Unplug Your Unused Appliances

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An alarm clock or cellphone charger might consume 10 watts on average plugged into the outlet. If that 10 watt device is left in the outlet 24 hours a day for 365 days a year, it will consume approximately 87.5 kWh year.

For the sake of this analysis, let’s assume that we use 100% coal fired electricity, sold a residential home for 15 cents per kWh:

  • $0.15 per kWh (Hudson Valley price)
  • 1.04 lb of coal consumed per kWh (modern coal plant with NOx and SOx controls)
  • 0.35 lb of coal ash produced per kWh (modern coal plant with NOx and SOx controls)
  • 0.7 gallons of water consumed per kWh (modern recirculating water coal plant, water discarded as vapor in cooling tower)

In one year that 10 watt device will use:

  • $13.13 in electricity
  • 91 lb of coal burned
  • 30.6 lb of coal ash landfilled
  • 61.25 gallons of water

It’s Time to Dismantle Trump’s Murder Budget and Defund Militarism

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It’s Time to Dismantle Trump’s Murder Budget and Defund Militarism

"The predictable passage of blank checks for war was an expression of the acceptability of the status quo. The status quo was murder, but within the halls of Congress and, of course, the White House, there was a level of comfort with that. From the US's early days, the military evolved largely as a vehicle for colonialism and genocide. As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in An Indigenous People's History of the United States, "the Iraq War was just another Indian war in the US military tradition." This country's military has long been more of an offensive force -- charging ahead with the winds of white supremacy and capitalism at its back -- than one of "defense." The Iraq War is one moment in its long legacy of actively disrupting, upending and devastating the lives and communities of millions of people of color, both at home and abroad."

"Much of the government seems to view perpetual war as an inevitability, the way most of us, in the words of Angela Davis, "take for granted" the existence of prisons. Davis has written that, although prisons as we know them are a fairly recent addition to the world, they have become so embedded in our society that "it is difficult to imagine life without them." The US's brand of imperialist militarism, too, is seen as natural. In the mid-2000s, many liberal Democrats were arguing for a strategy of amelioration: a small-scale withdrawal of troops, the cutting of some "waste" from the Pentagon budget, a halt to the production of a couple of bizarrely expensive fighter jets. These measures were aimed at mitigating the damage, instead of disrupting the overall project of war, militarism and the destruction of communities, most of them in Muslim-majority countries."

Independence Day 2017

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This year Independence Day (July 4, 2017) is located on a Tuesday. Maybe you’ll also get the Monday off for a four day weekend? It is 15 weeks away now, and the average temperature for this day is 82 degrees.

A look back at the weather for Independence Day:

  • Sunday, July 4, 2010: Partly cloudy, 90 degrees
  • Monday, July 4, 2011: Sunny and pleasant, 86 degrees.
  • Wednesday, July 4, 2012: Rain showers, 90 degrees
  • Thursday, July 4, 2013: Thunderstorms, 91 degrees
  • Friday, July 4, 2014: Cloudy with showers, 73 degrees
  •  Saturday, July 4, 2015: Rain showers, 70 degrees
  •  Monday, July 4, 2016: Partly cloudy, 87 degrees

Red River

Campfire

March 21, 2017 9 AM Update

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Forty degrees and pretty gray as we head into the 9 o’clock hour this morning. Later we are looking at temperatures around 47 degrees which is normal for today. Maybe a little more clearing later, we will see.  Going to see some melting of the snow and creation of some mud everywhere. Kind of brown and icky looking snow in the city for sure today.

I realized on my way to work that my face was covered with blood and my sideburns were cut unevenly. Somebody was half awake when he shaved this morning. Too late to fix the sideburns, but I did mop up the blood and will fix the sideburns in tomorrow morning.

The sun will set at 7:09 pm with dusk around 7:37 pm, which is one minute and 9 seconds later than yesterday. Today will have 12 hours and 14 minutes of daytime, an increase of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have a slight chance of rain showers before midnight, then a slight chance of rain and snow showers between midnight and 1am, then scattered snow showers after 1am. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 25 degrees at 6am. Five degrees below normal. West wind 11 to 16 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Chance of precipitation is 30%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible. In 2016, it got down to 27 degrees with periods of snow. We aren’t don with snow yet, although in two weeks the normal low temperatures will be above freeze. The record low of 2 occurred back in 1875.

I don’t know if they adjusted the sensitivity of the CDTA Navigator cards or if I’ve just gotten better at using the cards but it seems like they are almost instantly read when I stick my wallet up against the reader.  I am very happy with my new wallet, as things don’t seem to slide around much, and I don’t need to pull out CDTA Navigator Card to pay my bus fare — so no risk of misplacing it in my wallet or in a coat pocket.

As previously noted, next Tuesday is the Average High is 50 when the sun will be setting at 7:17 pm with dusk at 7:46 pm. On that day in 2016, we had rain and temperatures between 50 and 41 degrees. Typically, the high temperature is 50 degrees. We hit a record high of 85 back in 1945.

Today in 1921, New Economic Policy is implemented by the Bolshevik Party in response to the economic failure as a result of war communism. In 1970,  first Earth Day proclamation is issued by Joseph Alioto, Mayor of San Francisco. And in 2006,  social media site Twitter is founded. And in case your wondering what is the matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank, American author, historian and political analyst is born in 1965.