"May you live in interesting times"

It's official - this will be a historic presidential election regardless of who wins. McCain picks Alaska Gov Sarah Palin as veep! I'm sure Mitt is disappointed, but it's a bold move that should bring some unhappy conservatives back to the voting booth.

While these are not necessarily my issues; she is strongly pro-life, an NRA member & hunter, thinks we should drill for oil in Alaska, and has a son who'll deploy to Iraq before the election.

She should play well with many disenfranchised Hillary voters - some, certainly not all, but maybe enough to make a difference.

A friend notes "Interestingly enough Obama choosing Biden defangs a lot of his arguments about McCain as an insider - a possible minus for Obama. Palin gives McCain more of the guy trying to change things - a possible plus for McCain."

I was mildly rooting for Romney, but I doubt he added enough to the ticket. Biden just gives me chills, but I'm sure most traditional liberals think he helps Obama - trouble is, he needs more than that group to win.

I wonder if McCain/Palin can pull some conservative congress-critters to D.C also? I expect a lot of turnovers this year.

NOW will probably shoot Palin down on the pro-life issue - their one issue doesn't seem to be women when those women are conservative.

McCain picks surprise running mate - Yahoo! News UK:
"Republican John McCain made a surprise choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate on Friday, adding a political unknown to the presidential ticket who could help him appeal to women voters.

Palin, 44, a self-described 'hockey mom,' is a conservative first-term governor of Alaska with strong anti-abortion views, a record of reform and fiscal conservatism and an outsider's perspective on Washington.

'She's exactly who I need. She's exactly who this country needs to help me fight the same old Washington politics of me first and country second,' McCain told a roaring crowd of 15,000 supporters in Dayton, Ohio.
. . .
The choice of Palin was a risk for McCain given her lack of national experience, but her record in Alaska will help him reinforce his reform message. Palin built a reputation as a reformer in a state that recently has been hit with corruption scandals.

Elected in 2006, she is Alaska's first woman governor. She is also an avid sportswoman who would bring youth and vitality to the ticket. McCain turns 72 on Friday and would be the oldest person to take office for a first term in the White House if elected.
. . .
The choice of a vice president rarely has a major impact on the presidential race. Palin will meet Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a debate in October.

McCain and Republicans open their national convention on Monday.

In his acceptance speech on Thursday, Obama attacked McCain and linked him to the Republican policies of President George W. Bush. He also said McCain was out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of Americans and had been "anything but independent" on key issues like the economy, health care and education."

$4,000.00 per second paid in taxes by "Big Oil"

As Reagan said "... government IS the problem". Also, we need to remember that Jimmie Carter's "windfall profits tax" resulted in less production, not lower prices - a big part of the reason the US imports 70% of our oil today.

Today in Investor's Business Daily stock analysis and business news:
"On July 31, Exxon Mobil reported an $11.7 billion second-quarter profit, breaking the record for a U.S. company that it previously set.

Naturally, politicians and the public, provoked by a financially ignorant media, reacted as if the company had stolen the money.

Barack Obama called the earnings 'outrageous.'
. . .
Too often, business leaders choose to duck when the arrows of outrage come flying. But Exxon Mobil CEO and Chairman Rex Tillerson made an unusual and courageous stand Wednesday, appearing on ABC's "World News" with Charles Gibson.

"I saw someone characterize our profits the other day in terms of $1,400 in profit per second," Tillerson told Gibson.

"Well, they also need to understand we paid $4,000 a second in taxes, and we spent $15,000 a second in cost. We spend $1 billion a day just running our business. So this is a business where large numbers are just characteristic of it."

We can't think of anyone who would be willing to pay $4,000 in taxes for every $5,400 they earn in salary or wages. Yet many in our country believe it's OK, even desirable, for oil companies to do just that.

What's needed here is a bit more perspective, a sense of proportion. Though Exxon Mobil set a record for nominal profit, the oil industry isn't actually making the biggest profits.

In the first quarter of this year, the profit margin for oil companies was 7.4%. That trailed the electronic equipment industry (12.1%) and the pharmaceutical and medical industry (25.9%).

Last year, 63 industrial groups posted bigger profit margins than the oil industry.

Also obscured by the moaning over Exxon Mobil's profit is the fact that investors expected higher earnings from the company. After second-quarter profit was announced, the company's stock price fell almost 5% because of its disappointing performance.
. . . .
And with more than half of all Americans owning stock, that means millions are poorer when Exxon Mobil shares fall."

The Future of Warplanes?

Remotely piloted vehicles are coming into their own, but I certainly hope we maintain a manned Air Force for that day when some enemy manages to interrupt communications with our unmanned vehicles, or finds convenient methods to disrupt their electronic brains.

We need to remember that "the next war" will be different than the wars we're fighting now. Combat equipment needs to be flexible enough to meet the challenges of that "next war". As discussed below, UAVs are an important component of our air power - an advantage we may not retain forever. Hopefully the Air Force has some realists making these decisions.

Warplanes: The Rise Of The Droids:
"August 11, 2008: The U.S. Air Force is, for the first time, converting a fighter wing from manned (F-16) combat aircraft, to unmanned ones (the MQ-9 Reaper.) The conversion, for the 174th Fighter Wing, has been in the works for three years, and the last combat sorties in manned aircraft were flown last week, by members of the 174th serving in Iraq.

The air force has already converted several combat wings to fly Predators which, while armed (with two 107 pound Hellfire missiles), are considered reconnaissance aircraft. The Reaper is considered a combat aircraft, optimized for seeking out and destroying ground targets.
. . .
Strafing and "intimidation" (coming in low and fast) attacks have been very useful in Iraq and Afghanistan, so the Reaper is not going to put the F-16s out of business right away. But the 19 ton F-16 costs three times as much as a Reaper, and is much more expensive to operate. The F-16 uses over a hundred times more fuel, per hour in the air . . .

. . . It's cheaper, more effective, and safer (for pilots) to use Reapers (or similar aircraft) for a lot of the ground support work. Fighters are still needed to keep the skies clear of enemy aircraft, although Reapers are better suited for the dangerous work of destroying enemy air defenses. But for fighting irregulars, the Reaper is king.
. . .
It's been noted that most of what F-16s (and F-18s) are doing these days is dropping smart bombs, and using their targeting pods to do recon for the ground troops. Reaper does both of these jobs better and cheaper.

The major advantage of the Reaper is it's "persistence." It can stay in the air for 14 hours (or more), and that means you can put it over an area of interest, and wait for the enemy to do something. If that happens, the Reaper is there with Hellfire missiles and smart bombs. . . . one Reaper can fly out with over a ton of munitions, and stay out for over ten hours. An F-16 can do that, but only if you want to wear down the pilot. The Reaper operators work in shifts, and are in much better shape to handle whatever comes up."

Storage for Solar & Wind Energy

Both solar and wind power-plants require a storage mechanism in order to deliver energy to the grid in a controllable manner that won't put stress on other energy producers.

It looks like the idea here is to produce Hydrogen & Oxygen via electrolysis when the output is strong (or demand is weak), and to use them to produce energy when the output is weak (or demand is strong). Less expensive materials (catalysts) will lower the cost of electrolysis but this, like any form of storage, still increases the cost of the wind or solar power-plants. It would be interesting to see how these costs compare to the cost of a modern nuclear plant.

Solar Energy, All Night Long - Forbes.com:
. . .
"Nocera's discovery--a cheap and easy way to store energy that he thinks will be used to change solar power into a mainstream energy source--will be published in the journal Science on Friday. 'This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years,' said Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT. 'Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can seriously think about solar power as unlimited--and soon.'

Plants catch light and turn it into an electric current, then use that energy to excite catalysts that split water into hydrogen and oxygen during what is called photosynthesis' light cycle. The energy is then used during the dark cycle to allow the plant to build sugars used for growth and energy storage.

Nocera and Matthew Kanan, a postdoctoral fellow in Nocera's lab, focused on the water-splitting part of photosynthesis. They found cheap and simple catalysts that did a remarkably good job. They dissolved cobalt and phosphate in water and then zapped it with electricity through an electrode. The cobalt and phosphate form a thin-film catalyst around the electrode that then use electrons from the electrode to split the oxygen from water. The oxygen bubbles to the surface, leaving a proton behind.

A few inches away, another catalyst, platinum, helps that bare proton become hydrogen. (This second reaction is a well-known one, and not part of Nocera and Kanan's study.)

The hydrogen and oxygen, separated and on-hand, can be used to power a fuel cell whenever energy is needed.

"Once you put a photovoltaic on it," he says, "you've got an inorganic leaf."

Chemists, it turns out, are always worrying about the stability of their catalysts and end up doing backflips to try to synthesize materials that won't corrode. Photosynthesis, though, is so violently reactive that the catalysts involved break down every 30 minutes. The leaf has to constantly rebuild them. Maybe, thought Nocera, instead of fighting corrosion, he should work with it. "It's a bias a lot of scientists have. We want something to be structurally stable. But all it has to be is functionally stable."

This thinking led Nocera to try his cobalt-phosphate mixture. He knew it wouldn't hold together, but he thought it might still work. Sure enough, Nocera's catalyst breaks down whenever the electricity is cut, but it assembles itself again when electricity is reapplied.

Nocera's discovery is still a science experiment. It needs plenty of engineering before it can be a useful device. The cobalt and phosphate at the center of Nocera's work is cheap and plentiful, but the hydrogen reaction uses platinum, which is rare and expensive. The electrode needs to be improved so the oxygen-making process can speed up. And the system needs to be integrated into some kind of electricity-producing device, ideally powered by solar or wind on one end and a fuel cell on the other."

Also see this link, for pictures of the process etc.