We got the all-clear from the neck surgeon in February. It has been a month since then; a slow return to normal; baby steps. The pain is gone. The strength is coming back. My neck feels stable for the first time in a year. We are well on our way to a full recovery. I say “we” and “our” because Judy has been such a big part of this, it’s not just “my” recovery. It’s not quite like it was before surgery. A little less mobility. I can turn my head from 10 to 2 instead of 9 to 3. I can look down, but not quite enough to see my feet. Problem? Not at all. I can use my shoulders to turn and look further when I need to. I can lean over as I look down. It’s all good.
Global energy
I read something from Bill Gates about how difficult and expensive it is to store energy. He wants to bring electricity to the quarter of the people on our planet that don’t have access to it. Of course he wants to do it in a sustainable way. He doesn’t want to just build new coal powered power plants all over the planet. He wants to generate electricity with wind and solar, but they only produce energy intermittently. He needs a way to store electricity after it has been produced so it can be used later, and battery technology is not there yet. He’s thinking big, but he’s stumped. Maybe he should think bigger. I’ve mentioned this before. Locally, there is a dramatic rise and fall in the amount of energy used over the course of each day. Globally though, the demand would be fairly constant. If we could produce and use electricity on a global scale, instead of a local scale, we wouldn’t need to store it at all. If we have the capacity to distribute energy efficiently over large distances, then there will always be enough energy being produced somewhere on the planet for the people that need it on the other side of the planet. Conceptually, doesn’t this work? A worldwide source of clean energy! We have hammered battery technology hard for a hundred years. We’re doing great but we’re no-where near the point of storing solar energy for cities overnight, or wind energy on days that are calm. If we applied the same effort to energy transmission as we have to battery technology, wouldn’t we be more likely to find an immediate solution to the transmission problem than the battery problem? This wouldn’t change the economics of energy production versus use. If a place like Arizona can produce more solar energy than it uses, it can sell the excess to the grid. It will cost Arizona something to produce its energy, but it could be a net gain for their economy if they sell more than they produce. Seattle might have no hope of producing enough solar or wind energy, but they have hydro-electric. They might have an energy deficit and have to purchase energy from the grid, but they’re already paying to produce that extra energy with power plants right now. If it seems that it’s not fair for some parts of the country, or world, to benefit from the energy they produce, while others have to pay for what they can’t produce themselves, that’s not any different from how it is right now. If you want to burn coal in power plants and your region doesn’t happen to have any coal reserves, you go buy your coal from West Virginia. It costs you money and West Virginia benefits. It would be the same, just distributed differently, but with the bonus that the energy could be clean. Now how do I get this message to Bill Gates so he can implement it?
Along the way
A jetty we did not walk out on that day.
Oh yeah
George Bush. I couldn’t think of anything George Bush did. Well, there *was* that Iraq thing. That’s what happened while George Bush was president. I knew there was something…… We’re all tired of the gridlock. We want something to happen. The problem is, some of us would like the democrats to be successful and accomplish everything they’d like to do. Others of us would like the republicans to be successful and accomplish everything they’d like to do. We all want the same thing, we want an end to gridlock; we just each want it our own way. So if gridlock were to suddenly break loose, still about half the population would be delighted and half would be pissed off, either way it went. But gridlock is not likely to let up any time soon. Even when both parties want the same thing, neither wants the other party to get credit for it. If we continue with divided government; the house and senate blocking the president; even bipartisan bills get voted down unanimously by the party in power, even if everyone agrees that it’s a good idea. Maybe if they stall long enough, they can get the job done when it’s their guy in power and be the ones to get the credit. When we get to this point, we not only have gridlock on any new ideas, we can’t even pass the day-to-day stuff our government needs to do its job. (I’m such a socialist, I think government *has* a job and should do it.) This is the point where I would suggest a solution if I had one…
I’m feeling philosophical about presidents
We didn’t like it much when Reagan was president. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Trickle down. A rising tide lifts all boats…. Big deficits. I don’t think we noticed much about George Bush, the elder. Nothing really stands out. We liked it when Bill Clinton was president. We had budget surpluses for his last four years. All we had to do is not screw it up. He couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, but that wasn’t a big deal to us, we had peace and prosperity. Others couldn’t wait to get rid of him and were thrilled when Bush got elected. Now we could have someone “responsible” leading our country. We hated it when “W” got elected. We didn’t think he was very smart, but hoped he would be smart enough to surround himself with smart people. I think he did, but that still didn’t work out so well. He and his big-money cronies kind of wrecked everything. Wall Street gone wild. Tax cuts for the wealthy. Trickle down. A rising tide lifts all boats…. Oh well, we survived. Obama got elected and we were thrilled again. He inherited a fiscal disaster, but we thought he could turn it around. He did get it headed back the right direction, but not all the way back to budget surpluses. Meanwhile, slogans appeared like “Our country will never be the same again.” So many people hate Obama, they can’t wait for him to be gone. Oh well, they survived. Now there is another election. We think another eight years of progress under a democratic administration will have the economy sorted out again. We’re concerned a republican will get elected and they’ll have their way with the economy and give it all way to their friends again. Republicans are afraid another democratic administration will wreck the country even more than the last eight years did. The election will finally happen. About half of us will be relieved and the other half will hate it. Oh well. Either way, we’ll survive and so will all the people who think they won’t.