Month April 2009

The end of cheap water

Prices are going up for water in southern California and will probably stay up. There’s too much demand for water coming from in semi-arid areas and not enough water available, especially during the current drought. Nor does anyone really know…

Levitating vertical wind turbines

Magnetic levitation suspends the vertical turbine in air. Thus there is no friction while it spins, allowing vastly more power generation. The biggest conventional wind turbine has a capacity of 6 MW. A Maglev turbine may be able to do…

How Goldman made that big profit last quarter

[Goldman Sachs] moved its fiscal year up a month and simply left out its losses from December, which is now known as an ‘orphan month’. Is the rule that says a year has twelve months also open to subjective judgment?…

Teabaggers. A sympathetic view

Hank Williams Jr. Red White and Pink-Slip Blues DJ, who lives in rural Utah, says he knows teabaggers and most of them, if they have politics at all, are Democrats not Republicans, and that they aren’t racist. I’ve helped organize…

The tea bags united will never be defeated

Note the suave tea bag earrings By all accounts the mighty tea bag protests today, hugely promoted by Fox News and right wing astro-turf front groups, were a flop. Crowds were way less than most mass nationwide protests get. Given…