Solar Power Implementation

I was fascinated to learn that tents in tent cities in disaster areas can be replaced with nice sized hard sided homes with solar power for $500 a crack. The are designed by Ikea; look here   or here   or here.  What a great idea. Or better yet look at my article  0f Monday, July 22, 2013

Refugee Housing Unit (RHU): Truly a better mousetrap.

Strides in solar power have been immense in recent years. Solar cells cost much less now. According to the Mother Jones article, It took nearly four decades to install 50 gigawatts of PV capacity worldwide. But in the last 2 ½ years, the industry jumped from 50 gigawatts of PV capacity to just over 100 gigawatts. At the same time, global module prices have fallen 62 percent since January 2011. Even more amazingly, the solar industry is on track to install another 100 gigawatts worldwide by 2015—nearly doubling solar capacity in the next 2 1/2 years.

So why don’t we see more solar power? The problem it seems to be found in what is called “soft costs”: installation, permits, marketing etc.

Here is another place where we can learn from Germany. Dave Crane and Robert F. Kennedy complained about the amount of red tape solar implementation has to deal with in this country as compared to Germany, a leader in alternate energy and who has streamlined the process; this is perhaps best seen in the following chart:

I wonder why we continue to subsidize fossil fuels when we should being do more with alternate energy. (Actually I know why, lobbying by the fossil fuel industries.)

But then we can just go along burying our head in the sand about energy issues as we have been.

The must be looking for fracking sand.

Cat Golf

As I wrote earlier we left the TV on all night running Castle episodes along with NPR. This resulting in Lamont thinking he was ruggedly handsome and they all became educated on public issues. Not wanting to repeat that mistake I left the TV all day and night on the Golf Channel now that the Solheim Cup is being played. (Pray for the American team.)

I firmly expected to come out to the Shackteau this morning to find it transformed into a golf course and all the cats with little golf clubs smacking drives down carpeted fairs ways, chipping onto little greens and occasionally having to chip out of the litter boxes. That didn’t happen; well, I’m not sure about the litter boxes. I guess paws just don’t lend themselves to overlapping grips on pencil clubs. So, they remain soccer players chasing the whiffle golf balls about the floor.

But think about it, a Cat Golf Tour. Most know I am a golf fanatic but in truth it is a pretty silly game whacking a little while ball with a stick with a knob on the end of it through a cow pasture onto smoother parts of the cow pasture that has a hole in a and trying to put the little white ball into that hole. It is ridiculously difficult for most mortals, somewhat akin to Jesus’ remark about shoving a camel through the eye of a needle.

I must admit I like to what women’s golf better than men’s golf. The game is more identifiable, plus women look better than men, especially in short skirts (unless your Freddie Funk.) Men’s golf today is essentially very manly guys whacking that little white ball incredible distances common mortals cannot even visualize generally into the rough where the again use enormous strength to extricate the little while ball from the equivalent of the briar patch, and then manage to make par or better. It makes no sense especially to a man of my physic who cannot even see as far as they hit the balls (this is the reason I don’t hit the ball very far, so I can find it more easily. Pipe down out there, I hear snickering.)

There is great debate in the golf world that we ought to make the golf courses more amenable to average people with reasonable amounts of time to spend. Shorter courses with less holes where it is easier to put the little white ball into the hole before we grow old and rickety.

But think of Cat golf. Cats commonly think out of the box, except when they go in the box. They could probably improve the games a lot. Why bother with sticks, they have tales, use them. My golf bag weighs about 3 tons for some reason, a tail is much lighter. Cats might make golf a contact sport tackling each other and wrestling during each hole as they compete for the ball. Another good idea, just use one ball and the first one to it gets to whip it down the cow pasture with its tale, unless another cats tackles it before it can tail whack, and perhaps they could use their noses to putt.

I think I will have to bring this up to the USGA or perhaps form the USCGA (United States Cat Golf Association.) Perhaps we should not mix the two.

Which of the Following Claims Is True?

• ·      If you cut the taxes of the wealthy the result will be income trickling down to the rest of us.
• ·      If you tax the wealthy it will hurt the rest of the economy.
• ·      By shrinking the government we will create jobs.
• ·      Cutting the budget deficit is more important than stimulus plan to improve the economy.
• ·      The major budget killers are Medicare and Medicaid, so we should privatize them or do away with them.
• ·      Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
• ·      It is completely unfair that lower income Americans pay lower rates of income tax.

If you believe any of them are true I would suggest clicking here or try to reverse your frontal lobotomy.

News – Entertainment – Propaganda - … and Listening

I have been emailing with a friend about the media lately and it brings up a number of issues about the nature of today media, especially in the area of news.

Local news we agree can be helpful. My complaint is they spend too much time retelling national news.

A larger issue is just what is a news program. I likely get most of my media news from watching GMA in the morning, which is more fluff and entertainment than news, but you get the weather and some breaking stories and occasionally a nice piece of good news. We also watch the evening news, again on ABC with Diane Sawyer, who seems quite earnest and pretty and gives some highlights that we have generally already learned during the day. You can take any network of your choice and have pretty much the same stuff. All of them generally take more time setting up a rather short news bit than telling the news story itself. And they all owned by companies that have vested interests in the news.

Also, since Roone Arledge took over ABC news all networks are about the business of news; they are meant to make money, not just report the news. As a result we get a lot of bad news because that sells better than good news. As a result I do most of my newsgathering on the Internet, trying to find more reliable sources and weeding out the bull. It’s not easy but worthwhile.

My friend complained that the media often tells us what we should think about issues and events rather than just give us the news and letting us filter that information through our own belief and reasoning systems. Of course, that is the point of many commentary programs that abound on TV such as: CBS’’s Sunday Morning; ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopolus, NBC’s Meet the Press and the like. On those programs who have folk from various political points of view debating others on the merits of their views versus the wrongness of other ideas. What my friend complains about as these discussions are often rude, abrasive, and impolite and are based more on rhetorical methods than reasoning. I agree.

I taught debate when I was a high school teacher and had some problems with the game. It was a win lose competition, as you would expect. Students would collect data on the 3” x 5” cards and bombard each other with information. Call me naïve but I have believed and still do that the point of debate is to search for truth. Debate, discussion, whatever you call it, is a place for us to share our ideas and thoughts with others so we can all have a clearer understanding what is truth. That does not mean we will all agree, but it should be helpful to all involved in helping develop our own ideology and beliefs and values. That is why I began this blog; to have discussion and debate on religion and politics but being civil about it in the process. However, it seems to be a lost art.

I have absolutely no patience with shows and networks that are just propaganda machines basically appealing to people emotions and have not qualms about lying or misconstruing information as long as it helps promote their own ideas. The radical right has become experts at this though it is not limited to their party or parties (I have said it seems there are 5 Republican parties at the moment.) I wish that the American public would just not listen these hate mongers that do not look for solutions but just stir up the pot in shock radio or TV. But bad news sells.

In my younger years education was about developing critical powers of thinking. That didn’t mean being critical, but being able to evaluate ideas, questioning, discussing, and searching for truths. And, for a while we were pretty good at it that we became more a nation of complaining about what was wrong rather than becoming problems solvers. As a pastor I have heard people constantly complaining about this or that and I generally respond by asking them what ideas do they have about solving that problem. Generally silence follows at that point.

A final point I want to make on this subject. I believe a major reason why have all this senseless emotional rhetorical mud slinging going on today is because that is what is modeled for us by politicians and other leaders, including the church. One of the most important studies that has helped me in my career and in life, was not a course I took in primary, secondary, college or seminary but in a continuing education piece I took on listening and hearing skills. In Gestalt therapy there is a piece I often use to show folk that you cannot listen and talk and the same time. What we usually do in debate it hear a few works and then immediately begin rebuttals in our heads, thus missing the totality of what is being said to us. If we cannot hear properly we cannot speak clearly and appropriately.

What we need badly in this country is the ability to listen creatively and well. We need to take the time to let whoever we are talking to complete their thought and then we can respond. That is exactly what does not happen in shows such as my friends mentioned. Instead they rudely interrupt to get the two cents in no matter what the other person has said. It is bad manners, and not helpful to listeners who may be tried to make sense of the issues that face us today.

I was served a church that had a great deal of conflict. There was about half the church that lacking good verbal skills in being able to get their ideas across. They other half had excellent speaking skills but were basically oblivious to the ideas of others. The result was a split church. To deal with this problem we involved as many members of the congregation as possible in listening skills meetings led by myself and a leader from the denomination. I won’t say we solved every problem that church faced and had faced for years. But we did help. A lot of people found their voice and were listened to and taken seriously. A more united community came about.

I wish someone would take the members of our congress and the members of the media and provide such practical learning on listening.

As Jesus said, “Let those who have ears, hear.”

Are You in Jail?: A cat ponder

Patchtricia yawned, stretched, flexed her toes, scratched the rope on the three level catstack then turned to Pawline and Lamont and said, “Are we in jail?”

Pawline, also on the catstack, casually turned her eyes to Patchtricia and with an responsive yawn said, “Huh?”

Equally perched on the catstack (I don’t know what else to call it) gave Lamont a half lidded eye lookand meowed, “Just what do you mean, ‘in jail?.’”

Rolling over on her back Patchtricia gave another scratch to the rope and replied, “Well, we’ve been here in the Shackteau for quite a while now. But remember we used to live outside and could wander anywhere we wanted to at anytime. Now we just stay here. Is it a jail?”

Pawline arched her back, dug her claws into the blue fabric of the catstack and responded, “Well, you may remember I used to make a few breaks for the outside, successfully as you will remember while you two just stayed here. I was free to roam about and hide in the old building next door like we used to do as kittens. I also got cold and hungry and even though I was ambivalent about it, I allowed myself to be recaptured by the furless ones and put back into the heated, air-conditioned, Shackteau where we have plenty of water and food. I’ve quit trying to escape. So, if this is jail, it must be more of the Scandinavian type, though I don’t think we are being trained to do anything.”

“True,” replied Patchtricia, “and I remember our mother was free to be flattened by a truck on the highway outside. Oooo.

Lamont, sitting up eyed his sisters then pontificated, “Sisters, just what constitutes a jail? True we are confined to this area of the world. But the furless ones are also confined to earth, unless they are astronauts, then they are confined to the galaxy. The furless ones cannot fly like the birds we used to attack or the flying bugs we sometimes catch here.

Lamont continued, “I have also heard the furless ones talking -they think we can’t understand them, silly creatures – about the possibility of taking us into their house. Will that also be a jail? Is it their jail? Will we be freer there than here? There are many sides to this concept of jail. I would posit that one cat’s jail might be another cat’s place of freedom.”

After a long silence Pawline began to purr and Patchtricia said, “I think I’ll go munch on those crunchy food things. Is there any catnip left around?”