Starting in 2017, we can expect to see a lot more "beach health advisories" being issued, but it's not because the waters have suddenly become unhealthy. No, our old fiends over at EPA are at it again:
The Environmental Protection Agency’s nationwide standard for fecal bacteria levels in ocean water that triggers advisories to avoid water contact will be changed. The number, known as the beach action value or BAV, is being reduced by more than half.
The current BAV is 156. Beginning in 2017 that drops to a nationwide EPA-mandated 70.
Of course, here in Oregon, it's well-known that thousands of visitors flock to our ocean beaches to swim and to drink our excellent Pacific Ocean seawater, and they do it year-round. So it's a good thing that EPA, back there in pristine Washington D.C., is looking out for us all.
While professional agitators wring their hands over Climate Change and advocate for more solar and wind subsidies (neither of which is capable of providing baseload energy) as they vilify coal and natural gas and worry about dams harming fish, Corvallis-based NuScale has actually developed technology that resolves all of those issues.
Difficulty: it's (GASP!) nuclear. It's a Small, Modular Reactor (SMR).
“It’s not intuitive,” Conca acknowledged, “but nuclear actually has the lowest environmental and health impact versus the amount of energy it produces.”
And let's be clear: we're not talking about your father's nuke plant. No Fukushima or Three Mile Island stuff here: SMRs are small enough to be loaded onto a truck or a barge to get them to their destination; they're just assembled in a factory and shipped out. No resemblance to the old nuke plants.
NuScale’s design is based on technology developed at OSU by Jose Reyes, who co-founded the company and serves as its chief technology officer.
Each 50 megawatt reactor module could be operated individually or in arrays of up to 12 units for a total generating capacity of about 600 megawatts, compared to about 1,000 megawatts for a conventional nuke. The reactors and their cylindrical containment vessels would be small enough (76 feet long by 15 feet across) to build in a factory and ship by truck, barge or rail to their final destinations, where they would be installed below grade level in a large pool of water. The design uses natural convection currents to circulate cooling water, a “passively safe” approach that eliminates the need for an elaborate network of pumps, pipes and valves that can fail in an emergency.
They're very likely to receive NRC approval in the coming years. In addition to being meltdown-proof, they yield far less waste than the earlier reactors. Other countries are looking into the technology, but NuScale's way ahead of the pack:
While the NRC review process likely will take several years, NuScale is pushing ahead with plans to build its first nuclear generating plant at the Idaho National Laboratory in partnership with a pair of regional public utilities, Energy Northwest of Washington and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems. That plant, which would have 12 NuScale power modules, is slated to be completed in 2024 at a cost of about $2.8 billion (the price tag is expected to come down to $2.6 billion for future “12-pack” plants).
Of course, there's opposition from the Usual Suspects:
Led by well-organized environmental and social justice groups such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Physicians for Social Responsibility (mocked as Physicians for Social Irresponsibility by some NuEx speakers), anti-nuclear activists question the claims of safety improvements by SMR proponents and point out that the problem of radioactive waste disposal remains unsolved.
That latter "concern" will be resolved when the first vitrification plant comes online at Hanford. Heck, we can likely shoot the resulting glass into deep space, so it's not really a problem.
Here's the deal, greenies: you can continue to yammer about carbon and climate change or you can embrace a carbon-free energy technology; you can't have it both ways. And wind and solar not only can't provide baseload supplies, they come with significant environmental costs of their own. So either get with the program or get out of the way.
Granny's path to the White House has become more than a little encumbered along the way, which is probably why she's taken to comparing Republicans to Nazis, of late.
An FBI “A-team” is leading the “extremely serious” investigation into Hillary Clinton’s server and the focus includes a provision of the law pertaining to “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information,” an intelligence source told Fox News.
The section of the Espionage Act is known as 18 US Code 793.
A separate source, who also was not authorized to speak on the record, said the FBI will further determine whether Clinton should have known, based on the quality and detail of the material, that emails passing through her server contained classified information regardless of the markings. The campaign’s standard defense and that of Clinton is that she “never sent nor received any email that was marked classified” at the time.
A violation of the Espionage Act would be a felony.
The involvement of an FBI "A" team underscores the seriousness of the situation in which Granny finds herself, as it appears that Obama's appointed head of DOJ, to whom the FBI reports, is pulling out the stops. One almost gets the impression that Barry doesn't want to see her as the 2016 nominee.
But at least she says that she "takes responsibility"....
Those unfunded liabilities are really starting to kick in; things are so bad in the state that the Illinois Lottery is giving "winners" IOUs.
After years of struggling financially, Susan Rick thought things were looking up when her boyfriend won $250,000 from the Illinois Lottery last month. She could stop working seven days a week, maybe fix up the house and take a trip to Minnesota to visit her daughter.
But because Illinois lawmakers have not passed a budget, she and her boyfriend, Danny Chasteen, got an IOU from the lottery instead.
"You know what's funny? If we owed the state money, they'd come take it and they don't care whether we have a roof over our head," Rick said. "Our budget wouldn't be a factor. You can't say (to the state), 'Can you wait until I get my budget under control?' "
And to a certain extent, she has a valid point. At the very least, they'd tack on penalties and interest; at worst, they might just take the house. If they're too broke to pay up, perhaps they should consider suspending their lottery.
I spent some time cutting up a fresh salmon, and vacuum-packed and froze most of it for later. I set aside a small fillet for dinner, which I stuck into a large pan with a small bit of beer and some some fresh-roasted Hatch hot peppers. Threw the cover on the pan and did some medium-cooking; had a fresh ear of corn soaking. Put the corn in the micro after the salmon had a five-minute head-start.
When the corn was done, I shucked it into the compost bin, then brought the ear back and stuck the salmon pan onto an empty burner to let it settle. All told, it fed three adults, and we still had enough salmon left to have fed a fourth. If you can get fresh-roasted Hatch peppers in your area, it works really well with salmon.
I think I'll fire up the smoker and stick some of the salmon in there - with Hatch peppers. It'll be amazing, most likely.
Desktop and laptop PCs are still in wide use, but tablets and phones are sucking out a lot of the market. Windows is still a thing, but the company has its sights set on a new horizon:
If Microsoft can't come up with a smartphone platform that can topple the iPhone or Android, why not just take over the iPhone and Android?
That's why Office is now cloud-based. Sure, there are competitors, but MS Office is the standard; they wiped out WordStar, Lotus, and everything else with their Office suite, and everybody uses Office today on desktops and laptops. And that's why Microsoft is porting apps to Android and iOS devices.
While Windows has become less relevant, Microsoft Office is still the industry standard for getting stuff done.
Office workers and students both rely on Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the rest of the suite. Google Apps (recently rebranded Google for Work) is providing some solid competition, particularly in smaller businesses and tech startups, but almost every big business in the world still has thousands of Office licenses.
Rather than force Windows on users to make them use Office, Microsoft's new game plan is to make Office irresistible to anybody, no matter what device they're using.
At the old Microsoft, it didn't care what apps you ran, as long as you ran them on Windows. The new Microsoft doesn't care what operating system you run, as long as you're running Microsoft services.
Subscription is the new model at Microsoft. Operating systems may have started them and brought them to prominence, but they've long had this mantra: embrace and extend. And that is exactly the approach they're taking with their "services" model. They can't beat Apple and Android, and for now, they don't need to - Windows is still the most-used OS by far. But the future seems to be in mobility, which is territory firmly controlled by A&A.
No problem - Microsoft will just take control of them.
A Native American tribe in Idaho has been assigned the task of drafting a plan for saving a tiny band of wild reindeer from extinction in a far corner of the northern Rockies straddling the U.S.-Canadian border, federal wildlife officials said on Friday.
Who knew we had reindeer down here in the lower 48? Apparently there are only 14 of them left, so what I suspect is going to need to happen is going to be along the lines of what was done with the California condors: there were only 21 of those birds remaining when USFWS partnered with zoos to remove them all from the wild and subject them to an intensive captive propagation program designed to increase the remaining genetic diversity.
That was a huge problem, as the Usual Suspects (Audubon and other groups) fought bitterly against the idea in the courts. Fortunately for the condors, Audubon and company lost. There are now several hundred birds, some of which have been released into the wild, where they have successfully reproduced. It seems likely that a similar approach will be required to prevent total extinction for this species, but since the Indians are involved in the effort, perhaps Audubon and other "conservation" groups will think twice before litigating.
One big problem: they'll need people skilled in managing prey species such as this in a captive situation; they tend to spook easily and may kill themselves by running into walls or spiral-fracturing a leg. It's a typical response by prey species, and if you don't understand how they experience things, you're almost certain to generate that response.
Back in the day, public displays of affection were frowned upon, although tolerated. In Progressive Portland today, things have gone considerably further:
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Parents whose kids attend the Emerson School in North Park Blocks are joining in the chorus of concerned voices for all the crime happening there: People camping out, doing drugs, and having sex all in a school zone.
What's wrong with those parents? Do they not recognize the invaluable educational opportunities being presented on a daily basis there?
"This year is decidedly different than any other year," said Principal Tara O'Neil who had gloves on, and was carrying a sharps container as we talked with her. "I'm walking around making sure there's no needles on the playground or in the grass around the park."
"We've seen people shooting up, people having sex, we've seen people peeing, and the other thing in our doorways," said Jean Fleming, who lives near the park.
"This is a crime, nuisance, and quality of life issue. This is not a homeless issue," said Fleming's husband, Mic Fleming. "This is all new people, this is all new activity, this is a level we have never seen before."
Oddly, nobody at Portland City Haul seems to want to offer any comment on the subject, despite the fact that their policies in recent years have encouraged and enabled the development of these kinds of situations. The Park Blocks aren't exactly secluded, after all; they run through the middle of downtown in the southwest and northwest districts. There aren't shrubs nor bushes there, it's all grass and large trees.
Welcome to Portland! Wide open and anything goes, thanks to decades of benevolent Democrat rule!
Say what you will about the guy, he's certainly shaking things up. And one of the ways he's doing that is by virtue of the fact that unlike every other candidate in either party, he can't be bought. He's not only not chasing donors, he's turning them down:
A Washington Post article about the consternation of top Republicans took the boast at face value: “Donors feel powerless. Republican officials have little leverage. Candidates are skittish. Super-PAC operatives say attack ads against him could backfire.” Most voters will read of such big-donor consternation and think: What’s not to like? On the trail, Trump has of late been telling the story of a lobbyist who came to him offering the campaign $5 million, only to be sent away. Otherwise, Trump says, “he’ll be coming in two years, representing some foreign government.”
I turned down so much money I feel like a stupid person . . . five million dollars. I could have it right now, and I turned him down. In fact, how about—I’ll just take a vote—how about if I take all this money and promise you, swear to you, that I won’t do anything for these people. What about that? No?
Attacked during the early August Fox debate for giving lots of money to Democrats, he replied:
I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people before this. Before this, two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.
One of the other candidates asked, So what did you get?
“Well, I’ll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding, and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave.”
That, if nothing else, gets peoples' attention. He may be bombastic, but he says what he thinks and he can't be bought. No wonder donors feel powerless. Unlike Obama, for example, who depended upon people like Portland child predator Terry Bean to raise a lot of money, Trump doesn't need to go there.
EUGENE -- The sex crimes case against prominent gay activist Terry Bean of Portland and his ex-boyfriend will be dismissed Tuesday because the alleged victim refuses to testify.
Bean, 67, and former boyfriend Kiah Loy Lawson, 25, are accused of having sex with a 15-year-old boy at a Eugene hotel in 2013. They each are charged with two counts of third-degree sodomy, a felony, and third-degree sexual abuse, a misdemeanor.
It's worth noting that ol' Terry reportedly offered to pay the kid around a quarter of a million dollars to keep quiet. It's how Portland Democratics roll.
As increasingly seems to be the case, the stuff that was bad for you is now good for you, and vice-versa. It used to be that butter was bad but stuff like margarine and soft-spreads were good. Then it turned out that they're bad for you but butter's good. And we continue:
Red meats were bad for you, so you were supposed to eat only fish or chicken - or better yet, become a vegetarian. Now it turns out to be not exactly the case.
I quit paying attention to the whole "this is good, this is bad" trope long ago; my motto is:
New research published in the journal Nutrition found that eating meat can actually give your heart a boost — and the impact is the same as if you were to stop smoking, cut back on your sodium intake, or exercise more.
Yeah, the amino acids derived from meat consumption build proteins that increase blood vessel flexibility. Which reduces blood pressure, which reduces the likelihood of heart problems, stroke, and other issues. Golly, who knew.
We're omnivores. There's a reason for that. Some people think that it's terrible to kill Bambi, and others think that they can save the planet by not eating Clarabelle. Good luck with that; I'm doing kebabs on the grill.
