still be considered human since it is fully derived from human-machine civilization and will be based, at least in part, on a human-made version of a fully functional human brain. The merger of these two worlds of intelligence is not merely a merger of biological and mechanical thinking mediums, but also and more importantly, a merger of method and organizational thinking that will expand our minds in virtually every imaginable way.

Biological human thinking is limited to 10 to the 16th power calculations per second (cps) per human brain (based on neuromorphic modeling of brain regions) and about 10 to the 26th power cps for all human brains. These figures will not appreciably change, even with bioengineering adjustments to our genome. The processing capacity of nonbiological intelligence or strong AI, in contrast, is growing at an exponential rate (with the rate itself increasing) and will vastly exceed biological intelligence by the mid-2040s.

Artificial intelligence will necessarily exceed human intelligence for several reasons.

First, machines can share knowledge and communicate with one another far more efficiently than can humans. As humans, we do not have the means to exchange the vast patterns of interneuronal connections and neurotransmitter-concentration levels that comprise our learning, knowledge, and skills, other than through slow, language-based communication.

Second, humanity’s intellectual skills have developed in ways that have been evolutionarily encouraged in natural environments. Those skills, which are primarily based on our abilities to recognize and extract meaning from patterns, enable us to be highly proficient in certain tasks such as distinguishing faces, identifying objects, and recognizing language sounds. Unfortunately, our brains are less well-suited for dealing with more-complex patterns, such as those that exist in financial, scientific, or product data. The application of computer-based techniques will allow us to fully master pattern-recognition paradigms. Finally, as human knowledge migrates to the Web, machines will demonstrate increased proficiency in reading, understanding, and synthesizing all human-machine information.

The Chicken or the Egg

A key question regarding the Singularity is whether the “chicken” (strong AI) or the “egg” (nanotechnology) will come first. In other words, will strong AI lead to full nanotechnology (molecular-manufacturing assemblers that can turn information into physical products), or will full nanotechnology lead to strong AI?

The logic of the first premise is that strong AI would be in a position to solve any remaining design problems required to implement full nanotechnology. The second premise is based on the assumption that hardware requirements for strong AI will be met by nanotechnology-based computation. Likewise, the software requirements for engineering strong AI would be facilitated by nanobots. These microscopic machines will allow us to create highly detailed scans of human brains along with diagrams of how the human brain is able to do all the wonderful things that have long mystified us such as create meaning, contextualize information, and experience emotion. Once we fully understand how the brain functions, we will be able to recreate the phenomena of human thinking in machines. We will endow computers, already superior to us in the performance of mechanical tasks, with lifelike intelligence.

Progress in both areas (nano and robotic) will necessarily use our most-advanced tools, so advances in each field will simultaneously facilitate the other. However, I do expect that the most important nanotechnological breakthroughs will emerge prior to strong AI, but only by a few years (around 2025 for nanotechnology and 2029 for strong AI).

As revolutionary as nanotechnology will be, strong AI will have far more profound consequences. Nanotechnology is powerful but not necessarily intelligent. We can devise ways of at least trying to manage the enormous powers of nanotechnology, but superintelligence by its nature cannot be controlled.

The nano/robotic revolution will also force us to reconsider the very definition of human. Not only will we be surrounded by machines that will display distinctly human characteristics, but we will be less human from a literal standpoint.

Despite the wonderful future potential of medicine, real human longevity will only be attained when we move away from our biological bodies entirely. As we move toward a software-based existence, we will gain the means of “backing ourselves up” (storing the key patterns underlying our knowledge, skills, and personality in a digital setting) thereby enabling a virtual immortality. Thanks to nanotechnology, we will have bodies that we can not just modify but change into new forms at will. We will be able to quickly change our bodies in full-immersion virtual-reality environments incorporating all of the senses during the 2020s and in real reality in the 2040s.

. . . . .OK, now that we've stretched waaay out, let's come back in a little bit and take a look at what we can today, right now to improve our own energy efficiency, right at home. I harp constantly on upgrading the national Electrical grid, which still remains the biggest waste of energy that we have, and a constant drain on our wallets, our bank accounts and the system overall. I'm damn sick and tired of hearing the phrase "transfer of wealth" come out of the extreme Right's and neoconservative's mouths, while they participate, daily, hourly in the largest transfer of wealth in human history as we continue to pay for our dependence on foreign oil. Every time, they, you, any one of us, fills a tank up , pays an electric bill, turns on a computer, turns on a TV, we are contributing to that transfer of wealth, putting a few more dollars of our own in it, and putting it in the bank accounts of people in countries that aren't friendly to us, and don't have our long-term national interests at heart. So. . . .
. . .Like I've said over and over, we absolutely have to reinvent/upgrade/modernize the grid, otherwise everything else we do in terms of new energy sources, harvesting solar, wind, water powered turbines will be for naught. From Popular Science, by David Roberts:

The American electric grid is an engineering marvel, arguably the single largest and most complex machine in the world. It's also 40 years old and so rickety that power interruptions and blackouts cost the economy some $150 billion a year. The idea of building a connected "smart" grid that can route power intelligently is beyond daunting, no matter how much stimulus money gets thrown at it. But if we want to cut carbon, we have no choice. Today's grid simply cannot handle a large-scale rollout of the clean-energy sources outlined in this series. In part that's because we need new high-voltage power lines to connect parts of the country where renewable resources are abundant (the sunny Southwest deserts, the windy Great Plains) to the cities and suburbs where more people live. But the more fundamental problem is that most renewable power sources don't behave like fossil-fuel sources — they can't be turned on and off on demand. Wind farms produce power only when the wind blows; solar, only when the sun shines. This is problematic, because power demand is twofold: We need "baseload" power that's predictable and steady, and "peak" power for daily spikes in demand (when, say, everyone arrives home and turns on their air conditioning). Intermittent renewables are not well suited to either. But with more power lines connecting power sources over a broader geographical area, renewables can simulate baseload power. (The wind is always blowing somewhere.) And a smarter grid cleverly shifting power demand around can redirect enough clean electricity to handle it when demand increases suddenly.

. . . .Read the entire article here.

- Get an energy audit done by your utility company, or someone who is either a licensed electrician, a licensed HVAC tech or a licensed Builder. It'll be worth what it costs you to do, in terms of the dollars you'll save on your energy bill, and the $1500 tax credit you can get for making your home more energy efficient. Use someone like me, or my bro Tom. Now, if you live out of state, paying us to come is kind of self-defeating, due to the gas we'd use, but if you want us to come that bad and have a cup of coffee, I suppose one of us would!

- Check out Hohm from Microsoft, which will be Beta-released next week. It's a software application that will be a web-based service for keeping that is a home power management software tool.

- And in the most exciting news for a closet geeky fan-boy like me, the Canadian duo, Cold Fusion, who hope to deliver a cold fusion reactor for about a tenth of the estimated cost of other such projects just got a grant for $12 million to continue research.

. . . .Outta here for today, hope you had a good weekend, have a good start of the week.

. . . . .Got your back, somewhere out there in the night

. . . .Kiss your kids and tell them you love them out loud. This rodeo is a one-way ticket, and no one, no one, gets out alive. We don't get to dictate the terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched, no one does. So it's not about yesterday or tomorrow, about guilt or regret or worry, it all is what it is, and it's today. This ain't a dress rehearsal, the curtain's gone up and it's showtime, right here, right now. This is the sights, the sounds, the words of me changing my life. Change your life, change the world around you, that's the way it works.

The Desolation Angel