...Ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
--Dolly
Now it's your turn...
Remember -- If I don't like it, it hits the bit bucket.
If you hijack my comments for purposes not consonant with my purpose for operating this blog, your post will be deleted, your membership cancelled, and your IP address banned.
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Joan of Argghh! writes...
Damn! Poor Dolly sure has to jump through a lotta hoops just for a cheese danish!
Good stuff, however.
Posted by Joan of Argghh! on 09/07/10
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Tam writes...
nb.: I don't feel particularly unpatriotic for trying to shave a buck or two from my power bill.
Granted, if I didn't live with an electrical genie-yus, I probably wouldn't realize that leaving the netbook charger or cellphone wall wart plugged in costs money, but there you go...
Posted by Tam on 09/12/10
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Gary B writes...
I highly respect Watts for his intelligent and tireless work in helping to combat the lies, distortions and junk science of the global warming hysterics. But all this snooping around to save a few kilowatt-hours is just silly. To me, it's analogous to someone giving detailed instructions on how to sweep up the crumbs behind your fridge, filter out the dust and use the residue to make bread pudding. We live in a modern, prosperous country, damn it! We don't waste our valuable time and energy collecting bread crumbs!
Collecting "crumbs" of electricity ought to be just as absurd, but the green fascists have artificially limited supply and rigged the pricing so that consumers are heavily penalized for using more than the paltry allocation determined by some enviro-bureaucrat. Here's the delightful choice they're forcing on everyone: spend the summer sweating in your boiling, humid home or run the AC and pay penance of hundreds of dollars per month to your masters. Take it or leave it.
Absent the constant fear-mongering and meddling by the Green lobby, there would be dozens more large-scale power plants (esp nuclear) in this country producing an abundance of reasonably-priced electricity.
Is it wise or virtuous to "conserve"? It depends on what you're conserving and how much it costs you. Only a fool spends dollars to conserve pennies. And that's the trade-off you're making when you spend precious hours or weeks of your life scraping up crumbs of electricity (or suffering in a broiling or freezing home) in exchange...for what? Reassurances from a bunch of Chicken Littles that the sky might not fall for another day or two--until the next panic attack strikes and they start anew with predictions of doom. Since the 1960s there have been at least 8 or 10 predictions of imminent environmental catastrophe, NONE of which has been even close to being true, eg global cooling, nuclear plant meltdown/waste, running out of energy by 2000, population "bomb", mass famines, acid rain, etc.
Posted by Gary B on 09/16/10
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Mark Philip Alger writes...
Tam;
But what does it cost versus what do you gain from it? No green EVER makes a real cost-benefit analysis. And, unless you value your time at zero, I suggest that many of the so-called "cost savings" measures -- as Gary alleges -- will actually cost you more time than they're worth.
I would suggest that bugging the mfrs of wall warts to include in their control mechanisms -- such as they are and what there are of them -- one which shuts off power when there's no demand on them.
Should be pretty simple: unplug the cell phone, the power stops flowing. Dunno why it's not so right now. AAMOF, I'm pretty sure the Radio Shack replacements I use do that already, as -- ISTR -- they are cool when without a load.
But I leave my computers turned on 24-7 for myriad reasons, all of which have to do with my convenience. I save HOURS of my time by having certain housekeeping tasks performed while I'm asleep.
M
Posted by Mark Philip Alger on 09/18/10
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Page 1 of 1 pages
Aaaarrgghhh! Friggin’ SHEEP...
ANTHONY WATTS proudly displays a new toy -- an energy fetishist's wet dream machine. See, in California, (and, sadly, elsewhere), instead of increasing supply of electricity to meet demand, the fucking green fascists are trying to throttle demand by means of intrusive regulation and distortion of the market. And all the people lap up that thin, runny crap as though it were salty brown gravy, handily forgetting that the whole purpose of electricity is to ease human existence. Chasing economy for its own sake is a perversion, and the tyrant wannabes pushing it on you deserve no better than the back of your hand -- hard -- to the chops.
Oh, come ON, Alger! Isn't it a good thing to save energy?
No, Dolly, it's not. Like everything else in life, it matters why. If the why is a perversion, or causes a degradation of the quality of life, rather than an enhancement, it can hardly be progress. Instead of conservation, think of it as starvation. Is it a good thing to starve a child? After all, you use less food!
But that's different!
How? Because the victim is specifically a child instead of non-specifically "just people" -- who may or may not be children?
How is there going to be a victim from using less power?
Now it's my turn to go, "Oh, come ON, Dolly!" Surely you can't be so naive! What's the proper merchant response to an increase in demand?
Initially and temporarily, to increase prices.
Why?
To gauge demand.
To what end?
For the next step: to increase supply.
And this program of the greens is going to do that... how, exactly?
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Hmmm?
Er... It's not?
Right. And why not?
Because the greens believe there is a limit to human expansion set by available resources.
And who first proposed these limits?
Malthus.
Correct. And was he right?
Nooo.
And how soon was he proven wrong?
Before his conjectures were even published.
And has there ever been a situation where this kind of thinking was borne out?
No.
In fact, it's been spectacularly wrong every time it's been put forth, hasn't it?
Yes.
And when the ideas have been put into force, they have, in fact, caused considerable suffering and death, correct?
As in the Ukraine under Stalin, yes.
Whereas reliance on human ingenuity, the genius of the marketplace, and the abundance of nature has propelled the most prosperous societies in the history of civilization. Right?
Right.
Now. You've heard me on this before. When you turn a machine or other device against its design purpose, what is that?
A perversion.
Correct. And is it a perversion to make a machine consume less energy without increasing its efficiency?
Yes.
And does the device Anthony Watts described make the machines in question more efficient? Does it help them do their designed jobs while using less energy?
We don't know enough to tell. We're up against the knowledge problem. We don't have and cannot get sufficient data to make an informed choice. However, we must assume, because the machines were designed to consume energy in a standby state, that there was some reason for this, and that cutting off the power supply to a machine in standby will 1) probably damage the machine and B) prevent it from providing the service to human beings it was designed to provide.
Very good, Dolly. You may have a cheese Danish.
Oh, goody! My favorite!
::turns to the readers:: Remember, folks, don't pursue energy savings for their own sake. Those savings are illusory and will end in human suffering. Enhanced efficiency is good. Simply throttling demand with no commensurate increase in efficiency is bad. Evil, in fact.
My name is Gabrielle Dolly and I approve the contents of this blog.
I'm little, but I'm loud.
All helicopters are black after midnight.
Yes, a broken clock is right twice a day, but it is still broken.
No, I don't want to live forever, but neither do I want to spend the rest of my life dying.
Screw feminism; celebrate your babe-ness.
If you've got 'em, flaunt 'em. And, Baby, I got 'em.
Get some on ya. More usually does the trick.
Yeah, I'm anti-war. Trouble is, the enemy isn't. So, what're ya gonna do? Bleed on 'em?
You look to me like somebody who actually believes that there's no such thing as a stupid question.
"Life's too short to box with stupid liberals. Trouble is: there ain't any smart ones."
Okay. Here's how this works: If all you got's a hammer, pretty soon, every problem starts to look like a nail. Folla? 'N' if all you've got is government, pretty soon every solution starts to look like oppression.
Beauty may be only skin-deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
You may not be able to impose democracy on a country, but you sure as hell can impose socialism. Stop it!
Damned right I'm an enemy of the state. Aren't you? Why the hell not?
Just so's y' know: I didn't pick the fight.
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I don't PLAN on fightin' in a leather bikini with my midriff exposed and my boobs half hangin' out. It's just... sometimes a fight comes at you without giving you a chance to get all armored up. 'N' ya jus' gotta go to war in the unnerwear ya got on.
Cincinnati novelist Mark Alger is one of nature's noblemen, and one of the best writers on the Web. Treat yourself. --Francis W. Porretto
Mark Alger is a writer, who just happens to blog. And if you're not checking him out you're doing yourself a disservice. --Raging Dave
Mark Alger's Baby Troll Blog, whose look at life and the world around him, along with pithy comments from the effervescent Dolly, deserve to be on everyone's required reading list. --Guy S.
YOUR QUOTE HERE
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SIG-BLOCK QUOTES
"Society has no right to be unjust to a single one of its members, ... the whole society minus one, is not authorised to obstruct the latter in his opinions, nor in those actions which are not harmful, in the use of his property or the exercise of his labour, save in those cases where that use or that exercise would obstruct another individual possessing the same rights." --Benjamin Constant
"Individual liberty; Individual Responsibility." --Russell Means
"When you want to blather away into the ether, collecting the accolades and shunning the negative response, you're not advocating for speech to be free -- you're advocating for talk to be cheap." --Jane Galt
"A leftist idea can be recognized by three earmarks, It will be: 1)Founded in ignorance, 2) Focussed on irrelevance, 3) Engaged in wishful thinking. --Mark Alger
4) "And threaten use of the coercive power of the state to extract compliance." --Arnold's Corrollary (ed.)
"I could tolerate leftists if they had any coherent ideas for a better way to do things. But they don't. They cling stubbornly to failed brain-fart dreams that have been attempted over and over again with disastrous results, but they never learn. When better ideas come along, they simply screech and holler at them, then fling feces like the monkeys they are." --Acidman
"All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers.They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." -- H.L. Mencken.
Just One Question Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons? --Joe Huffman.
The Jews in the Attic Test
I looked at all laws that restricted freedom with a view to the impact it would have in a worst case scenario of our government run amok. Will this law make it difficult or impossible to protect innocent life from a government intent on their imprisonment or death? ...I told them I called this test my "Jews In The Attic Test". Furthermore I told them that if it fails this test no further discussion is really needed, the law must be opposed in the most vigorous manner possible.
--Joe Huffman
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APHORISMS PASSED
"Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." -- Barry Goldwater
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"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." -- Thomas Jefferson
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"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government... -- Thomas Jefferson, 1776
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At the core of modern liberalism is the spoiled child -- miserable, as all
spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and
useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats. --P.J. O'Rourke
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[W]e're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with unalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. No act of ours invited the rage of the killers, and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder.
On the contrary, they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in and never accept anything less than complete victory.
--President George W. Bush
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THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. --Thomas Paine
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"How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual... as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of." ----Texas State Rep. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp
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One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that "violence begets violence." I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure -- and in some cases I have -- that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy. --Jeff Cooper
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The only sure way to get the money out of politics is to get the power out of government. --Mark Alger
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When Obama says he wants to "spread the wealth," you can be sure it's your wealth he's talking about, not his.
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Carry your gun - it's a lighter burden than regret. --Breda
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Only fools speak of "climate change" as though it were something remarkable or frightening. Climate is change.
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To all the hogs at the trough in DC: You don't get to waive my rights.
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In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. --George Orwell
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It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace, Peace!" -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! --Patrick Henry
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Compromise, hell! That's what has happened to us all down the line - and that's the very cause of our woes. If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time? --Jesse Helms
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COMMENT: You know, it amazes me the stupidity of all your get-rich-quick schemes. They fail on one singular point: commerce requires trust. Your sneak attacks and unwanted turds-in-burning-paper-bags-on-the-doorstep comment spam portray an individual or organization who is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get what he wants. Yeah. Right. I want to do business with somebody like that. And then you don't give any contact information except for HTML links. What makes you think anybody would follow those? Sorry, Bub. Not from this site. My readers aren't that stupid. Or that gullible.
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