It is being reported that the White House is "granting" a half million dollars to four states to "jump-start" off-shore intermittent energy.
Even as a money-laundering exercise ala Solyndra it's not even worth a footnote in the annals of intermittent energy.
It's embarrassing that this story was as long as it was in Scientific American, and one of the reasons I quit subscribing to this "journal" years ago.
By now, after decades of advocacy, an Agore PowerPoint presentation from 1994, and a gazillion dollars wasted trying to establish Cape Wind, we should be a lot farther along than just awarding $600,000 to a dozen universities to do some more research on how to jump-start wind energy.
If anything, President Obama should have just granted a billion dollars or so to GE to "just do it."
In North Dakota, $600,000 won't even get you a half-mile of pipeline on the reservation.
$600,000 will most likely go to six professors, to supplement their university/college salaries, book royalties, speaking fees, and other revenue sources.
Note: I often misread articles. It's possible I'm misreading "$600,000." That's such a small number in the big scheme of things, I must be missing something. Maybe it was the carrot that got six professors to show up at the White House to fill an otherwise empty room.
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Random Thought
I don't have a bucket list. I always wondered why. It just dawned on me. Bucket lists are too constraining.
Bucket lists may be good while one is still working and planning for retirement but once one is truly retired, establishing a bucket list moves the individual out of retirement and back into a new "job."
Generally speaking my days are so busy I do not look forward to any of them. If I thought about all the things I had to do or am scheduled to do on any given day (mostly involving the granddaughters' sports and taking care of the 15-month-old), I would become depressed. So, I wake up each day, with no plans farther out than two hours. I would like to move that to one hour but when one's principle mode of transportation is a bicycle, one has to plan ahead two hours.
For example, tonight we are all going to a Texas Rangers - Detroit Tigers baseball game. The Rangers can clinch their division with a win and a Houston Astros loss. I have no desire to go and don't even want to think about going. But come 5:00 p.m. I will be the happiest guy in the world taking my two granddaughters and their friends to the stadium. I already have handouts on MLB to give them and then a short quiz.
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