Doubly bloggy goodness

The Word:

The semi-official Indy BlogMeet will meet Sunday, 17 August at 3:00 pm at Broad Ripple Brew Pub.
The semi-un-official Bloogmeet will be a week later: 24th, same time, same place.

All clear?

(Via Shermlock.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 15:07:59 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Yeah, I’m back

...and exhausted.

Made a quick trip southward to assist Aged P and WS in moving house (which had been put off for a week by delays re: closing).

Unfortunately, first project on arrival was to uninstall all the routers and TV boxes for return to the phone company. (New place comes with CATV, internet will be DSL^[1], needing a different set of boxes.)  Result: No internet for the last 5 days (not that I had any time for it, anyway).

More later.

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Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 16:52:18 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here it comes

The new competition:

We have an old high-milage beater Dodge minivan that we use to transport the dogs to the vet and the kennel with and to rescue other stranded dogs and cats from the pound to take to their new adoptive families.  It's not pretty, but it has a neat stereo input jack to plug in two RCA plugs..so I connected my Palm Treo to the AUX input.. Within minutes I was hearing streaming audio from KOOL in Phoenix, KIXI in Seattle, KAAM in Dallas...and on and on..even Rivera Radio in Monaco..and it sounded right up there with Sirius or XM.  Not quite FM, but not as bad as a cassette.
...
I could even hear those kids on WKID in my CAR in Atlanta!  And Old Time Radio shows from Philly..and Country music from Canada, and Classic Rock from an online only station in Savannah..and on and on and on..forever!  Adult Standards if I want them..when I want them..from Los Angeles, and New York City, and Grants, New Mexico.  There is a guy streaming lounge music in Elko, Nevada...Wow..I'm a kid again! - Jeff Laurence, posting at Radio-Info

Do you remember the last time anybody got this enthusiastic about radio in the car?  (I think it was around the time FM stereo was introduced.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 12:53:01 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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“...a guy you’d like to watch a ball game with.”

“Big Stupid Tommy” offers a listener’s tribute to Skip Caray.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Radio at 01:38:29 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Here’s another one you can bet on...

Question:

What happens to New York if there isn’t enough juice to meet demand?

Answer:

You wouldn’t expect anything constructive out of New York’s liberals, would you?

(Post editorial via IP.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 19:35:23 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Concentrating on the important stuff

Instapundit linked this one yesterday:

TransCanada Corp., Canada's largest pipeline company, won state approval and a $500 million subsidy to proceed with plans to build an estimated $27 billion pipeline that will carry natural gas from Alaska's Arctic region to U.S. markets.

The Alaska Senate voted today in favor of the proposal by Calgary-based TransCanada, following approval last month by the House.  The company will get a state license to begin studies and early work on the pipeline. - Bloomberg.com

Glenn says, “We need it,” and I agree, but one thing bothered me.  This project seems such a no-brainer: Why the heck should getting things underway require a $½-billion subsidy from the state of Alaska?  Well, read on...

The line would ship 4.5 billion cubic feet of gas a day over 1,700 miles (2,735 kilometers) through Canada to U.S. markets...

Under its license agreement with the state, TransCanada will get the $500 million subsidy in return for seeking federal [Meaning “Canadian and U.S.”? - O.G.] regulatory approval for the project and finding customers for the pipeline.  The license doesn't guarantee construction of the project.

I suppose it could be argued that half a billion dollars isn’t excesive regulatory overhead for a project with a cost “at least $26.6 billion,” although, I’d note that the half billion is only “for seeking federal regulatory approval”^[1] and that the project’s total “compliance” bill will undoubtedly be much higher.

But the more disturbing message I’m getting here is that, despite all the politicians’ talk of “energy independence,” the likelihood that this project would not receive governmental approval must be great enough that TransCanada wouldn’t touch it unless somebody else guaranteed that the company’s first $½-billion of expenses were covered.

Well, hurrah for regulation.  It’s so reassuring to know that, despite energy prices going up and up, there are still folks there to concentrate on the important stuff.  We may freeze in the dark, but we’ll take comfort in the knowledge that we got our money’s worth.


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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 16:16:21 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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PETA Kills Kittens (and Puppies). Lots of them

Go read:

Then consider the “ethics” of a  0.84% adoption rate.

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 01:31:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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If it works, I want to offer a wager

Linked at.several.sites, stories about MIT-developed “24-hour solar power.”  If you drill down, you find that what’s actually been developed is a significantly-more-efficiant water electrolysis process which, if combined with a fuel cell, makes for a better “storage battery”

A liquid catalyst was added to water before electrolysis to achieve what the researchers claim is almost 100-percent efficiency...

“The hard part of getting water to split is not the hydrogen -- platinum as a catalyst works fine for the hydrogen. But platinum works very poorly for oxygen, making you use much more energy,” said MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera.  “What we have done is made a catalyst work for the oxygen part without any extra energy.  In fact, with our catalyst almost 100 percent of the current used for electrolysis goes into making oxygen and hydrogen.” - EETimes

MIT’s new cobalt phosphate catalyst is also less toxic and much easier to handle than the nickel oxide types previously used.  This has the potential to make electrolysis practical for energy storage, something really important.

But I’m disappointed with all the emphasis on solar.  While solar is sexy, concentrating on it limits your thinking.  Electrolysis is a “battery,” and you can use any available electricity to charge it: Windmills, off-peak hydro, off-peak nuclear... whatever.  Add this to our existing generation-distribution system, and we can significantly increase peak capacity, replace some of the expen$ive natural-gas-fired peaking plants we use now, or do both.  Or place the electrolysis plants at the points of demand and “charge” them in the wee hours (when demand and line losses are low). Poof, we’ve made a significant dent in mitigating our distribution capacity problem.^[1]  All before we’ve installed a single photovoltaic panel.

Now for the wager.  If this works, the Luddites, transnational progressives, and liberal fascists will see this as a threat. Because it solves a bunch of problems,^[2] and without problems they have no “handles” for taking control of our lives.  So there will be arguments, like this one:

It is established FACT that Hydrogen is very difficult to contain.  It leaks through the tightest seals like they were swiss cheese, and once free it races into the atmosphere and escapes into space.

This is not a major problem when all our hydrogen comes from the deep deposit hydrogen mines in Australia and Canada, but what if this new discovery hearalds an age of wholesail water mining?  Do these so-called scientists not realise that we cannot have water without hydrogen?  Have they forgotten that humans are 80% water?  That water makes our crops grow and our fish swim??  Our life's blood could be literally floating away!

This irresponsible god-gaming may save us from peak oil today, but our grandchildren tomorrow will be facing PEAK WATER if these experiments are allowed to continue!

Write to your political representative today!

The above, not by me but by Slashdot poster “Repton,” almost perfectly mimics the doom-mongering about so much modern technology that already eminates from the “fear crowd.”^[3]  He posted it last night at 7:52p.m., less than an hour after Slashdot linked the story.

Now, does anyone want to bet against this exact argument being made, in total seriousness, by somebody, sometime in the near future?^[4]

Thought not.


(I posted similar thoughts in a couple.of comments at Daily Pundit.)

UPDATES 080802 14:40:


Elsewhere:

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Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 00:57:30 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Sites Linked - July 2008

38 posts in July, still trending downward after June’s 43 and May’s 45, but also still ahead of March and April (both 35) and far better than the lowest month YTD: September 2007 (28 posts).

The July linklist is below the jump...
more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 16:11:13 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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