Oh, since I wrote this reply for /., here’s my defense of wind power:

An interesting analysis, and while I agree w/ that nuclear power would be far preferable to coal, (and without discussing further viability issues), I would just like to point out that wind power in the US should not be ruled out offhand. From the abstract of the 1993 Wind Energy Potential in the United States study by D.L. Elliott and M.N. Schwartz (which supercedes the 1991 study cited):

Good wind areas, which cover 6% of the contiguous U.S. land area, have the potential to supply more than one and a half times the current electricity consumption of the United States. Technology under development today will be capable of producing electricity economically from good wind sites in many regions of the country.

So yes, in theory, wind power could meet our power needs (but not w/o being coupled with advanced battery technologies.

Even cost per kWh, Wind does ok. From a March 2004 briefing published by the World Nuclear Association on The Economics of Nuclear Power, shows a present day cost of about 3.7c/kWh. A recent AWEA analysis of the The Economics of Wind Energy [PDF] places the cost/kWh for a 51MW wind farm at between 2.6-4.8c/kWh depending on wind speed. Even if we account for backup power and double the cost, we’re not doing too badly either way.

Coal is at about 3.3c/kWh, but when calculating in the external costs “to put plausible financial figures against damage resulting from different forms of electricity production for the entire EU” as done in the decade long EC ExternE studies. Total cost [after adding the additional external costs] of both nuclear (+0.4 euro cents/kWh) and wind (+0.1-0.2 ec/kWh) end up beating the snot over coal (+4.1-7.3 ec/kWh).

Regardless, I agree with Lovelock. We really need to dump fossil fuels now.

BTW, as far as batteries go, Argonne Labs has been developing some advanced energy storage techniques includeing using high temperature superconductors for both magnetic as well as magnetic bearing flywheel storage (20kWh containment w/ 99% conversion efficiency and 0.1%/day idle loss); fuel cells / other electro-chemical storage would be options as well.

Over the coming weeks we’ll be doing an analysis of lightweight personal content management systems at work as well.

• Movable Type vs. ExpressionEngine
• Blog Software Breakdown – comprehensive breakdown of blogware (chose wordpress for personal use, why)
• CMS Matrix: Drupal v Plone v Tiki v WebGUI

One of the difficulties is trying to bridge the blogging and the larger collaboration space. (I think in the end, the compromise might be to use MT or EE for blogs/some CM, Drupal for community sites, and try to integrate a wiki in. TikiWiki unfortunately is just too unstable for use — hmm, TikiPro looks promising)

• DxO Optics Pro Review – new software that corrects lens-based blur, distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting via optics profile
• How Widescreen Won – go go original format!
• Simon’s been playing around w/ purple links
  • plinks – a purple numbers variant
  • Purple Number Signs – Tim Bray discovering purple numbers (shows how little crossover there is between hypertext theory/web praactice?)
  • Big Day for Purple Numbers – Purple Number History
  • mnot: Ubiquitious Fragment Identifiers
  • XPointerLib – a project providing XPointer support for Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 7, and Phoenix 0.4. This code was motivated by the Annotea Project‘s use of XPointers to specify annotation locations. It originally lived inside of Annozilla, a Mozilla-based annotations client. Today it has evolved into a standalone XPCOM Service implemented in JavaScript.
  • Ahoy – this recent use of javascript-based linking reminded me of a project started by Brian Donovan two years ago to allow text selection linking via Mozilla’s window.getSelection() Method and the W3C DOM Range API (extended article describing behavior)
  • Twine Overview – the code hasn’t moved while I’ve been clearing other things off my plate, but there are a set of references at the bottom that are relevant
• Mickey Mouse Muthafuckaas – new music video made from Google Image search

6/1	Yo La Tengo w/ Antietam	Henry Fonda	$15
6/4	Shins	Wiltern	$19
6/4	Tortoise + Autolux/Beans	Henry Fonda	$18.50
6/8, 8PM	The Stills & See Ray	Henry Fonda	$17.50
6/9, 8PM	The Fire Theft	Troubadour	$15
6/9	Franz Ferdinand	Wiltern	$18.50
6/10, 8PM	Mission of Burma + Kinski	Henry Fonda	$22
6/11, 7:30	The Thermals and Things Explode, Low Skies	Knitting Factory	$10
6/17, 8PM	Piebald, The Jealous Sound	Troubadour	$10
6/26, 8PM	Mike Doughty’s Band	Troubadour	$15
6/26	Decemberists	El Rey	$15

Gen. Anthony Zinni, USMC (Ret.) Remarks at CDI Board of Directors Dinner, May 12, 2004 -keenly insightful commentary on Iraq and other issues:

Let me give you an example the War on Terrorism. I think we do a masterful job at the tactical level. We attack al Qaeda on the ground. We break down the finances. We break down the cells. We get law enforcement cooperation around the world doing wonderful damage to the organization. Yet, as an ideology and a movement, it has grown.

If I were to analyze, from a strategic point of view, al Qaeda – and, Im not saying this is the right analogy, but its just an example – the strategic center of gravity for al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden is a pool of angry, young men willing to die. What causes angry young men willing to die?

They’re willing to die because theres a political, economic or social reason. Some sense of disenfranchisement. Some sense of oppression that makes them angry, fires them up, and makes them tempted to come to al Qaeda. Now, that isn’t enough to get them to blow themselves up and to do horrific acts. You need a rationale. You need something that justifies what they do.

At the operational level, the center of gravity is the aberrant form of Islam that they’re able to use on them to provide the sense of reward, and rationale and justification for what the do. And then the set of tactics that work so well against us, because it is asymmetric.

If you think about it on those three levels, I have to go after this War on Terrorism, which is even a bad name. I have to go after this movement of extremism at three levels. How do I cut that flow of angry young men? How do I make sure that aberrant form of Islam is rejected? Or encourage others to, and I’ve got some thoughts on all this, but I wont go into it here. And do the things that we do well at the tactical level. But, you don’t have that kind of strategic thinking.

Russ Feingold was the lone vote against the Patriot Act two years ago. He’s currently soliciting funds, apparently to fend off attacks on this and the rest of his voting record. Now, I don’t live in Wisconsin, and his Patriot Act vote and campaign finance reform bill are all I knew about him, but after doing some reading, he seems like a real stand-up guy. So yeah, I contributed some bucks. Consider doing the same if you think he’s done right.

• Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Council for a Livable World Candidate Fund
  

  Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold is a profile in courage who defied the political consensus during the Bush Administration’s rush to war. Feingold was the only United States Senator to vote against the USA Patriot Act after September 11 because he felt that many of the provisions threatened our constitutional civil liberties. Feingold was one of only 23 Senators to vote against authorizing the President to attack Iraq. When the Senate approved a large increase in the military budget in 2002 by a vote of 93 – 1, he was the lone holdout. He was the sole Senator willing to launch a lawsuit to block President Bush’s withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

• Russ Feingold: Mr. Good Government
  

  Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog, rates Feingold higher than all other current Democratic senators over a career, except for one – the senior senator from Wisconsin, Herb Kohl.

• ACLU Score Card
• Public Citizen Score Card (hey, they use the same software, Capwiz)
• More from his site:
  • Five Reasons to Vote Russ
  • Awards and Recognition

Interesting. Someone created a LiveJournal Syndicated Account for my site 2 weeks ago: random($foo) LJ account.

Simon just put up an article on Rounded Corners with CSS and JavaScript that’s very similar to a round corner technique I was playing around with last summer.

List of rounded corner techniques: How do I get rounded corners on my box/DIV using CSS and no tables?.

I hit a site and got forwarded to George Bush’s re-election site. I actually had to do a check to make sure though. There’s more mentions of John Kerry on the page than of Bush. But then again, I can’t think of any reasons to vote for Bush either.

• Kairosnews – A weblog discussing rhetoric, technology & pedagogy
  • My Brilliant Failure: Wikis In Classrooms, 5/21/2004
  • Drupal integration w/other tools, 10/10/2003
  • Drupal Collaborative Book vs Wiki, 10/1/2003
• uglyredhot: It’s time to start using a wiki for my personal knowledge management, and ensuing discussion
• Drupal doesn’t have wiki functionality