Archive for the ‘Random’ Category
A construction crane, reported to be perhaps 15 stories tall, has collapsed in New York City. Parts of several buildings were severely damaged, including one apartment building which was really hit hard.
This isn’t normal Murdoc fare, but the MSNBC.com story says two were killed. CNN says four. I’ll be shocked if that’s all the higher the number really is, particularly if apartment buildings were hit on a Saturday.
Let’s hope that’s all there is, though.
Solar Power to Rule in 20 Years, Futurists Say
Via Instapundit:
He predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He predicted the explosive spread of the Internet and wireless access.
Now futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil is part of distinguished panel of engineers that says solar power will scale up to produce all the energy needs of Earth’s people in 20 years.
There is 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to meet 100 percent of our energy needs, he says, and the technology needed for collecting and storing it is about to emerge as the field of solar energy is going to advance exponentially in accordance with Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns.
They didn’t say “could scale up” or “be capable of producing all the energy needs of Earth’s people.” They said “will.”
I’ve long been a strong supporter of greatly increased nuclear power generation, but if this turns out to be true I’ll happily jump on the solar bandwagon.
However, this seems to be the basis of the 20 years claim:
“We also see an exponential progression in the use of solar energy,” he said. “It is doubling now every two years. Doubling every two years means multiplying by 1,000 in 20 years. At that rate we’ll meet 100 percent of our energy needs in 20 years.”
To expect the growth rate of something in the early stages of its infancy to continue is not terribly realistic. On the other hand, if solar electricity generation breakthroughs bring the benefits that many are hoping for, I can see it happening.
Opinions?
This has been getting a lot of (pretty justified, IMHO) attention:
The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C — a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year’s time. For all four sources, it’s the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
I’ve been skeptical that a decade and more of warming data was not really enough to prove anything, so one year of cooling data is no better. But it’s anecdotal evidence that does a lot to derail much of the anecdotal evidence the global warming crowd like to toss around as conclusive fact.
All along I’ve thought that the largest effect on earth’s global temperatures was the sun. I still think that, and it seems that more and more evidence is coming to light that supports this.
And if you think major Global Warming scenarios were scary, you had better not take a look at some major Global Cooling scenarios. You’ll pine for the days when the Ross Ice Shelf was disappearing, rather than the days that the Ross Ice Shelf threatens to gobble up southern Australia.
My 10-year-old daughter went skiing yesterday and we got a snapshot:
She’s fine. On Monday they’ll set the break.
If you aren’t skiing hard, you aren’t skiing. And Murdoc’s kids ski.
Good thing I wasn’t with, because I probably would have told her something along the lines of “tape it up and get back in the game.” I always say that God created moms to protect the children from the dads.
If posting has suddenly let up, I apologize. But someone has to carry the girl around. And sometimes sit by her and do nothing but be close.
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank with all hands on the night of November 10th, 1975.
For more Edmund Fitzgerald videos, see last year’s post in MichiBlogger.
Blah, blah, blah.
Searchers locate missing Boy Scout troop
They had gotten off the trail so they “hunkered down” for an extra night.
They waited until daylight rather than trying to walk out in the dark.
All were safe and well, and on their way out, when found. The search was initiated in case a member of the troop had been injured and the group was having difficulty getting out of the woods, so to speak.
I’ve mentioned before the plan to bike the 600+ miles from Lansing, MI, to Washington, DC in support of childrens’ rights. The Equal Parenting Bike Trek begins this Saturday, and they’re still a few bucks short of their fund-raising target.
Also, they’ve launched a new site dedicated to the effort: Cycling4Children.com. This will cover the Trek, and right now features videos and links to the impressive media coverage so far. Worth checking out.
The site’s tagline is “Children have a fundamental right to equal time with both fit and willing parents after a divorce“, and if you agree with this and would like to help support this fundraiser, you can donate via the widget here or on the Cycling4Children.com site (left sidebar).
Police: 4 dead in Minneapolis bridge collapse
Death toll revised downward; investigation to begin into cause of buckling
Murdoc has a number of friends and family in the Twin Cities area. I know that, statistically speaking, none of my people were probably involved. But it’s obviously a scary thing to think you could be driving along on your way to work and the road just suddenly falls into the river.
I grew up in Minnesota, and I always thought the traffic in the Twin Cities area was far, far worse than it should have been.
Prayers out for all of those killed, hurt, or lost. And for their families.
Instapundit: HOW TO GET RICH: Quit watching TV.
From the linked article:
If you want to know why you don’t have enough money, the first question to ask yourself is how much time do you spend watching TV? It’s probably a lot more than you ever realised. While most people focus on the cost of cable when they think of the price of watching TV, I would argue that a far more costly aspect is the opportunity cost — the things you could be doing during the time that you’re actually watching TV.
To put it into perspective, if you watch an average of 31.5 hours of TV each week (which the average person in the US does) and you value your time at minimum wage of $5.85 an hour, you are spending nearly $800 a month ($798.53) to watch TV.
I haven’t really been much of a TV watcher since I was a teenager, and even then I read more than I watched the tube. And since then the majority of the hours I’ve watched television programming have been sports. I’ve never really got into television dramas, and sitcoms never did it for me.
My loophole in all this has been the watching of movies on television. I watch a lot of movies. I used to average about ten or twelve movies a week (seriously…I used to log them) and that’s a lot of time. Since I started MO over four years ago, however, even my movie watching has drastically declined, probably averaging about two per week now.
Since the advent of TiVo and the ability to watch what I want when I want, I’ve got three weekly hour-long television dramas I watch, which is actually three more than I used to care about. At a half-year of weekly one hour shows per series, two movies per week, and about 40 three hour sporting events per year, I average about 8 hours of television per week. (40 sporting events is probably far more than the real number, but I’ll go with it.)
I also sometimes watch television shows during dinner with my family (classic Star Trek is a favorite) and don’t count that as I wouldn’t be doing anything else anyway, and I feel justified in not counting it because during virtually all sporting events I’m online working at least some of the time.
8 hours per week, to be honest, is more than I would have expected. But at least I don’t know who’s winning ‘Dancing with the Stars’.
I would bet that MO readers watch far less than the average of 31.5 hours of television per week, though I’d also bet that most of you watch more than 8.
