Why Alternative Power Is and Will Remain Useless

Here’s a fact you won’t see mentioned in the public policy debate over “alternative” energy:

There exists no alternative energy source, no combination of alternative energy sources, and no system of combinations of alternative energy sources that can fully replace a single, coal fired electric plant built with 1930s era technology.

Nada.
Zero.
Zilch.

Yet many want to make this group of functionally useless technologies the primary energy sources for our entire civilization.

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Does the President Actually Understand the Concept of Insurance?

As much as leftists like to call Sarah Palin stupid, I’m think I can confidently assert that she knows the difference between liability and comprehensive automotive insurance.

I have long assumed that the demagoguery by Obama and other leftists against the insurance companies was just cynical “eat the rich” politics. I assumed that behind closed doors, these Ivy League grads did actually understand that insurance provides protection against statistical risk only and not protection against absolute certainties. I assumed they understood that money being payed out in claims has to be balanced out by money paid in as premiums or the entire system will collapse very quickly.

However, hearing the President speak on the matter of insurance over the course of the past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that he, personally, simply does not understand how insurance works. I fear that no one else around him really understands either.

I say this because if he did understand how insurance worked, he would know that the story about his car insurance would make him look like an idiot.

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The Machiavellians: Principle I

Burnham
Burnham

The Machiavellians, written by James Burnham in 1943, is the greatest work of political “science” you’ve never heard of.

Burnham was a prominent Trotskyite during the 1930s. However, he had a Road to Damascus moment in the wake of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland. It was during during the period between his previous life as an American Communist/Socialist Party apparatchik and his later career as a prominent conservative intellectual (he was one of the original founders of National Review) that Burnham wrote his two most important books, The Managerial Revolution and The Machiavellians. Writing during this transition produced a curious fusion of the worldview of the Old Left and the nascent worldview of the New Right. Burnham writes in a frame of mind that is largely free of the orthodoxy of the Left but hasn’t yet absorbed the orthodoxy of the Right.

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Talk About Jaded

I came across this rather odd news article a little while ago. “Ultimate Thrill: Get Abducted For $1,226“.

Well heeled executives in France are paying big money to a company that arranges faux kidnappings. It seems that the thrills of bungee jumping and alpine skiing have faded, and adrenaline junkies with more money than sense are looking to add a little spice to their life.

After the contracts and liability waivers are all signed, and I suppose the check has cleared, the kidnapping kompany will lie in wait, lurking until the best time to strike! That way the surprise and emotions are at their most fevered.

A spokesperson for the firm which arranges these hijinks goes all psychobable in an attempt to justify the service. The clients are facing their worst fears in a controlled setting, hence it is good for their mental health!

I loved this part….

While paying “victims” might find the experience cathartic, however, there’s little guarantee of how innocent bystanders might react to witnessing a kidnapping in broad daylight.”

For some reason, I don’t see an American version of the company having too much success if they set up shop in Texas.

(Cross posted over at Hell in a Handbasket.)

Put the Keyboard Down and Back Away From Facebook

So, I bought this little iPhone app called “Sleep Cycle alarm clock“.

It’s an interesting idea. It uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to monitor the motion of your bed while you sleep. Like so:

mzl.ozennwoo.480x480-75

It uses the motion of the bed as a proxy measurement for your REM states. When you’re not moving much you are more likely to be deep asleep and when you move more it means you’re more likely nearly awake. You set a 30 minute time window in which you wish to awake and the app wakes you up when your motion peaks so you wake up alert instead of dragging yourself up out the depths of REM and starting the day feeling vaguely stunned.

It’s a neat idea and the basic idea is scientifically sound but that’s not what I’m blogging about.

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