What part of "do not have a choice" do I not understand? How about the subject of the 'choice' you are denied. Now that you have clarified that you don't have a choice about how the electric company pays you, or how solar works, I'll reiterate, you still DO have a choice about how to use the power you generate. Making better use of that choice would serve you well, but you seem intent on claiming it's all out of your control (and that you're forced 'at gunpoint' to sell all your production cheap and buy it back expensive rather than find a way to use it directly). I'm intent on making the best use of the choices available to me (and I bet to you) in order to make intelligent choices about my energy, choices that have saved me thousands to date, and should save me tens of thousands in the long run, and save uncounted tons of CO2 from being produced. You have instead invested in a system that now serves your needs terribly, and now want to tell others how solar is not economically viable or green, both of which are absolutely backwards from my experience and research.

You were not kidnapped, you walked into that guys home and put his gun to your own head. I wonder if you've even investigated 'net metering' in your area, it could make your system work for even you.

OK, so energy cost VS energy produced is ALL you want to compare. Then you MUST include all energy costs to be reasonable, including the energy cost of cleanup of coal waste failures (that right there already totally tips any scale against coal, it can't come close to making the energy that cleanup takes), the energy used in upkeep of coal waste storage for centuries, the energy costs of habitat destruction/reconstruction by coal mining itself, the mining itself, transportation of the coal, power plant operation (construction, upgrading, and maintenance), and the cost of mitigating the 20-40 times the amount of CO2 pollution, health issues, loss of sunlight (solar dimming is real), etc. The list of energy costs goes on and on for coal, while the list for the energy cost of solar panel production and use in some cases is damn near zero (where it's made with leftover chip wafers in solar powered factories it barely takes any extra energy at all, but I do understand that most aren't made that way now).

Double return VS coal, because you get twice as many KWH per dollar with solar PV, or better.

Again with the 'spend more energy to produce one KWH of PV than with coal', show me some data. Everything I can find shows you're 100% wrong if you look at the lifespan of panels which become energy neutral in well under 3 years on average (some much sooner) and last 20-30 years, while coal continues to need more energy to produce more (filthy) energy. Perhaps in the extremely short term you have a point about cost/production, but any time period over 3 years puts PV ahead of coal in energy costs/energy produced, and in their 20-30 year lifetime they do much better.

Coal made power is NOT cheaper than solar made power. If it was, I would not save money with a solar system. I have already saved money with solar VS buying the same amount of coal produced power, therefore solar PV is cheaper than coal. Period. If it wasn't, our electric companies would not be 'farming solar' here as fast as possible, they would be building more coal plants.

Some people support coal because they have been misinformed about alternatives. That's why I have continued our discussion here, because your information is wrong based on my personal experience and research, and I fear you might convince someone to not even look into solar enough to see how wrong you are, how much money they could save (if they do it properly), and how much pollution they could not create.

Um...I DO grow my own vegetables in my backyard too. It's cheaper, and I get far better produce with zero carbon footprint. Another statement you've made that I take personal exception with. It's not a HUGE effort, but is some effort, but the returns are great and totally worth it. I think many people stopped subsistence farming because they're lazy, overworked, and/or live without any place to farm. I've been doing it since I was 12 and ate my first self grown corn, and I've never had reason to question that decision. I've read about people spending $50 to grow $5 in tomatoes...I'm not one of them. I spend $50 on manure to grow >$1000 in produce yearly, and have enough to give >1/2 of it away.

Not a single one of your examples are 'more viable' than PV in every situation, and private owned home solar doesn't take public dollars away from public power projects. I looked into wind-it's way more expensive for the same generation power along with numerous other issues, nuke-also far more expensive with other long term major issues, solar thermal-hardly working as hoped yet in the few, hyper expensive plants in existence, wave-not yet but fingers crossed, hydro-DISTEROUS for the environment and short lived. (You left out geothermal, which is excellent where it's possible.)
Also, most of your examples are not viable for residential use (what we're talking about here), as you said are more expensive (so are bad economic choices), and/or have other serious ecological issues that PV does not.

Money is the only reason to stick with coal or nuclear, and that's only because the companies that use it get away with not paying for most of the true long term costs, and even with that it's now FAR more expensive to buy that coal/nuke power than it is to make your own with PV, leaving NO real reason to stick with coal or nuclear....so what are you talking about?

My amphibious brethren are all at home suffering with chytrid....and the reptiles are overworked as a result.

Perhaps you ought to try to understand something and be less anxious to be irritatingly unlike your nom de Sift,

or

resort to your overworked usage of "...."

You misunderstand. Family court can't vacate state fees levied because of ILLEGALLY IGNORING family matters (child support). That's criminal. (and please don't be silly and say 'he didn't illegally ignore anything', because as far as the state is concerned he did until he proves he did not IN COURT, where the claim can be scrutinized and verified)
Courts have the authority and processes they do because intelligent, thoughtful people designed an imperfect system to do the best we could at serving justice. Because it is now so overworked, (and in this case abused by numerous people perpetrating frauds) it no longer works as designed...not because those in it are creating their own busy work, but because there is far too much actual work. (agreed, that's a good reason to streamline any process that could be streamlined)
Um...I don't want to sit in front of a robotic judge, thank you very much.
Um...courts ARE higher and more enlightened, due to their authority granted by society and their experience dealing with it.
Often courts do work properly. This one did, it vacated his child support order as soon as he proved he was never notified. Because you don't understand the full process does not mean it's poorly designed.
Like I said, I'm glad I'm not as cynical as you....you can deny it, but you are incredibly cynical about those working in the courts. I have known some, and they do not resemble your remarks in the least. They joined the law to help people, not to become a 9-5 drone lapping up the legal honey.

Congratulations! Your video, Overworked And Underpaid - Wrapping Cables - The Roadie Wrap, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 6 Badge!

Your video, Overworked And Underpaid - Wrapping Cables - The Roadie Wrap, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Overworked, exhausted, and in 'fuck this fucking job' mode here seen on his last day before being blacklisted from the oilfield AND trucking industry, not to mention being barred form ever returning to the state of ND after serving time there.

A condition referred to as, 'full-tilt' and he'll be lucky if they give him the spoke key to a bicycle after this.

(bet he has some hardcore metal or most likely, some sheit ghetto-rap cranked-up to 11 on his stereo and couldn't even hear the thunks from the beams on his boom....at least you'd like think so.)

Watched the whole roast and the best segment came from Jeff Ross, who had the entire panel of comedians in-stitches with short, well-timed quips and a comfortable, un-strained delivery. Samberg's schtick was crude, overworked, manic, tiresome and dull....oh, and unnecessarily long, not unlike most of the tired skits from SNL nowadays.
Lorne Michaels should take him back. Oh. He's there now.....give him a permanent dressing room star then and keep him from polluting any future feature film offerings.

yeah, it'll trickle down, through the IV drip you'll need because you broke your health on the cheap unhealthy diet you could barely afford with the salary from your underpaid, overworked jobs (should you be lucky to have them).

No wait, you won't be able to afford the IV drip either.

@renatojj

Politicians don't have their hands all over businesses, it's the opposite. Businesses have their hands in the strings that direct the politicians. Which means politicians are not serving society, but serving businesses. There are many examples of things happening that you know are wrong and can see are wrong, but nothing ever happens...why? Because businesses are either making money on them or mitigating money loss by it happening.

Look at nuclear power regulations, they have been loosened and the inspectors are actually limited in what they can inspect so much so that they don't actually see more than 5 or 10% of the workings of a nuclear plant. How can they say something is safe if they see less than 10% of it and those 10% don't even allow them to do tests they used to do?

Oil company regulation, why did the BP oil spill happen? It was because they are not held to standards damn near every other country on the planet holds them to. And when you see more into it, many times the oil inspection agents were going to work for the oil company when they retired. And yet they rarely busted their balls on questionable things and got caught with their pants down many times with not catching violations.....so they probably weren't hired for their inside knowledge on how to best keep the existing equipment up to standards....since they aren't being held to them.


And as for the last post you made...you can't just drop regulation on all of these things. There's countless reasons for it but I'll try to list a few.

1) They basically hold a monopoly in many industries or a small number of very large companies that end up basically being a monopoly, so there would be no counter balance of a free market because the market has never been free to begin with. If it were truly free there'd be 100/1000/10000/100k/1mil businesses in these industries all competing on either features or price because they should all be about as reliable as one another...since we always have to picture the "perfect" free market. I'll bet you can name a couple people who have shit internet service pretty easy or pay a lot for very little.

2) You are putting the policing of industries in the industry hands if you dial back regulation. They already can not regulate themselves. How many companies supported SOPA and now how many more support CISPA? They do what's best for them and they do it cooperatively not independently. That's why you have groups formed of these companies putting bills forward that are basically passed nearly word for word if edited at all by congress critters.

3) We hear all the time about businesses only responsibility is to make money. We don't even hold a person to that standard, an individual has more responsibilities than that...earning a living is probably in the top ten but it's not your sole major responsibility as a member of society. Number 1 could arguably be "obey the law" or "don't be a dick". Business number 1 should probably be don't negatively impact people as your business model....this could be not polluting, keeping a safe work environment, not overworking people, making underhanded deals in the name of profit, making deals you know you will back out of or have no intention to honor, etc. Yes shit happens, but you shouldn't make your business model based on making shit happen to profit. Banks and financial institutes arguably did this with bad mortgages and false rating of these mortgages when selling them.

@messenger

It's not just bribing politicians, but businesses openly courting people for employment after their term of service or the people regulating them. It makes it more profitable to be lenient and not enforce regulations or laws on companies when you'll be making 3x your salary when you go to work for them after kissing their ass for a decade or two. Both the bribes and the business tie ins with Haliburton made the early days of the current war seem pretty shady when you look specifically at Dick Cheney. But it happens with advisors to people in office as well, it's something that really should be stopped because government should be about public service and not service with the intention of landing a sweet gig at some company you helped make a few billion dollars for awhile a public servant.

You can't stop it entirely, but there should definitely be some lawful punishments put in place to make it have to cost the companies exorbitant amounts to court people to court them with the severe punishments placed on people who stray too far from the path. Like prison terms or fines to the tune of percentages of their life savings and 25% of a company's value if they are caught. Unfortunately, the people who would put forth these laws are the same people who would be directly affected by them....because they are all business owners anymore...it costs too much money to get into office and rich people are the only people who tend to have the wealth/power to pull it off.

So......regulations on companies it the best you can hope for, make it so politicians can't offer them anything worth the huge donations they make to these people because regulations would make the attempts worthless, unless of course it was deregulation. Which they've already done and continue to do, to the detriment of all. Profits are up for all the big companies sometimes higher than pre-crash, and yet they employ less people than they did 5 years ago. How are they pulling THAT off....they are cutting corners or doing something shady somewhere to keep earning like that despite being less capable of producing like they did prior when a lot more people had disposable income.

Another wonderful group is the Disabled American Veterans. They are no doubt overworked right now, but they help outgoing veterans get proper benefits.

My direct experience with Asians (specifically Indian origin) at college were that a lot of them were admitted with scholarships or worked as teaching assistants to pay back what they owed as the difference. Many of them were in the graduate program while I was in the undergraduate, but my last two years there about half my classes were graduate classes with a couple projects removed for undergrads.

And what I witnessed to make up the higher than average test scores of the Indian students was that they would cheat. I had one of them turn around during a test and try to cheat off of my work. I turned him in so I wouldn't be blamed if he copied word for word something before I noticed, nothing happened.

They would take past students homework, put their name on it. Photocopy it 5 times and all the indians in the class would turn it in as their own work. They would get together to work on projects, despite it not being group projects...it was all heads on one screen for hours on end.

So, they may test better and score better, but after speaking with a few....their society doesn't seem to punish cheating like you have here in the US. So I don't put much stock in scores, I spoke with a number of them and they had their smart members who carried the dumb ones along.

And the reverse can also happen. The dumb ones can smother the smart ones potential. Seen it happen while I was in school, "jocks" who were obviously very intelligent would blow off classes and homework because it wasn't what the other guys in their group were doing. These were white folks mostly.

And then you have native born US people of white or black families who are just not capable of mathematics beyond simple multiplication and division. And don't absorb most subjects, but might be a wizard at automotive or electrical given the opportunity. Perhaps they are developing more slowly than others, or perhaps they will never be capable of what you expect of them. But they reflect poorly in your scores, and are not immigrants.

That doesn't mean there isn't a place for them in society.

Now if you tell me that the jobs that would normally be there for folks like this are just swamped by the immigration.....then that's another thing they should be accounted for.
Or if their low scores are holding back other students, that's nationwide...and I'll agree it's a problem that needs to be addressed.


Obviously in immigrants or native born, if you don't see improve in certain cultures after one generation...something is wrong. And it can't simply be that these people are from a certain background that is incapable of adapting...they are human after all.

But I don't think immigration is causing the flaws you see. I think they are exacerbating the problem that already existed prior to their arrival. And that native born and people with established cultural centers in those areas have learned to adapt to and taught to the new arrivals.

A few flaws I saw while in high school:

- Over indulgence in sports programs. The books would be literally falling apart and they would be paying to have a new sports complex built. Saw this in a number of schools. I even did some work on one once I was out of high school. Multi-million dollar project where half of it was in their field and complex. The other big chunk was for the administration, and a quarter or less was put into stuff for the kids...you know the reason the place exists in the first place. The common thinking was that the sports complex would "make them money", except if it had to pay it's own way and cover the payments on the property, upkeep costs, etc...it would spent it's entire years "earnings" in a single month. But the board thought it was making money, despite what everyone else told them. While the actual classrooms were all cost (in their eyes)....even though they should be the core of the school's focus and were rarely without issues. Leaking roofs, leaking windows, etc.

- Teachers overworked. Many of them had extra curricular things they were in charge of in addition to teaching class, grading homework, meeting with parents, etc. Some even worked second jobs so they could supplement their income....especially the newer teachers.

- Teachers over-controlled. Discussion was kept a little too politically correct in most explanations of topics. It makes it more difficult to wade through the language to get to the lesson being taught. Sometimes some plain spoken wording would have made it much more clear. Dancing around the holocaust and civil war subjects are doing a disservice to their impact.

- Teachers reciting from text books. Basically in these cases the teachers didn't know the subject well enough to explain it to others. These people should no be teaching. I knew of parents who would come in and remove students from particular teachers classes because they had older siblings who told their parents how horrible this teacher was. I had to suffer through because I couldn't convince my parents, and I think it hurt me in the subject of mathematics for quite sometime following that class. I lost a lot of interest in the subject because of this teacher.

- Stupid punishment. I had principals who would bend over backwards for sports players especially soccer and football, but would threaten me with detention and what not every time they thought I was doing something. One example stands out. Big snow the night before, they never plowed the township I lived in until right around the time school started. My vehicle wouldn't go in the snow, I had to go home and get a ride from my parents since their vehicle was heavier. Principal didn't believe me until the bus that would have been on my route showed up 20 minutes after I did. He threatened me with all kinds of stuff. And I lost another big chunk of interest in school, because why bother if they are going to punish you for nothing and let others slide for basically bullying other students.

- And I could go on and on. If you weren't a native English speaker or aware that all this above shit was common. You might think you were being singled out and only end up going because the law says you have to. And most times despite the evidence that the above does not work, it's just enforced more stringently...making it even less desirable to put up with all the BS.

Education might be considered a socialist program, but it's lost it's focus from education and put it into sports or administrative costs...or when it comes to college outrageous fees that have little to do with what you are receiving. Or....profit centered for many people involved. A capitalist way of thinking, and it's not WHY these places exist..it's against their nature to be this way. And it's going to affect the overall education of your population as costs rise and money is taken away from what should be it's only goal.

Agree with the problem, but not the cause. Films are story telling, and story telling always adopts the culture and beliefs and stereotypes of the Audience.

These tend to be mostly American/Hollywood movies. Ultimately the underlying American movie watching public still generally believe women are either housewives, raising kids without adventure in their lives or lonely overworked and unmarried.

But it's also because of just a general lack of talent!
- Weak writers rely on the old tired movie formulas. e.g. the hard cop, divorced, alcoholic but loves his kids.
- Weak actors can only act 'basic' parts: Violent men with one liners, Sassy women shopping and bitching about men.

It's really hard to find a male or female actor that has the chops to pull off a part where they carry the character and conflict of a real storyline for 2+ hours. Most of the best Female actors i can think of are in the UK.

Although the cops are exploited (Overworked, underpaid), in times of struggle and with examples like these, one should understand the police as class traitors. They do not side with working people, they are used as hired guns to protect corporate interest and routinely deny human beings their rights.

Police are becoming more and more militarized and privatized and soon the separation between the masses and the pigs will be complete.

How do we live in a society without these pigs? Workers militias.