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dirtguy's comments:
on The Role of Unions
Here are a few of my generalizations to add to the mix.
All people tend to be self-absorbed and short-sighted, Union or Management.
Power differences between these groups tend to translate into abuses over time.
If a specific Union is negotiating with an employer that is not up to holding their own, there will just as likely be abuses as when the power differential is in the other direction.
This is a problem that will always be a moving target.
Our goal should be to strive for power parity in each specific negotiation. Remember, even in a court of law, with a lawyer for each side, fairness is still up for grabs if the lawyers are not equally skilled.
We shouldn't ask; are Unions getting too powerful? Or even; are teachers Unions, or Public Employee Unions too powerful? But, rather; is there parity in this or that negotiation, and, is the outcome reasonable/sustainable?
And where some teachers, taxpayers, or anyone else gets stretched too thin, we need to sort it out and regroup on a case by case basis.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Unions
Are we lost in our generalizations yet?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on Wes Moore
Excellent show!
We seem to be talking around the old questions of 'free will' and 'determinism'.
I think that both are factors that interact and can be influenced by us.
Shortsightedness is the obvious deterministic factor for young people.
People, especially kids, need to hear and see that they have productive choices, what those choices are, and how to make them a reality. Most need to hear and see some positive version of these choices on an ongoing basis to counteract the deterministic component of their built in shortsightedness. Farsighted parents/mentors are absolutely crucial through out our formative years, and beyond.
Doability is another deterministic factor that can have as much to do with deficiencies in social and economic options as individual ability and imagination.
Kids make choices all the time. One always looks a little better than another. The role of adults if to make the choices of young people less limited by their shortsightedness as well as less limited in realistic options.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Role of Protesting
People are still self-interested and short sighted in degrees. Many people can do the same things and have a whole range on both the 'selfishness' spectrum, and the short-sightedness spectrum.
Protesting, Blogging, Soldiering, Voting, you can't generalize any of them. People do them for all manner of reasons, enlightened and selfish.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
As someone who has done a lot of burning of combustibles and also separated the char from different wood mixs to burn the two separately, I can attest to how difficult a challenge it is to burn the non charcoal part of the mix cleanly, without a lot of serious energy input, i.e., fans, afterburners etc.. The charcoal part is always the easiest to burn.
So, what is your 'cooking', 'afterburning', and 'compressing' energy input to get your 'managable' end fuel? And how did you manage to burn cleanly the stuff you removed?
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
Sorry about these double posts....
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
So why not just fertilize our forests? The short answer is, we don't get annual feedback as we do with annual food crop producing land that we can manipulate and amend with equipment. By the time we have figured out we have a problem with most forest land, the managers haven't a clue as to whether the problem has anything to do with cropping 40+ years ago or not. Fertility management in forests, if it ever becomes more than an oxymoron, will require much more research. It will likely always be limited in mountainous timberland where soil sites are variable and not easily mapped or amended.
In the mean time the best we can hope to do is leave as many nutrients as close to where they came from as possible. This was what was behind the thinking of the forest service in the '70s when they at one point even advocated a practice of spreading the limbs around after a logging operation. This in contrast to a recent Helicopter operation in my 'backyard' where they accumulated the tops and limbs of more than 1000 acres of thinned timber on a 1 acre landing site. The heat of the slash fire in some places melted rock, soil, and ash. Mostly though, it just relocated a lot of nutrients.
Will this slash burn site be more productive than the land that was logged? That depends on whether the bank account of the different sites where the trees came from were drawn down to the point where there was a "limiting nutrient". Odds are the landing site will have quite a reserve of the non-volatile and soluble nutrients, but since those can also be limiting, the forester that looks at this site 50 years from now, likely wont have a clue as to what happened, and probably wont even see an outward difference. The difference in this case is that the slash burn sight could probably remain productive - even with cropping - for many, many generations with just the additions of occasional Potassium (soluble), Sulphur (volatile), Nitrogen (volatile), and maybe Phosphorus, (reactionary with Iron and aluminum). All the other 10 or so mineral nutrients would be there in abundance.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
We may be able, as you hope, to figure out a way to use slash in a way that is a win:win. Lots of us who live out in the woods lay awake nights thinking about it. The first requirement is to keep the ash in place or return it after combustion.
Nothing is wasted in nature....., but hot forest fires on steep ground followed by heavy rains can be devastating as far as nutrient loss and future productivity on specific sites. Slash and slash burning or even forest fires do not generally have long term negative impacts, especially if the current level of nutrients [won from the parent silicates over countless generations of plant growth and soil organism activity) is not diminished by some kind of extraction or removal from the site or root zones. It really is like a bank account. Some sites can tolerate more withdrawals from that account than others. Cropping low lands, where nutrients tend to accumulate from highlands, has proved the principle. Even soil with a huge reserve, have a limit when you annually remove nutrients. We are now at the point on some formerly fertile low lands where we supply virtually all the extracted nutrients on an annual basis, in proportion to the ratios that are used by the species that we intend to grow. Hydroponics grew in conjunction with our need to keep growing crops on land increasingly drained of their nutrient bank account
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
We may be able, as you hope, to figure out a way to use slash in a way that is a win:win. Lots of us who live out in the woods lay awake nights thinking about it. The first requirement is to keep the ash in place or return it after combustion.
Nothing is wasted in nature....., but hot forest fires on steep ground followed by heavy rains can be devastating as far as nutrient loss and future productivity on specific sites. Slash and slash burning or even forest fires do not generally have long term negative impacts, especially if the current level of nutrients [won from the parent silicates over countless generations of plant growth and soil organism activity) is not diminished by some kind of extraction or removal from the site or root zones. It really is like a bank account. Some sites can tolerate more withdrawals from that account than others. Cropping low lands, where nutrients tend to accumulate from highlands, has proved the principle. Even soil with a huge reserve, have a limit when you annually remove nutrients. We are now at the point on some formerly fertile lands where we supply virtually all the extracted nutrients on an annual basis, in proportion to the ratios that are used by the species that we intend to grow. Hydroponics grew in conjunction with our need to keep growing crops on land increasingly drained of their nutrient bank account.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
I think I can sustain about 40 watts for about 15 minutes. lol
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
"The research also shows that to take increasing levels of biomass from forestry operations hurts the long term productivity of forest soils."
Very important point.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
All higher plants use all of the 15 or so essential plant nutrients, albiet in different ratios. Many are also capable if not inclined to take up certain elements that are not considered nutrients, i.e, lead, mercury, gold, silica etc..
All organic material, when burned creates ash. Ash is most variable between species, but even from the same species there is genetic variation. Add to this, variations in what is available in the root zone of an individual plant, and you can have significant variation. Thus, the fused ash of Douglas fir needles will tend to be a warm light brown, while the fused ash from Grand fir needles will tend to be a much darker chocolate brown. Manganese and Iron are the main colorants in both cases with variations. Douglas fir rarely exceeds 1% of either. Grand fir is almost always over 2%, (on my forested 10 acre plot), with and average closer to 4%, and some samples as much as 10%. [You might be at seriously risk for neurological consequences if you breathed to much Grand fir needle ash.]
Coal comes from plants, and contains the ash from those plants. There is every reason to suspect that if you sampled coal from different locations, even within the same coal deposit you would get a wide variation in compositions. Still, the variation may be less, than if we burned grass straw one month - with its' high silica ash - and then burned mixed conifer slash the next.
Bottom line: your feed stream needs some reasonable consistency in ash chemistry so you don't 'gum up' the boilers..., and the emmision controlers can work as designed. Lots of testing has to occur. It become a little more doable when the fuel source is concentrated as it is in coal. I suspect growing 'giant reed' is an attempt to solve a number of these problems.
posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
Unfortunately how green it is depends on lots of factors.
The most green would be a bio-fuel that was close, consistant in its' cemistry/emmissions, high in BTUs, minimal havesting and processing energy.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
Good you brought this up. Unfortunately, as you burn it you lose your future fuel source.
But as you say, we really could improve the range ecosystem if we just let nature run its' course and let it burn.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on The Biomass Question
Please elaborate on your last paragraph. I think I agree that it would be to the good if we continued to learn better and better ways to clean up coal emissions. Seems like a wasted opportunity?
What was the "fix" that was in with PGE?
Thanks.
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Sex Education for College Students
Sex has so many facets that it is easy to focused on one, or a few, and neglect the others. I think that most young people still hear from the most experienced elders in each generation the message: "to proceed with caution and with as much information and good will as you can muster".
I think because Sex is such a complex mix of possibilities and dangers the average parent feels inadequate to articulate balanced and comprehensive advise. Most avoid the subject with their children. Some want the school to do it. Others choose to let the street and media fill the void. Still others look to their churches for help.
I think it is important to remember in all this, that,......, the Urge to Merge is not just physical!!! We call it 'making love' as opposed to 'sex' when people are trying to also connect in non-physical ways as well.
If we ignore the non-physical need to connect we will be sick at heart, or in our spirit. Just as, if we ignore the physical need we will have a sick animal. The best we may be able to do is to balance or combine the two. [I think there is a Carl Jung quote to that effect.]
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Mubarak Stepping Down
What I thought Mubarak should have said to the different Egyptian factions on his way out was: Prove my worst fears wrong and reconcile the differences among you peacefully. [Democracy will not get you peace if you do not resolve to make room for the diversity among you. Majority rule can be the worst kind of rule if you do not have minority rights.]
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
Damned if we do -- damned if we don't?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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on Creating Sustainable Jobs
Specialization kicked into high gear as tribal units ran out of room to expand and faced the necessity of becoming bigger and more competitive than the competition. Alienation is such a ubiquitous part of modern specialized existence that we hardly notice the things in society that have evolved to keep the masses working and paying taxes. Entertainment, and consumer goods are the most tangible of the enticements for workers to carry on. But behind this there is also a lot of cheer leading around growth, getting ahead, the American dream, investing in the stock market, making a killing etc.. Growth may not be inevitable or sustainable. But if workers don't have the prospect of improving their lot, might they just not show up for work? Or more likely reduce their productivity to the point that the whole economy succumbs to a downward spiral?
posted 2 years, 3 months ago
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