Salt of the Earth

I woke up with this running through my head. It might be the voice of prophecy...or perhaps not.

(Rolling Stones, snarky British working-class version)

(Judy Collins, American populist left version, enough changes to make it a different song. "Salt of the Earth" starts halfway through the video--no better version, sorry.)

No no no no

Please don't give $700 billion to the banks, so that they can piss it away like the last trillion. I'll probably have more to say on this, and more intelligent things, but right now I just wish it would stop. Caw!

Obama's science advisory panel

List at Wired. It's an idiosyncratic list, and only one of the five is a woman, but the short bios all indicate knowledgeable, competent people. It is not even remotely plausible that a McCain/Palin administration would make picks near as good.

Cherry-picking

This one's an exasperated comment on "libertarian" arguments against public transit. You cannot mix apples, watermelons, and cherries, compute average statistics about the mix, and then honestly proclaim that you have proven something about apples. Sheesh.

Notes on energy policies that will work

I got tired of snickering at Republicans, so here's a few notes on things we know will work.

1. A huge amount of fossil-fuel generated and electric energy is spent to heat and light buildings. Careful design, retrofitting of existing buildings, and siting of new buildings can reduce this by at least 90%. The use of incident solar energy - sunlight and heat is enormously effective. The big win here is what are called "hybrid" techniques, where active systems that use small amounts of energy are used to control passive systems to store and and direct large amounts of solar and geothermal energy. Daylighting and heating techniques are widely known; one that is less so is the geothermal heat pump, which is a highly-efficient cooling technique. There are houses in Maine that use entirely solar heat; there are houses in Louisiana that use geothermal heat-pumps for cooling. Clever design can reduce building energy use enormously, and many of these technologies save money, even at low energy prices. Links: Overview at Worldchanging. Brown and DeKay, Sun, Wind, and Light an excellent practical guide to passive techniques. Deparment of Energy on geothermal heat pump technology. US Department of Energy on photovoltaics.

2. Long-haul freight rail. More efficient than long-haul trucking and much more efficient than long-haul air transport.

3. Medium-range passenger rail. More efficient than single-occupancy automobiles, safer, and you can do office work on the way.

4. Urban multi-modal transit. The amount of space required by the heavy use of automobiles is itself a huge cost, both in land and the energy required to develop it. Broadly, when there are enough people to use the systems, rail is both more efficient and much cheaper than buses. In local transportation, however, there are many uses where rail doesn't make a lot of sense--there's no energy advantage over an automobile with a family. Buses have the advantage of not needing dedicated rights-of-way, but are uncomfortable and more expensive to operate than rail systems. If a bus line is operating for more than 10 years, it makes sense to replace it with a streetcar.

5. Build closer. Sorry, guys--we've no idea how to make low-density urbanization energy efficient.

6. Solar electricity. For applications where there is no good substitute for electrical energy, this is a good technology that is still improving.

So...are we hearing about these from the Democrats? Sadly, not very much. But Al Gore's been talking about them for over 15 years!

"And you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska."

Well, yes, if you count the Diomede Islands in the Bering Strait. Little Diomede Island is a US holding; Big Diomede Island is a Russian holding. They are something like 1,000 miles from Anchorage and probably just as far from any significant place in Russia. A brilliant, deceptive, and meaningless claim. Sarah Palin has close connections with a radical anti-US party, the secessionist, theocratic Alaska Independence Party. Sarah Palin also has close connections with a remarkably strange version of Christianity. She has received protection from witchcraft. Palin Signed Off on Budget to Charge Rape Victims for Exams. She is given to cronyism and notorious for appointing inadequately-prepared friends to high office (NYT article, reg. may be required). Exhaustive analysis of Sarah Palin's conduct as Governor in several disturbing instances by Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Read it and weep. This is the all-purpose "why Sarah Palin would make a bad President" post. I may add more to it. Caw!

Further thoughts on Palin

When I first heard of Sarah Palin, my attitude was, "Oh, that's kind of cool." As the information began to roll in it was, "Oh, wow, she's really awful." Now it's, "WtF? Why does anyone care about her?" Interlarded, mind you, with "She's Nehemiah Scudder [fictional religious radical] in a dress. Have the Republicans gone crazy? Have we all?" I don't get it. Why does she matter at all? (And will I still feel this way tomorrow morning?)