PBS on when I came home...documentary of Andrew Jackson...who seems to be a good example of the American paradoxical behavior...as described in the closing narration quoting his first biographer...have to see if I can find that...then documentary on Jackie Gleason...oh...Lucy too...so it's about more than one comedian...
But to tilt at the Windmills...oh, it seems no matter what we do with technology we screw up....the wind driven electric generator like in Tehachapi Pass...clean power!...have a dark side...and I saw it headlined in the Modesto Bee but the paper sold out before I got to it...lemesee if it's on line...brb...cant find it...but another will be on the web...just search tehachapi windmill generators hawks...brb...from search alameda wind turbines hawks...
quote
With 5,000 windmills in a 50-square-mile area, the Altamont Pass is the world's largest wind farm, producing enough electricity to power 200,000 households annually. But it is also the worst in the country for slaughtering birds. Altamont Pass is a prime hunting ground for golden eagles and other raptors, and scientists estimate conservatively that the turbines kill some 4, 700 birds every year. Unable to see the whirling blades, the birds fly into the turbines and get chopped up -- nearly a third of them golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, American kestrels, burrowing owls and other raptors, according to a new study released by the California Energy Commission. About 70 golden eagles a year die.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/12/19/MNG14AEB7U1.DTLunquote
sorrow increaseth
Kenya is another democracy on the brink...
There was a story the other day about wave generators out in the ocean offshore of San Francisco...lemego see...brb...
quote
The dream of generating electricity from the ocean's waves will take a major step forward today when Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announces its support for plans to build the nation's first commercial wave power plant off the coast of Northern California, the latest step in the state's efforts to combat global warming. The plant will consist of eight buoys bobbing in the water 2 1/2 miles offshore, each buoy generating electricity as it rises and falls with the waves. If all goes as planned, the "wave park" will begin operating in 2012.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/12/18/MNEKU05V9.DTL&type=printableunquote
Have to save that for a post on my Ocean Cities!!...
Telling tale of the Andy Griffith show now...it's a lot like Mayberry around here!
Now for that Jackson bit...
quote
The film concludes with the words of Jackson’s first biographer, James Parton: “Andrew Jackson was a patriot, and a traitor. He was the greatest of generals, and wholly ignorant of the art of war. He was the most candid of men, and capable of the profoundest dissimulation. He was a democratic autocrat, an urbane savage, an atrocious saint.”
unquote
Oh...and the Jackson bio had a bit about the early pamphleteers who took advantage of the new steam driven printing presses to send through the mail anti slavery flyers to cities in the South...Jackson gave encouragement to the Post Office to destroy them as "incinderary materials"....too there was a bit about the Cherokee and the Trail of Tears...and bit about the Corporations and the Banks...PBS with these shows seems to be mining 19 Century America for things relevant to todays dilemmas...as I have done here in the Blog...if nothing else it was the golden age of writing as that was really the only media then...so there's lots of neat things to quote!
Jackson is kinda like the blesseddamned windturbines!!
DavidDavid
Tree in the Door
