mackdaddy
mackdaddy's JournalI think the number one problem is Valid Voters who are not allowed to vote, or vote is never counted
This voter roll manipulation has been going on at least since 2000, and the Democrats will not do anything about it.
Every election hundreds of thousands of valid registered voters have been prevented from voting using these massive invalidation lists. This year it is the "Interstate CrossCheck" list. These are almost always ginned up by the Republicans, and target minority sounding surnames. If the voter actually complains when they go to vote they are given "provisional" ballots, but there does not seem to be any real standards in checking if these are valid, and seem to often just be chucked in to piles never opened or counted. And no one ever goes back to see why the voter was removed from the rolls, or if they are put back on them. How many provisional ballots are out there.
Making it hard for especially Democratic voters to vote it also a favorite Election manipulation technique of the Right. Extreme voter ID laws, shorter early voting periods, and fewer, harder to find precincts, or just moving the voting locations, and under-staffing/provisioning the locations to cause longer lines all discourage the "wrong people" from voting.
Also there never seems to be any kind of random spot check on vote counting machines. There is no way to check full electronic ones. But ones that are optic scanners of paper ballots, or like in Ohio where the machine prints out a paper roll record could be spot checked at least. Hand count the ballots run through the machine and check it against the machine total. I have never heard of this being done anywhere. But every gas pump or deli scale is checked for accuracy in this state (OH) on a regular basis. Not so much the voting machines.
Another simple check that does not seem to be done is to check the counts from each machine added up for each precinct, which is added up for each county, which then is added up for statewide totals. In 2004 and 2008 this totaling function was done on the same RNC computers in Tenn that ran the private email for the Whitehouse that lost 22million votes. And the guy who programmed it all died in a small plane crash.
There is also the simple crosscheck of the number of votes check off in the precinct registration desk vs the total votes shown on the machines. This was way off in Detroit this year and was used as a reason to not examine/recount the precinct!
It is supposedly possible for private citizens to ask to examine the actual ballots for a period of time after the election is finalized. This never seems to happen.
The other thing that always pisses me off is the actual major candidates (or at least democrats) will never do a recount/audit like what the Green party was auditing? Our candidate had standing so the recounts could not have been thrown out or stopped. How could this have possible hurt her, or us more than this result?
What if someone Hacked the playbook of one of the Superbowl teams?
And all of the insider gossip of preparing for the game, and released it through wiki-leaks. Maybe even some non-public discussion on some infraction by the players or coaches being handled internally was made public. And all of this could be tracked back to some say Russian Gambling oligarchs. Somehow I think the sports betting would be affected.
Would fans then "get it". Hey they did not "influence" the field, or officiating, or the players on the field themselves. But it would seem to me to be a bigger deal than a pound or two of ball inflation.
I have not seen any real data that the voting machines or tabulators were hacked. But the election itself, how people thought of the two candidates and their parties WAS affected. With all of the other issues, the election was close enough that this was a factor in the election outcome. Not the only factor, but not a minor one either.
I hope one day that who we elect for president will be more important that the Superbowl game. May the odds be ever in your favor!
Russian Roulette.
For much of the last few weeks, Trump's chance of winning were quite low at about 16%, or about 1 in six. Fairly low, but it would be like getting any single specific number on a die which has six sides.
Then with all the talk of Trump's ties to the Russians I though of another 1 in 6 “game”. Russian roulette is supposedly putting one bullet into one of the six chambers of a revolver type pistol, and spinning the cylinder, closing it and putting it to your temple and pulling the trigger. Kind of the ultimate win or loose, even if you have a 5 in 6 chance of living. I certainly would not do it.
This election is a bit like the whole country playing Russian Roulette. Except the last check of 538 now has Trump at over 34%. This is like putting TWO bullets in the six shooter for the round.
So anybody saying they are all the same, or not going to vote is literally playing Russian roulette with the country and ALL our futures.
Get out there and VOTE, and Get out the VOTE!
The Realities of Sea-Level Rise in Miami's Low-Income Communities
MIAMI—The water rose quickly. At noon on a brilliantly sunny day here, several blocks from the beach, a lake of salt water suddenly appeared in the street, filtered up from the porous limestone that resides underneath the whole county of Miami-Dade. On the corner of 79th Street and 10th Avenue in the Shorecrest neighborhood, people wandered outside their apartment buildings to stare at the rising water, sloshing through in rain boots to take out their trash.
“It’s been like this for a few days now, rising and then receding and then rising again,” says Jessica Benitez, a resident who moved to Miami from her native Venezuela about a month and a half ago. She says she didn’t know these apartments would flood before she moved into them, and she still doesn’t know how to predict when the water is going to rise. She got home from the store a few days ago to find her street completely flooded, and she tied plastic bags around her feet to get to her door. “[The city] has never told us anything. The water just sits there. It’s like there are no drains, and I don’t understand why,” she says.
She’s not the only one who feels that way. This is just one neighborhood of many in Miami-Dade dealing with the effects of Florida’s King Tide last week, the highest tide of the year. Coastal neighborhoods are hardest hit, but the flooding also reaches farther inland, to less affluent communities. It’s here where the consequences of climate change and sea-level rise could in fact be most grave, says Nicole Hernandez Hammer, a climate researcher with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Middle- and low-income households tend to be less resilient to shocks such as flooding, and they also run the highest risk of being forgotten in the rush to save the millions of dollars in real-estate investments on the waterfront.
“It’s getting worse. When you visit places that weren’t flooding 30 years ago, they’re flooding now,” says Hammer. Today, the Miami area experiences about six of these sunny-day flooding events per year. But the Union of Concerned Scientists projects that by 2045, they’ll be happening 380 times per year. “That’s two times per day in some areas,” she says.
http://www.citylab.com/weather/2016/10/sea-level-rise-is-affecting-miami-low-income-communities/505109/
It is interesting that these places did not flood when they were building them. But there is no real sea level rise, or it is only a few fractions on and inch....
Nano-spike catalysts convert carbon dioxide directly into ethanol
October 12, 2016
Nano-spike catalysts convert carbon dioxide directly into ethanol
ORNL's Yang Song (seated), Dale Hensley (standing left) and Adam Rondinone examine a carbon nanospike sample with a scanning electron microscope. Credit: ORNL
In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous.
"We discovered somewhat by accident that this material worked," said ORNL's Adam Rondinone, lead author of the team's study published in ChemistrySelect. "We were trying to study the first step of a proposed reaction when we realized that the catalyst was doing the entire reaction on its own."
The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.
"We're taking carbon dioxide, a waste product of combustion, and we're pushing that combustion reaction backwards with very high selectivity to a useful fuel," Rondinone said. "Ethanol was a surprise—it's extremely difficult to go straight from carbon dioxide to ethanol with a single catalyst."
http://m.phys.org/news/2016-10-nano-spike-catalysts-carbon-dioxide-ethanol.html
This could be a very big deal. First the CO2 levels are off the charts literally, and may kill us all in 20 to 100 years. Ethanol is very useful directly as a fuel, but there are also fuel cells (DEFC) that can convert ethanol directly into electricity. We had some of these in the Fuel cell college class I taught, and we even used some "Moonshine" (bottled locally) to run them. Making something useful (and valuable) is the best chance at making some sort of stab at reducing CO2 levels.
Early Voting Started today in Ohio! I have finished voting.
Straight ticket, Blue all the way.
Go Hillary!. Can't wait for the Rump supporters to choke on it:
"Madam President of the United States: Hillary Clinton"
Fuel cells help drive Ohio's innovation economy - Congress can keep it that way:
Fuel cells have long been viewed as a breakthrough technology for transportation and stationary power, offering unprecedented efficiency, ultralow emissions and the potential to use current fuels as well as renewable fuels.
Recognizing fuel cells' potential to expand manufacturing, the state of Ohio planted the seeds to allow a new dynamic industry to flourish in the state.
In the early 2000s, for instance, Ohio's Fuel Cell Program, under the broader Third Frontier program, offered millions of dollars for low-interest loans, research and development, and worker training. Another one of those seeds was the creation of the Elyria-based Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition, which has received grant funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and sparked further growth.
The fuel cell industry now includes a broad network of supply chain participants, several fuel cell integrators, and researchers developing breakthrough technologies spread throughout dozens of our cities.
This strong base and dedicated support from the state has prompted leading innovative companies, such as LG Fuel Cell Systems (in North Canton) and Johnson Matthey ex-Catacel (in Ravenna), to choose Ohio to invest and expand. (continued at link)
http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/09/fuel_cells_help_drive_ohios_in.html?utm_source=op+ed+2016&utm_campaign=funding+-+solid+oxide&utm_medium=email
63% more people voted as Republicans than Democrats in the Ohio Primary.
I am not sure what this means for the general election, but it does not instill confidence.
This article talks about how many people crossed over and voted on the cross party ballot which is allowed in Ohio. More registered Democrats requested and voted on Republican specific ballots than vice-versa. But the bigger issue I see is how many more Republicans came out to vote. This is a Kasich vs Trump state, but if anything like this turnout happens in November, we will get trounced in Ohio.
Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted released statewide data this week revealing how many Ohioans switched political party affiliation in the most recent election. County data was also released.
Because Ohio has open primary elections, voters do not register with a political party, but are instead affiliated with a political party by casting a ballot in a partisan primary election. Voters can select any party ballot they choose during primary elections. Voters also have the option of remaining unaffiliated by casting an “issues only” ballot.
snip
Statewide, a total of 1,197,725 voters cast a ballot in the Democratic primary election, 34,867 of whom were previously affiliated with the Republican Party, representing just 2.9 percent of all Democratic ballots cast. In contrast, 1,952,684 voters cast ballots in the Republican Primary, 115,762 of whom were previously affiliated with the Democratic Party, representing 5.9 percent of the total Republican votes cast.
http://www.athensmessenger.com/news/more-than-locals-switched-political-party-affiliation-in-primary/article_0cbe0d02-e83a-5617-91ae-e6aac1ead07f.html
Nuclear costs in uncharted territory
If you want a job for life, go into the nuclear industry – not building power plants, but taking them down and making them safe, along with highly-radioactive spent fuel and other hazardous waste involved.
The market for decommissioning nuclear sites is unbelievably large. Sixteen nations in Europe alone face a €253 billion waste bill, and the continent has only just begun to tackle the problem.
Among the many difficulties the industry faces is lack of trained people to do the highly-paid work. Anyone who enters the business is likely to be sought after for the rest of their career because the job of decommissioning Europe’s nuclear sites alone will take more than 100 years – even if no new nuclear power stations are ever built.
Add to the European nuclear legacy the dozens of old nuclear power stations in North America, Japan, Russia and central Asia, and nuclear decommissioning could already be classed as one of the biggest industries in the world, and it can only grow.
And this does not count the millions of dollars still being spent annually to contain the damage from the nuclear accidents in Chernobyl, Russia, in 1986, and Fukushima, Japan, in 2011.
http://climatenewsnetwork.net/nuclear-costs-in-uncharted-territory/
"In total, there are 200 reactors worldwide due to be shut down by 2025."
I wonder if these costs are included the the "RoEI" for these plants?
Naked And Armed: Newark (OH) Homeowner Thwarts Christmas Burglary
NEWARK, Ohio - A Newark man may have saved Christmas and a whole lot more for his family Thursday morning.
The giant piles of gifts, nearly overwhelming the Klein Christmas tree, make it obvious, this isn't a small family.
“We have six children and two grandchildren, so lots of kids, lots of presents,” Jason Klein said.
Those presents may have inspired a crime. And the thought of all those kids thwarted it.
Klein said he was lying in bed when a noise jolted him away just before 4 a.m.
“ just saw somebody quickly dart that way,” Klein said. “The first thing I thought about was protecting my family.”
Klein acted without thinking. He grabbed the gun he keeps above his bed with his heart pounding and opened up his sliding door.
“When I first got his attention, he came at me, came at the door and said ‘you ain’t gonna shoot me’ and that's when I said ‘I will shoot you’ and I put the sight right on his head,” Klein said.
Klein thinks the man was trying to roll the fire pit to the window to boost himself up to the window.
.....
“I was standing there wearing nothing but my .40 caliber,” Klein said.
Klein didn't take the time to put on clothes before jumping into action........
Licking County Sheriff's deputies arrested the man. He is currently in jail.
http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2015/12/24/newark-ohio-naked-and-armed-newark-homeowner-thwarts-christmas-burglary.html
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