First, I have a crapton of links to contend with. I'll probably close most of them without commenting here, but some will survive.
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Thanks to the obvious and repeated crap numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, I no longer trust any statistics from the government. Especially ones which--gosh!--just happen to come out right after Obama has pledged to uphold his campaign promise that the cost of electricity will "necessarily skyrocket".
If you read the entirety of the Arse Technica article, you find--in the third-to-last paragraph--this telling quote: "...[T]he low costs are enabled in part by a federal production tax credit...."
In other words, it's not really any cheaper; it's artificially cheaper because the federal government is giving tax credits to companies who build windmills. Those tax credits end up being paid for by higher taxes on others, or deficit spending, or a variety of other tricks.
The bottom line is--absent those tax credits--wind power is not cheaper than coal. Full stop. And because the federal government does not cut its spending by whatever those tax credits amount to, it ends up costing all of us just as much (if not more) for wind power as it would if those tax credits were absent.
Once agan demonstrating that so-called "green power" is economically infeasible.
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I don't blame him one bit. Who the fuck are the Kardashians? Who gives a rat's ass about them and their lives? They don't do anything useful; they're not even entertainers--they're just rich assholes from California.
I stopped caring about pop culture when...uh...hmm, it seems that I never actually started caring about pop culture. Why, it's almost as if I have a life or something!
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Plastic is lighter than metal. It also has a somewhat lower temperature of fusion. I expect that--as is the case with other, similar stories over the past few years--the "heat wave" will turn out to be highly localized. Remember the melting street lamps? That was "global warming", too, until it was revealed that the "global warming" had, in fact, been a nearby dumpster fire.
Automakers are smart enough to specify plastics that can withstand being in the sun on a summer day. As one comment points out, note that the dashboard is unaffected by the "record heat wave". Yeah.
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Even though I've seen it before, I watched this for about five minutes. I'll spoil it for you: it's not a continuous process; it's a bunch of independent "cells" stuck together. There are a few paths which let a ball cross the entire process, but no one ball goes through each stage. It's still interesting.
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I have to get myself in gear, here. Things to do! Miles to go, and so forth!
According to Rockauto.com's e-mail, my EGR gasket may arrive today. That'd be nice if I were getting next-day service for my THIRTEEN DOLLAR SHIPPING ON A TWO-DOLLAR PART. WTF.
