Today in History 03/07/2011
This is as good a day as any for me to set my watch back to November 2nd, 2010 - or at least as far back as January 4, 2011 at about 9 pm, and get some signatures - one from the President, one from the New Hampshire Secretary of State, and one from John Lynch, Governor of the State of New Hampshire. Today in History 1965: Attack on civil rights protesters in Selma, Alabama. On this day in 1965, state troopers used nightsticks and tear gas to attack American civil rights activists as they crossed a bridge in Selma, Alabama, during their march to the state capitol in Montgomery. More events on this day 2011: United States President Barack Obama signed into law a bill making Chris Booth the Senator from New Hampshire, a race which had been contested since November 2nd. 1987: American boxer Mike Tyson became the youngest heavyweight to acquire the World Boxing Association (WBA) championship belt when he defeated James Smith in 12 rounds. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for the telephone. 1875: Composer Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France. 1850: U.S. Senator Daniel Webster spoke out in favour of the Compromise of 1850 (enacted in September), a series of moderate measures that addressed the question of slavery in U.S. territories. 1792: English astronomer Sir John Herschel, a successor to his father, Sir William Herschel, in the field of stellar and nebular observation and discovery, was born. 1644: Massachusetts established the first bicameral legislature in North America. 161: Marcus Aurelius became emperor of Rome. (2011). Encyclopædia Britannica. Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica. -with an edit by Chris Booth PO Box 32 Concord NH 03302 603-738-2582 Add Comment Election Results 02/15/2011
The following is from NH Supreme Court Docket 2010-0827: Many of the candidates in this years election used illegal campaign activities to garner votes, and those votes are being challenged. There are many types of illegal activity used, but this candidate is going to allow the easy way out - by pointing out simply that their roadside signs violated state law 664-14, which, among other possibly choices, requires the candidates name and fiscal agent, or name and address. The signs used for the Governor's race for the two primary winners both complied with State law. The signs used by Jack Kimball did not (used a web domain instead of a person's name), and he was arrested in the state house (citizen's arrest) and put under house arrest, not to leave the state of New Hampshire. He replied that he likes New Hampshire, and will likely be running for Governor again in 2012. Watch him closely, though, for any other illegal activity, and if you have or have found any of his signs, they need to have a physical address which is within the state of New Hampshire added, at the bottom, before they can be used., or a person's name - cross out or tape over the domain name and write in "Jack Kimball" for example.
Paul Hodes, our U.S. Representative from the 2nd district can not by the Constitution be arrested while traveling to Washington, but he can be arrested if he returns. His signs, which say at the bottom, "Paid for by Hodes for Senate", need to have the address for Hodes for Senate added, which is, or was, in 2010, 379 Elm Street, Manchester, NH 03101, or the name of the chair of the committee, or the name of the committee's treasurer; in order to comply with the law. This can either be hand written, or a sticker could be made to add to the signs. Or Paul Hodes might decide to run for re-election to the house, in the special election which will be held to coincide with town meeting... . Deepwater Horizon Well 07/20/2010
The Deepwater Horizon well has now been capped, after about 130,000 barrels of oil were released into the gulf. To me it makes no sense to have the goal of killing the well by using the relief wells to plug it, because we need that oil - you drill a well, you find oil, now capture it and make it available. However, it also makes no sense to remove the cap for three days while you are transitioning to capturing the oil. The cap should have been designed with sufficient valves to allow connection of pipes to capture the oil. If not, then leave the cap on, plug the well, and leave the oil there until it can be safely captured without any significant release to the environment. If it takes a century or two to develop environmentally save deepwater drilling that is insignificant in comparison to the one or two billion years that we can expect to be here on the planet. What we need oil for, though, is petrochemicals, not fuel. We need to transition from coal, oil, nuclear and natural gas to wind and solar for energy as quickly as possible. There is an 8 cent per barrel tax on oil production to pay for spills, but this should be increased to $1 or $10/barrel, worldwide, and made available to clean up all of the oil spills that have occurred, and will continue to occur. There are other areas of the world that have been affected far worse than Prudoe Bay or Louisiana. Quick change electric car batteries 06/18/2010
 When electric cars first came out, at the start of the 20th century, they were difficult to charge because they required dc electricity, and while Edison wanted to distribute dc to homes, Westinghouse won that battle, and ac, alternating current, not direct current, became standard, due to the lower cost of transmission lines, by using transformers to raise the voltage and lower the current. At the end of the 20th century, when electric cars were re-introduced, with the EV1 and the RAV4, and others, charging systems were not standardized, but now, at the beginning of the 21st century, as electric cars are being re-introduced, and as we are transitioning to electric cars, charging systems have been standardized, just like the diagnostic ports on cars have been standardized. However, what happens if you want to drive to Florida? Electric cars typically have a range of from 100 to 300 miles. The shorter the range, the cheaper the battery, and the cheaper the car. If your average daily commute round trip is less than 20 miles, you could meet that with a range of only 40 miles, like the Chevrolet Volt, and if you want to go from Concord to Boston you could do that with the Tesla, which has a range of 200 miles. To go to Florida, though, would take a week or more if you had to stop and charge the battery every 100 or 200 miles. The solution is to also standardize the battery packs and use the quick change solution in the video below, which shows that you can change the battery in an automated battery swap station in less than 2 minutes - about the time that it takes now to fill your tank with gasoline. The charging station will need to recognize the size battery you have and replace it with the same size, whether it is a 40 mile battery, a 100 mile, 200 mile, or 300 mile battery, or you could rent the battery, and choose which size to have installed, for cars that could accommodate more than one size. A similar quick change system was used for the fleet of battery powered buses used at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. One of the reasons you have been hearing about hydrogen for cars is that oil companies are panicked to think that no one will need to stop at gas stations because they will always charge their car at home. A hydrogen car is simply an electric car that uses a horribly inefficient battery that you have to fill up at a filling station - you lose half of the electricity when you make the hydrogen, and half when you convert the hydrogen back into electricity, never mind that the fuel cell to do that uses platinum and the car costs $1,000,000. So, setting aside the cost of the car, the efficiency of the charging system is 1/2 x 1/2 = 25%, vs. the 90 to 95% efficiency of just using a battery, so hydrogen cars are just not a practical solution. Healthy food 06/15/2010
Some of our foods today come from half way around the world, and some are grown at factory farms in shocking conditions. The more local food we have the better. An apple a day keeps the doctor away is a common expression, and apples are grown locally in many U.S. states, and particularly in New Hampshire. Recently there have been a large number of farmers markets opening up and they are an excellent opportunity to obtain food directly from local farms. An interesting solution to the loss of local farms is contracting with power companies to install wind turbines - for about $3,000 - $5,000 each, per year, as a supplemental income that actually can exceed the farm income by a factor of 5 or 10 to 1. Zoning needs to protect farmland though, to prevent it from being used for other purposes. Buckminster Fuller looked out over the fertile lands of Santa Clara valley and said that it should be saved for farmland, and the homes should be built only in the hills, but his advice was not heeded, and as a result we lost some of the best farmland in the country. Some of our foods are genetically modified, and those need to be identified so that we can make a choice between eating GM foods or non-GM foods. Europe is much more sensitive to GM foods than the United States, where labeling is prohibited. This prohibition needs to be lifted, and GM foods need to be identified. Consumers need to know what the source of their food is so that they can make an informed choice. The companies that have developed GM crops have lobbied to prevent labeling solely to prevent consumers from making that choice. Cape Wind 04/28/2010
 Today, after a nine year wait, Cape Wind received final approval, and construction is expected to be completed within approximately one year.  This map, using 50 meter (m) wind turbine data, shows areas with excellent and outstanding wind opportunities off the coast of Massachusetts. Today's turbines, though, are three to four times higher, and open up much more areas to commercial viability for wind power. For example, Indiana, using 50 m data, is rated for a total of 30 megawatts (MW) of wind power, but at 70 m, 40,000 MW, and at 80 m, 148,000 MW. Modern wind turbines today are typically over 100 meters tall, and most offshore ones over 150 meters. The ones in the photo above are 157 meters above waterline, although from the shore, the Cape Wind turbines will barely be visible, and look about like a row of match sticks along the horizon. Unfortunately the NREL data has been lagging behind industry state of the art. Excluding any offshore wind power, the 2010 study of 80 meter data rates the U.S. as having the capacity of generating over 9 times the total amount of energy used in 2005. While the energy used in the United States has tripled since 1950, even with population increases, total use is expected to drop by 50% by 2050 due to efficiency increases - for example, LED light bulbs use about one tenth the energy for the same light output as incandescents, and electric cars almost one tenth the energy of gasoline powered cars. So in summary, I would say to Cape Wind, congratulations on receiving approval, and on not giving up in the face of opposition. We can anticipate getting about 25% of our energy from wind in the near future, 65% from solar, and the remaining 10% from a mix of geothermal and hydroelectricity. However, this will also mean the need for doubling our transmission capacity, and adding storage capacity, in the form of pumped hydro-storage, so that energy can be used where it is needed, and when it is needed. Offshore oil 04/22/2010
 This oil rig explosion and fire was a very rare event, fortunately, but what is not rare about offshore oil, is the environmental damage to the water. If you go to the coastline of Texas, the water is brown with oil. Do people in Virginia want that for their beaches? A far better approach is to switch cars to natural gas and electricity, and simply stop using oil. Right now you can buy gasoline for about $2.75/gallon, or switch your car to natural gas and fill it up for the equivalent of about $1.60/gallon, or to electricity, and charge it overnight for about $0.60/gallon. The conversion cost to natural gas is much less than the conversion to electric, but the savings/mile is also less. Contributions 04/21/2010
Every contribution is helpful, no matter how little. The one that means the most to me, actually, is the penny received yesterday, from someone who has less to give than most of us. And every penny counts - they all add up! Current Unemployment Rates, Selected States 04/14/2010
New Hampshire, in February, was tied with Virginia for the sixth lowest unemployment in the country. The Middle Class 01/30/2010
 The Amoskeag Mills were once the largest textile mills in the world, producing 500,000 yards of cloth a week, and covering a mile and a half of ground along the Merrimack River, in Manchester, New Hampshire. However, the cotton used was shipped from the south, and after World War I, Amoskeag could no longer compete with mills in the south. They tried to lower wages and increase hours, but still could not compete, and finally closed after a century of operation, in 1935. The reason that I see no other solution than a world wide minimum wage and a tariff on any goods imported from any country without a minimum wage is because of the example of the Amoskeag Mills. My goal though, is the elimination of all tariffs, once a world wide minimum wage is established. It may not even need to be very much - as little as $1/hour, but probably about $5/hour would be more practical. What is interesting to me is that graduating from High School my goal in life was to earn $5/hour. At that time the minimum wage in America was $1.25/hour (about $8 in today's dollars). For those who have been asking for an increase in the minimum wage, that is not a raise! Raising the minimum wage is simply a recipe to increase inflation. Our goal should be that a dollar can buy a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread today and forever, and having an average of zero inflation over time, instead of adding zeros every century. Before the Amoskeag Mills opened in 1831, most of America lived and worked on the farm. After the mills closed, the country was in the Great Depression, which did not end until World War II. After World War II, the GI Bill allowed millions of returning servicemen to go to college, creating the middle class. The following chart shows average incomes by education in 2008:  The largest population group today is high school graduates. The chart shows that even some college increases the average income level, and the highest median income is those who receive a professional degree. The following chart shows how household incomes are distributed, showing that the largest group consists of those with a household income of from $50,000 to $100,000, and that 10% of households have an income of less than $12,500.  Originally only the wealthy were taxed, but actually more total income is received by the middle class (those making from $50,000 to $100,000/year) than the rich, and a full 14% of all income comes from those making less than $25,000 per year, while only 9% comes from those making over $250,000 per year.  The book, The Millionaire Next Door, by Thomas J. Stanley, explains that of the millions of Millionaires in America today, most live relatively simple lives, and became millionaires by following some very basic financial principles:
Almost anyone with a middle income can follow those very simple steps and become a millionaire. If you invest at 8% over a 40 year period, it only requires setting aside less than $300 per month to accrue a million dollars. And the fun part is that if you put only $49.11 into a trust fund for your child each month it will grow to $23,576 by the time they are 18, which may sound to them like a great way to buy a Corvette, but if instead they leave it in the trust fund, adding not a penny to it their self, it will grow to $1,000,000 by the time they reach age 65, and provide a very livable retirement income of $80,000/year (at 8% return, or $40,000 at a much safer 4% return). So the choice is simple, set aside for retirement, or buy the Corvette. For most people, their first car is an old used car, and when they buy a new car it is with a loan, but if instead of making monthly payments on a car loan, those same monthly payments are put into a savings account, and then paying cash for a car, the payments earn interest instead of pay interest, and the net result is that each car ends up costing as much as half what it would have, depending on the savings interest and on the loan interest. The best car is the one that you own outright. | AuthorChris Booth ArchivesMarch 2011 Categories |
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