Mr. Klaus declined to be interviewed for this article. His office called a list of proposed questions “peculiar.”
Some days I’m tempted to subscribe to the New York Times just so I can cancel my subscription. But the risk that their phones might be cut off in the intervening minutes keeps me from following through.
Update – Vaclav Klaus, on global warming.
“The Holodomor, or Hunger plague, was a famine engineered by the Soviet Union as part of a series of actions, including mass executions, designed to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Census data reveal a shortfall of 11,000, 000 in the Ukrainian population by 1937.”
Throughout Canada, in each and every year, the fourth Saturday in November shall be known as
“Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (“Holodomor”) Memorial Day”.
Before reading on, just consider for a moment what the term “negative pricing” might mean in plain English.
Ready?
During these negative price periods, suppliers are paying [Electric Reliability Council of Texas] to take their power. Consumers (at least at the wholesale level) are getting paid for using power, and the more power consumers use the more they get paid. These prices are a big anti-conservation incentive. You could, as a correspondent put it to me, build a giant toaster in West Texas and be paid by generators to operate it.
Infrequently, a power plant might choose to bid below the short term marginal price in order to stay in the market and avoid shutting down. It can be economically rational for operators of less responsive generation units to offer negative prices in order for it to avoid the costs of shutting down for just a few hours and then start up again when load increases – think coal-fueled or natural gas steam turbine. When energy load is very low, near zero or negative prices can result.
This isn’t the cast in West Texas. Instead, the negative prices appear to be the result of the large installed capacity of wind generation. Wind generators face very small costs of shutting down and starting back up, but they do face another cost when shutting down: loss of the Production Tax Credit and state Renewable Energy Credit revenue which depend upon generator output. It is economically rational for wind power producers to operate as long as the subsidy exceeds their operating costs plus the negative price they have to pay the market. Even if the market value of the power is zero or negative, the subsidies encourage wind power producers to keep churning the megawatts out.
As the word “chickenhawk” goes into hiding…
“Leaving the Bush tax cuts alone. Putting Iraq-war supporters in as Vice President and Secretary of State. And now keeping Bush’s Defense Secretary on. I’m beginning to feel like I won this election!”
Jules Crittendon asks “But is it really necessary to rub it in? … Yeah, I think so.”
Not even inaugurated, and the once useful Noam Chomsky already feels betrayed…
Rove – you magnificent bastard!
Update – KABOOM!!
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night vintage music show, here are Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, with Tex Beneke, Paula Kelly, The Modernaires, the Nicholas Brothers, and Dorothy Dandridge performing Chattanooga Choo Choo & Part 2 (from the film Sun Valley Serenade, 1941, 4:43 + 3:36). And, yes, that is the inimitable Mr. Milton Berle in the background 😉
Update: I forgot; SDA Late Nite Radio DJ EBD mailed me a note pointing out that in addition to the fascinating value of last night‘s video presentation (my words, not his) there is available in the Interwebothique the original audio track of Bob Dylan‘s You Gotta Serve Somebody from his 1979 album Slow Train Coming (5:22).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
The proposal to abandon the Carleton Unversity Students’ Association was put forward after it was recently revealed to only include bigots, and primarily idiots.
… to allow the next in line to take over.
Related – Introducing the “Office Of The President-Elect” Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?
h/t
UK iat “real risk” of imminent power shortages;
The shortage has been caused by the increase in the level of demand for energy combined with a growing tendency to build wind turbines, at the expense of other, more reliable, electricity sources, it says. The report estimates that around one quarter of the UK’s energy plant capacity will close by 2015 as the country struggles to balance its carbon emissions targets with production of new energy sources.
[…]
A spokesman for Capgemini said that unless new power stations are built “the lights will go out”.
Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much– or at all– when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.
We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.
What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.
For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Libratas Americanna.
Its habitat is varied, making it remarkably adaptable. It is at home roaming forest glades where it freely sheds annoying cultural artifacts such as hygiene … but is equally at home grazing at Starbucks or pondering the sacred texts of Noam Chomsky.
The following video gives us a rare glimpse into Libratas Americanna mating rituals, whereby both male and female attempt to attract members of the opposite, or same, sex by debasing themselves. Anthropologists speculate that debasement rituals originated among primates where feces tossing is common:
Of course, don’t underestimate Libratas Americanna … given a bit of funding, it can become spiteful, bellicose, and even litigious.
crossposted @ Cjunk
The Strange Case of Deborah Cansick and the vanishing Freedom of Information Act.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. In a recent entry, Kate quoted the phrase “Ratings don’t matter, profitability does”. Now, technically, that is true. Which is to say, ratings don’t matter to profitability if profitability is obtained via some non-rated mechanism (for example, extortion).
Yet this is exactly what gives us the leverage to make moral judgments on questions of the legitimacy of profit: as Mr. Bob Dylan and associates have so many times said, here in 1979: “It may be the devil, or it may be the lord, but You Gotta Serve Somebody” (6:25).
Thus, when you judge someone, it is legitimate to ask, who are they serving? All I ask is that you sincerely try to avoid pre-judging, that’s just stupid (except in emergencies, of course).
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
Military.com has the story…
“The day started out with a 10-kilometer patrol with elements mounted and dismounted, so by the time we got to Shewan, we were pretty beat,” said a designated marksman who requested to remain unidentified. “Our vehicles came under a barrage of enemy RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) and machine gun fire. One of our ‘humvees’ was disabled from RPG fire, and the Marines inside dismounted and laid down suppression fire so they could evacuate a Marine who was knocked unconscious from the blast.”
Famous Last Words: “Ratings don’t matter, profitability does…”
“The first recommendation is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) be repealed so that the CHRC and the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal would no longer deal with hate speech, in particular hate speech on the Internet.”
Full report here – commissioned by the CHRC itself.
Update: Unconfirmed sources report that an advisor to the Michael Ignatieff Liberal leadership campaign will be issuing a statement discounting the Moon Report as the work of a “Nazi sympathizer”… developing…
More at the National Post, plus reaction from Kathy Shaidle, and Mark Steyn, with lots of chatter erupting across the ranks of the Blogging Tories.
UPDATE: The CHRC is in full damage control mode – “Lynch is already trying to throw Moon under the bus.”
In her press release announcing his report, which you can see here, you’ll notice something is missing: Moon’s recommendation to repeal section 13. He uses the phrase repeal again and again in his report – but you won’t find it in Lynch’s revisionist press release. It’s like the chapter in George Orwell’s 1984, where Winston is busy cutting out embarrassing items from old newspapers, and replacing them with the new, politically correct truth. That’s what Lynch is doing already.
Official NOAA USHCN climate station of record in Fairbury, NE.
At current prices, shippers can’t cover their costs. Many are breaching bank covenants and a few have been forced into administration. In a move of sheer desperation, the notoriously secretive London shipping community convened on Wednesday to try to cut their losses. The meeting focused on reducing the counterparty risk involved in the shipping business’ complex chain of long-term agreements, which stretch from shipowners through traders to the operators, known as charters. […] The hard times could get still worse if banks start calling in loans. That would flood the already glutted market with a wave of foreclosed ships. The only remedy is the breaking yard….
A key safety valve for regulating the world’s supply of ships has stopped working in recent weeks, after credit and other problems brought the sale of ships for scrapping to a near halt.
The problems are centred in India, the heart of the world ship-demolition industry, and have prevented owners from selling the thousands of ageing vessels worldwide that are no longer worth keeping afloat, following a collapse in the rates earned by many vessel types.
[…]
Some Indian banks also appear to have refused to honour letters of credit over fears about the value of the ships pledged as security. Vessels were fetching record prices of up to $740 a tonne as recently as September, while the present market price has collapsed to $300.
Just a short time left to vote (if you haven’t already). If we can move him into 7th place or higher, he’ll travel down bedecked in SDA duds. Just a few minutes left….
Update – the voting has concluded, and after a back and forth horserace, iti appears Rob finished in 7th place. Thanks, all. I know he appreciates it!
Just make sure of one thing while you’re down there Mr. Clark – no dead hookers.
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra performing the fourth movement of Gustav Mahler‘s Symphony #5 (Adagietto), Zubin Mehta conducting, in Chile (2001, 9:45).
And here’s today’s ethical horns-of-a-dilemma, courtesy of Mr. Perry Mason: If the only way you could avoid making a mistake was to be dishonest, would you be dishonest and avoid making the mistake, or would you be honest and make the mistake?
Answers.com reports that Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, outlines the following possible responses to a dilemma. The classical responses are to either choose one of the two horns and refute the other, or alternatively to refute both horns by showing that there are additional choices. Pirsig then mentions three illogical or rhetorical responses. One can “throw sand in the bull’s eyes” by, for example, questioning the competence of the questioner. One can “sing the bull to sleep” by, for example, stating that the answer to the question is beyond one’s own humble powers and asking the questioner for help. Finally one can “refuse to enter the arena” by, for example, stating that the question is unanswerable.
Yet I think there’s another response. Pace the abstract, in any specific context, individuals will weigh the relative risk/reward tradeoffs between the available horns, and will choose that which appears more valuable, according to their personal axiological value functions. Moreover, I think that this same rule applies to both “neurotypical” brains, and “autistic” brains, they just use different value functions. Sorry if that doesn’t sound very noble, yet I think that form follows function, and I don’t think that our function is to be noble, I think that our function is to function.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.
A couple of quick snapshots taken on my drive home from Hanley, SK as the sun dropped low in the sky this afternoon.
The old bridge at Outlook. (Full size)
The highway looking north, near Swanson. (Full size)
