First Post: Just for ducks here, at first.

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Lessons

After blogging the Bush and early Obama years fairly prolifically, I’ve had what amounts to a 15-year vacation from history. What have I learned in that time? A little bit of humility, to be sure. I was wrong about a lot of things — some inconsequential, some very consequential — too many to number extensively here, to be sure. But as I said, I learned something from being wrong. But I was right about a few things too, and I learned from that too. And as I watch the Trump II administration begin its work in earnest, some of those lessons seem awfully relevant right now. 1. Never make a sword so sharp that you wouldn’t want your enemy to wield it . Classical liberals have been shouting this for a long time. Any government project or agency is by definition political the moment it comes to life, and when you give it the power to do what you want, you license the other side to do with that power what they want. Democrats have ignored this rule for a long time. In fact, both parties have b...
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Storage

I've been thinking a lot lately about the issue of storage as it relates to clean power.  As someone who has always claimed to be a common-sense environmentalist, this is clearly where I see the stakes are highest.  Efficient storage is the make-or-break for wind or solar energy, since the sun isn't always shining, and the wind is sometimes calm.  We live, the futurists say, for a battery technology that will solve those problems, allowing us to save solar energy for a rainy day, so to speak. But I think this outlook is wrong-headed for two reasons.  For one, battery technology is just not moving that fast.  And even if it were, and the capacity problem were solved, we'd still be another few tech generations away from the miniaturization necessary for a workable replacement for current solutions.  For another, I think this outlook ignores the real principle at play in storage. In the end, it's not electricity we are looking to store.  It's work th...
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Aretha

Comes today word that Aretha Franklin has gone on to the great gig in the sky.  A couple of memories bubble forth: One: In high school, I was a die-hard headbanger.  I loved Judas Priest (I think Razor turned me on to British Steel, come to think of it), early Metallica, Iron Maiden, pre-Hagar Van Halen.  Even all my old stuff was Stones and Hendrix -- you know, all pre-programmed with the cucumber in the trousers.  Yeah, I had seen (and enjoyed, so I thought) Spinal Tap , but I think I still didn't quite totally get it.  (I know now: they were laughing at me.) After surviving a semester with me in college, my exasperated roommate said to me one day, "Don't you have any women in your music collection?"  I think I had one Bonnie Raitt disc and Blondie's Parallel Lines on cassette, and that was about it -- so I was pretty much stumped.  My collection was cock all the way down, so to speak. My roommate hit me with two tastes that changed my world...
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