45% of Mississippians Vote That Dividing Cell Rights Should Trump Those of Women

One of the more watched ballot initiative this week was the Mississippi Personhood initiative that would have granted full human civil rights to a fertilized human egg. Almost half of the voters were for this measure. Here's the CBS report, but you can find it everywhere this week. Basically, it would have outlawed most birth control and, of course, abortions. The issue as I see it is the tension between the rights of a host and a guest. Should an unexpected guest be permitted to stay as long as they feel necessary, no matter how the host feels? What if the guest makes unreasonable demands, such as requiring up to half of your assets and most of your attention while living there? Note that the laws are set up to require you to support the guest for an additional 24 times as long as she stayed after she decides to move out. At the root of this ballot initiative really was the need to make sure that Republicans get out to vote. It is a pity that the Democrats cannot figure out how to seed a ballot with an issue that will fire up their base in this manner. What about resurrecting the Equal Rights Ammendment?

Continue Reading45% of Mississippians Vote That Dividing Cell Rights Should Trump Those of Women

Antidote poster for what most ails America

Today, I spotted this poster on Facebook: The artist is Al Haug, who has published the poster on a Facebook page here. He is not selling the poster, but does indicate that those who post it should attribute this work to Al, and further states:

I can accept gifts to support my artwork thru paypal: https://personal.paypal.com/cgi-bin/marketingweb?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=marketing_us%2Fsend_money Use westbankal@gmail.com as account. Send as a "gift" only. But you don't have to send anything. And don't be a poophead and try to sell this image- your karma would suffer greatly.

Continue ReadingAntidote poster for what most ails America

Plummeting cost of PV solar power

The cost of solar power is collapsing to the point that its use is about to explode across the United States, according to Kees Van Der Leun at Grist:

[T]he fact that 30 pounds of silicon, an amount that costs $700 to produce, is enough to generate a lifetime of household electricity baffled me. Over 25 years, the family would pay at least $25,000 for the same 100,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity from fossil fuels -- and its generation cost alone would total over $6,000!
Paul Krugman weighs in too, criticizing those who just can't stop touting dirty coal and natural gas derived from tracking. Then he turns to the quickly falling cost savings of PV solar:
[P]rogress in solar panels has been so dramatic and sustained that, as a blog post at Scientific American put it, “there’s now frequent talk of a ‘Moore’s law’ in solar energy,” with prices adjusted for inflation falling around 7 percent a year.
Even more falling cost data at CNET.

Continue ReadingPlummeting cost of PV solar power