Great pictures from the BPH. Looks like a good time was had by all.

Has anyone heard this ridiculous argument that "Clinton fired ALL the U.S. Attorneys" and, therefore, W did nothing wrong or unusual? Just looked around to find out what that's all about. Found that every incoming administration routinely fires the previous admin's U.S. Attorneys, and puts in their own. Who are then expected to serve the full term of the administration which installed them. So Bush fired Clinton's US A's also, which was OK. It's the mid-term replacement of 8, for political reasons, that is unprecedented.

I just figured I'd share my spot of research.

I've added some material to this and I'll try to get the formatting to look right.

I got a complimentary copy of An Inconvenient Truth on Monday, and I was impressed that even the DVD packaging encourages recycling. The outer wrap was corn-based, the cardstock that the sleeve was made of appeared to be recycled paper, and on the inside there's even an encouragement to pass the movie along to someone else after you've watched it. Good stuff.

Wheezy,
What you just pointed is clear, concise and common sense. A horde of wingnuts with talking points have tried to muddy this issue. Rove&Co have been trying to dismantle at least a hundred years of civil service tradition and return to the pre-Teapot Dome days of patronage.

Most modern martinis aren't even made with gin, let alone vermouth. That weenie James Bond popularized the vodka martini which is a little like a tofu turkey. It may look the same, but it isn't.

Someday I hope to return to a BPH. Maybe later this summer when the current work crunch is "supposed" to ease. Re: The US Attorney flap, what Wheezy said. A new administration routinely asks for the resignation of ALL of the appointed officials, especially when there is a change of party. Routine stuff. No Big Deal. The Republican enablers of this administration keep shouting about the 93 Clinton firings like it was something new. But I suspect that all of those US Attorneys did their jobs with no interference from White House politicos who wanted to wanted to hinder investigations of "good" guys or go after "bad guys" (of the other party).

I think the House and Senate committees probably ought to take the chance on interviewing the White House staff, and hold public hearings with the fired attorneys. Otherwise, we might wind up in a protracted court battle over executive privelge that will run past the end of this adminstration (when the new President will fire all 93 attorneys and appoint new ones!).

As a future law student, Wheezy, I have to add my completely uninformed opinion on the whole attorney-firing issue. The way I see it, every political appointee knows that they serve at the pleasure of the administration, and full expect to lose their positions when there's a change. But once an administration puts you in that job, your first loyalty should be towards unbiased justice, not your party's platform. This firing sets a really bad precident, and also sends a message to all current and future US attorneys--pursue the party's interests above all others or your job is in jeopardy. It's nothing less than blackmail, and in my opinion a federal attorney can't do their job if they are constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure that the White House is happy.

"You don't do this anymore. Elections have consequences."

I love this line. Absolutely love it.

Sorry I hijacked the boodle in the first comment. I appreciate the supporting comments - realize that you D.C. people probably know all of this already, but lots of us need to find out to avoid being conned by wing-nut arguments.

Gotta go work now.

I have a question of political tactics. What's to stop the members of a minority party from all changing party affiliation over night, so that suddenly they become the largest bloc within the majority party? Could the Democrats have used this technique to form a voting bloc with the few moderates within the Republican contingent in the previous Congress and thereby control who became Speaker, Majority Leader, etc? Does the existing party caucus have a right to decide who will be admitted to the caucus?

Could there ever be a Big Sister? If so, what would she be like post-Orwell? Is there any historical precedent--say, the likes of Q. Lizzie I or Q. Vicky, perhaps Maggie Thatcher?

As Joel says, the creation of the Hillary-bashing and Apple-knockoff ad by its creator--the ad a takeoff from a now-ancient Apple Superbowl ad (didn't they describe the ad's actors as portraying a pack of lemmings back in the day, the 80s--I'm really straining those brain neurons trying to remember, or am I thinking of yet another Apple Superbowl ad? Do you remember how talked about the Apple spots were when they were originally broadcast?)--is hardly the digital derring-do of your average citizen!

And Sen. Boxer of California--all 4'11" inches of her, showing her moxie during Gore's presentation. Did you know she uses the Boxer box for height when speaking at a lectern? Not to mention the marriage between her daughter and Hillary's brother--very much in keeping things in the tight-knit Democratic family and Clinton axis...

I'm thinking of another woman involved in politics this morning, Elizabeth Edwards. She is quite in my thoughts. I have a story about Elizabeth Edwards, but shall save it for after the Edwardses' announcement at noon (I wish for good news but fear otherwise) and for later, as I have errands to run.

Interesting (well, intersting might be too strong a word) little factoid, but that Apple/Hillary ad is actully a knock-off of the knock-off that Apple Inc. did of its own ad. You can tell because the sledgehammer-weilding woman is listening to an iPod.

Vermouth? MD 20-20? I just found out, to my shock, that Everclear has been outlawed--when did that happen? I'm surprised the anti-prohibition forces aren't vigilant like the gun nuts are. You know, today they take away your Everclear and the next thing you know you won't even have Bud Light. Doesn't the 21st amendment guarantee our right to drink?

It's so funny that I would be trying to buy grain alcohol because I am the most total of tee-totallers, but you know it burns clean and it's good fuel for backpacking stoves. (Plus, you can use it for first aid if you fall off a mountain and have lacerations or something. Can't do *that* with butane.)

Wheezy,
fired USA Iglesias wrote a letter that was published in the NYT yesterday, basically making your points.

Martini&Rossi isn't the only good vermouth. Noilly-Prat makes one that is good in martinis and even better in sauces. I find vermouth a convenient cooking wine when you need to addd just a dash to a sauce as it keeps 2-3 months in the fridge. At any rate:
http://www.noillyprat.com/validgb.htm

Re. your idea regarding minority party members switching sides to become majority bloc within the majority party:

I don't see that working for very long, other than pushing some sort of short-term agenda.
Who would trust the people that did that?
Who would contribute money to their next campaigns?
How much support would these flippers expect to get from their new party (Not to mention the old one. Someimes you do need help from across the isle.)?

Seems like it would be group kamikaze politics to me.

There's the old saw about an honest politician being one who stays bought. Someone who know more about politics than I could make some salient commentary here, but I'll leave it to people who know what they're talking about.

bc

Not that some average Jill Schmoe couldn't create this type of ad with Photoshop or other digital software tools...The ad mentioned in today's Kit (if you've seen it) just seemed too pointed, too clever, that's all.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I have decided to enshrine (you know, frame in gold and place it next to my computer) the Feb. 26 column by NYT Paul Krugman, "Substance Over Image"--despite Joel's writing about the style or image of the '08 presidential contenders to the contrary.

Several grafs from Krugman:

''Presidential elections are high school writ large, of course,'' declared Newsweek's Howard Fineman last month. Oh, my goodness. But in fairness to Mr. Fineman, he was talking about the almost content-free rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- a rivalry that, at this point, is mainly a struggle over who's the bigger celebrity and gets to lock up the big donors.

Enough already. Let's make this election about the issues. Let's demand that presidential candidates explain what they propose doing about the real problems facing the nation [Al Gore, anyone?], and judge them by how they respond. ...

The point of these questions isn't to pose an ideological litmus test. The point is, instead, to gauge candidates' judgment, seriousness and courage. How they answer is as important as what they answer. ...

Over the last six years we've witnessed the damage done by a president nominated because he had the big bucks behind him, and elected (sort of) because he came across well on camera. We need to pick the next president on the basis of substance, not image.
***

And I thought NYT Judith Warner's column about Hillary and the important, related issue of questioning the need for the female "schmaltz" factor was a terrific rebuttal of sorts to Joel's Kit about Hillary in Nashua and Keene. (S'nuke, you know the history of England's Keene--and New Hampshire's Wentworth?)

Good kit, Joel--what a horse's [expletive] that Inhofe is. Unbelievable. And good to see Sen. Boxer boxing his ears back.

For the life of me I do NOT understand what the hell de Vellis must have been thinking with his mash-up [new technical word added to the Internet vocabulry: for the uninitiated, that was what is called a "mash-up," taking an existing advertisement or movie trailer and re-cutting it and otherwise altering it to make something else]. Of all the possible anti-Hillary things to slam her about, he picks the one that's pretty much meaningless and pointless. And his explanation is even dumber than his mash-up. Guy clearly has his head up his own digestive tract. And the Obama campaign is well rid of him. I fear one of the new trends in modern campaigning thanks to the likes of YouTube and its ilk is the completely idiotic distraction event (CIDE)like this one.

Wheezy, all that business about Clinton firing attorneys is the purest smokescreen. But here's the one single statistic that's interesting: Not count changes of administration, ever since the beginning of the Reagan administration 27 years ago, you know how many U.S. attorneys have been removed or fired? Three. Three in 27 years. And the law firm of Arbusto, Gonzo and Karlito want to fire 8 of 'em and pretend to claim it's all routine.

OK, back to the truly important stuff: Scotty, great pix of the BPH. Great to see Yoki had a good time, and that you all weathered the severe language translation barrier so well.

Regarding the resurgence of vermouth, when I was about 15 or 16 and "discovering" the joys, pleasures, hangovers and vomiting of alcohol (for "discovering" read: stealing from my father's liquor cabinet), the first one I ever tried was my father's Martini & Rossi vermouth. Didn't like it, didn't understand why he did (he was generally a Manhattan drinker at the time, as well as a loyal Pabst Blue Ribbon man). So I can truthfully say I haven't drunk any vermouth in maybe 43 to 45 years. But given that interesting article, I'm going to have to try it. (It's take me half a century to like gin, so I suppose there's an outside shot I could become a martini drinker sometime between now and when senility sets in. I'd call that "Just in the nick of time.")

What's the word?
Thunderbird.

bc

There was a funny bit on Jon Sterwat last night. (This is from memory)

STEWART- John, why can't Rove just go to the hill put his hand on the bible and tell the ******* truth?
OLIVER- Well Johm, we all know what happened the last time he testified.
* cut to image of bible with the imprint of a (human?) hand burned into it.*
OLIVER- The committee room smelled of burnt pork for a week.

I saw that Jon Stewart bit...very funny. Every time I think of the Rove bit about Republicans brandishing steel and Democrats wanting to give the terrorists therapy I can literally feel my blood pressure go up. That pasty faced fat boy and "brandishing steel"- As IF!

Sorry, the 10:54 was me. I wasn't bragging about about my memory, just providing myself with an out in case someone consults a transcript.

The Post today covers a report on New Orleans levees. Here's the final paragraph:

'The Corps "now estimates that between $2 billion and $4 billion will actually be required to achieve the minimal 100-year level of protection," the report said. "The level of protection that this will achieve should not be confused with the much higher Category 5 hurricane protection now being studied. . . . That will cost much, much more." '

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032101963.html (story by Peter Whoriskey)

So inadequate "100-year" protection might cost $4 billion. Maybe it really would make more sense to organize an orderly retreat from some of the less-protectable portions of the city. How much new city could you build for, say, $15 billion?
_______

Also related, a bit, to hurricanes, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (from Fort Lauderdale, Broward County) reports some complicated demographic goings-on. People are leaving the county to escape a rapidly rising cost of living (including hurricane insurance), crowding, etc.). These emigrants tend to go to Georgia, Tennessee, and the Carolinas. At the same time,immigrants, many of them highly skilled, are coming from the Caribbean and Venezuela.

And there's some indications that immigrants get started in Florida, then move elsewhere.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cgrowthmar22,0,4975509.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

Of all the things that came out of the justice dept. emails, what really got my goat was the way that White House guys and Bushies are so concerned about spin and talking points.

Here we have the President CLAIMING that the Democrats in congress are just politicizing the situation and the emails show that the White House could possibly be characterized as doing very little else.

I just don't know how the talking points and the whacked-out logic make it right to FOX and many of the White House lay-spokespeople so quickly and in such a coordinated fashion.

At any rate, if Congress really wanted to go after Gonzo, they would focus on the WH-ended investigation by an internal Justice Dept group looking into the mis-use of Warrantless Wiretapping. The 'audit' was ended by Bush, some say, at the request of Gonzo and it is now rumored that Alberto was one of the targets of the internal investigation.

I find it telling that the we got to see the Boxer "handling" of Inhofe and Pelosi's skills displayed in the other house. Both are that pretty considerate and intelligent women who are starting to allow sunlight to hit what, until the past month, has been just fuel for rumors.

I just wonder how long Tony Snow can keep up his routine. I think that, at some point in the near future, we are going to see him go off to spend "more time with the family."

Just a quick comment: Pretty cool that TBG and Yoki actually wrote the beginning of today's Kit sitting at the Boodle's Center Chair.

bc

I was wondering about that BC, but didn't want to appear stoopid. Where is the Boodle Center Chair and how did they get there?

Glad everyone had fun. I hope to attend a BPH someday.

If I'm invited, that is....
Do I sound needy?

Seems like a case of warrantless blog crashing. TBG/Yoki, did you see Joel's holo-glasses?

What does BPH stand for? I get the context, but not the abbreviation.

Since the subject of Torqueberto has come up, here is my satirical take on the man:

http://livebythefoma.blogspot.com/2007/03/torqueberto-musical.html

His well documented malfeasance is in a league of its own. Even by Bush Administration standards.

Dave, how can they tell that people are actually leaving South Florida? Isn't it possible that most of them are just stuck in traffic?

Kim;

Of course you're invited! :-)

BPH = Boodle Porching Hour

I'm pretty sure BPH is Boodle Porching Hour, right? I loved that porching hour kit.

Time to post the links to the FAQs again:

http://www.mortiifera.com/?p=67

and more info is available here:

http://boodle.wetpaint.com/

Saw a BMW Tuesday w/ the old Nixon line on a bumper sticker:

"Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

Instead of subpoenas, maybe the Dems should send some pretzels over to the WH. And maybe have some staffer jump out of nowhere to scare Cheney into having a heart attack.

It just makes me laugh when I see George and the others complaining that the Dems are playing "partisan politics". What the hell were George and Co. doing for the past six years?

Poor wittle babies.

As Boxer said, "Elections have consequences."

Oh sorry, BOO. I got distracted mid-sentence by actual work.
*heaving a sigh of relief* I wondered what I would do if no one invited me.

Loomis writes: 'I thought NYT Judith Warner's column about Hillary and the important, related issue of questioning the need for the female "schmaltz" factor was a terrific rebuttal of sorts to Joel's Kit about Hillary in Nashua and Keene.'

The Judith Warner piece was quite good but I think her point -- pulling from memory here -- is that female politicians are expected to behave a certain way, give off certain feminine "signifiers," somehow show that they have a soft edge. My point was different: That she doesn't tell anecdotes. That she doesn't use narrative. She delivers themes. I'll blog again about this at some point and give you more examples.

LindaLoo;

I know the history of the N.H. Clarks, but that's about it.

Joel, I agree with you. I find Hillary hard to listen to... She seems to be a Democratic student of Frank Luntz. She is an emotion evoker... no facts. It could be just the sound bites, but getting actual policy facts from Hillary is about as satisfying as getting a good/worthy dessert from a health food store.

Martooni... there is also the humor gap. To fully appreciate it, you almost have to laugh at it.

Jon Stewarts take on Gonzo and the eMails subject matter... warning, this may contain sentences that may make you laugh inappropriately. So... be warned. martooni, the timing on the Cheney reference is priceless.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/03/21/daily-show-what-is-a-loyal-bushie/

John Edwards about go on TV with wife to talk about her medical news. Doesn't sound good.

Haven't seen "300" and hate to spoil the ending for Gore if he intends to, but didn't the Persians win at Thermopylae?

Thanks for re-posting the faq, KBertocci. I knew it was out there somewhere and it's really very helpful. I was too lazy to look for it, so us boodle slackers thank you! I know I'm not alone.

DM... the more I think of it, the less my dig about Cheney makes sense -- it implies that he has a heart.

Sad! What a struggle. My prayers go out to the Edwards all those people facing a similar challenge.

Mrs. Edwards' cancer is back but the presidential campaign will go on, fyi.

They're being courageous about it, optimistic. She seems to have the world's best attitude even though it's not a great prognosis (not as bad as they initially thought yesterday, though).

Meanwhile blogger Ben Smith on The Politico had a scoop this morning:

"Edwards To Suspend Campaign."

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0307/Edwards_to_Suspend_Campaign.html

It's always good to get something first. But it's even better when it's actually true.

Here is Ben Smith's entire item as of noon:

John Edwards is suspending his campaign for President, and may drop out completely, because his wife has suffered a recurrence of the cancer that sickened her in 2004, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, an Edwards friend told The Politico.

"At a minimum he's going to suspend" the campaign, the source said. "Nobody knows precisely how serious her recurrence is. It'll be another couple of days before there's complete clarity."

"For him right now he has one priority which is her health and the security of the two young children," said the friend.

As for the campaign, "You don't shut this machine off completely, but everything will go on hold."

UPDATE: Edwards staffers are pushing back very hard.

"Anything you are getting from someone claiming to know right now is not true - anyone claiming to know something right now is making it up. There is no information from this campaign until John and Elizabeth speak at noon," says spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield.

JA - he's batting .500, then. His other post was "Achenblog To Mock Me If Wrong.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0307/I-am-making-that-up.html

byoolin!!!!!! So funny!

The Persians won by the classic technique of completely overpowering the enemy. Won big time. Themistocles at the Battle of Salamis later demonstrated the difference between a "noble sacrifice" and intelligent strategy. But one could argue that the Spartans provided the inspiration to prepare for serious war.

Also, Herodotus reputed the Persian army to be 2 million men, no mere 10,000. The significant 10,000-man army in history is in Xenophon's "Anabasis", the March of the 10,000 (not that I've ever actually read it. I think I'll get a copy). You know, a book about a noble warrior brotherhood of professional mercenaries fighting their way out of a country in which their employer was the losing side, leaving them surrounded by angry people who consider them to be, you know, mercenaries.

I didn't care for Gore's suggestion that Thermopylae was a decision for the many, made by the few. That smells like an endorsement of oligarchy. But one could argue that the Battle of Thermopylae is an apt symbol for a conscious sacrifice by a few in order to inspire the many towards a wise choice. It remains in the hands of the many to decide which choice truly is wise, but the inspirational character of the sacrifice still inspires SOME sort of decision. A sacrifice of far lesser proportion is demanded from us in order to lead the world toward a rational response to global warming.

byoolin... that was great! Thanks for the laugh.

==

I am saddened by Elizabeth Edwards' news, but I'm glad her husband will keep on with his campaign.

I'm thinking she was "the decider" in this issue, as wives often are.

My sister fought breast cancer twice and won, as she goes into her 19th healthy year since the second occurrence. I hope that Mrs. Edwards has the same outcome.

Tim, 10,000? to 2 million? maybe there was a surge.

byoolin, that was quick. The link is to a page that is no longer there...

Does anyone remember the name of the anti-virus program that Cassandra uses?
Thank you for your attention.

I'mk suprised no one jumped on this little tidbit from Gore's testimony:

"...the creative power of the information revolution was unlocked by the Internet (which I created). And when I came up with ARPANET and this Senate empowered me with the legislative framework and research and development funds, all of a sudden I just developed it amazingly."

That's what he really meant, right? Ha ha.

I also thought that Thermopylae was an odd reference. No victory of course, but an "inspirational loss", maybe like the Alamo. Maybe when Tuvalu dips beneath the waves it will become GW's Thermopylae.

Really too bad about Edwards' wife and campaign.

Great BPH pictures.

Gore never said he invented the internet. The claim that he did is just a Republican slur.

The news is sad, but the Edwards couple seem ready to move on. Good wishes for them both.

I love that comment from Senator Boxer. You go, girl.

Where is Ivansmom? I'll bet you are busy, Ivansmom, but we would love to hear from you.

I don't know anyting about global warming, not anything, but I would love to know more, and what I can do to help. I think we should all be interested, and more than interested in global warming. I don't believe it to be an issue taken lightly or to be in denial about. And for those that think no matter the disaster if they have money all is right with the world, think again.

After the Imperial fire here, some of the workers at that plant had to travel to Washington to answer questions from a panel of senators. My question, why is it these citizens from a small rural town had to show up, but people in the present administration don't? Maybe two questions, is this the same thing or something different? I guess what I'm trying to find out is aren't we all accountable at some point, and if that is true, don't we have to answer? I've only heard one person in Washington say the bucks stops here, and I believe that was a woman, Janet Reno during the Waco incident?

CASSANDRA!!!HEY!*WAVING FRANTICALLY*HEY!
Can you tell me the name of the anti-virus program that some boodlers recommended?

Hey, Boko - if you have a Yahoo login (or can get one) they have a pretty good anti-spy and anti-virus program you can download written by Computer Associates. I have one old computer that gets sorely infested occasionally and usually their stuff cleans it right up. It's not infallible, but it works a lot better than Norton.

AVG by grisoft is what i use

www.grisoft.com

Come now, Boko999, slur is a strong word, isn't it? I know plenty of democrats, myself included, who have had a good chuckle at Gore's expense. He did host SNL once after all, right? And one of his "Rejected Gore-Leiberman Campaign Slogans" on Letterman was, "Remember America, I gave you the internet and I can take it away!"

No, sorry, Tim, but your take on the Battle of Thermopylae is incorrect. Thermopylae was a classic holding/delaying action, and there was no expectation that the Greeks were going to ever win it. King Leonidas of Spart and his 300 men (aided by 700 Thespian volunteers, who never get a mention in the movies, for some reason, so it really wasn't 300 against whatever, it was 1,000 against whatever). But yes, the Spartans were vastly outnumbered. Leonidas smartly chose a narrow mountain pass to block the Persian assault, and held it for three days, delivering disproportionate casualties on the enemy. His small force finally "lost" when a Greek shepherd traitor showed the Persians a small path around the blocade, so the Persians were finally able to come up behind Leonidas and "win" the battle. The Persians didn't win simply by overwhelming brute force of numbers, although they would have, eventually. The point was the delaying action allowed the Athenias to get their navy and ships together to turn around and beat the Persdians at the naval Battle of Salamis. With most of his fleet devasted, Xerxes had no choice but to retreat back into Persia.

So Gore's analogy in a way is pretty much correct: a small handful of men knowingly made a decision that saved not only their nation (the only part they were concerned with) but had they known it, Western Civilization as we know it today. So yeah, 300 guys saved the world, more or less, and knowingly sacrificed themselves to do so.

Sorry for yelling and not identifing myself, I was rushed. Strange loonys waving their arms around and shouting can be a little startling. It was just me, not a strange loony.
Thanks Wheezy and tonk, I'll check those out.

Mudge, just for clarification, your role in the battle was...

Actually, Tim the graphic novel "300" as well as the movie *does* use the premise that the Spartans' sacrifice at Thermopylae inspired the rest of Greece to unite and defeat the Persians at Platea.

bc

"And when the scientific and engineering pioneers came up with ARPANET and this Senate empowered them with the legislative framework
and research and development funds..."

This is Gorespeak for "I didn't actually invent the internet, but it wouldn't exist if I hadn't spent your money on it." He clearly claims some level of paternity for it wouldn't be such a mockable concept.

Now he wants to save the planet by allowing any moonshiner burning corn squeezings to hook to the grid. We could do a lot better if we just continued ratcheting up air quality standards and approving new nuclear reactors.

We will never meet our current power needs without blowing dead dinosaurs in the air or burying waste that lasts bazillions of years. Wind farms, switchgrass, solar collectors, and cow farts combined will never be a fraction of the energy we want.

Senator Windbag was clubbing EnviroAl with some half-baked Ditto-head talking points, but the kernel of truth is that everytime Al flies across the country to show his mastery of Powerpoint, his carbon footprint stomps all over all the savings of the hippies weaving hemp bags to take to the grocery store.

Biased a wee bit, aren't we, yello?

Not that I disagree.

Slur
-to cast aspersions on; calumniate; disparage; depreciate: The candidate was viciously slurred by his opponent.
-A curved line connecting notes on a score to indicate that they are to be played or sung legato.

jw | It's pretty funny now, but the Republicans used the false claim to paint Gore as a liar. Typical disgusting tactics.
I've heard that Lee Atwater was a fine musician.

From Wikipedia, re Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn who DID invent the Internet:

"Cerf and Kahn issued the following statement on 2000-09-28 in response to the controversy:

[A]s the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.
Last year the Vice President made a straightforward statement on his role. He said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet." We don't think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he "invented" the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore's initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening. We feel it is timely to offer our perspective."

Certainly he could stay in Tennessee and just do everything by video, but so could everyone else, right? So it's just him that's wrong to show up in person for speeches?

Vinton Gray Cerf (born June 23, 1943) is an American computer scientist who is commonly referred to as one of the "founding fathers of the Internet" for his key technical and managerial role, together with Bob Kahn, in the creation of the Internet and the TCP/IP protocols which it uses. -Wikipedia

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200009/msg00052.html

Al Gore and the Internet
By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf
Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the
Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the
Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among
people in government and the university community. But as the two people
who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the
Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a
Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to
our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Hey yellojkt!
Help me understand... Is the primary problem with Necular Energy that we have no state of the art reactors in the USA?

Are all the current, in-line and active reactors one-offs? or pretty close?

Is spent waste easier to handle?

I, for one, would love to be able to truly sell back energy at a reasonable wholesale/small seller rate. I really don't care if there is only the current potential of a percent, why not. It is almost like changing the tax code to hurt financial savers because, as a rule, Americans don't save.

Finally, Kurzweil in INC had the following to say:

There's another wrinkle to keep in mind. When I say that information technology doubles in price performance and power each year, remember that the rate
itself is expanding at an accelerated rate. It took three years to double the price performance of computing equipment in 1900, two years in 1950, and
we're now doubling it every year. At today's exponential rate, doubling every year means multiplying by a thousand in 10 years and a billion in 30 years.
But with the rate of acceleration continuing to grow, we will actually hit the billion mark in only 25 years. Consider the pervasive influence of information
technology in today's world and multiply that by a billion in a quarter century--while we shrink the size of both electronic and mechanical technology
by a factor of 100,000 in the same time frame--and you'll get some idea of how revolutionary information technology will be in the future.

All sorts of industries will be affected, beyond what we think of conventionally as computing. Take energy for example. Today, it seems like an area of
grave concern, with implications from global warming to pollution to geopolitical instability. The fact that demand for energy is projected to triple within
20 years heightens our worries. Based largely on the 19th-century technology of fossil fuels, energy is not what we would consider an information technology.
Not yet anyway. But when we have fully programmable nanotechnology, through which we can reorganize matter and energy at the molecular level, then we will
see a revolutionary transformation.

Here's what I mean: Today we produce 14 trillion (about 1013) watts of power, 78 percent of which comes from fossil fuels. We have, however, plenty of
energy in our midst. About 1017 watts of sunlight fall on the earth, or roughly 10,000 times more energy than we regularly consume. Solar panels today
do a poor job of capturing this energy because they are inefficient, expensive, heavy, and difficult to integrate with building materials. Today production
of solar power costs on average $8 per watt, much more than other energy sources.

The economics of solar power are poised to change dramatically, however, as a new generation of solar panels made with nanomaterials comes of age. Developed
by a series of venture-backed companies eagerly jockeying to disrupt that $1.9 trillion worldwide oil industry, these innovative panels are projected to
drop in price within a few years. And whether or not any of the known businesses now developing them are successful, once we have full-scale molecular
nanotechnology-based manufacturing, we'll be off to the races.

At this point, energy will become an information technology dominated by massively parallel, computation-controlled molecular manufacturing processes.
In 20 years, I believe solar panels will be as inexpensive as a penny per square meter. We will be able to place them on buildings and vehicles, build
solar energy farms, and incorporate them into clothing for powering mobile devices. Converting 0.0003 percent of all sunlight hitting the earth, which
will be feasible at that time, will let us meet 100 percent of our energy needs two decades from now. In yet another welcome change, we will be able to
store the energy in nanoengineered fuel cells that will be tiny and widely distributed, a great improvement over the centralized, dangerous energy storage
facilities we rely on today, such as liquid natural gas tanks.

Most discussions of global warming make no mention of the ability of nanotechnology to solve this problem within 20 years. Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient
Truth never mentions nanotechnology, which in my view is a rather big oversight. The inclination to project the current rate of change into the future,
what I call the "intuitive linear view," is hard-wired in us. The reality is that transformative changes happen faster and faster today. The telephone
took 50 years to be adopted by a quarter of the U.S. population. The cell phone did that in thirteen years. Only five years ago, most people did not use
search engines. Just three years ago we did not hear the terms "blog," "podcast," or "social network." And three years ago, people thought that it was
impossible for a business to make money on Internet advertising. Today, we have Google, a company with a $157 billion market cap that does just that.

The pace of change is already so fast that the world will be a very different place by the end of the three-year planning cycle of typical business projects
currently under way, let alone the six- or seven-year venture capital horizon. In my own technology projects, we bake into our development and business
plans projections that call for the rapid advancement of technology, on a quarter-by-quarter basis. One pleasant result of doing this is that we often
find that today's difficult tradeoffs dissolve within a short period of time. With the doubling of price performance each year in every kind of information
technology, you just need to wait a short while to find that you can have your cake and eat it too.

The past is an accurate guide to the future only if we take these exponential progressions into account. But relatively few people do. We see what is right
in front of us and expect that pace to continue. But a studied look at history shows that progress is exponential, not linear, and the difference is profound.

I am working my way through the book The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil, which is sitting on my Kurzweil keyboard. He tends to be right a bit more often than Richard Perl (before Perl re-writes history).

I very little here, but wonder why we might in about a dozen years be creating energy all over and cost effectively.

Ouch! Watch you head Error

Had actual work for all of this morning and am just now caught up. Had a great time at the BPH last night. It was nice meeting two new boodlers I hadn't met before along with all the others who were able to make it, and missed those who couldn't. I have my new BPH sticker up on my cubicle tack board, just below the Achenblog Hilarity ensues bumper stick and above a picture of the AchenMascot Tai Shan. On the way home I lost my toothpick flag, but still have the cloth flag and the friendship pin. BPHs are like christmas.

This picture: http://www.smithsonsociety.org/Images/Content/Gala_taishan.jpg

That is I KNOW very little here, but wonder why we might in about a dozen years be creating energy all over and cost effectively

No, this picture:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/news/archives/knut200.jpg

Why are we postng baby bear pictures?

I didn't know this:
Vinton Cerf
He has a hearing impairment, and serves on the board of Gallaudet University, the first school of higher learning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing; he received an award from the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. He and his family currently reside in Virginia.- from Wikipedia

Vint Cerf is a great guy and a good interview. :-)

yellojkt, so much to say, so much to say... *restraining self*

Stop with the baby bear pictures! Don't you know they grow into viscious killers with huge nasty teeth.

HELP! Where do I find the transcript of Gore's hearing? I've had no luck in the Senate website.

You mean like this?
http://www.saskschools.ca/~gregory/arctic/animals/pbear_seal.jpg

Watch out, seal!

Was that a copy of The Grand Idea on the bookshelf located behind Bush at the last press conference?

I don't know about you, but I found the President's proposal to be REASONABLE.

skimming the boodle...great pix, scotty...*waving to tonk*

DM, are you sure you don't mean you found his proposal MODEST?

I think the Internets would have been a lot more fun if it had been invented by Bennett Cerf instead of Vint.

And a lot more dangerous if HTML had been invented by Bruce Lee instead of Tim Berners-Lee.

no, jw, it was reasonable. I don't know why that word popped into my mind... it could have been because Bush said it 12 times during his press conference.

He also proclaimed that the proposal was a ... proposal.

Just in case we didn't know what kind it was.

Dolphin Michael writes: Today we produce 14 trillion (about 1013) watts of power, 78 percent of which comes from fossil fuels. We have, however, plenty of energy in our midst. About 1017 watts of sunlight fall on the earth, or roughly 10,000 times more energy than we regularly consume.

In the 3rd sentence (1017 watts) do you mean this amount of sunlight is daily, or hourly. Otherwise, I don't know how 1017 watts is 10K more than we use when you said above we use 14 trillion watts. Do we need a "kilo" or two in there somewhere?

I know NOTHING about this, but was trying to puzzle through your posting to find out more.

byoolin, yes, Bennett Cerf's version would have been much better. Instead of Domain Name Servers, we would have had Kitty Carlisle and Dorothy Kilgallen to figure out where we needed to go to get the answer.

I think he meant 10 to the power of 17. Like, 100,000,000,000,000,000 watts. Maybe he had a carat in there and the blog software kicked it out.

jw - thanks. Makes sense now.

The actual slur on Gore was more subtle than just calling him a liar. By pinning the "invented the internet" meme on him, they were branding him as a blowhard and an exaggerator. He was painted as an over-reaching smarty-pants. The dorky valedictorian president of the honor society that nobody likes. Nothing in Joel's quotes contradicts this preconception.

Trust me, I would much rather have had Al in office on 9/12/2001 than Generalissimo Chimpo, but the pin-point slandering and vilification of their opponents is a singularly majestic Republican skill.

That was my take as 10**13 is a trillion, so 10**17 is 10,000 times more than 10**13 (foru more zeros).

but 14 trillion would really be 14*10**13 (or 1.4*10**14)

DM, did you read the National Geographic article about nanotech a few months back? I got so scared I actually couldn't sleep that night. Amazing stuff, but allowing unregulated capitalism to manufacture it (and flush the waste products downstream, where it can't be cleaned up) is just too scary. And especially since they're using it in sunscreen and fabrics, cosmetics, instead of for important societal purposes.

SCC:ACK missing words and a missspeling...

MxWPfan, I don't know where there's an online transcript of the Gore hearing. Possibly it takes a day or two for the Senate to post it. I took this excerpt from a private transcription service the Post subscribes to.

Wheezy... I was quoting Ray Kurzweil's piece in INC. there is something wrong about that statement as he/editor are missing some pers.

I think that point is that there ... here I found this at a page at uoregon.edu...

Incident Solar Energy on the ground:

Average over the entire earth = 164 Watts per square meter over a 24 hour day

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/1998/ph162/l4.html

DM, the Kitty Carlisle reference made me chuckle. Thanks.

bc

DM, bc, how many people under the age of 45 would catch the reference? I did, but then I remember watching the show.

no Wheezy, I didn't see it.

On several people's posts about the republican treatment of Gore, it has been beyond anything appropriate. I heard that one congressman showed up and, after asking his questions, sat and read the paper while sitting on the committee.

I am wondering how many 10,000's of hours they spend coming up with ways to seem pompous or offensive.

New Yorkers trying to reduce their carbon footprint, reported in a snarky NYTimes article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/garden/22impact.html?pagewanted=print

Slyness, I'm under 45 but not by much.

bc

I like Gore's idea to allow anyone/everyone to sell energy to the grid.

What would make it a reality is if the govt set up some sort of deal where those in sunny climes could get subsidized solar panels, those in windy climes could get a cheap windmill-thingy, and those in areas suited for geo-thermal could get some sort of device that collects that energy -- and then make it worthwhile/profitable to divert excess energy into the grid.

My Dad makes his living building power plants, so I'm not anti-centralized generation -- but if we all generated a little power (even if not enough to offset our own consumption), that would be one heck of a load taken off the current system.

They could also hook up all those stationary bikes at the health clubs to the grid. Even if they didn't generate that much energy, maybe society would have a greater appreciation for gerbils and hamsters.

Another thought... decentralized power generation would mean that if a grid goes down it wouldn't leave everyone in the dark. In fact, I think it would be harder to bring the grid down (less outages) if there were multiple sources of power to keep it running.

Kinda like that internet thing.

Here is an example of how not to get people to conserve. The Hydro company in Toronto is requesting an increase in its rates, WHY, in part due to lower revenues as a result of people converving energy. Not exactly an incentive for people to keep conserving.

martooni, there is a program here to sell energy generated by means of small solar, wind power etc. It is relatively new and in the early stages.

When I read the reference to MD 20-20, my addled brain initially interpreted it as WD-40. Which, come to think of it, isn't that far off.

I remember Kitty from my youth very well. the cute one between Orson Bean and Bill Cullen.

The problem with solar energy is that it is very diffuse and of terrible quality thermodynamically. It is also only any good when the sun is shining unless you have a storage medium. Also the sun shines where it is needed the least. Hamburg gets half the sunlight that Albuquerque does.

The best solar cells are about 30% efficient. At 167 W/ft^2, the world needs cover an area of Colorado with high efficiency photovoltaic cells. Never mind the area needed, how long will it take to make 100,000 square miles of PV cells.

Outer space is a much better place to catch sunlight. The extraterrestrial solar flux is 1350 W/m^2. If we had one hundred percent perfect collection and distribution, we could power the world with a giant satellite 60 miles square. Figure the fuel cost of launching that and then determine the payback.

I'm sorry, solar is a nice tool to have in the quiver, but it will never be the sole solution.

Yello why the reliance on "one" solution. Wouldn't a mixture of clean technologies be good.

I didn't mean to imply that the Greeks at Thermopylae were in any way expecting to win, in the classic sense of taking control of the field of battle and deciding whether to kill their enemies or merely spank them and send them home. They definitely intended only a holding action, with the possible length of the hold being somewhat indeterminate when they started, and the possibility of retiring from the position after a time. That latter element did not work out. The inspirational aspect was not a strategic decision, I think; it just turned out that way.

I always loved Leonidas' line, in the classic version of the story of Thermopylae, regarding the vast flights of Persian arrows: "So much the better; we shall fight in the shade."

300 definitely plays up the heoric sacrifice angle, conveniently ignoring things like the notion that "free men" (which Frank Miller's Spartans perennially proclaim themselves to be) are not ruled by hereditary monarchs or military dictators; plus, it's easier to be "free" in a day-to-day sense when you have an historically enslaved city next door (Helos) to provide an hereditary slave class; and being a professional soldier is hardly the acme of occupations. Not dishonorable, but wouldn't it be better if the job didn't have to exist? For the Spartans, it was a noble aspiration to become a professional killer of other men (with a strong dose of institutionalized violent homoeroticism thrown in), creating wars, if necessary, in order to show one's superior moxie. I'd rather be a potter or a farmer. I love Frank Miller's art and storytelling skills, but he has this disturbing fixation on the moment of physical aggression, specifically between men, to a rather pornographic extent.

I always preferred the Roman approach to war, as a business-like matter that must be tended to. Forget honorable modes of combat, coming back with your shield or on it, and all that rot. The point of war is to win, and winning is accomplished by rational planning and competent execution. Winning is what you call it when you get to make the decision about what happens next. Romans would have replied to the arrow line with a more terse "That's why we train to use our shields." Romans would have engineered an instant fortification at Thermopylae (and none of this foolishness of building it using human bodies -- that would make for an unstable foundation). Romans would have engineered fortifications on the secret goat path, and built artillery pieces from popsicle sticks and olives in order to stand-off the Persians and take them by attrition. The victims of Roman wars were just as dead, but the Romans did not generally trump up a war in order to compensate for sexual inadequacy (except for Cassius, and look what the Parthians did to him). (Obscure historical footnote for the day).

Of course, they still had gladiatorial combat. But they had no patience for that kind of foolishness when territory was at stake.

The exchange with Inhofe shows how politically charged Climate Change has become. And I don not think that it's due solely to commercial influences on the Republicans. I suspect that part of it is simply because many of the Republicans despise Gore, and are loathe to accept that anything he says might be true.

Although I have nothing but admiration for Gore, I also wish someone other than an ex-politician (if such a thing exists) had taken up the cause.

Hey, martooni! Hope you are doing well.

Tim, as opposed to OUR strategy, which would have been to arm the goats on the goat path...

Ultimately, Alexander fought them over there so he didn't have to fight them over here.

I think Alexander fought them over there, so he could enlist them to do more fighting over there.

I suspect that the only reason that the Persians attacked Greece at all was to control their olive oil.

RD... I made a similar connection regarding "Mad Dog" and the popular lubricant.

True Mad Dog 20/20 story...

I was a member of the "Unmentionable Country" club in high school (it rhymes with wrench) and we went on a field trip to Montreal, Quebec (as in Monrayal, Kaybeck). Across the street from our hotel was a liquor store, so we gathered up our fake IDs and headed over as soon as the chaperones weren't looking.

One kid insisted on buying two bottles of MD 20/20 for himself even though he could have had his pick of the store. Later that night, after we were all pretty well toasted, he was laying on a bed and announced "I think I'm going to be sick". We were not surprised.

That said, if you've never seen a person go from laying flat on their back to standing upright in 0.0005 seconds, it was amazing. He went straight to the bathroom and proceeded to expel the MD 20/20 in a ballistic/spewing manner that resulted in a dripping purple pinstripe that hit all four walls and before leading to the toilet.

Needless to say, we took pictures and blackmailed him for his lunch money the rest of the year.

Didn't those of us old enough to remember Kitty Carlisle do this all before during the "Energy Crises" of the 1970's?

Bottom line is that even if consumers are might be willing to pay more money for "clean" energy, those who invest in power infrastructure are hesitant to take that risk in a competitive environment. This is one of those problems that government was set up to solve.

Tim, you are so right. In the course of his lifelong campaign, he trained more soldiers than we have trained Iraqi Police.

Somewhere, I heard that we have trained every third Iraqi to be a policeman. I think I heard that the problem stems from the fact that the Iraqi Police get paid every 4 weeks and after they get paid, it takes the policeman 5 weeks to walk home and cash his check before returning.

It was something like that.

So one of the official tests of the boodle is the Kitty Carlisle test?

Re: the Kitty Carlisle test. I believe Peggy Cass rounded out the foursome.

Slyness... I'm hanging in there -- thanks for asking. I'm on the waiting list for a local rehab clinic and hoping to get in soon. Unfortunately, the number of people with my "condition" greatly outnumber the available beds.

(Note to the paparazzi: I will not be shaving my head or wielding a green umbrella, but I may drop my pants or make obscene hand gestures, so stay tuned.)

Wasn't Paul Lind in a square somewhere?

dmd,

That is my point. You will eventually power your house with solar cells. It makes since to. Your roof ought to do something other than keep the rain out. Someday you might run a small office building with PV. You will never power a factory from the solar energy available onsite.

We will sooner or later run out of dead dinosaurs just as we ran out of trees to chop down. If all you are worried about is climate change and carbon footprint, nuclear power is the way to go. You may regret that call in 10,000 years. Biodiesel is a scam perpetuated by ADM. Every technology has a downside.

My beef with off-grid production is that it is potentially more wasteful and polluting than the current centralized grid model. Picture 20 of your neighbors all burning leaves to power their homebrew Honda generators.

There are no easy answers. People have a hard time understanding numbers with as many zeroes as DolphinMichael was throwing around. Six billion people would love to live the life of an average American/European/Japanese. Five billion don't. Yet. When they do, crunch those numbers yet again.

Yello, you get in big trouble for burning leaves where I live!! :-)

jw, to answer your question earlier, I personally played no role in Thermopylae, battle-wise. As you may know, the Spartans were a highly militaristic society, and practiced extreme physical fitness and fighting skills contantly. They demanded physical perfection in themselves. I, being a generally lazy slackard and indolent, wise-a$$ kinda guy as well as a total coward, wouldn't have lasted in Spartan society for more than 34 seconds. As for defending lonely mountain passes against a hundred thousand berserk Persian dudes with swords and bad attitudes--yeah, right. My mother didn't raise no idiots. (I was an early role model for my friend the great Sir Harry Flashman, about whom you may have read).

At the time of Thermopylae, I was a stringer for the Port of Piraeus Picayune and I was the only guy still in the office (sleeping off a bender in a corner) when the Persians invaded, so the city editor kicked me awake and sent me out to cover the story. (City editors, then as now, were not exactly the icons of sensitivity.) As it happens, I was able to watch the battle from a crag high up on the hillside for the first two days. Late on the evening of the second night, long after my supply of popcorn and flagons of wine had run out, I wandered off into the darkness to answer a brief call of nature, stumbled, hit my head, and rolled unconscious into a dark crevice. This turned out to be quite fortunate, because a few minutes later that traitorous Greek shepherd came by leading a couple thousand Persians around behind the Spartans. I awoke and had the good sense to lie still and quiet as the Persians marched by not 20 feet away. In the blackness of the night I could hear their footsteps, crunching along and making a funny sound with their feet as they tramped over the unpopped popcorn widows I had strewn about my lookout post. When the moon came out from behind a cloud, I could see that the Persians were carrying makeshift ladders and ropes made from willow branches and climbing vines--I surmised correctly they were going to use these to climb down the mountainside the next morning. And wouldn't you know it, right in front of me a squadron of these guys stopped to rest for a few minutes, piling up their equipment right in front of the very crevice in which I was hiding!

Well, there I was, trapped behind enemy vines. It was all I could do to keep from answering yet another call of nature, if ya know what I mean. After half an hour, the troops moved off, and shortly before daybreak I managed to sneak away from the scene of the battle. I suspect it wasn't pretty.

Like many foreign correspondents, I had brought along with me some support staff, in this case a very young long-distance runner/copyboy named Phidippides. I'd write up my dispatch on a handy piece of goatskin and yell that time-honored newspaper call, "Copy!" and Phidippides would come trotting up. I'd hand him the story and off he'd go to Piraeus or Athens or wherever. Ol' Phidip wasn't real smart, but man could that boy run. He was kind of the Forest Gump of his day. Looked a little like Steve Reeves, he did. Some talent-spotter got sight of him and took him away from the Port of Piraeus Picayune, and Phido went on to make quite a name for himself running messages back and forth between Athens and Spart right prior to the Battle of Marathon, and then of course you know the story of how he ran from the battle to report the great victory, and then collapsed and died. (I'd told him to try and pace himself, but he never listened very well to good advice.)

At any rate, I found him camped out where I'd left him a mile or two away from the mountain pass. Late that day when I saw this horde of Persians coming down the road I knew it was curtains for the Spartans. I hurriedly composed a few lines for the top of my news story, and sent Phidippides off to Athens to tell the Athenian big shots what had happened. Then (not being a runner) at a somewhat more leisurely pace, I rode a donkey to Piraeus to report back to the city editor.

Wouldn't you know--I get to the Port of Piraeus safe and sound a couple days later (there was this roadhouse, the Retsina 6 [motto: "We'll leave the flaming torch on for ya."], along the way near a lovely olive orchard on the sunlit hillside, and this serving wench [she was one of the Gibsonoupodoponopagus gals, IIRC]...but maybe I should hold that story for another day, like I used to tell Sheherazade. But let me just say I was always a sucker for a nice set of dimples), and there was Admiral Themistocles rounding up ships and shanghaing men for crews all over town. He had some half-a$$ed notion of going out to Salamis to oppose the entire Persian Navy.

"But Your Admiralitude," I protested, "you're outnumbered four to one! And besides, I have a press pass from the Port of Pireaus Picayune, so I can't very well---."

But he cut me off. "Tell ya what, Curmudgephleides [my Greek name]. "How'd you like to be embedded with my fleet? You'll get a front row seat and everything, and ya see that galley over there with the big pointy bow? She's setting off in half an hour. Here, you give the float attendent this boarding pass--you're in seat 22F. That's a window seat on the starboard side near the bulkhead. We start boarding in 10 minutes, beginning with Zone 4."

Well, I didn't have a lot of choice, and an hour later we we're pulling out of the harbor. You undoubtedly guessed by now what I was too stupid (or I like to think it was because I was a wee bit hungover, and uh...saddle-sore, so to speak --I think I had somehow wenched my back a day earlier) to figure out at the time: Seat 22F was indeed the window seat, alright, but on a galley you pretty much do your own locomotion, and its a couple of days before they send the snack cart down the aisle with the beverages, let me tell you. I was chained to Seat 22F, and with no damn SkyMall magazine, either. I had one third of an oar, and the "float attendent" was this mean hulking Macedonian dude who looked like Tony Little with a bad haircut. That ship was like being stuck on the runway at LaGuardia aboard a US Airways jet for three weeks. We're like, 20 minutes outside of Piraeus, and there they are: something like 600 to 800 Persian ships compared to our 166, including the leaky scow of an Airbusius 380 I was riding in. Man, those guys had remes, they had triremes, they even had a few biremes (not that there's anything wrong with that; and the Greco lads sure had nothing to whine about themselves; that was one bad place to drop the soap in the shower).

So yeah, I saw the Battle of Salamis. I ROWED the fording Battle of Salamis, thank you very much. It was nothing but row, row, row, row, THUNK! as we rammed a Persian ship. "All back!" that Little Tony s--t [pardon my Greek] would yell, and we'd throw her into reverse, and then row, row, row, row, put yer backs into it you swine, and then THUNK! we'd take out another enemy barge. It was like a high school parking lot during a condom run on prom night. Jeez, what a zoo.

So there ya go, jw, my role at the Battle of Thermopylae, in a nutshell.

Oh Wheezy. That was Hollywood Squares. Paul was in the middle right above Charlie Weaver.
Kitty was the Queen of "What's My Line" and "To Tell the Truth."

I like the idea of distributed power, but I just don't see it happening any time soon. I just don't think the technology is there.

As I have said before, I think the answer, at least for the next 50 years or so, is increased efficiency combined with Nuclear power. Anything else is wishful thinking.

Of course, it will only take one brilliant breakthrough in either solar-cell or fuel-cell technology to make this whole thing moot. But I'm not betting on it. Global Warming scares me more than nuclear waste.

No one has yet to explain to me why conservatives feel the need to pooh-pooh global warming. I mean, the solution is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, right? Like, that stuff that the Middle East has lots of and we don't? So what's the downside? I really don't understand it.

RD... I'd bet on it, but only if we can get the oil guys out of positions of power.

I can only imagine where we would be if the half-trillion spent on wars were diverted to finding that solar or fuel-cell breakthrough.

SCC: "wars" should have been "elective wars"

Well Raysmom, first I think a lot of conservatives have a knee-jerk reaction against anything that smacks of environmentalism because they associate the term with pot-smoking long-haired atheistic draft-burning hippy-types.

Second, of course, may of them are closely tied to industry and there is a legitimate concern about the short-term economic pain of some of the proposed solutions.

Third, Even if it wasn't an environmental issue, Gore and those Hollywood Liberals are for it, so, naturally, they are agin' it.

Mudge... you mentioned a wench with dimples in your Thermopylae report. I'm a sucker for a well-turned ankle myself, but curious/dirty minds want to know which set of cheeks those dimples graced and whether they were part of the "bottomless mug of metaxa" special.

I am so embarrassed - I've flunked the Kitty Carlisle test thoroughly. Will I be allowed to post anymore?

I agree, in principle, martooni. But the most inconvenient word in the English Language is "if."

Wheezy - I think we can let it slide just this once. But just to be safe I would commit this to memory:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Carlisle_Hart

martooni, your 5:32 question reminds me of that story of the Lady or the Tiger, the one where you never get to find out which ending it is (so to speak). Well, this is one of those times.

ohmygawd. I didn't realize that she is still alive. Looks like *I* flunk the Kitty Carlisle test...

RD... "pot-smoking long-haired atheistic draft-burning hippy-types"

Is that why I wasn't invited to the Inaugural Ball?

btw...

Almost cut my hair
It happened just the other day
It's gettin kinda long
I coulda said it wasn't in my way
But I didn't and I wonder why
I feel like letting my freak flag fly
Cause I feel like I owe it to someone

(CSN&Y rock, but really... I was thinking about it and almost did it yesterday. Thank the FSM, I came to my senses before I came within range of scissors.)

Not only that, but Kitty Carlisle was featured in the Marx Brothers' classic "A Night at the Opera" -- she was quite a good soprano in her day. Of course, I remember quite fondly watching Orson Bean blowing on her boa (so to speak...) on the game show. They certainly did get all dressed up in those days.

Mudge... "which ending"? Did you mean "which end"?

I do respect your gentlemanly silence/ambiguity on this. The site of the lady's dimples will remain a mystery.

Thank you Achenbach! I will look for the transcript later then.

I'd like to see a small solar furnace attached to a steam engine\tubine spinning up a kinetic battery. You could scale that to almost any residential scale.

I made it to the boodle in time to catch Mudge's epic of the battle. I at least caught the important stuff.

On the going 'postal' front, I spoke with our intrepid recetionist when she was in the morning. I spite of a heinous flu she is suffering from, she told me that she knows this fellow I am worried about from previous attempts to enter and utilise the building. She said he has always given her the whillies but she thought it was just her chicken self (she worried a great deal about white powder back in the day), and so kept it to herself. We now have in place a fully fledged action plan should he come by. It basically goes, shout the word, and call 911. The Boss is considering a restraining order, or making the entrance to the buidling one where you have to be buzzed in. We will be disscussing the going postal when we do our next fire drill.

Really we should do more of this stuff. We are about a block from the Strathcona Refinery, and you never know what could happen over there. Thanks to all of you for your very good advice.

DR,
May boring days at work be yours, if you know what I mean. Take care and perhaps not put the iPod on high?....a student near my building last summer took a bullet in the bottom (really and he survived and is doing well) because he DID NOT HEAR THE ROBBER-DUDE BEHIND HIM SAY, "Excuse me, please, but give me your money, please, oh kind sir."

Raysmom -- about 30 blackbirds at the lake but not a one peeping their pipes of love. However, and this is even better: spring peepers out in force!
Spring Peeper (Pseudacris crucifer, sometimes called Hyla crucifer)
http://www.frogsonice.com/froggy/images-10.shtml
Scroll down to see the pix of spring peepers....darling wee laddies and lassies of spring that are seldom seen but often heard.

Also, Raysmom: I counted more than 25 turtles sunning themselves, both mud turtles and sliders (red "ear"- marked).

Doglet wanted to jump out at the bad, btrapped into the basket. I wonder how doglet would fare against a crabby, testosterone-high gander.

Scaleable photovoltaic (meaning if we bought it by the quarter-acre at Lowes it would get cheap pretty quick) is technically feasible right now for about 10 cents per kilowatt hour. I pay about 7 cents right now. And the pollution from the coal plant blows right into town! So I guess I'm paying a bit more if you count intangibles. Such as I don't get to talk to my elderly neighbor in the yard because he's hiding inside on "code orange" ozone days. He finds it hard to breathe outside on those days. I was just looking at a Scientific American article before I joined the boodle.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=643C3D30-E7F2-99DF-3108C4CB8A197667

Nuclear power has four problems: the still not-dealt-with waste problem, proliferation of bomb materials into unsafe hands, costs, and safety. Some radically new thinking will have to be done before we expand its use. I personally have hopes for it, but it's a tough one.

I sympathize with Gore. He really ought to find a way to cut down his total kilowatt-hour usage. He has a big family and probably security equipment he doesn't need to talk about, but still...

I kept abreast of his fine efforts to fund internet research through the years. He did yeoman's work and should rightfully be praised for that work.

I used to work for a coal-burning power plant (moral quandary, anyone?) and after that a transformer company so I know a bit about electrical power distribution. I never "got" calculus until I started analyzing alternating current. Any questions, and I will try to answer. But please, not about the calculus! Well, maybe a little.

The idea about orbiting solar panels, beaming power down to microwave conversion stations, is alive and well. It's one good idea to keep on the table. I still promote Jumper's law: all asphalt will be covered with a roof structure holding photovoltaic cells. We could all drive electric cars on electrified highways. Granted, the power would have to be augmented by off-road power plants such as we now have.

Whoops: Should read like this --

Doglet wanted to jump out at the bad, bad, bad and invasive Canada geese preening and P%^#@@*ing everwhere. But she was strapped into the basket. I wonder how doglet would fare against a crabby, testosterone-high gander.

"wenched my back"

I'm going to steal that someday. It's a shame I don't play D&D anymore.

I knew there was a reason I liked RDP and yellojkt...

:-)

jumper,
I like the idea of roads as power generators. Eveything should have two uses and heaven knows we have enough asphalt in this country.

I'm still looking for an article in SciAm (last year sometime?) about a power grid composed of a super conducting cable surrounded by liqiuid hydrogen. Power could be imputted anywhere in the system. Electricity and fuel for your coolrod. The article was a little geewhizzy, Popular Mechanicish but seemed plausible. The first step for any sensible solution is to get the continental power grid under one authority.

Until an electricians strike shuts down all highway transportation and pulls the plug on the internet.

OOHR: The Roads Must Roll

Jumper;

Spent fuel is already stored properly at every operating reactor (and even a couple of places where they've torn down the reactors). There are sites not too far from DC where spent fuel has been in steel and concrete casks for 20 years and it's just fine, thank you. The science of safely storing the stuff, even for thousands of years, is not in question. Politics is the problem, not the spent fuel.

As for proliferation, why is that an issue in the U.S.? Every reprocessing plan I've come across includes proliferation-resistant fuel types. And frankly, nuclear power plants can and already do USE warhead material, once it's blended down with some U-238.

Cost? It's six of one, half a dozen of the other. You have high up-front costs and very low operating costs for nuclear, and almost the reverse for fossil fuel (except if you start talking about "clean coal" plants, muy dinero to build).

Safety? More than 100 reactors in the U.S. and the ONLY accident we've had here was Three Mile Island, where all the available data shows next to no radiation dose to the public. Incidents? Yes, many of them, but the public's safety has not been affected. Let's all remember that "safe" and "zero risk" are not synonymous and never will be.

Nuclear power is one (perhaps the bedrock) of many reasonable methods of continuing modern society while addressing greenhouse gas emissions.

I'm posting this from home, using my personal property, in case anyone's interested.

I will never go here. I've been to the canyon, and that was bad enough, but this. I've always been a toes in the dirt kind of person.

http://tinyurl.com/yr8ed5

The BPH photos were wonderful. Yoki, nice stuff. Do you think they are falling for the invasion idea? Looks like a good time was had by all, and more.

The problem with lots of these way cool futuristic technologies is that they are decades and decades away. Even such a neat idea like C02 injection is not very mature, and doesn't even begin to address the problem of foreign dependence.

Sure, if we put bazillions into some of these concepts development could be enhanced. But I know from first hand experience that even with shockingly generous funding, a technological development program can only be accelerated so fast. There is no substitute for experience.

And besides, if funding were available for such a crash program, why not devote the money to further refinement of the most mature technology out there - nuclear.

Wow ScottyNuke - it's like, you know, you're some kinda *expert* on this or something.

Sure glad you're on the job.

RDP;

Job? Me? Uh....

It's a hobby. Yeah, that's the ticket!

:-)

Costs of nuclear tend to get forwarded to the future. As far as I know, no containment walls have been disposed of yet, and the tonnage is formidable. But, Scotty, I am not really a sort to fear nuke power for silly reasons. I eat my naturally radioactive bananas with glee, like a good techie should. And you are right that "problems" exist for any system. I personally wish my own local power company would build a new generation liquid-metal reactor which is far more efficient, at least according to my reading as an interested layman. I am afraid their thinking is too stodgy. However, I don't ever recommend underestimating the willingness of sociopaths, both present and future, to do horrible things with some of the truly dangerous nuclear waste. Or ignorant denizens of the future, either.

Scotty I do agree with nuclear power, it has provided my father with an income for the last fifteen years.

I would just like it to be OK for there to be innovation and experimentation without industry screaming we are trying to wipe them out.

Perhaps I believe too strongly in alternative methods as an addition to existing sources but I do not see the problem with reducing our footprint as much as we can even if it doesn't provide a complete solution. Not a big fan of using corn for ethanol but I hope work continues on biomass, read an article today about using the spent orange rinds to create ethanol - limited in production but of some use.

Mudge, that one rates up with the sonic disturber, or what ever it was. Bravo!

RD, Scotty, yello, I hope the breakthrough comes soon so we can can yell, "Eureka!" and enjoy the fruits thereof.

martooni, you are in my prayers.

Pax, Jumper? We're on the same page. :-)

And try Trojan and Maine Yankee for disposed-of containments. Both sites completely decommissioned apart from the small area where the casks are stored.

Why not a pebble-bed or high-temp gas reactor? *L*

dmd - I agree that the quickest thing we can do is reduce our energy usage. Heck, I have been sneaking these twisty bulbs into our home while nobody is looking.

Hmm with a handle like "scottynuke" it's almost like he planned this in advance eh?

We can't go for a strong nuclear program - we'd have to get help from the French. But it would help for sure. Put them where it makes sense, that's all.

I still remember Three Mile Island because I'm downwind of it and we spent some time wondering whether we were getting dosed or not. No smell, can't see it... The whole area is too dense to be evacuuated, so faghedaboutit as far as that goes. So there's no doubt that still hangs over the industry.

The other thing is Homer Simpson works in a nuke plant. But I don't know of that helps or hurts!

Some places solar makes sense. It would help here (there's actually a house in the area that went all the way http://www.hopewellproject.org/pages/project.html ) but for me wind would make more sense because I have a fairly consistent wind coming over the fields.

The problem in common is the storage when the units aren't generating. Which is the same problem with the electic car implementations. So I say we should be on a Manhattan Project of battery technology.