Hi, my name is Daniel Barker, I live in Lakeland, Florida.
I am a lifelong conservative, and left the Republican Party in early 2006 over the war in Iraq and corrupt defense contractors.
Like any good conservative, I totally opposed Senator Al Franken - until the following happened:
Last Thursday, Sen. Franken introduced an amendment (S.2588) to the FY2010 Defense Appropriations Bill that would restrict funding to defense contractors who commit employees to mandatory binding arbitration in the case of sexual assault. The legislation, endorsed by 61 women’s, labor and public interest groups, was inspired by the story of Jamie Leigh Jones, who watched the vote from the Senate gallery today.
Jones was a 19-yr-old employee of defense contractor KBR (formerly a Halliburton subsidiary) stationed in Iraq who was gang raped by her co-workers and imprisoned in a shipping container when she tried to report the crime. Her father and U.S. Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), worked together to secure her safe return to the United States, but once she was home, she learned a fine-print clause in her KBR contract banned her from taking her case to court, instead forcing her into an “arbitration” process that would be run by KBR itself. Just today, Halliburton filed a petition for a rehearing en banc in the 5th Circuit Court, which means that Jamie’s fight is far from over.
(source: official site for Senator Franken)
After reading how our own government contractors abused Jamie Leigh Jones, I now support Senator Franken!
I ask everyone in Washington, D.C. visiting to do the following: when walking near the Capitol, carry a big sign that says "Daniel Barker, Lakeland, Florida, loves Senator Franken"
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
some comments on energy
Yes, we have thought of that at various times. The leader of our motorcycle group asked me that - he was talking about cars - if they're electric, where do we get the electricity from? I had thought of it years before that, and he asked me years ago.
There are several answers for electric car. First, the electricity can come from whatever we want to use, whereas an internal combustion is primarily fossil (I know some people argue about an 'alternative', I'll get to that in a minute.) So if the power comes from a dam or wind or solar, no fossil fuel. Second, an electric car uses less energy. When it decelerates, it creates power. Also it is more efficient - the motor turning the wheel is better than an engine, transmission, drive shaft, differential, and so on.
Batteries for electronics - when solar panels hit affordability, people will use them. Right now, for a small unit (under 5K$), it runs about ten to twenty dollars a watt. A thirty watt panel runs about three hundred, plus the stuff - installation, control panel, and of course a deep-cycle battery to store the electricity.
It is only a matter of time for solar energy to become cost-effective. It started out at about a thousand a watt, now it's down to about five dollars a watt. That is the cost of the panels. When you factor in what it produces, it runs about twenty two cents a watt. As we're paying about thirteen, it doesn't add up. But Hawaii costs about twenty two cents on the grid, so recently solar energy hit parity, probably the first time in a developed nation.
There are ways you can cheat - reflect more light on the panels using mirrors. (A mirror costs nothing compared to the same size solar panel.)
Hmmm...getting fuel from corn and so on - right now, it takes so much energy (the plow, for example, and harvesting, processing the corn and so on) to grow the corn, that in general you are not saving any fuel - it takes about the same amount of fossil fuel to produce the corn oil as the corn oil itself produces.
For most people, a crank generator beneficial - first, it produces heat, which most of the time you need, second, exercise, which benefits, third, you are not using fossil fuel, which is good.
The only exception is climate - if tropical or sub-tropical, the heat produced has to be removed. The answer is obvious - a water-based generator. The crank generator works in a swimming pool. First, even in the summer time, you need to heat the pool, so the heat produced generating the electricity is not only not wasted, it is beneficial. The other benefits are the same - exercise and not using fossil fuel to make electricity. So we need to develop a human powered generator that works in a swimming pool.
With today's engines, a 50cc, or three-inch engine, would produce at least three horsepower, or about 4kwatts. One tenth of that, 400 watts, is much more than what I'm producing pedaling the bicycle. So just a 5cc engine would be a good size for me - it would produce up to about 400 watts, which to me is a lot of power.
I guess all this is happening because of the new president - everything is changing, how we look at things.
There are several answers for electric car. First, the electricity can come from whatever we want to use, whereas an internal combustion is primarily fossil (I know some people argue about an 'alternative', I'll get to that in a minute.) So if the power comes from a dam or wind or solar, no fossil fuel. Second, an electric car uses less energy. When it decelerates, it creates power. Also it is more efficient - the motor turning the wheel is better than an engine, transmission, drive shaft, differential, and so on.
Batteries for electronics - when solar panels hit affordability, people will use them. Right now, for a small unit (under 5K$), it runs about ten to twenty dollars a watt. A thirty watt panel runs about three hundred, plus the stuff - installation, control panel, and of course a deep-cycle battery to store the electricity.
It is only a matter of time for solar energy to become cost-effective. It started out at about a thousand a watt, now it's down to about five dollars a watt. That is the cost of the panels. When you factor in what it produces, it runs about twenty two cents a watt. As we're paying about thirteen, it doesn't add up. But Hawaii costs about twenty two cents on the grid, so recently solar energy hit parity, probably the first time in a developed nation.
There are ways you can cheat - reflect more light on the panels using mirrors. (A mirror costs nothing compared to the same size solar panel.)
Hmmm...getting fuel from corn and so on - right now, it takes so much energy (the plow, for example, and harvesting, processing the corn and so on) to grow the corn, that in general you are not saving any fuel - it takes about the same amount of fossil fuel to produce the corn oil as the corn oil itself produces.
For most people, a crank generator beneficial - first, it produces heat, which most of the time you need, second, exercise, which benefits, third, you are not using fossil fuel, which is good.
The only exception is climate - if tropical or sub-tropical, the heat produced has to be removed. The answer is obvious - a water-based generator. The crank generator works in a swimming pool. First, even in the summer time, you need to heat the pool, so the heat produced generating the electricity is not only not wasted, it is beneficial. The other benefits are the same - exercise and not using fossil fuel to make electricity. So we need to develop a human powered generator that works in a swimming pool.
With today's engines, a 50cc, or three-inch engine, would produce at least three horsepower, or about 4kwatts. One tenth of that, 400 watts, is much more than what I'm producing pedaling the bicycle. So just a 5cc engine would be a good size for me - it would produce up to about 400 watts, which to me is a lot of power.
I guess all this is happening because of the new president - everything is changing, how we look at things.
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