Month: September 2012

Energy is found in many, many forms, many of which we name and think of as substances. We often call things like oil, coal and natural gas energy. We call the companies that extract these substances energy companies, but these substances are not energy and the companies that extract these substances are not energy companies. Have you seen a shake-it-up flashlight? Ever walk barefoot on sand that was so hot it burned your feet? Ever watch a sail boat move across a bay? Energy is equal to the movement of your hand, it is equal to sun shine beating on the sand, it is a breeze flowing though the air. Energy is energy and it cannot be created nor can it be destroyed, it is merely converted from one form to another. We don’t loose energy as we use energy; energy becomes dispersed. It goes from being directed and useful to being spread out and less useful that is only if it is not contained or recaptured. This energy stuff is hard to understand because we have wrapped language around it that is more metaphor than a correct understanding of energy.

Movement is energy that can be converted into other forms of energy such as the movement of water through a water mill wheel moves the grinding stone to make flour. In a hydroelectric dam that energy is used not to turn a grinding stone but a turbine, which spins a generator to produce electric energy. In much the same way the movement of your hand in a shake-up flashlight accumulates electrons either in a battery or in a capacitor and then the electrons/electricity move through the light circuit and are converted into light. Movement = energy, energy = electricity.

In the hydro-energy cycle the sun heats up water that converts to vapor, vapor becomes less heavy then air and travels up in the atmosphere where its heat energy is dissipated. It eventually condenses back into water and ice around small particles of dust, once heavy enough it returns to earth in the form of rain and snow it collects in the streams and flows down hill by the force of gravity. We capture gravitational energy and covert it to mechanical energy as in the form of a flour-mill or in the turbines that produce electricity.

Let me break for a quick aside. Huge dams don’t have to be built to capture this cycle. It is money interests, politics and poor engineering that have given us the gigantic hydroelectric dam. We can do much the same energy capture by making small structures over various places along a river that allow the river to flow freely and yet capture its movement so we can harness the power of the hydro-cycle with minimal impact to the environment and without endangering wildlife and vistas. It is only poor engineering and shortsightedness by those involved that has given rise to the giant hydroelectric dam.

Have any of you gone on to your roof on a sunny day?  Were the roof shingles hot? Where did that heat come from? You are right. It came from the sun. We build roofs to protect us from the sun and rain. When the sun hits our roofs it turns sunlight energy into heat energy. That heat energy radiates through the rafters into our attics and ends up heating our houses. We spend energy mostly from burning substances to remove that heat energy from our houses through the use of air conditioners. Instead of fighting energy with more energy and pollution, why not use the roof’s surface to make electricity and hot water? Solar panels are one of the more benign ways to capture energy. They capture energy from sunlight and turn it directly into electricity. If not photovoltaic solar panels, we should at least be looking at using the sun’s rays to produce hot water. We use hot water everyday. Making hot water would also allow us to heat our homes through radiant floor heating. The sunlight energy is hitting our roofs anyway.

Ever go out in a storm and see the trees whipping around? That movement is a sign that there is energy out there applying force to the branches to move them around. What is making the branches move? Oh, wind, of course. Wind power makes sense since the wind blows trees, leaves and dust around. Why not put it to use generating electricity? Wind has been used for thousands of years as a source of energy. In farms across America windmills on top of towers were how farmers pumped water out of the ground for their livestock. In Ocean City, Maryland the trees are all bent over in one direction because most of the year the wind blows constantly in one direction. Going to the beach in the winter is amazing. All the flags are tattered because of that constant, heavy wind. I looked at the power lines stretched along the highways of the ribbon like islands along the coast coming from some far away power plant where literally tons of coal are burned every day to produce electricity for these sea shore towns, all the while there is wind traveling through and over and around the buildings. Thousands of watts of wind power only being used to provide the flapping motion in flags.

There are other sources of energy that have minimal environmental impact and have gone largely unused such as geothermal, wave action conversion systems, tide conversion systems, systems to take advantage of the steady ocean currents, harnessing the power of the jet stream and ambient temperature conversion systems. WE LITERALLY ARE BATHED IN ENERGY. As Obi-Wan Kenobi said of the force the same can be said of energy, “It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.” We don’t have to burn a single thing to get useful energy from our surroundings, and converting or capturing all that energy and turning it into electricity, the cleanest and most universally useful form of energy, is a no-brainer. We can convert various naturally accessible energies to electricity and we can use electricity to produce heat, light, radio waves, microwaves, electron beams, motion and on and on.

The solar powered vehicles of the World Solar Challenge run for more than 30 hours during that race at average speeds greater than 60 miles an hour, powered only by sunlight hitting the surface of the vehicles. Thirty hours is only the length of time of the race however, these cars can travel continuously on the power of the sun. (Google: Xof1) What this proves is that we can make vehicles that can get their energy to move from their surroundings alone. This is quite a radical departure from our standard idea for transportation; however, it is one that can help us think of energy in a different way. It used to be that we couldn’t think of a vehicle that used anything other than gasoline or diesel. Then came ethanol first as a blend and then with the advent of flexible fuel engines vehicles that can take up to 100% alcohol. We have come to learn that there are vehicles that can be powered by natural gas and liquid petroleum gases like propane.  Now we have electric vehicles in the mix. All these things have merged to allow us to think of automobiles as possibly being fueled differently. Electric energy generation can be though of in this way as well, and there is where the connection to electric vehicles changes the entire paradigm. If electricity can come from renewable energy sources and electric cars use that electricity, electric cars are renewable energy vehicles. Yes you can power a car with a wind turbine.

Energy is found in many forms and much of it is convertible into electricity. In our human history we have used biomass (wood in a fire) to keep us warm when it was cold and to cook our food. Then we learned to tame animals and hitched rides on their backs. The grazing that the animals did provided the energy we needed for transportation. We discovered how to use the wind to travel over water with sails and later we harnessed the movement of water and wind for mills to grind grain. There we stood for hundreds of years until we discovered that coal burned especially hot and water expanded tremendously as steam when boiled. With that knowledge we powered the first industrial revolution, then came oil and we got another shot in the arm for industry. Then our tinkering with electricity led us on a different path. Innovations turned away from energy and transformed our world through the advent of the computer and access to information. The usefulness of electricity has proven to be far more world changing than any other form of energy however, we were still generating it just one step up from the caveman burning wood. Our thinking surrounding energy had not changed significantly for over 100 years. However, electric vehicles allow us to think of energy differently. For example, our breaking systems in cars had not evolved that much from pressing a piece of wood against a wheel to get it to stop and we referred to the heat energy given off by friction brakes as waste heat.

Regenerative braking is part of that out of the box thinking that is opened up when we think of powering our vehicles with electricity rather than through internal combustion. Before stopping a car meant converting momentum energy into heat energy and transferring it to the air, now it means taking momentum energy and converting it into electric energy to slow down and storing that electricity in batteries and then using that energy captured through regenerative braking now in the batteries to over come inertia, which then deposits the energy in momentum energy again. When I look at the Metro rail trains around Washington, DC the most evident feature of their undercarriage is their huge disk brakes. When the all-electric trains slow down to stop at a station, part of the sound that you hear is the braking noise from those monstrous disk brakes. I look at those disks and think what an absolute waste. The Metro trains using regenerative brakes could help power the trains going up hill with the trains trying to maintain a controlled speed while going down hill. The engineers who designed those trains just don’t get it.

To get it you need to think of energy in a different way. For example, the idea of one central location providing the energy needs for a wide area, especially by using fossil fuels, when we think about it, should seem ludicrous. Nikola Tesla made the big electric power plant possible with AC power originally to move the energy harnessed from Niagara Falls to Albany, New York, but energy is abundant and all around us. We don’t need to do it that way anymore. The water movement in your pipes when you are taking a shower has energy in its motion sufficient if captured to power a clock. We see the heat of the day move Mercury up the thermometer, ambient heat turned into the motion energy of an expanding metal fluid. That expanding metal could push a piston that would turn a crank that would turn a gear that would spin a turbine that could produce electricity. When you start thinking out of the box like this, you discover that the number of ways to produce electricity from the energy around us are innumerable.

To solve the power plant problem we need to arrive at a more distributed or self generated form of energy generation. This new way of thinking of and capturing energy can be for all of us. It is only a matter of investment, smart design and strong political action.

Even if we don’t fully move to renewable and distributed energy production, when it comes to our personal vehicles, we can make a difference. Trying to wring out greater efficiencies, and lower and lower pollution standards out of millions of internal combustion engine cars on the road is ridiculous. As internal combustion engine cars get older they become less efficient and pollute more and more. It is infinitely easier to regulate and convert a single power plant then millions of power plants on our roads and highways. Electric cars, even when being powered by coal in a power plant are far more efficient then gasoline powered cars.

The renewable electricity that I purchase for my home also powers my Volt. The energy I put into my car when going up hill comes back to me when I am going down hill. The energy I put into getting up to speed comes back to me when I am braking with regenerative brakes. Energy is momentum. An object in motion remains in motion. Energy is potential as a rock high on a mountain about to be cut loose and travel down the mountain with great force and speed. Energy is the movement of wind. Energy is heat on a hot day, the movement of waves, the tide coming up and going down, the warmth that you feel when you hug your loved ones. Energy is sunlight knocking electrons around on a solar cell and those electrons traveling down the attached wire into a car battery where it can be used later to move the car through an electric motor. If we concentrate on what energy really is we can find energy enough for all we wish to do with it without ever having to burn, pollute, fight wars for, or pay extortionist prices to get at it. All we need to do is think of energy in a different way.

I think the Republicans believe there is widespread voter fraud because they cheat constantly, whenever and wherever they can. They find it hard to believe that the Democrats don’t engage in the very same behavior. Plus, once, about fifty-two years ago, some dead people voted in Chicago.

My biggest problem with this dude’s argument is that he is essentially asking for permission to express his political opinions without fear of contradiction or mockery from other people on the left. We could empty out his argument so it had no specific content. Let’s say that he believes x and he says x. And then let’s say that TBogg writes a snarky post mocking x. Finally, let’s say this dude writes a long heartfelt post about how terrible it is that he can never say x without people like TBogg making him feel like a child who loves ponies and woodland creatures.

Honestly, I could stop now, because that, at bottom, is all his post is.

Of course, his post is about the American government killing innocent civilians. I don’t know any liberals who are in favor of killing innocent civilians. Even among conservatives, at most, you’ll find people who are indifferent. No one but a few sociopaths is actually advocating killing innocent civilians. So, the following is really just a stronger version of what nearly everyone feels:

I don’t know how else it say it, considering I’ve said it a thousand times. I want my country to stop killing innocent people. I want it so bad I don’t know how to act or what to do. I want it so bad I can’t sit still or sleep at night. I want it with everything I have that’s capable of want. And I know that this is the kind of talk that invites pure contempt from those like Tbogg, who have only the idiom of sarcasm and derision and cannot imagine straightforward moral sentiment.

So, why am I not staying up at night worrying about innocent civilians? Maybe it is because no innocent civilians have been killed by drones this year. About nine civilians were killed by drones last year. In the entire history of the drone program there are 191 confirmed cases of civilians being killed and at least 139 of them were killed during the Bush administration. Yet, to hear this dude talk, you’d think that we are just going around indiscriminately bombing villages of innocent people. I am a lot more concerned about what our troops are doing in Afghanistan than I am with the drone program, precisely because the drone program generally does not kill innocent civilians. Its entire purpose is to avoid “collateral damage.”

If drones are a concern, and they are, loss of innocent life is near the bottom of the list. Issues of national sovereignty, world opinion/blowback, and the rule of law and proper oversight are much better elements to discuss than some fictitious Holocaust of innocent people. In fact, focusing on drones takes the conversation away from the broader U.S. foreign policies that create the targets of drone attacks. Obama’s foreign policy isn’t doing enough to tamp down the anti-American sentiment that fuels terrorism. Drones are, in this sense, potentially counterproductive. One might oppose them because they make us less safe rather than because they tend to take innocent lives.

In any case, pro-Obama progressives don’t attack people when they say “I’m not voting for Obama because of the drones” because we think the drone program is great. We attack them because that’s a stupid argument. If you said that you aren’t voting for him because he is aggressively tracking down terrorists and you don’t support doing that, then that would make more sense. If your morals require you to keep your hands clean, that’s fine. My morals tell me I have to oppose the modern Republican Party with every fiber in my body. So, we just have a different moral outlook.

I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone. But if you try to act like you are morally superior to me, I will mock you.

Here’s a reminder:

In April of 2007, Romney said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,” but quickly changed his mind after bin Laden was killed. “Any thinking American would have ordered exactly the same thing,” he proclaimed earlier this year.

It’s rare for a politician to openly admit that they don’t think. But, really, it’s just one more flip-flop in a long string.

Jonathan Chait wrote a nearly perfect piece back in February for New York Magazine. It was an attempt to explain the strategy (and a bit of the psychology underpinning the strategy) that the Republicans adopted in the wake of Barack Obama’s 2008 victory. Why go for total obstruction? Why move to the right on immigration? Why nurture the most far right elements of the party? Why embark on a massive voter suppression plan? Chait covered it all, and I think he nailed it. At its simplest, they know that the America they once knew and dominated is slipping away. They know that the GOP, as it has existed since 1980, is going to have to adapt or die. But they decided they should roll the dice on one more chance at glory. If they could pin the economic downturn on the president and gin up enough racial and class resentment, they might be able to take back the House in 2010 and the Senate and White House in 2012. With the trifecta for at least two years, they could make their last stand and perhaps stall the coming progressive revolution for a decade or more. Here’s a particularly good part of Chait’s piece:

Last summer, Obama was again desperate to reach compromise, this time on legislation to reduce the budget deficit, which had come to dominate the political agenda and symbolize, in the eyes of Establishment opinion, Obama’s failure to fulfill his campaign goal of winning bipartisan cooperation. In extended closed-door negotiations, Obama offered Republicans hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts and a permanent extension of Bush-era tax rates in return for just $800 billion in higher revenue over a decade. This was less than half the new revenue proposed by the Bowles-Simpson deficit commission. Republicans spurned this deal, too.

Instead the party has bet everything on 2012, preferring a Hail Mary strategy to the slow march of legislative progress. That is the basis of the House Republicans’ otherwise inexplicable choice to vote last spring for a sweeping budget plan that would lock in low taxes, slash spending, and transform Medicare into ­private vouchers—none of which was popular with voters. Majority parties are known to hold unpopular votes occasionally, but holding an ­unpopular vote that Republicans knew full well stood zero chance of enactment (with Obama casting a certain veto) broke new ground in the realm of foolhardiness.

The way to make sense of that foolhardiness is that the party has decided to bet everything on its one “last chance.” Not the last chance for the Republican Party to win power—there will be many of those, and over time it will surely learn to compete for nonwhite voters—but its last chance to exercise power in its current form, as a party of anti-government fundamentalism powered by sublimated white Christian identity politics. (And the last chance to stop the policy steamroller of the new Democratic majority.)

That is a B-I-N-G-O, right there.

I’d argue that the Republicans’ dedication to total obstruction had become obvious by the time the budget deal was under discussion. The administration wasn’t fooled into thinking John Boehner could deliver on his promises, so they were free to make as generous an offer as they wanted. The game was to highlight the Republicans’ intransigence, which required pissing off the Democratic base. That’s not to say that there won’t be a deal that the Democratic base doesn’t like, but it won’t ever be half as generous as what Boehner walked away from last year.

The more important point is that the Republicans haven’t made any deals, and haven’t made any concessions to women or gays or Latinos or blacks or scientists or environmentalists because they want one last shot at governing without any of those folks. They are thinking about the future in an apocalyptic way. They can’t stop armageddon from coming, but they can put it off for a little while. The modern GOP is on death’s door, but it can have one more shot at governing the way it wants to govern.

In a way, it has been a giant gamble. Every demographic trend that is working against the GOP has been exacerbated by their strategy of total obstruction, opposition to immigration reform, gay and women’s rights, science, and their pursuit of voter suppression. But the strategy worked brilliantly for them in 2010, and it hasn’t completely flamed out yet this year, although things are looking bleak. There was some rational basis for what they did. At least, there was until they decided to vote en masse for the Ryan Budget and then put the man himself on the ticket. That was the equivalent of a Berserker attack. Here is a visual demonstration of what went wrong with the Republican leadership’s brilliant plan:

Any questions?

The Tea Party (FreedomWorks) is panicked about Jeff Flake’s chances in the Arizona senate race, and they are sending in staffers and money to try to save the day. In other news, some idiot killed himself and his whole family because he wasn’t falling for that unskewed polls nonsense and he couldn’t face four more years of Obama.

Twitter is blowing up with mockery of the first of these two paragraphs:

Mr. Romney’s team has concluded that debates are about creating moments and has equipped him with a series of zingers that he has memorized and has been practicing on aides since August. His strategy includes luring the president into appearing smug or evasive about his responsibility for the economy.

Mr. Obama is not particularly fluid in sound bites, so his team is aiming for a workmanlike performance like his speech at the Democratic convention. He is looking to show that Mr. Romney would drive the country in an extreme ideological direction at odds with the interests of the middle class.

So, Romney has spent over a month memorizing “zingers” which he will then attempt to offer in a spontaneous and witty manner in the debates.

I don’t think this will go well.

Walter Shapiro went to Ohio to explore his theory that Obama might lose because of a bad economy. What he discovered was something completely different.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – There are only two plausible explanations for what is going on this week in this swing state central to virtually all Mitt Romney’s victory strategies.

Either many top Ohio Republicans are in the grips of the worst panic attack since an Orson Welles 1938 radio drama convinced thousands that the earth was under attack by Martians. Or more likely, judging from the comments of these GOP insiders, Romney’s hopes of carrying Ohio are fast dwindling to something like the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot.

Shapiro discovered that no one likes Mitt Romney. One insider said, “Romney is a guy who is used to talking to the board of directors instead of the shareholders or the employees.” It seems to be the consensus.

“The Obama people have convinced Ohio voters of two things,” says Curt Steiner, a well-connected Republican public relations strategist. “That Mitt Romney doesn’t believe anything. And what he does believe is all anti-middle class.”

I’d argue that Romney has done plenty of the convincing, too. It seems like he’s mainly been campaigning against himself. It seems like Ann Romney is campaigning against him, too, saying that his biggest challenge in office would be maintaining his “mental well-being.” I mean, you know, no one knows Mitt better than Ann. If your own wife has doubts that you are tough enough to handle the job, what is left to talk about?

Just so you are clear what this all means, if Romney loses Ohio, he can win Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada, and still lose the Electoral College 270-268. To win, he would have to win all those states and either New Hampshire or New Mexico, too.

What I am saying is that Romney’s goose is cooked.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the three turreted Victorian house in Cape May, New Jersey.  I will be using my usual acrylic paints on a conventional 8×8 inch canvas.  The photo that I’m using is seen directly below.

When last seen, the painting appeared as it does in the photo directly below.

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

Once again, there are lots of changes for this week’s cycle.  To the house itself, I’ve added details to the porch railing.  This makes for a finished appearance.  I’ve also added the lower portion seen under the curbside tree.  I’ve finished the street and sidewalk.  Note that these are done in warm colors, especially the sidewalk.  Curbside grass now sprouts from the sidewalk.  The many bushes out front have been defined.  And all of the greenery seen in the painting now have highlights to the left and shadows toward the right.  With these changes, the painting is finished.

This painting has been especially instructive for me.  It was mostly free of stress and proceeded in what seemed like a natural manner.  After applying underpainting of various shades, I added what would become the upper layer of paint.  I did not obliterate the underlying layers and these show through in the photo.  The upper layers received some refinement but I did not fuss with things as in the past.  In fact, other than the group of bushes out front (which required some extra effort and paint) this was a pleasure to paint.  The result is a pleasing and nicely unified piece.  I’ve already started a new painting which uses the same technique.  

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week.  See you then.

 

Earlier paintings in this series can be seen here.

 

If you can believe the Democrats’ internal polls, Heidi Hetkamp is on pace to retain Sen. Kent Conrad’s North Dakota seat. There are a lot of close Senate races this year, but it looks like the Democrats are ahead in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Missouri, North Dakota, and Nevada, and Angus King has the advantage in Maine. The Arizona race is too close to call. Other than Pennsylvania, none of these races are in the bag, but we could be looking at a really strong result on election day.

Currently, the Dems have 53 senators caucusing with them. If things stand as they are, the Dems would lose their seat in Nebraska, but pick up seats in Maine, Massachusetts, Indiana, and Nevada. That would be a three-seat pick up. Winning Arizona would make it a four-seat pick up. The Dems could wind up with 56 or 57 seats. Add in that Joe Lieberman will be replaced by an actual Democrat, and the shift is even better.

Women would have something to celebrate, too. We could add the following women to the Senate:

Deb Fischer (R-NE)
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)
Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)
Shelley Berkley (D-NV)
Mazie Hirono (D-HI)

Of course, the Senate is losing Olympia Snowe and Kay Bailey Hutchison, both of whom will be replaced by men. By that’s still a potential net addition of four women to the upper body. That three of them are strong progressives is a big plus, too.

I should have added that Jon Tester of Montana is in a real fight and could easily lose. That would be a shame because he’s a good fit for his state and has represented them well. Adding him into the mix makes it a little less likely that the Dems can get to 57 seats.

The last race to keep an eye on is Nebraska. I don’t think Bob Kerrey can pull it off, but it’s not impossible. I hear he had a good debate, for what it’s worth.

In any case, the assumption has been that the Dems would lose control of the Senate. That is still a real possibility. But it’s actually looking more likely right now that the Dems will add a seat or two or four.

That’s a testimony to the compelling nature of Mitt Romney’s campaign themes.