An off note in music history

It is little known today that Signor Alfredo Nobellini, inventor of the accordion, also invented another, even less successful instrument. Always seeking a greater fortissimo, he combined his interest in music with his interest in things that go boom! to produce the explodeon (rhymes with melodeon). Any accordion player could play an explodeon, though seldom for very long.

It is difficult, at this historical remove, to gauge the impact the explodeon had on its listeners, as few critical reviews of performances have survived. Audiences are reported to have been blown away, even transported to heavenly heights. The score of the famous 1812 Overture originally had an explodeon part, but this was later rewritten for cannon, which were found to be easier to manage in an orchestral setting.

Nobellini composed a suite for explodeon and pipe-bomb organ. He was reported to have said, before its only known performance, that it would mark the apogee of his career. Indeed, neither he nor the concert hall is known to have featured in musical history since the event.

"Still working on it."

Beetle Bailey by Gregg and Mort Walker | Sept 5, 2011

Varieties of experience

MUTTS by Patrick McDonnell | August 24, 2011

Oil companies are not gouging

Some facts about oil and money at ExxonMobil Perspectives.

ExxonMobil’s earnings are from operations in more than 100 countries around the world. The part of the business that refines and sells gasoline and diesel in the United States represents less than 3 percent – or 3 cents on the dollar – of our total earnings. For every gallon of gasoline, diesel or finished products we manufactured and sold in the United States in the last three months of 2010, we earned a little more than 2 cents per gallon. That’s not a typo. Two cents.

Taxes are much more than that. Governor Molloy in Connecticut wants to add another 3 cents to his state's 25 cent per gallon gas tax. Gas is cheaper in Rhode Island, and cheaper yet in Massachusetts, but most Connecticut residents don't live close enough to a border to make it worthwhile to cross over just for cheaper gas.

Read the Perspectives post, and this one at Power Line, which adds some commentary. Higher energy prices are part of the Administration's plan to Win the Future. WTF!

Palin in 2012

After listening to the podcast of the speech Sarah Palin gave in Madison yesterday, I felt like rushing to the polls to vote for her right away. Video and transcript at Conservatives 4 Palin.

A flappers' dictionary

Slang of earlier eras can be opaque. Here's a guide to some of it from the 1920's. Thanks to Virginia Lee on Facebook.

"Crisis management in advanced democracies"

I like it when someone takes something I've sort of known for a long time and states it tersely and pungently. Mark Steyn's reader Ezra Marsh just did that, with this:

My experience is that most people, and all democracies, manage time in the following way:

Phase 1) A crisis is coming, but we still have time. There's no need to act yet.
Phase 2) Yes, a crisis is coming, but we still have time. There's no need to act yet.
Phase 3) We're out of time. There's no reason to act, because it's too late.

How often do we see this scenario? Seems like daily. Democrats are particularly good at it. They like to talk about vigilance as if it were paranoia, prudence as a culture of fear. But Republicans sweep things under the rug now and then, too. Thanks to Mark Steyn at The Corner.

Maybe that new car should have one of these

The Wave-Disk engine. What? I don't know, but if they can have a prototype by the end of the year as promised, this is a whole new direction for cars.

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Obama's Marie Antoinette moment

One of many, really, but maybe this one will catch the public imagination.

Can't afford gas? Buy a new car!

That's the ticket. Glenn Reynolds has two posts so far. The first has a screenshot and link to video. The second, more thoughts on the matter. Update: Make that three posts: I missed this one.

And a couple of days later, another, with a nod to historical accuracy.

Heh. Another post on this: "LET THEM BUY HYBRID VANS." This topic keeps on giving.

Japan catastrophe

Received in email from Bud Tyler, the Old Marshal of Frontiertown, who claims not to have written it.

10 Things to learn from Japan--

1. THE CALM
Not a single visual of chest-beating or wild grief. Sorrow itself has been elevated.

2. THE DIGNITY
Disciplined queues for water and groceries. Not a rough word or a crude gesture.

3. THE ABILITY
The incredible architects, for instance. Buildings swayed but didn't fall. (?????)

4. THE GRACE
People bought only what they needed for the present, so everybody could get something.

5. THE ORDER
No looting in shops. No honking and no overtaking on the roads. Just understanding.

6. THE SACRIFICE
Fifty workers stayed back to pump sea water in the N-reactors. How will they ever be repaid?

7. THE TENDERNESS
Restaurants cut prices. An unguarded ATM is left alone. The strong cared for the weak.

8. THE TRAINING
The old and the children, everyone knew exactly what to do. And they did just that.

9. THE MEDIA
They showed magnificent restraint in the bulletins. No silly reporters. Only calm reportage.

10. THE CONSCIENCE
When the power went off in a store, people put things back on the shelves and left quietly.

I think number 3 has a lot to do with building codes, but the architects and contractors need to be willing and able to follow them.

The whole thing says something about media. Someone said something recently about how different real catastrophes are from Hollywood catastrophes. In movies, we always see panicked mobs. In real life, we more often see this kind of cooperative and often selfless behavior. Compare news coverage, largely fictitious, of what was supposedly happening in New Orleans when Katrina hit, with the reports that came later, when real witnesses began speaking up.

"Palin-bashing by the brain trust"

To go with the previously noted piece on Obama, Van der Leun also gives us On Palin Bashing by the 'Brain-Trust': "As far as coward Charles Krauthammer goes…."As a commenter says, "How did we go from Reagan to Pansy Patrol in so short a period of time?"

A propos of Palin, this from Glenn Reynolds:

MARC AMBINDER ON FACEBOOK: “My hunch is that this election will hinge on who best harnesses the gut fear that America is in decline — and turns it into real optimism.”

Who does this better than she?

Van der Leun speculates on Presidential malice

The question of to what degree Barack Obama hates America and wishes to destroy it comes up in conversation from time to time. Van der Leun's analysis, contrasting Hanlon's and Heinlein's razors, seems like a good contribution. Excerpt:

21 months is an extremely long time to have a rogue ego and malicious mind actively guiding and making the day-to-day, life and death, decisions of the nation. Twenty-one months of appointments, foreign policy, executive orders, and the odd military adventure here or there, can add up to a lot of problems unless your goal is the weakening of the United States. In that case, it might just be enough time after all.

Read the whole thing: Presence of Malice: Against the Conservative Portrait of the President. There is much discussion in comments.

And see, for contrast, the next post: "Palin-bashing by the brain trust."

Pure gas

It seems that some lucky people, in parts of this great land of ours, can still obtain unadulterated, clear quill gasoline. The list of stations is maintained at Pure-Gas dot org. Hmm … they don't seem to mention whether there is MTBE in this stuff, or not. But that would still be better than ethanol. From Jerry Pournelle's mail.

S. Weasel goes to an art show

A Norman Rockwell exhibition, to be exact. Turns out it's his first in England. Her review is here. Short version: "Superb."

Some discussion of the shortcomings of critics is included. Special credit to Uncle Badger, in comments. I find that if I am acquainted with the work of a critic, I can figure out whether he or she is likely to like a work that I am likely to like. But it's too much trouble to become acquainted with the work of every critic. And most art criticism, especially, is pretentious hooey.

"Leftist anarchists" are oxymorons

Good, brief discussion of "leftist anarchists" at Instapundit. Excerpt: "… there is no such thing as a leftist anarchist. We are using words here to describe groups of people in ways that those words were never intended to be used. It’s like a person carrying a yellow flag, but it’s called green. Everyone says, 'hey, I see you have the green flag with you,' whenever you go about town with a yellow flag. Such is leftist anarchy. It isn’t anarchy at all, but actually extreme statism.…"

New Pournelle interview

Glenn Reynolds interviews Jerry Pournelle, at PJTV.

Compare and contrast: Tom Snyder interviewed Jerry Pournelle and Durk Pearson, back in 1979.

Desuetude

This blog appears to be suffering from it. It's not because the woodpecker has eaten all the suet, either. No, the squirrels got a fair amount of it too.

And it's certainly not because I have lost interest in current events, or in the Internet in general or the blogosphere in particular. No, for me the Internet reminds me of London in that line of Samuel Johnson's, when he said "when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

Actually, I have been very sick with cancer on my pancreas. Not pancreatic cancer, but a neuroendocrine tumor there, and on the liver as well. The general discomfort, the distractions of many visits to doctors and hospitals, and the debility induced by chemo treatments have all contributed to the lack of posting. So that's what's going on.

I'll continue to post links here every now and then, but I doubt I'll be indulging in anything lengthy, not in the immediate future, anyway.

Star Trek, Phase II

Really new adventures. All for love, no money. Thanks to Moe Lane, who explains a bit more.

Monbiot learning to love the nuke

Good for him. In the Grauniad: Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power. George is coming to see that civilization requires energy to operate. Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Of course the Grauniad has to pair this piece with a prime example of anti-nuke hysteria, just for balance. "Fair and balanced," right.

Update: A related item from Seth Godin: "For every person killed by nuclear power generation, 4,000 die due to coal, adjusted for the same amount of power produced..." Thanks again to Glenn Reynolds.

High cost of the green mirage

This is a little wind farm, mind you.

Wind power will cost RI taxpayers $1.5M

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - Deepwater Wind's initial project will raise state and local governments' electric bills by a combined $1.5 million in its first year, according to documents reviewed by the Target 12 Investigators.

Municipal electric bills will increase by a total of $1 million while state government's bill will rise by $476,630, according to an estimate commissioned by National Grid from Energy Security Analysis Inc. The cost would rise by 3.5 percent every year for the next two decades.

The estimate was included in a document National Grid asked the R.I. Public Utilities Commission to seal from the public view as the panel weighed whether to approve a controversial 20-year contract between Deepwater and Grid. The PUC denied that request, opening the town-by-town breakdown up for public inspection.

The government cost estimates reflect the smaller of Deepwater's two projects, a demonstration wind farm off Block Island that will have up to eight turbines and is expected to be up and running by 2013.

The company – which was handpicked by Gov. Don Carcieri in 2008 to develop wind power off Rhode Island's coast – is also proposing a much larger, utility-scale development of up to 200 turbines that won't be in place until at least 2015.

Much more, and video, at the link.

In a sidebar to the story quoted above, we learn that "National Grid will pay Deepwater a maximum of 24.4 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity in its first full year of operation. After that, the price will increase 3.5 percent per year – theoretically to 25.3 cents in the second year, 26.1 cents in the third year, etc." For comparison, a recent post at Green Tech says "Recent power purchase agreements to buy energy from wind farms have been in the range of 5 cents to 6 cents per kilowatt-hour." And for further comparison, that sidebar says that "National Grid pays 9.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for wholesale electricity in Rhode Island right now." Most of that comes from natural gas and nuclear.