Subsidize or Invest?

The argument is that subsidies aren't getting us there.  What we need is more investment in research so that green energies are cheaper and can out-compete fossil fuels.

Nepotism, cronyism, and narcissism

Here's why I feel much better about picking on the rich than stomping on the poor.

Here’s what we know about the rich: They have a lot more money than everyone else, and they have more money than everyone else by a larger margin than they used to. Why is that? They like to tell themselves it’s because they are morally and intellectually superior, but there is not a whole lot of evidence to back that up. People usually end up rich because they were born or raised with certain environmental advantages. One of the biggest advantages you can be born with, these days, is rich parents. And one of the biggest advantages rich parents pass on to their offspring — let’s say the second-biggest, after “money” — is the sense of entitlement necessary for an entirely unaccomplished rich person to coast through life without constantly feeling crippling guilt.

Wedding Photographer Illegally Discriminated Against Gay Couple

Similar to the Arlene's Flowers case, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that a wedding photographer could not refuse to provide services to a lesbian couple.

The Massive Secret Database Of Gun Owners

A massive database of gun owners exists.  But it isn't the government that has it, it's the NRA.  How convenient.

Fraud in Government Programs

Everything you think you know about government fraud is wrong.  Stopping fraud isn't all that difficult.  Hiring more workers to make sure that aid is promptly distributed to those who need it and vigorously prosecuting those that misappropriate that aid is part of the solution.  A good read.

Oklahoma Constitutional Amendment Struck Down By Federal Judge

The establishment clause means that you can't single out Muslim religious laws for discrimination.  If you are going to rule out Muslim religious laws, you have to rule out the religious laws of all other religions as well.  Why do they insist on wasting everyone's time with this?  Because they just can't keep their bigotry under wraps anymore.  In the long run, that should be a good thing.  The bad guys have self-identified themselves for easy recognition.

Remember the Replicators?

Imagine major aircraft parts, like wings, assemble like chain mail from small interlocking components.  Manufacturing would resemble 3D printing.  The assembling parts could even shift their shape and retain their original strength.

Older Adults and Brain-fitness

It turns out that those brain training programs actually work.  Have you done your Lumosity training for today?

Minimum Wage Effect

If one really wants to bring the working poor above the poverty line, it would take a $10 minimum wage.  We can let the economists argue about whether that would be a good thing or not.

New gay-friendly youth center opens in Kennewick

The Vista Youth Center had to close its doors but a new LGBT-friendly organization has opened.  Check out the Quest Youth Center.

Knots don't always weaken a fiber

If it's a carbon fiber, knots can actually make it stronger.

Obamacare questions get answered

Americans for Prosperity spent $1 million to buy ads that raise some questions about Obamacare.  The implication is that the answers to the questions are ones you may not like.  However, just the opposite is true.  You will probably like these answers.

Republicans Pass Bloated Socialist Monstrosity

If there is any question about Republican hypocrisy, this act should remove all doubt. 

It’s no longer novel that conservative Republicans have positioned themselves to Obama’s left on domestic spending that benefits their own constituencies. We have seen three years of Republicans attacking Obama for robbing Grandma’s Medicare. But at least Medicare is a justifiable program. The existence of farm subsidies is insane, and the fact that a party that hates government so much it engages in a continuous guerilla war of shutdowns, manufactured currency crises, and outright sabotage can’t eliminate it may be the most telling indicator of the GOP’s venality. They only hate necessary government spending. Totally unjustifiable spending is fine with them.

Fukushima 2.25 -- The Humanitarian Crisis

Here's another article that compares the radiological damage of the Fukushima meltdown to the humanitarian damage done by the response to it.  The latter is far worse than the former.  The fear is causing more problems than anything having to do with the nuclear effects.  Fukushima is nowhere close to the scale for Chernobyl despite the many attempts to put them together.

That the region was rapidly evacuated and everyone told not to eat anything from that area (for two months as I-131 decayed away), was all that was needed to reduce any threat of thyroid effects and all other cancers from most of the affected areas. Japan did this. The Soviets did not.  That is why comparisons between Fukushima and Chernobyl fail. That plus Chernobyl released ten times as much radiation into the atmosphere and was a weapons reactor.

Getting the carbon out of emissions

Here's a new technique that provides a cheap and easy way to remove CO2 from industrial emissions.  Good news for fossil fuel plants and other generators of CO2.

Crabby Conservatism

There is a class of people who are quick to be critical of others.  Perhaps they have been targets of excessive criticism in te past and they live a life fraught with insecurities. Unfortunately, this sometimes comes out in supermarket checkout lines.  Yes, food stamp fraud exists.  But, typically, it occurs when a disreputable establishment exchanges an amount of cash for a higher amount of food stamps.  When you see a person paying with food stamps, you can be pretty sure that they are indeed poor and are doing the best they can.

From someone who has been there,

"When you get that money, you feel like you can breathe," she said. "I can understand why people would buy things that people think are outrageous. When it comes, you feel like I can buy whatever food I want right now. You never can buy whatever you want. My clothes are hand-me-down, furniture second-hand. The food is new and mine."

Yes We Can - Dispose Of Nuclear Waste

Beyond just a way to find an acceptable way of disposing of nuclear waste, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013 lays out a new model of how to construct legislation on difficult issues.

Big, Not Cute

According to Bill Gates, real energy solutions need to be massive and industrial, not experimental and small-scale.  Most green energy advocates don't seem to have an appreciation of the scale of energy that is needed to run a developed country such as ours.  It's one thing to be able to power a few households, but it's another to power an aluminum smelter or a large server farm.

DOE loan guarantees fueled utility-scale renewables boom

Despite all the unwarranted publicity the Solyndra story evoked, loan guarantees generated a renewables boom.

Independent investigator Herb Allison, a former national finance chair for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, found little to criticize in the "utility-linked" loan segment, which included 20 clean energy generation projects with $14 billion in total principal, compared to the eight "nonutility-linked" loans of $2 billion, which included solar manufacturers and automotive manufactures in a program established by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, under Bush. Allison also reviewed $7.3 billion in loans to Ford Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.

After Tesla Motors Inc. repaid its remaining balance of $465 million on its DOE loan with interest nine years early May 22, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the $34 billion portfolio has had losses of roughly 2%, none from the clean energy power plants.

U.S. Runs Out Of Nuclear Fuel From Russian Warheads

Now that the supply of down-blended weapons uranium has come to its end, what can we expect for the prospects of expanded mining operations.  With the growth of demand to come from the East (China), we shouldn't expect uranium prices to decline.