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Friday, June 24, 2016

Oh No! Not Another Allegorical Tale! Part 1.

by Chris James

An earlier column of mine, titled “An Allegorical Tale,” was written specifically for the Common Sense site. The allegory in question was provided by a single example that epitomized man’s idiotic inhumanity, not merely to man, but to just about any living thing. This current column, also written specifically for this site, is a pre-allegory introduction to a breathlessly awaited publication of Part 2.

Energy, the sort that mankind makes, and uses, every second of every day: what’s it all about? Well, it’s all about Einstein’s world-famous equation quantifying the relationship between the atom-splitting annihilation of matter and the resultant release of a force that we call energy. His brilliant mathematical insight represented the pinnacle of something that we have known, or suspected, for more than 200 years. Namely, that there are really only two tangible things in life: matter and energy. For thousands of years, we have also known that you can use one thing to get the other. A simple example at one extreme is, of course, the burning of wood to generate heat. At the other extreme, and infinitely more complex, is the capture and containment of atom splitting processes for the same purpose.

Allegorical Tales Can Be Lengthy---Here Is Part 2.

by Chris James

Let me reiterate that, while these stories are real, they are also intended to be allegorical metaphors for the utter chaos inside the Alternate Energy (AE) movement today. Where to begin, where to begin? Appropriately, let’s start on the sunny side of the street and take a peek at solar AE.

There are two main routes to exploit solar energy’s role in our modern and sophisticated culture: the solar array (pompously named the Solar Energy Generating System, SEGS) and photoelectric cells. The principle behind the SEGS white elephant process is to find a nice sunny spot in a desert and cover it with acres and acres of mirrors. Thousands of them, all focused on a central vessel where water is heated to some ungodly temperature and the resulting steam is used to drive turbines to make electricity. The mirrors are computer controlled to follow the sun as it traverses the heavens.

Ye Gods, There’s a Third Part?!!?

by Chris James

Let’s talk windmills. Oops, sorry. I meant “wind turbines”---as the wind brigade calls them (so that we numbskulls won’t confuse them with tulip fields and people running around in wooden boots). There’s a lot wrong with them---the turbines, not the Dutch.

First, they’re ugly. Put a wind turbine of practical size in your yard, and your neighbors will love you for it. Put a few hundred together in a (small) wind farm and the visual pollution is nauseating. Especially as these farms are usually built out in the open countryside, where the winds are unobstructed by man-made structures. And there goes your landscape. In addition, lonely people who have the misfortune to live close to wind farms have reported that when the turbines are in full cry, the noise is intolerable. And there goes your real estate nest-egg.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Ghost Voters

by John Stevenson

Legend has it that Chicago’s graveyard precincts gave John F. Kennedy the 1960 presidential election over Richard Nixon.  Who knows?  Probably an exaggeration.  Regardless, there’s apparently a Chicago-style get-out-the-vote effort going on right here in the Golden State.

An investigative reporter for CBS2 in Los Angeles compared California Secretary of State voting records with Social Security Administration death records.  Surprise!  He found that some of the dead were still politically active.  He interviewed relatives of the deceased voters---confirming the SSA’s assessment that the voters were, in fact, really departed.