Friday 27 November 2020

How few Electoral College votes extra will it take to make Trump president

He is about 40 short so its not impossible. What kind of people get selected for the Electoral College and how strong and/or well off are they. Could Trump's last hope could be to buy the 40 he is missing for a second period as president. 

Now that his core voters where to slow to embbrase his strategy of encouraging voter fraud in the hope enough of them would come forward and cast doubt on the election, emember its a secret vote so you couldn't prove who the fraudulent voters supported, he does seem desperate for any other way of changing the electrion result. Not even swaying from casting doubt over the whole election system if it can gain him the most narcisdistic president USA so far have seen. Have you ever seen any politician in a supposedly democracy that demands so total outspoken admiration of they who surround him at press conferences.

Trouble is the Americans have never been in a situation like this where the sitting president is very wealthy and unscupoulus and have so manny very rich backers from so many also lugubrious sources. Not that he needs them. Haven't his grasroot supporters collected in enough of a fund to pay both 1 or 2 million to each that was supposed to vote Biden but swithces on the day. Not that he needed even that extra money to do it, but he seems to gready to use any of his own if he can avoid it.

Throw in a quick pardon in the deal and many could be persuaded. Plus a pardon for they who persuade them. In all this pardoning thing is a tool with far reaching consequences few could have foreseen. And any impeachement proceedings of Trump himself as a result could easily be held up by the even now 50 Republican Senators plus Pence's double, vote until the 4 years are gone.

Thursday 11 June 2020

1 meter social distancing = no social distancing

Think about it. 1 meter between tables in a restaurant means that every time somebody moves at the neighbouring table or a waiter stands between tables and take your order, there is absolutely no social distancing.
People often measure the distance to others from the middle of themselves to the middle of others. Then 1/3 of the 1 meter is taken by you and another 1/3 by the other person and then you are only left with what is needed to not actually touch each other.

Every bar, restaurant and other venue where people congregate to buy stuff are pushing for the 1 meter limit because they know that that is as close to normal non pandemic times you can get without people actually sitting on top of each other.

Take the example of when you go for a walk along a relatively narrow road you know you have to step out of if a car comes and people your meet are not even making an effort by walking side by side. Think about that and that the average car is about 2 meters wide.

Basically governments that reduce the requirement for social distancing form 2 to 1 meter have given up on the demand and are just setting 1 to give a sheen of complying with scientific advice. And when 1 fall they all fall because no industry body is comparing with where its stricter. They all constantly push for being like where it is more lenient.
In pandemic times one just can't leave the decision making to those whose economic interest is aligned with the more people you can stuff together in a crowded place the better. Or the politicians that are in their pockets.

Thursday 5 June 2014

Ireland has a water shortage


According to the new state body that is taking over the country’s water supplies.  When the economy dictated that the country should save, all the politicians, bureaucrats and profiteers came together to see how the country could not save, but lay their hands on more.  One of the solutions was to spend hundreds of millions of euro on installing water meters to more than 1 million households that the country so far had not needed, and could have done well without.   Not only that, but since Ireland’s closest neighbour was the one with experience in installing these meters, most of the contracts event there, not even benefiting the local economy.  And have you ever thought of the standards of the installation of these water meters.  It will cost the new quango extra to have it done well, but they will benefit economically if there is a leek on your side of the meter.  There is a lot of talk about how you should fix your dripping taps, but a drip a few feet underground will never be discovered and can easily eat up your measly “free” allowance.

Metered water will lead to a colossal additional private outlay on all sorts of water collecting devices for the less efficient individual collection of rainwater.  A reduced use of water for example for toilet flushing which will lead to more clogged sewage pipes because there is still the same amount of unmentionables and paper to flush away but less water to do it with.

And the new quango  (same as the old quango Board Gais) has already forecasted that it needs to spend untold hundreds of millions on new water projects.  It’s easy to hide some big bonuses to the top brass among a billion Euro of projects.  Percentage-wise the outlay on performance bonuses will be so “insignificant”

 I specially feel sorry for all them that has already had to pay for their own water treatment plants in the community, had them roughly expropriated by the state and now is expected to pay for the water all over again.

Politicians and bureaucrats do not know the meaning of the word save


Take the example of a department or council that has got the word to save 10% next year on a service they provide.  To you and me that is spend 10% less money than you spent this year.  To effectuate this they start a user pay fee for a little extra around the edges that brings in an extra 20%.  Since the little extra only cost 10% they pat themselves on the back for needing a 10% smaller budget that year. 

Problem is they haven’t actually saved anything.  It’s the other way around.  They have spent 10% more rather than saved 10%.  How the money was collected is irrelevant in government services. Whether the total spend was through general taxes or through some general taxes and some direct fees is irrelevant for the public.  They are still money they have to pay, often not entirely voluntarily. 

Saving the environment by polluting more?


10 years ago when I moved into my house a single bin truck collected all the weekly waste in the area by coming along on a Tuesday morning.
Then it was opened for competition and we got 3 operators equalling 3 bin-trucks a week.  Next step was a green bin for recyclable waste, so now each company needed to send 2 bin-trucks a week and since with competition prices now had doubled, more got in on the act.  We then had 10 bin Lorries every second week (green (bin) week) and 5 every other week.   Next step I hear is another brown bin to be emptied every second week. 
So after all this recycling for a greener world is done, we will now be visited by 10 bin-trucks every week:  4 on Mondays, 2 on Tuesdays, 2 on Thursdays and 2 on Fridays, unless it’s a Bank Holiday when we will have 4 on Saturdays also.  And this single ended lane only has 22 houses on it
Going from 1 to 10 trucks every week.  Is that the way to save the planet?

Friday 2 December 2011

Travel by recreating

There is a lot to be said for cloning and much to be said against the current conservative methods.   If you could send a human being instantly in a different place (like in beaming), you could say you have cloned it by eradicating it’s existence in the original place and recreating it somewhere else. 
Let’s start with the less controversial topic of transporting non live matter. Most stuff is made up of a few basic substances widely available.  There is already projects for creating stuff by printing them in 3 dimensions as needed.  Here we are kind of beaming the idea of the stuff to a machine that makes it there and then.  All that is missing is a much improved scanner.  I see scanning and the political will to do it.  Is see scanning by peeling.. If it was done very fast (like in a human instant) no pain would be felt.

From creating on demand to transporting is just a small step of destroying the object in the place of sending before you recreate it in the place of receiving.
For live body applications we first have to learn much more about the brain and the thought and what makes you you.  But the principle could be the same.  

 And think of the possible applications.  It would eradicate all other forms of long distance travel by plane, train, car or ferry.  Even repeated space travel. 
Think of all the alternative uses, in addition to cheap and easy transport.  We could get writhe of all the prisons (and other physical storage requirements).  Your sentence would be a state of stasis, and it could be performed by storing the data about you in cyberspace.
You could also then easily travel at the speed of light, since all that would actually travel is the information about you in the form of light.

There is a quantum leap required to go from the one to the other, but it can only be achieved by THINKing Outside The Box. 

Alternative ways of storing electricity

For years the “approved” way of storing electricity was in a battery.  But when you think of it there is many other ways.  Sample you can store water that falls as rain now in a big dam and then later release it to generate electricity in a hydroelectric power plant.
Most fuels can be stored, and then used to create electricity as electricity is needed, think
The problem with batteries is that they are expensive, have small capacity, are heavy, take long to charge, and deteriorate quickly.

Most fuels can be stored, and then used to create electricity as electricity is needed.  Think power plant run on coal or turf, or diesel fuelled generator.
For a driving a car you can use electricity generate hydrogen and store that in a tank for driving it in a specially made car.  Here the problem is that the way of making hydrogen is very expensive and advanced and not very distributed.  IT will take a large investment to get an infrastructure going. 

We need to find a different way of storing electricity.  One company, currently not in the best of shape, has found a way.  Compressed air.   Since it’s already under pressure it can be used to drive a relatively normal piston engine without further pollution.  What you need is a suitably solid tank of some quantity.  The main advantage with it though is that compressed air can be created by the common compressor using electricity.  The compressor today is so common that most petrol station already have it.  Actually many car owners already have one at home to check their tyre pressure.  They can also be had so small that you can bring one around with you in the car so you could actually fill up your car using any electricity supply.  And it doesn’t take an age like charging a battery. 

I’m sure there is many alternative ways of storing electricity, or energy, that we will think off as soon as we start thinking outside the box.