Eleanor Duckwall's Spotlight

Research your "energy vampires", cut as much 13% off utility bill

It's a VAMPIRE, sucking energy from your outlets even though you think it's powered down or turned off. Some appliances are merely idling, waiting for your command to instantly power up.

The International Energy Agency estimates between 3 and 13 percent of the costs on your electric bill comes from vampires.

Go here to check the kilowatt hour consumption of a particular appliance. The Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy lab operated by the University of California, created this searchable database.

The author suggests putting all such vampires (except for fridge and microwave) on electrical strips/surge protectors that can easily be turned off en masse by a flip of the switch, and he keeps his air conditioning thermostat set at 78 to 80 degrees, and he did an on-line home energy audit. This one is from OUC.

At home fireworks shows to become more elaborate

This news does not make us happy as some of our neighbors routinely use fireworks on a routine basis instead of saving the thrill and effect for the Fourth of July. The sky is beautiful, but we are unable to enjoy the show because of the rattled nerves of our aging Rotties. Sometimes falling bits singe roofs and pool enclosures, and the ugly aftermath is left on the street until someone gets around to sweeping it all up.

The traditional Cocoa Beach fireworks display has been cancelled because of budget problems, but other Florida venues will continue. [More celebratory local venues listed here, and for the Nation here. However, More cities are cutting their fireworks displays and other traditional amenities.]

Sailer's Four-Point Plan for Improving Schools

Click here for an explanation of the following points:

1. Educators need to stop falling for this year's Solution of the Century every year.
2. School size is probably not worth worrying about -- but school district size is.
3. We need independent school achievement testing agencies.
4. We need to measure school achievement relative to the IQ of each student.

Video: Comprehensive immigration reform "will be my top priority yesterday, today, and tomorrow," says McCain

Link: sevenload.com

_[Via: Hot Air]

Robert Shapiro Discusses His Book 'Futurecast'

One of the incidental benefits of insomnia is the delight of stumbling over something on television that gives an "Ah-ha!" moment. While channel surfing during a sleepless period I came upon the C-Span broadcast on Robert Shapiro and his book Futurecast: How Superpowers, Populations, and Globalization Will Change the Way You Live and Work.[I ordered from Amazon.com]


[This broadcast is from FORA.tv. 1hr.20min.]

Is Mexico's Drug War a Civil War?

At Family Security Matters:

The ongoing struggle between the Mexican government and the drug cartels - and the struggles between and within the cartels themselves - is a war.

It's not a conventional war in the classic imagination, of two armies facing each other on a large plain. But then, most wars today aren't like that anyway.

Most wars today involve small unit tactics, close quarter combat, ambushes, checkpoints, uncertainty, and alternating periods of quiet punctuated by surprise attacks. As in Iraq, where I served a tour of duty, the fighting in Mexico varies greatly by region and locality, and has its ups and downs.

Could the Mexican Drug War be classified as a civil war?

More demands from Islam

Pat Condell tells it like it is.

Download here

See also: A secular world is a sane world

Will you survive 'decarbonization'? Could weeds help?

The lives of U.S. citizens are drastically changing because of factors beyond the cost of oil. The purchase of carbon credits, the paying of someone to reduce or remove global warming pollution in your name EVEN THOUGH the pollution YOU YOURSELF remains the same is not the same as reducing your carbon footprint, or the "measure of the impact human activities have on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gasses produced, measured in the units of carbon dioxide." California is now coming up with plans to 'decarbonize' that could become the model for the rest of the United States. Wired Magzine's Alex Madrigal liveblogged the meeting by the California Air Resources Board. Here is the 35-page plan in pdf.

In 2006, California passed the Global Warming Solutions Act. Here are some greenhouse gasses you don't normally hear about. It appears from this report that even though we do our utmost to pare down our personal carbon footprint, everyone will still paying through the nose as the state [and eventually the nation?] will be charing exorbitant fees to "offset the transition away from fossil fuels", a process that could take decades, and fees [fines?] for anyone bringing a fossil fuel into the state. [See: Carbon Offsets Do Not Work]

Cheer up, not everything is bleak. The plan is supposed to bring savings in the form of modest savings to car buyers, a saving to public health-care costs, and INCREASED STATE REVENUES!!!

Will the nation follow the same track? Hmmmm.

[Measuring Our Carbon Footprint]

Envisioning Life at $200-a-barrel oil

Osama bin Laden must be crowing from his hiding place: the "oil weapon" is taking a toll as he envisioned, forcing changes in our economy and total life style.

The story is being repeated everywhere. Martin Zimmerman at the L.A. Times explains the "fundamental shifts in the way we work, where we live, and how we spend our free time." Henry C.K. Liu at the Asia Times, though not rejoicing predicting this outcome, going into great detail in "Flat-earther blind to oil facts". At Townhall, Carl Horowitz describes the problems with the Mexican oil industry in "There will be corruption: How Oil, Labor, and Government Mix in Mexico". Russia is attempting to form a natural-gas cartel.

Transportation in American can only be characterized by one word: expensive, and getting more so. Right now the cost of train travel outstrips that of traveling by air, but not for long as the cost of air travel is becoming more expensive and harder access as airlines cut routes and fleets.

Will we be able to drive to our destinations with skyrocketing gas prices and crumbling roads, bridges, and levees, and other infrastructure?

How will our children get to school if we can't drive them and school districts cut or eliminate bus service? How will police and fire services keep their vehicles moving? How will we businesses continue to ship goods or provide services? Will we be able to get to work, enjoy recreation, go on even short family vacations?
What about heating and cooling our homes, growing and storing food, maintaining clean water and clean air? All of these require energy, yet no real solution has been suggested.

Of course these problems are not limited to the United or even the West. Two-hundred-dollars-a-barrel oil will affect the whole world, a problem that has been envisioned for decades, yet little has been done about creating a solution.

"Ambition counters ambition" may be the way to prevent politicians from creating too much personal and institutional power, but such a maxim can not help solve an existential problem. We must work together, putting aside major and petty grievances that are holding back the implementation of an energy policy that will work. We can't afford to wait five, ten, twenty years while new forms of energy and their devices are developed, even though they probably are the future.

Florida Company Outsources Hundreds of Jobs to India in Spite of Local Subsidies

The Nielsen Company in Oldsmar, Florida [near Tampa], is replacing some of its workers with H-1B visas that contract with the bodyshop Tata (TCS). Nielsen employees who lose their jobs are required to train their Indian replacements in order to retain their severance and pension plans. (Via VDare Blog)

Across the state, the Kennedy Space Center is laying off thousands of workers, many of whom are competent mechanics.

Oldsmar is offering $3.1 million and other county incentives to Nielsen for creating high-wage jobs.