Let there be lights
My power came on yesterday afternoon. By the time I got back home, it was toasty warm and everything was working again. It was like watching something that had been dead come back to glowing life.
I need to chase away the memory of the transformation of my warm, cozy place into a cold and offputting darkness. And so I find that, at least for now, my usual frugality about having too many lights on has been jettisoned in favor of lights, lights and more lights. I love having them on, especially in the evening. And the pleasure of the hot shower is immense. Not to mention being able to microwave a cup of tea.
I cranked the heat way up for a while at the beginning and basked in the unaccustomed pleasure. I don’t want to be cold, not even for a moment, not even a little bit. I’m sure this will pass and I’ll go back to the usual, but for now it seems to be the best way to undo the last four days of cold and wandering.
Makes me think of the domestic scenes by the Dutch painters, full of light and wood fires. Hope you didn’t have too many eco-friendly CF bulbs. Their less than cheery glow will put a damper on the warmest fireside!
in indonesia, they have black outs every night to save energy! (they have suggested the same for the US)… so periods of blackouts might become the world custom… we certainly are not making more capcity, nor are we maintaining the lines we have… (socialist programs drain capital from infrastructure).
so maybe such blackouts will become a regular thing…
if you read the link to the article on the ANC i posted, you would find that it happens as part of the decline. [in the example below, its because the state starts appointing people equally, rather than use merit. the new system was socialist communist, like ours is bcoming. and so the ways choices are made differs, and leads to the end result. you cant ahve equality of outcome if you dont throw merit out the window! and snice they dont belive that merit is real, they will throw it out in favor of social manipulation which to them seems the same as merit. cargo cult mentality]
A Simple Example Of Communal Decline
A Letter From South Africa by Jim Peron (September 1998)
Die, the Beloved Country
When a country begins sliding into oblivion it really is the little things that get to you. You
wake up in the morning and turn to see what time it is. The clock is off. The electricity is off
again. Sometimes for a few minutes, sometimes for a few hours, but it seems to happen more
regularly than before.
You pick up the phone at work to make a call. Nothing. Your neighborhood is without
telephone service again. You breathe a sigh of relief–at least if all the phones are out, they’ll
do something relatively soon to fix it. If it’s just your own line, it can take days before they’ll
do anything.
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/die.htm
[i dont know about the website, i never looked, someone sent me the document, which is very interesting in its story]
i know this one was a winter storm… but no one is actually noticing that the times to repair are longer, and the number of losses are more. the grid is failing slowly.
http://www.energetics.com/gridworks/grid.html
America operates about 157,000 miles of high voltage (>230kV) electric transmission lines. While electricity demand increased by about 25% since 1990, construction of transmission facilities decreased about 30%. In fact, annual investment in new transmission facilities has declined over the last 25 years. The result is grid congestion, which can mean higher electricity costs because customers cannot get access to lower-cost electricity supplies, and because of higher line losses. Transmission and distribution losses are related to how heavily the system is loaded. U.S.-wide transmission and distribution losses were about 5% in 1970, and grew to 9.5% in 2001, due to heavier utilization and more frequent congestion. Congested transmission paths, or “bottlenecks,” now affect many parts of the grid across the country. In addition, it is estimated that power outages and power quality disturbances cost the economy from $25 to $180 billion annually. These costs could soar if outages or disturbances become more frequent or longer in duration. There are also operational problems in maintaining voltage levels.
perhaps the left might let us not waste the energy we are generating… and some how we are to integrate 144,000 windmills covering .5% of the surface area of the US into this (rather than less than 400 nuclear power plants to double our capacity)
America’s electric transmission problems are also affected by the new structure of the increasingly competitive bulk power market. Based on a sample of the nation’s transmission grid, the number of transactions have been increasing substantially recently. For example, annual transactions on the Tennessee Valley Authority’s transmission system numbered less than 20,000 in 1996. They exceed 250,000 today, a volume the system was not originally designed to handle. Actions by transmission operators to curtail transactions for economic reasons and to maintain reliability (according to procedures developed by the North American Electric Reliability Council) grew from about 300 in 1998 to over 1,000 in 2000.
Additionally, significant impediments interfere with solving the country’s electric transmission problems. These include: opposition and litigation against the construction of new facilities, uncertainty about cost recovery for investors, confusion over whose responsibility it is to build, and jurisdiction and government agency overlap for siting and permitting. Competing land uses, especially in urban areas, leads to opposition and litigation against new construction facilities.
the opportunity of a power outage for days, is always a opportunity to point out that our infrastructure has rotted as the money was shifted to social programs!!!
if you notice dates as you read over and over, its like from 1970 they were shifting infrastructure dollars to socialist communist programs… then taxing to increase those programs… and letting the rest rot for 40s years with minimal maintenance. bridges that could ahve stood for 1000 years are now almost gone in this time.
we are closer to the decline than we realize…
Summary
North America’s world-class electric system is facing several serious challenges. Major questions exist about its ability to continue providing citizens and businesses with relatively clean, reliable, and affordable energy services. The recent downturn in the economy masks areas of grid congestion in numerous locations across America. These bottlenecks could interfere with regional economic development. The “information economy” requires a reliable, secure, and affordable electric system to grow and prosper. Unless substantial amounts of capital are invested over the next several decades in new generation, transmission, and distribution facilities, service quality will degrade and costs will go up. These investments will involve new technologies that improve the existing electric system and possibly advanced technologies that could revolutionize the electric grid.
neoneocon,
Enjoy it! It’s one of life’s little pleasures.
I’ve spent many more days/weeks than I ever care to remember without power as I grew up in hurricane alley.
Nothing is more miserable than no air conditioning in the South in the middle of summer during a power outage after Momma Nature has decided to throw a temper tantrum!
I definitely know the feeling of relief in seeing the power come back on and the joys of a hot shower! Even if it were in the middle of the night there was a general feeling of intense relief that it was finally over.
Of course, on the flip side, you didn’t have to worry about everything in your fridge spoiling – or being around people taking a hiatus from regular bathing in hot weather…lol…so enjoy – you have it coming to you.
Doing without electricity is a small price to pay when you are saving the planet from global warming. (tongue removed from cheek)
here is some advice from the same site explaining the decline… i finally looked at the site. a lot of interesting things to note it.
enjoy!!!
The General Impact Of The Decline Of A Civilization
by Philip Atkinson
When a civilization declines it goes into reverse with all the wealth, power and wisdom realised by its rise being discarded at an ever increasing rate until dissolution. The people will discover that:
1. The quality of goods and services falls as the cost increases; and this corruption extends into every aspect of their existence, from the faltering quality of bread to the growing inconstancy of love.
2. The essential requirements of:
i. Peace will be disturbed by increasing interruptions of:
– Noise.
– Indecency (see f-word and loss of shame)
– Violence from within and from without the community.
ii. Order will be increasingly eroded.
Tyranny and injustice will reign as delusion triumphs and the community dissolves into impotence. But this will never be generally recognized because the source of the disease is the waning of citizens’ comprehension. A decay made palpable by the disappearance of plain speaking.
Such a society is no longer engaged in creating a human heaven on earth, but is earnestly constructing the very opposite where:
i. The worst people get rewarded while the best get penalized.
ii. The education system can only spread delusion.
iii. The bureaucracy becomes a liability instead of an asset.
iv. The courts must promote injustice.
However this will always be denied because truth will be vanquished by lies.
( see a letter from South Africa for a simple example of this process).
How To Live In A Declining Civilization
by Philip Atkinson
Nothing can be done to halt the decline of a civilization; it is an irreversible and inevitable process that occurs with every civilization. Concerned citizens must learn to live in a hell called heaven without losing hope. They must resist futile attempts such as trying to:
– Arrest the decline in the community by making changes, because the community will only accept changes for the worse.
– Publicly promote the truth as this can only earn official denial and private persecution.
– Control events by gaining a position of influence, for only the worst are promoted.
Only things to do
The only things a sensible citizen can do to resist social decay is:
1. Be polite
2. Think clearly by using plain words at all times.
3. Learn the new science of Philosophy to understand what is happening to humanity, as well as explain this to others.
It is also the duty of all citizens:
Before the appearance of the forest of signs announcing the eruption of tyranny, to silently endure the increasing excesses of our senile community to avoid accelerating our demise.
After the explosion of signs, to resist the tyranny demanded by his society which is trying to rob and enslave him; inflicted by barbarians who are trying to rob and kill him.
To escape poverty, slavery and sudden death, citizens should evade both these tyrannies the best way they can.
And for me there are two other tasks:
1. To attempt to persuade citizens of their community’s demise by spreading the word.
2. To attempt to save the tangible fruits of civilization already in existence, which are Books which have already survived one Dark Age by such authors as Livy, Plutarch, and Tacitus as well as those of our own civilization such as David Hume, Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke; and great works of art.
Life is for living, and despite the ever-present growing shadow of decline, citizens should enjoy those fruits of civilization that are still available, rather than lament those that are lost. Always remember that, during decline, time makes everything worse; so it could be that our present will be regarded by the future as a golden age, when poverty, chaos, death and destruction were not commonplace.
Consolation–Justice Is Done
It is difficult to endure the constant stream of lies and glaring injustice without a desire to use violence to rectify both, but the minority of unselfish citizens should try to console themselves with the notion that regardless of whether a community is waxing or waning, justice is done: when the multitude is unselfish (virtuous) they win increasing wealth and order, but when the multitude is selfish (sinful) they win increasing poverty and chaos; which is the message of religion: virtue wins heaven while sin wins hell.
I don’t want to be cold, not even for a moment, not even a little bit. I’m sure this will pass and I’ll go back to the usual, but for now it seems to be the best way to undo the last four days of cold and wandering.
Wierd… When I read this, this thought came unbidden:
“If Bernie Madoff took the life savings of any Holocaust Suvivors–and I’ll bet he did based on the particulars of this case–he should be thrown in a dark box in the ground and the key should be thrown in after him.”
I’m sure this will pass and I’ll go back to the usual, but for now it seems to be the best way to undo the last four days of cold and wandering.
Welcome back from the wilderness, dear Neo.
Funny, been unusually warm down here in Fla. Even drove around today with my a/c on in my truck. But we pay for the privilege come August!
Later
artfldgr,
Good to have you back. I missed your posts. I can’t read ALL of them, but I try.
I am becoming very gloomy about our economic prospects going forward. Not because of the recession, because all recessions end and they are typically the end of some kind of excess or bubble, and they sow the seeds for recovery.
But this recovery is going to be a tepid, sub par one. Our in-house economist says that his econometric model, which factors in the hard version of the cap and trade system (carbon tax), shows that the carbon tax regime will shave 1 to 3 percentage points off of GDP. We typically, on average, come our of recessions with GDP growth of 3 to 5 percent. That means this recovery will be a weak 1 to 3 percent GDP, which is not enough to absorb the job losses from this recession, which started roughly in December ’07 or January of this year, depending on who you talk to.
I’m a tad depressed thinking of the widespread and monstrous stupidity that is entrenching bad policy and likely foreign policy crises. I am a tad depressed because trying to talk intelligently to other people about this only gets you fobbed off or shouted down.
I remember the 1970’s as not a very good time. If you were a Younger Boomer (I turned 18 in 1973) you were graduating into a hard recession, when jobs were very difficult to find (I went in the Army because I could not afford college and didn’t know what I wanted to do anyway). Later in the Seventies, we were yo-yo ing between high inflation and high unemployment. By then I was a college student and even finding a part time job was not easy. I see us heading into another Carter-like period. And it could very well be worse.
But, I do take comfort in the simple things. I got my power back Saturday night and the wife and I got home by 5:30, put the heat up, and then went out to eat. We were staying at her mother’s house, because it’s a big house and she had light and heat. I’m glad of that because I am recovering from right knee arthroscopic surgery (the fourth on that knee – another meniscus tear) that I had last Wednesday before the storm. It was good to have light and heat at the in-laws + their friendly dog. There are places in this state that are still without power and it may be some time before they get it back. I guess the Peterborough, Rindge, and Jaffrey areas are a problem. It’s very rural there and there are power lines deep in the woods in some places.
So, neo, good to hear that you finally have your power back.
I lived in Africa for awhile and was lucky enough to be in a town big enough to have electricity but even when we had it the “current”, as they called it, only lasted part of the day. Usually night time hours – from around 6 pm to about 8 or 10 am. (And less than that as my time went on and general conditions in the country deteriorated.) However, there were random outages that would last unpredictable lengths of time – sometimes a day or two, sometimes a week, sometimes two or three weeks. Usually there was no warning. One day the electricity just wouldn’t come on when you expected it to. You’d just cross your fingers and hope it wouldn’t be out for too long. We were prepared for the possibility, of course, and had back up plans, kerosene stove in place of the electric hot plate, etc. but still it could get to be a drag after awhile. When the electricity finally did come back on after a two or three week outage it was something to celebrate. I still remember one time when the lights suddenly popped on without warning after being out a few weeks, from my house perched on the side of a hill I could hear a muted cheer come up from the rest of the town below me.
Off topic
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/12/16/the-classic-dilemma-stimulus-or-a-tax-cut-keynes-or-the-supply-siders.php
Glad you made it back!! Over the summer, here in Pittsburgh, we had a horrible wind storm, and many people lost power for several days. I was lucky, and was without electricity for about 36 hours. Since then, I’ve been very grateful and aware of how valuable things we normally take for granted, are.
And it could always be worse – we could live in North Korea, where the night is as dark as it is long.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-410158/North-Korea-The-Bomb-doesnt-electricity.html
Neo,
Liberals never learn.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2008/12/16/2008-12-16_gov_david_paterson_unveils_dire_new_york.html
How much you wanna bet tax receipts are lower…..
They tried the luxury tax on auto’s over $30,000 and yachts and it only hurt those who MADE THEM! People bought much less of them.
The only one of the taxes i see people accepting is the booze tax. It’s the one many people will buy into or pay more for… or they’ll go outside of NY for their booze.
Bye bye NY! Might as well have David Dinkins again!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoxDyC7y7PM
no keynes please !
“When the Zombies take over, how long ’til the electricity fails?”
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2165/when-the-zombies-take-over-how-long-till-the-electricity-fails
It’s a fragile thing….
There’s a fireplace in the living room and a wood-burning stove in the kitchen at “La Casa de Camo”, my rambling estate. It’s good not having to worry that I’ll freeze in the event of an extended power failure…
The left has a backup plan for the coming decrease in goods and services. They’ll thank everyone for going “green” and saving the planet.
And the idiots will be thankful to have such thoughtful leadership in charge.
power was out a week here in France, after a storm in New Year 2000, but like Camo, the woodburning stove kept the house warm.
missed lights and telly/computer, but slept for 10 hours a night. it’s an ill wind…
FredHJR,
Thanks for the good word…
For once now I can cheer someone up!!!!!!!!!!!
I start with a question, for they bring answers and direct other questions.
How did the people live in more horrible times, and more horrible experiences than even the future your contemplating?
Your reletevating the horror of the potential future. Your worried about it being so bad compared to your past. but is it worse than the actual depression in the past? no, not really, not to mention you have tons more all around you. you may worry about the same kind of thing happeneing that happened in germany, china, and russia… which is good, but take it one step farther and ask yourself, how did they live, how do they live.
I will let you in on the secret… it should set you free… it can be found in many pieces of literature from the uplifting past, but not in modern things.
The real secret is that the state is not as involved in your life as much as you think it is.
That the state of the economy, while indicating change, your still in a better position than people in the past, who just survived things as they came.
No matter what happens your life is not going to be that much different. Well, maybe different in location, material, and such, but not different in the way you actually live life.
You wills till get up in the morning, you will still have a bunch of tasks that are abstract but lead to some form of sustenance, your still going to associate with people, and your still going to go about your business every day as you do today.
Even if they are killing people around you and there are bodies on the streets, you will just adjust, and you will go about your business as you would any other day. The difference may be in what you pay attention to, how you choose what to do, the options that your going to loko at. But that’s what you always do.
So is it so hard to realize that no matter how bad it gets, your going to still operate as you always have. what you haven’t realized is the complete grokked truth of john lenins lines.
Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans.
Guy… all we are really complaining about right now is that life isn’t going to follow our plans and be what we want or expect it to be!
But if it did that, would it be LIFE !
(not life as in its alive, but life as in worth being alive?)
For fun… tie it to the penguin skit of monty python (yes, I can link up things across the universe and blow minds, but few let me do it. ya got to ask the right questions or make the right statements, and then I spit, spout or whatever)/
Why is he standing up there?
I don’t now, perhaps we should ask dr bloodly bronaowsky?
Why ask him?
Well, he knows everything!
Oh.. wouldn’t like that, take all the fun out of life…
Look at where you are now… are you one of the .05% of people that actually got to follow a plan? Or are you like most other people, who are where they are because they bumbled that way with a bias?
Just do me a favor… stop worrying about things that haven’t been, and start enjoying the things that you have and let the future be the future.
I will tell you the truth…
Will the future be bad?
Yes
Will the future be good?
Yes
What will yours be?
Wont know till the day I die…
The reason is the same as asking how your dokng in the stock market, or the hoaky zen koan at the end of Charlie wilsons war..
Or the other koan that I mentioned in passing…
We always live between two tigers that will kill us
Sometimes we forget….
When we do, we feel the world is good…
Sometimes we remember
When we do, the world seems bad
But if you accept this, and are aware of this. then you can make it always good
Because its always bad. ïŠ
[I went out with a bhuddist once. She took me to meet the head of the temple and movement who came from korea. She thought she would learn me. well, turned out that I blew hir mind more than she could blow mine. She left the house to run an errand and left me with her mom… by the time she came back, her mom and I were singing old songs from the 20s. she cried… she had never heard her mom sing before… we went to visit the monk.. we sat… she sat with a ok.. now teach him attitude… but it ended up that after the conversation, he told her to learn from me… for I knew it better than everyone in the room! that was one of the best compliments I ever got. And no I am not bhuddist]
Life is not what you make of it..
Life is what you make out of what your given…
Happy for you, Neo.
We walk a thin line, all the while pacifying ourselves with false sense of security.
And it’s still better than seeing the dangers and realizing- we can’t do anything to avert it.
And it’s still better than seeing the dangers and realizing- we can’t do anything to avert it.
personally i dont think so…
i have no problem with the dangers and knowing they are there… one only cant stand it if one is coming out of the illusion that they werent their in teh first place
in other words: to face reality is not to fear reality, but to understand it. something understood, stops being as scary, even dangerous things.
its part of what i call the princess and the pea syndrome.
failure to expose is failure to innoculate, and so later what is minimal is perceived as extreme.
life in fear isnt living…
a person pretending that dangers arent there, is still living in fear, but pretending otherwise.
only the person who stand and faces it, knows the truth, and can take it.
Or the other koan that I mentioned in passing…
Here’s my favorite koan that I came up with in the past year:
“What is the sound of a deer in the headlights?”
What is one grain of sand in the desert?
What is one grain of sand in the storm?
Artfldgr, I tuned out on the second sentence.
Really, you should have listened to LabRat and adopted her Sandbox Rules.
tatyana,
what if what can be said cant be said to the “see spot run” crowd?
do you know the history of vasily mitrokhen? can i refer to records and things? nope…
the sand box rules dont work. they basically tell everyone that stupid is better…
lets talk in soundbites…
or rather sound bits…
meanwhile, is anyone else bringing up pertinent informatino in their sound bites?
Britain facing blackouts because of Greenie harassment of power provision
Britain could face regular blackouts within seven years if the Government does not intervene in the energy market to ensure that more power stations are built, the head of National Grid says today. In an interview with The Times, Steve Holliday, chief executive of the company that operates the power and gas transmission network, said that Britain was facing an acute shortage of generating capacity because a string of ageing nuclear and coal-fired plants were due to be retired from service. The warning came after Ofgem, the energy industry regulator, said on Friday that it was to consider fresh incentives to encourage the development of renewable energy schemes in Britain.
Mr Holliday said that National Grid’s own analysis indicated that, under a business-as-usual scenario, Britain would fail to attract enough investment in new plants and would lack sufficient generating capacity to meet peak demand around 2015. “We are OK for a period of time . . . but when you go out to the medium term you can begin to see there is not enough collective generation being built in the UK. “We will need to watch that very carefully over the next 18 months to ensure that window gets shut,” Mr Holliday said.
where is your meaningful contribution tatyana? oh yeah… chastisment, but nothing to the subject.
you realize that this rule and game basically create a situatio where every idiot is equal to the smart people?
because the smart peopel now have to talk in tiny sound bites to be fair so taht every statement has the same relative importance.
duh.
why dont we just cut the human language to the 4000 or so terms needed for daily life, and forget talking about anythng else with meaning.
for short nothigns have little meaning, but its mostly the kind of parrot talk that orwell spoke against.
you cant discuss the energy grid and have any kind of meaningful dialogue if we are all restricted to sound bites!
why watch a two hour movie? why not just read the three sentence sumary?
according to tatyana, thats all ya need…
i get tired of this… because any serious discussion cant be a tea party where everyone agrees, no one says things outside of agreement, and everyone gives short parroting to give all a chance for their empty voices to be heard.
its a tea party version of a debate where the hostess is the totalitarian dictator…
i looked over the posts… generally most of the short ones are meaningless and off topic..
which is what i find womens general converstaions to be like, and completely unproductive… (when they allow themselves to care more about the interaction and the buzzign than the content and the meaning. women and a feminin culture are so image cargo cult its funny. which is why they are completely under represented anywhere where reality supervises their validity. like the hard sciences)
sheesh…
dont get better and raise the bar…
whine and have them lower it.