Trees Don't Grow Under The Solar Collector
3/6/2

I�m tempted to get an �All About Me� entry going. I�m feeling fairly uninteresting, and though I may be terribly interesting to some, if I don�t feel like I should feel interesting...then...something. It�s hard to write anyway.

So, I�m at this "float along and gather the paychecks" job. It even has a pension for when I�m old and going blind and the teen help at the old people clinics treat me badly. It�s boring, but when I tell anyone about it, they act as if I told them that I occasionally see Indiana Jones passing the other way being chased by natives in the course of my daily work.

I am feeling witty today though. Probably undeservedly.

And I have decided to not write an entry about how naive Moby and Cameron Diaz are to think that we could have a world that wouldn�t use oil. But if I did, I�d say something like �Why would you want to cost Everyman more money to have to get all new stuff to do whatever with? What about the farmers?� So, no more plastic in Moby/Diaz world. The price of adhesives would be through the roof.

The claim that X-bazillion kilowatts of solar energy hits the earth every minute, if we could just harness a fraction of that with enormous ugly contraptions, we could fuel a light bulb overnight.

Actually, I find those yard lights that are solar to be pretty nifty. If I were to go all luddite, I�d keep a dozen planted in the yard during the daylight hours. Oh, I forgot, real luddites burn wood with incomplete combustion and cause smog.

And the people espousing this stuff are the same ones that are the No Nukes crowd, or as I like to call them Coalies. I hate hate hate that we use coal to make electricity. We could use nukes like the French do and it�d be great. Why is the US all crappity on the nuke scene and France is way ahead? Because they only use one reactor design. The US uses contractors that feel the need to design a new one every time so there are no two alike. Durr. Sure, we do the fluidized bed coal thing with the limestone, yadda yadda, but there is no way you can make coal burn really clean.

And it�s the lie of electricity that I also object to. Cameron Diaz wants everyone [but her] to drive in an electric car that they plug into the wall overnight so it can make it 14 miles in the morning and then plug it up at work so that 8 hrs later it can make it back 14 miles. And you�ll have to go shopping on Saturday, since the car needs time to charge. But the truth is, in the Diazworld, it�s a coal-burning car because that electricity comes from coal.

Oh, sure, in her imaginary little world there is enough energy in a single sparrows wing flap to light a lightbulb. And I�m sure there is if the wing reached nuclear fission.

So, Toyota has a job open which looks like you took my resume and said �I want one of those.� I told Aisai that if I get the job, I�ll have to buy a middle 1990s Supra so I can have company pride. However, note, I will not get this job. It�s Toyota and it�s local to me. But everyone in my field with the same experience as I do, etc, will put their resume in the pot and be willing to relocate from Oregon.

And you know, if you harnessed 10% of the solar energy coming to the earth, it�d be dang cold. We�d have to run electric heaters with it.