I am going

I paid 57% of face and didn't even know I was getting a deal until the tickets arrived.

Rose Colored Glasses

I decided tonight that I am going with my wife and son to see the Badgers press the Ducks at the Rose Bowl. Tickets are available from the low-$100's, it's just a short drive from PHX, and I lost my job so I don't have to work on the 3rd. Opportunities like this don't happen every day.

Wind power constipates the Midwest grid

Another unintended consequence of wind power, the Midwest electric grid cannot transmit all the wind generated power when the wind blows hard. Reported by Energy Central:

The transmission team plans for peak hours, or when maximum demand will occur on the system. Incorporating assumptions about what the generation and load will be during peak hours in a transmission planner’s model runs into problems when, for example, 4,000 MW of wind power to which the resource planning team had given a capacity rating of 600 MW generates at full capacity.

“When I plan a transmission system that’s capable of 600 MW firm, what do I do with the other 3,400 MW if it shows up?” Bradish said. “It’s happening now and is causing issues on our transmission grid.”

This is making planning that used to be relatively routine more complex, said Chuck Liebold, PJM’s manager of interregional planning.

“PJM is now recommending transmission upgrades due to light load criteria, which looks at a 50% peak load and is heavily influenced by renewables integration,” Liebold said.

The solution, spend more money, much more money than the cost of the windmills, to upgrade the transmission grid.

How far will they go?

The great attorney had come to Los Angeles from Chicago to defend James and John McNamara, brothers and unionists accused of conspiring to bomb the Los Angeles Times, the city’s anti-union newspaper, killing 20 printers and newsmen. But jury selection had not gone well, and Darrow feared the brothers would hang.

Is this outside of the arsenal of Wisconsin's Walker-haters? We can only pray that it is.

Union über alles.

Found it here: Smithsonian Mag