Last time we saw slabs and put them aside. This time the slabs get clamped together so that we can use the chainsaw mill to saw the marker poles we are after. As always the first step is to put on the guide rails for the first cut.

The first cut is done with the help of those rails.

And as you can see there are a few cants coming out of that log. The clamps get lowered to make room for the chainsaw to pass.

And we can take our poles off the stack.

Here Hairo, one of Luis’s brothers, takes away one of those poles. There is so much sawdust flying around that he decided to wrap his face with another T-Shirt. Looks a bit funny but sawdust doesn’t taste that good

From the Glenwood Springs Post Independent (John Stroud):

What was planned to be a 3 percent annual water/wastewater rate hike was cut in half by Carbondale town trustees at their Nov. 24 meeting, as a way of bringing some financial relief to town residents…

At 3 percent, the new monthly base rate for in-town residential and commercial water customers would have been $16.83 each, and for out-of-town users $25.24, plus the incremental charge based on water usage. Wastewater rates would have been $10.83 and $16.23, respectively, under the original proposal. Those rates will now be slightly less given the agreed-to 1.5 percent increase.

More infrastructure coverage here.

From the Summit Daily News (Bob Berwyn):

As described in a draft environmental study, the Moffat Collection System project in Grand County would also have impacts on flows on the Blue River. Flows in the Blue River at its confluence with the Colorado River could be cut by as much as 4,800 acre feet annually, about 2 percent of the river’s flow, according to figures released by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the draft study. Denver Water project manager Travis Bray said those figures apply when at full build-out of Denver Water’s existing system, and with the Moffat Tunnel on-line. Under the new configuration of diversions that would result from the Moffat Tunnel project, Denver Water would take between 4,000 and 5,000 acre feet of additional water from Dillon Reservoir each year. Bray said the draft study shows there would only be a negligible long-term impact to boating and no impact to fisheries in the Blue River…

Although 2 percent doesn’t sound like much, peak flows are important for the river’s ecosystem, said Becky Long, water caucus organizer with the Colorado Environmental Coalition. “If the project goes forward, the Blue River would see reduced flows in the summer months during wet and average years,” she said. The peak flows in wet years help flush sediment out of the river, create new habitat and support rafting and kayaking, she said.

The main focus of the project is on increased diversions from the Fraser River, but conservation groups are concerned about overall effects on the entire Upper Colorado ecosystem. They advocated for the Summit County hearing when the draft study was released a few weeks ago. Long said the Corps was responding to requests from Summit County residents by scheduling the local hearing…

Conservation groups have identified several broad environmental goals that should be included in the project’s mitigation plan, including:

— Adequate baseline flows in the Fraser throughout the year to sustain fisheries and recreation.

— Sustained peak flows at key times of the year to mimic a natural flow regime and ensure the health and resilience of the river.

— Aggressive urban water conservation and efficiency measures to save more water, such as incentives for homeowners to replace Kentucky bluegrass with drought-tolerant landscaping. More than half of residential water use goes to watering lawns.

— Ongoing monitoring of the river’s health and a mitigation plan with the flexibility to adapt to changing conditions…

A summary of the draft environmental impact statement is online at: https://www.nwo.usace.army.mil/html/od-tl/eis/moffat.deis.vol1.exec-summary.pdf (pdf)

Here’s the public meeting information:

What: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hearing
When: December 8 —Open House: 4 p.m.; public hearing begins at 6 p.m.
Where: Keystone Conference Center (0633 Tennis Club Road, Keystone)

More Denver Water coverage here.

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the legitimacy of global-warming scientists regarding the alleged CRU Emails ( SEARCHABLE EMAIL DATABASE), I have revisited and regrouped some thoughts gleaned from my prior blogs on the subject of climate change (below).  One  does not need to  read between the lines of these emails looking for snipets to bring forth as evidence of a global warming scam.  All one need do is research the dramatic changes in our Sun and other bodies in our Universe* to put this argument into perspective:

*”Our solar system, including the sun and Earth, came into existence about 4.6 billion years ago. The young sun shone as much as 40 percent weaker than today’s middle-aged sun does. When we talk about global warming today, we are talking about how only a few tenths of a percent change in the solar radiation can change the climate on the Earth dramatically. This makes it interesting to consider how the Earth and its life forms have managed to survive the truly incredible changes that have taken place over the eons. During this time, incredibly dramatic changes have taken place on Venus and Mars.”

I have been a fervent recycler since I was a child.  Whenever I would drive by an unsightly vehicle graveyard just off a freeway somewhere, even at a very young age, I was very saddened by how humans indiscriminately pile all this junk onto such a beautifully created Earth.  However, it is my perspective that although it would be prudent, as well as aesthetically wise, to do what we can in this world to retain a natural balance between humanity and nature, it would be abominally neglectful and unwise not to realize that we are not just dealing with Earth changes; we are dealing with a natural cyclical change that encompasses the entire Universe, perhaps even a hyperdimensional “leap”.  I firmly perceive that the “Global Climate Change” rhetoric was borne of political and corporate greed and this needs to be examined much more introspectively by humanity as just one planet in a plethora of planets and planetary bodies undergoing change.   I really do not think that Neptunians, Juperitarians, and Saturnians would “warm up” to a cap-and-trade agreement!  A quote comes to mind:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr

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Humanities Ride Through The Galactic Car Wash (Revisited)

We have dirtied up our space vehicle called Earth with junk and we have dirtied up outer space with junk. Time again to make a trip through the Galactic Car Wash, which appears to be due by December 2012. We are already at the drive-up service for the initial inspection. Of course, the other planets and bodies in our solar system will be joining us even though they don’t have junkies to litter their orbits, which is to say this is not an end-time Judgment but a quite natural cycle of house cleaning and renewal, as the ancients understood it.

Long before the writing of the Old Testament, apocryphyal texts tell us that many ancient cultures were fully aware that what they were living on was a ball, a sphere. Somewhere along the long cycles of millenia, this concept was entirely lost, at least in the Western mindset. Not until the middle of the 15th Century did Copernicus (re)introduce the notion that our Earth was indeed spherical and was not at the center of the Universe….What? How dare he think we not to be masters of the Universe! some of his colleagues and the priests would scream! It was five centuries later when we first saw our own Earth from space and came to realize that not only were we not the center of the Universe, we were just a tiny speck of dust way out in the back 40 (from the perspective of the 3rd dimension, that is) and no where near the center of anything but in our own anthropocentric minds.

Carl Sagan said in his book “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space” (Random House 1994):

(T)he aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar,’ every ’supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived here, on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot… . Our posturings, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privleged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Can anyone look at the arrow above showing that “You Are Here” and not have a flicker of humility? Wisdom teachers from many ancient cultures, through ancient manuscripts, codices, stelae and other means preserved for us the need for humility as a Spiritual path. One of Jesus’ sayings was: “Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 18:4) . Although I am not one to visit traditional churches or church-based web sites, I did find a wonderully insightful and even humorous interpretation of humility written by Pastor Eugene Harder on their New Hope Community Church website in Humility The Road To Strength. (Excerpt: “Please expel from your mind your extreme, outrageous and the radical perceptions of humility. I invite you to seriously consider this truth . . . ‘Humility puts us on the road to wholeness, pride locks us into denial and defeat.’”)

Beyond humility, though, I look at the above portrait of our galaxy and our place in it, and I see our “mote of dust” as a thought in the Universal Mind/God/Higher Mind, whatever we choose to call it. Have you ever had a nagging thought, a vague feeling that something is just not right or something is alerting you that you just can’t pin down ? If we view this on the scale of the Universal Mind, this troubled thought we call Earth has been a sore thumb in Universal Mind with all its internal and external strife. We talk about love, respect, unity, but even in the 21st Century when the common man has been able to come in intact with many cultures and find much more in common than not, our so-called leaders seem to be bent on creating wars and manipulating the masses for sinister and greedy reasons instead of using that agressive energy to bring prosperity to ALL to all the planet through our encomonic powers and through humility (there’s that word again) of understanding that lifting up others around the planet lifts us up as well.

The Druids, Mayans, and Native Americans, and other pre-Churchianity cultures stressed humility as well, and my personal perspective is that we have interpreted humility as a weak point in this Era of the patriarchal imbalance on our planet. Humility, however, simply means understanding that are are all sailing uncharted territory together on this spacecraft called Earth right along with millions of other spacecraft. If our boat starts sinking, it would be best to work as a team to plug the leaks rather than killing our fellow helpers. If Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise were constantly at each other’s throats, would they have nurtured the unity and mutual respect for each other (and ambassadors from other planets) to keep a proper balance in place for survival ? I think not.

I also see our mote of dust, as Dr. Sagan termed it, as a cell in the body of “billions and billions” (another Sagan legacy) of other cells in the known and the unknowns of the Universe. This Earth cell seems to run rampant every so often and creates a cancer that needs to be irradiated so that it does not overcome all the other cells. This, for me, naturally turns my thoughts to the extraterrestial phenomenon that has been with us long before Roswell, but that is another story. In our system, the Sun is in charge as the radiation therapist of our particular solar system to my mind via Earth changes (brought about by re-coding DNA through the rays of its LIGHT from my perspective***).

It boils down to this for me: As Above So Below. We must push all the exquisite mind energy and creativity into a positive mindset on this planet to wipe out the “nagging negative thought” to bring about balance in nature and to bring about a higher conscious awareness; to know deeply how everything is connected. We all might need to consider that these cancers that develop from time to time are initiated by sinister and greed-driven powers, some of whom are from here and some of whom are not. But again, another story.

Surely, our world leaders must know our position in the Universal scheme, yet they continue to lead us into wars and ruination of our planet. I perceive that some of them have connections to intelligent beings on other planets or dimensions, and Earth is somehow a strategic location—an ongoing battle is being waged to control it. However, because these Powers That Be are blocked from the Light entirely, they somehow seem to believe that they can make provisions to survive while the rest of humanity suffers. They have it all wrong. They will ride through the Galactic Car Wash right along with the rest of all living things and planetary bodies with no place to hide. The sprays of “water” will seep into the deepest caves and and the driving blowers will push aside the highest mountains. Going off planet for them will not be an option since the entire solar system will be affected and cleaned. Escaping through interdimensional portals would simply force them to confront Self.

My suggestion to the Dark T-Shirt team on this planet would be to reach for humility and conscience. It will not prevent our rendevous with the Galactic Car Wash but it just might save their Souls. Our solar system will survive the “waters” and the blowers as we get a cleansing, but we will exit with a much cleaner Spiritual windshield through which we see our place in the galaxy. Darkness cannot survive in such a world of Enlightenment.

_____

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: Scientifically and Intuitively, It’s Bigger Than Us

We used to perceive our Sun as having a yellowish hue. Kindergarten youngsters today might not see it that way when they draw a Sun on their crayon drawings. From my perspective, the Sun has grown progressively whiter over the past several years and with it an ever enlarging irradiance (or halo) that surrounds it. Whether it be within the vastness of outer space or within the microcosm of DNA material, nothing changes without everything else changing as well. Many of the planets affected by our Sun are changing. I love to follow science as a spectator with all the intrigue and discovery that comes with it. But I am also acutely aware that what should be a completely objective and independent area of study has been politicalized and manipulated ad nauseum. It has also been silenced.

From my perspective, the Sun is the main precursor of climatic change in any era and not just on Earth but with most of the planets in our solar system. While it is probably quite true that our extremely bad habit of polluting this beautiful Little Blue Marble of ours could be interfering or modifying somewhat what would otherwise be the completely natural effect of major cyclic/climatic change, our role is minor at best in my opinion. There are alot of political reasons for scientists to be pressured into, bought off, or even completely denied access to government-kept research into the phenomenon of global warming. Blaming it all on human industrial emissions opens the way for an excuse for more taxing, more centralized control, and ever more suppression of the human population. But from my perspective, there is a much more motivated reason for taking attention away from our Sun and keeping the issue “local.” The electromagnetic configuration of our Sun is changing dramatically, and while our planetary Handlers want to convince us that this is just a “world gone crazy” that they must manage, they ultimately do not want us to consciously realize that we are in the “crazy” process of experiencing…..Our Awakening.

I would wager that alot of people perceive this intuitively if even on a subconscious level. For example, more and more people I come in contact with these days are becoming intuitively aware that their perceptions about ideas, people, and institutions are changing; they are experiencing glimpses of movement or “shadow” in the periphery of vision that they did not experience previously in their lives ; they feel more compelled to improve Self and to help others. From my perspective, these are source symptoms that correlate the electromagnetic changes occurring with our Sun with an upgrade in DNA as our orbiting solar system begins to align with the galactic center. I personally perceive that the mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA passed down by females) was the first to be affected but more and more, our DNA will react to the changing (hyperdimensionally induced?) vibration of the Sun’s radiance. This may be why species unknown before are beginning to be discovered on our planet; this may explain why previously overlooked ancient texts and artifacts are suddenly being “discovered” because a visually higher vibrational spectrum is beginning to seed the rods and cones of the human eye. The changing configuration of the electromagnetic rays of the Sun, in my opinion, are vibrating into our 3rd dimensional world a slow but exponentially growing ability suddenly to come to terms with Truth—that the chains binding us have been in our mind only—an illusion. Once critical mass is achieved (and perhaps if certain Enlightening discoveries are loosed in the Middle East), the Handlers on this planet will be subsumed by our collective Light. Poof. I dare to put forth that it is this Truth that Dark forces fear most. What’s more, Darkness cannot vibrate into the Light so if they press on with their inhumane and ecologically distasterous wars, I suppose they will become their own worst terrorists here** while the rest of us begin to shift into a higher dimension and become the future “missing link” in 3D Earth history .

That aside, it is always wise to be mindful of our fragile ecology: Recycle whenever possible, ride a bike, limit electricity use or better yet, go solar!

Our changing Sun will handle the rest.

***

Sun Energy Output At Over 1,000 Year Peak: “The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period - which could last up to 50 years – but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth’s climate grew steadily warmer. The scientists also compared data from ice samples collected during an expedition to Greenland in 1991. The most recent samples contained the lowest recorded levels of beryllium 10 for more than 1,000 years. Beryllium 10 is a particle created by cosmic rays that decreases in the Earth’s atmosphere as the magnetic energy from the Sun increases. Scientists can currently trace beryllium 10 levels back 1,150 years.”

 Climate change hits Mars “Mars is being hit by rapid climate change and it is happening so fast that the red planet could lose its southern ice cap, writes Jonathan Leake.”

“Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says “Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia, says the Mars data is evidence that the current global warming on Earth is being caused by changes in the sun.” (NOTE: Politically-motivated proponents of human-caused climate change don’t like Mavericks rocking the boat, do they?)

Planet Venus: Earth’s ‘evil twin’ “Fred Taylor thinks the greenhouse effect on Venus has been driven all along by volcanism. Active volcanoes would have pumped copious quantities of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. ” (NOTE: No automobiles or human-made industrial pollution there!)

Jupiter’s Spots Disappear Amid Major Climate Change “Jupiter is undergoing major climate change and could lose many of its large spots over the next seven years…”

Global Warming on Pluto Puzzles Scientists “In what is largely a reversal of an August (2002) announcement, astronomers today said Pluto is undergoing global warming in its thin atmosphere even as it moves farther from the Sun on its long, odd-shaped orbit.” (NOTE: Hummm…I wonder if Pluto is moving toward an unknown heat source? Heat Up in the Milky Way Center “This would mean that there is a significant shortcoming in our understanding of heat sources in the center of our Galaxy….”)

The Science of Global Warming in Perspective “(A) quantitative reason why carbon dioxide does not create global warming…”

‘Fossil fuel’ theory takes hit with NASA finding “NASA scientists are about to publish conclusive studies showing abundant methane of a non-biologic nature is found on Saturn’s giant moon Titan, a finding that validates a new book’s contention that oil is not a fossil fuel.”

Ocean Dead-Zones May Be Linked To Global Warming “The data make it pretty clear that the recent conditions are unprecedented during any period that has been measured…” (El Niño/La Niña effect gone wild).

Who’s Lying? A Simple Tale Of Unbiased Global Warming Facts “The climate involves many facets of complex science and those wishing to mislead for blood money are more than happy to make it even more technical if it supports their uncaring, greedy and biased objectives. The objective of this article is to find the unbiased truth in a format that most can understand.” (NOTE: An intelligent essay from a rather different point of view).

Not By Fire But By Ice “It’s all part of a dependable, predictable cycle, a natural cycle that returns like clockwork every 11,500 years.” (Robert Felix with a twist on our climate. Is it an ICE age?)

ClimateGate

Alleged CRU Emails – SEARCHABLE EMAIL DATABASE

Part II

NIST lied to the public by manipulating data to conform to the “Official 9/11 conspiracy”. The Federal Reserve lied to Congress and the people and raped the U.S. Treasury. Now, we discover that Global Climate Change scientists fudged. Now that we have the knowledge, we must dig our feet into the ground and rout out the collective Oz behind the curtain of proprietary “nondisclosure” nonsense when We The Tax Payers are paying for lies.

Related from:

11/23/09: Scientist: Leak of climate e-mails appalling: “A leading climate change scientist whose private e-mails are included in thousands of documents that were stolen by hackers and posted online said Sunday the leaks may have been aimed at undermining next month’s global climate summit in Denmark.”
In another e-mail posted online, and unrelated to Trenberth, the British research center’s director, Phil Jones, wrote that he had used a ‘trick’ to ‘hide the decline’ in a chart detailing recent global temperatures. Jones has denied manipulating evidence and insisted his comment had been misunderstood. He said in a statement Saturday that he’d used the word trick ‘as in a clever thing to do.’ “

——————

** If anyone is to blame for a “greenhouse effect”, it would be the (now) Bush/Cheney/Pentagon/NWO war-for-profit machine in motion since 1913…and possibly even… HAARP. (“From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction. Potentially, it constitutes an instrument of conquest capable of selectively destabilising agricultural and ecological systems of entire regions.”)

However our unusual climate manifests , it’s the Sun, which in turn is being affected by the Galactic Center! During the peak of the last solar cycle there solar flares so powerful, they could not be measured by instrumentation. They were called “X” flares. Now are experiencing a “Deep Solar Minimum.” Both cycles are extreme.

2005: X17 Solar Flare

2009:  Deep Solar Minimum

 04/02/08: Solar Storms Are About to Get Ugly “On January 3, scientists discovered a reverse-polarity sunspot, signaling the start of a new cycle — and some are predicting that at its peak (in about four years) things are gonna get nasty.“

04/20/08: Did an Ancient Language of Universal Symbols Exist? “Strangely, both the writing in Colorado and Yemen spoke of a similar event, possibly related to the Sun, which was prophesied to change human civilization. Subsequent translations of sites in Oklahoma, Australia and South America have added more details about this future event. “

..from my little corner of the world.
Life’s Journeys

**********

***(In the context of the positioning of our Little Blue Marble into alignment with the Galactic Center, which is already beginning, Earth indeed becomes very significant in partnering with our other intrasystem solar planets to prepare for cyclical change (rebirth if you will) that will bring us back into the fold of the interplanetary Enlightenment.)

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

Pueblo West is seeking state health department approval of a pumpback plan it says will not harm Lake Pueblo, which is contested by State Parks and the Pueblo Board of Water Works. The Pueblo County commissioners and Pueblo Area Council of Governments have balked at approval of Pueblo West’s plan to return treated sewer flows into a gulch behind the golf course above Lake Pueblo. Right now, all options are open, said Pueblo County’s water attorney Ray Petros…

“On the one hand, they say they have the science,” Petros said. “Then why are they so reticent about putting in an application for a 1041 permit so there could be public scrutiny and independent verification of that science?” The county still would have to permit a discharge into Lake Pueblo, even if state approval is given. There also likely would be issues with the Bureau of Reclamation for long-term storage contracts in Lake Pueblo, Petros said…

The pumpback option would allow Pueblo West to use more of [transmountain] flows because there would not be the transit loss associated with Wild Horse Dry Creek.

More Pueblo West coverage here.

Well it’s going live. I have been really busy getting paperwork in order. I will get the first write up of the design process written up.

In the previous post I described how we found the guayacan tree and how it got prepared. This time you can see how it gets cut into slabs. From those slabs we make poles in another step.

But first a thick branch on the main trunk has to go. I like this picture because it shows very well how the sawdust flies around the operator. This is really hard work and Moises does a good job.

Now it is time to attach the Alaskan Mark III sawmill extension to our Stihl MS 650 chainsaw. This contraption is actually a very smart invention. There are many cases where you need sawn wood but the wood and the use for it is in a location that’s too remote to first drag logs out and then bring the sawn wood back in. There are portable sawmills but none of those you can put on horseback. Those devices are trailers to be towed behind a light truck.

With the Alaskan Mark III the chainsaw slides through the log creating a slab. For the first cut you use some rails to give it an even surface to slide on. All further cuts depend on the quality of the first one. We did learn our lessons and have since moved from a very weak set of rails to a better version. But for marker poles it was fine.

Luis is driving a small stick into the opening to help the blade not getting stuck.

The guys took turns driving the chainsaw. The guayacan is so hard that it takes about half an hour to cut just one slab.

In the end we got the slabs we wanted. They get put aside after each run through the log.

Fortunately the nature of the US Thanksgiving holiday makes for very few drivers on the roads, which makes for very few cyclists getting hit yesterday.

From the US we don’t have anything, only one North American report on a cyclist rear ended in the fog in Toronto. Deadly week on GTA roads includes four fatalities Interestingly enough the cyclist that was rear-ended was not among the fatalities from that day, but I don’t know if he’s still alive today.

And from Jolly Olde, they killed another woman with a large vehicle, a bus this time. Cyclist in bus collision dies When I read about this wreck back when it first happened I was hopeful that we had a survivor, one of the few heavy vehicle/bicycle wrecks in London that didn’t kill the female victim. Unfortunately, she didn’t survive. I have nothing on this particular wreck, but what I know about the other wrecks is the majority are from heavy vehicles making left turns through the cyclist’s path, a Limey left hook (because they drive on the wrong side of the road) when the cyclist is stationary while waiting for a stop light. I don’t know how to fix that kind of wreck except to make turning across a cycle lane illegal, which will bollux up the works no end. That would be the equivalent in the US of making right on red illegal, and all right turns where there is a bike lane illegal. Think about how that will fly.

And that’s all there was today, yay! I like days that don’t have many killed or injured cyclists.

Billed @$.02, Opus

Recommended reading “The Management of Service Availability” – paper written by my colleague Keith Inight, Technology Strategy Director in the Chief Technical Office.

This paper starts by looking at business requirements and how to assess an appropriate level of availability for a service. Getting this right is important – the costs can triple for a relatively modest improvement in availability.

The paper then draws on original Atos Origin research into the root causes of unavailability and the things that could have prevented it. It builds upon the unsurprising but often ignored fact that defective processes and human error cause far more problems than hardware failure, and proposes pragmatic solutions.

The white paper is available as a PDF by clicking on the link below.

The Management Of Service Availability WP

In the study of electrical engineering, power factor comes up quite often in terms of its various mathematical definitions, but people seem to overlook its real-world relevance. Though there are some regulations governing power factor, the way residential users are billed for electricity often leaves us in blissful ignorance of the importance of power factor. In fact, power factor is a measure of efficiency.

Starting from first principles, let’s look at the equation for instantaneous power in electrical systems:Of course, there are similar definitions for mechanical power (which involve torque and speed rather than voltage and current as above).

In the best case, the voltage and current waveforms will be identical, which means that they are both sinusoidal with crests and troughs occurring together. For passive devices like light bulbs (which are purely resistive loads), this is exactly what happens. However, some devices (such as capacitors and inductors) store energy for a short period of time, causing the waveform of the current to be phase shifted or displaced, relative to the voltage wave.

If we use the “average” values of voltage and current, we can determine what is known as apparent power. Even though I call them average, what we really use are the “root-mean-square” values — the reasons we use this measure are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that we can’t use a normal average for sine since it would simply be zero. For you statisticians out there, RMS is related to standard deviation (it’s a special case where your mean is zero).

Though its units are identical to those of Power (Watts), we use a different unit convention for this value, the Apparent Power (Volt-Amps, or VA).

Power factor is simply the ratio of real power compared to apparent power:

For linear devices which do not store energy, real power and apparent power are the same, so the power factor is 1 (sometimes people call this “unity power factor”).

If, however, an energy storage device like an inductor or capacitor stores energy and simply return it back to the source, then the power factor will be reduced (since power is being transmitted over the line, stored temporarily and then sent back). Only real power contributes to work actually done — whether it be heating your room or turning a motor.

As mentioned earlier, inductors and capacitors cause the voltage and current to be shifted relative to each other. This results in what is called the Displacement Power Factor (the angle, φ, refers to the angular displacement between voltage and current):

However, as we are moving forward in semiconductor techologies, we are increasingly encountering more and more nonlinear devices which introduce something known as Harmonic Distortion. Basically, it makes the current waveform “noisy” compared to the voltage reference; usually this is because a device switches on and off (goes from periods of drawing some current to zero current) instead of merely being proportional to applied voltage.

Total harmonic distortion (THD) is a measure of how “noisy” the current waveform is; for example, if you draw lots of power in short-duration bursts, the current wave won’t look like a sinusoidal waveform at all. This is also known as a shape factor since it will be 1 (unity) for perfectly sinusoidal current, and smaller otherwise.

THD is measured as a percentage, so its value is somewhere between 0 and 1.

The overall power factor takes both distortion (current waveform shape) and displacement (current waveform phase difference, relative to the voltage) into account:

So now we have identified an equation useful for determining the overall power factor of your equipment, especially for things like computers, cooking, heating, washing/drying of clothes, etc. But what does power factor have to do with efficiency?

To answer that question, let’s rearrange our power factor vs (real and apparent) power equation to look at what happens to current. We’ll be looking at RMS current, which is important because it is one of the primary factors that determines maximum loading of a given power line.

Since the amount of power we’ll need and the RMS voltage (line voltage) are effectively fixed, we can see that power factor and RMS current are inversely related. That is, with a lower power factor, we will require higher RMS current to deliver the same amount of power to our load; our RMS current is lowest when the power factor is 1 (unity).

Since power dissipated across a transmission line is:

There are finite limits on the amount of current that can be transmitted (greater power dissipated results in more heating of the wires, which can cause them to expand significantly or to melt), a unity power factor means a more effectively utilized infrastructure.

If everything we connect to the power system has a low power factor, it will result in an inefficient use of existing infrastructure (since we are transmitting more current than necessary, which also increases total line losses). It also means we will need a greater investment in infrastructure sooner, which is a challenging issue facing electric power utilities responsible for distribution of power.

From The Pueblo Chieftain (Chris Woodka):

a vote on Tuesday confirmed the [Colorado Springs city] council’s position to phase out the stormwater enterprise within two years. Unless another funding mechanism is found, Colorado Springs will absorb only the minimal funding for federal requirements, maintenance, health, safety and emergencies in its general fund beginning in 2012. Colorado Springs council adopted the new policy in response to Doug Bruce’s Issue 300, which implies the voters chose to end the stormwater enterprise, without actually saying so. Bruce campaigned for the issue as an end to what he and others called a “rain tax” and celebrated by tearing up his stormwater bill on television.

Council also agreed to include a $4.24 million-$6.7 million project to upgrade the Templeton Gap levee, which protects thousands of homes, was not on the critical projects list. In all, about $9 million of work on projects from the critical list are likely to be completed under the two-year phase-out.

Council members did not come up with an alternative for funding the remainder of critical projects on the list, although some talked about developing a regional approach with other El Paso County communities or putting a stormwater question on a future municipal ballot.

At the same time, Colorado Springs is planning on spending $46.2 million on SDS in the coming year, according to its published 2010 annual operating plan. The city has issued bonds for the project.

Colorado Springs also will spend almost more than $27 million for maintenance, repair, inspection and replacement of sanitary sewer lines in the city, including $7.5 million for ultraviolet treatment at its Las Vegas Street treatment plant, $7 million for sewer line upgrades and $6 million to fortify stream crossings, according to the operating plan. The city committed to spend at least $75 million in sanitary sewer upgrades, which are costs paid by customers and have nothing to do with the stormwater enterprise.

The city is obligated to make some of the repairs to its sanitary sewer system under state compliance orders, which are also a factor in a federal lawsuit won by the Sierra Club.

More stormwater coverage here.

One of my customer’s team member had destroy the Hyper-V Cluster by mistake. He formatted the cluster nodes without evict them before doing that . The nodes of the clsuter used to be  part of old cluster that was destroyed by mistake.

I tried to build the nodes again from the scratch and Create new cluster, When I run the validation wizard I got this error:

Cluster disk with identifier (identifier) has a persistent reservation on it ,the disk might be part of other cluster. removing the disk from other validation set.

My SAN is HP EVA. The Cluster is not able to see any of my LUNS although I can see them from disk management and can’t create the cluster.

This error due to the fact that the LUNs still keeping the old identifiers from the old cluster, You have to use Cluster command line to clear the reservation by that command:

cluster.exe node %nodename% /clear:disknumber

Now everything should work fine and you can pass the validation wizard

(Yet another in our series of articles written for GNN.tv by users of the now closed online community, originally published Thu, 15 Mar 2007)

“Port Militarization Resistance is organized to end our community’s complicity in the illegal occupation of Iraq by stopping the U.S. Military’s use of the Port of Olympia.“ —PMR statement of purpose, 1/21/07

Two heavily reinforced police barricades, each with an estimated two hundred and fifty riot police, guarded strategic transport points near the Port of Tacoma. It was 3:30 AM on Saturday morning, in the middle of a long night of protests against the shipment of large armored military convoys through the town and port. Breath clinging to the cold night air of the Pacific Northwest, activists moved from one police barricade to the other, intending to undertake a non-violent act of civil disobedience by sitting down in the road and allowing themselves to be arrested. The police, apparently, had other plans.

Port Militarization Resister Ray Kavick reports:

The police responded by firing into the group with pepper spray pellets, bean bags and rubber bullets followed by CS (tear) gas and pepper spray dispersal gas. A few protesters returned the canisters back to the police line to keep them out of the unsuspecting crowd who was not participating in the action. The police then advanced through the cloud of gas and opened fire on the fleeing protesters, chasing them three blocks and launching at least 20 canisters of gas.

Although a video shot by protesters shows activists approaching the barricade and sitting down on the ground while singing, “All we are saying, is give peace a chance,” Tacoma Police Department Information Officer Brad Graham told me by phone that a large group had attempted to move the barricade, kicking over the saw horses towards the officers, and entering the off-limits area outside the established “protest zone.” Though the video shows none of this provocation, Graham says that this was what triggered the decision to open fire. “That’s the beauty of being a videographer,” said Graham. “You get to show what you want to show, and not what you don’t.”

Graham told me that, other than the alleged incident of the large group moving the barricade and entering the restricted area, the acts of civil disobedience have been well-orchestrated and overwhelmingly polite. He said that activists made it clear to them that they were allowing themselves to be arrested intentionally, and that the acts of civil disobedience have, for the most part, occured in a “safe, orderly manner.” This sentiment was echoed by the activists themselves. “It was very respectful on both sides,” Tacoma Port Militarization Resistance media liaison Linda Frank told The Olympian.

Though there were three arrests on Friday night, none were arrested in the police assault. Many were reported injured, particularly by the pepper spray and tear gas, though no one required medical attention beyond that which the activists were prepared for themselves (though some street medics were denied access to the protests). Protesters offered one another bandannas soaked in vinegar to cover their faces, slices of onion to soothe their burning throats, and water to wash out their mouths and eyes, being careful not to swallow. At least five people were reported to have been fired upon at point blank range in the face or chest, and and least two were beaten with wooden clubs. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” said twenty-six-year-old Chriset Palenshus. “Somebody said, ‘Call the cops!’ What do you do when you’re scared for your life? You think about calling the police. Obviously, that wasn’t an option,” said Palenshus. Much of the police brutality was caught on tape.

A few days later, on Sunday night, more than one hundred activists regrouped to continue their actions. A total of twenty three were arrested while performing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience, eight of whom were arrested for violation of the ban on backpacks. The remaining fifteen, including Olympia City Council member T.J. Johnson, were arrested while attempting to deliver a citizens’ injunction to halt the shipment of military material to Iraq. All twenty three have been released. Johnson told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that “the campaign to continue our opposition to the use of our publicly funded ports to support the escalation of the conflict in Iraq will continue for as long as it needs to.”

On Monday night, over one hundred activists regrouped yet again. As they proceeded to the free speech zone, police snipers observed the protesters from the rooftops. Advising the group to move to a better spot through a megaphone, activists mulled around and slowly began dispersing. People seemed to think the actions were over for the night, and many were disappointed that—in the words of an Infoshop News report by Port Militarization Resister Ray Kavick—“nothing had happened except us having the equivalent of a high school pep rally.” Slowly, protesters began congregating around the police barricades. That was when everything changed.

The call went out from the police for the protesters to disperse or face arrest. Activists stood their ground. Without providing the legally mandated dispersal time limit, police began pulling their gas masks down over their faces. To the right of the congregation of protesters, a bus pulled up and unloaded riot police. Another bus pulled up on their left, unloading yet more riot police, surrounding the protesters on three sides. Only five people stayed at the barricade to face down the police, while the remaining crowd stayed in the intersection a dozen or so yards away. Moving the line out, police fully surrounded those remaining at the barricade, who were then arrested. Advancing on the remaining protesters, the line of riot police once again opened fire with rubber bullets and tear gas. All charges against those who were arrested have been dropped (the first of which was for third degree felony assault on a police officer), and no one was seriously injured.

Keeping the Pressure On: A Continuum of Actions

On Sunday, March 4th, four activists were arrested in Tacoma for their participation in the spreading resistance to the militarization of U.S. ports. One protester was assaulted by police and tasered three times. Another was shot with a rubber bullet.

For three years, activists in the state of Washington have been mobilizing to resist the increasing use of their ports to ship military equipment to Iraq. In May of 2006, hundreds of heavily armored Stryker combat vehicles rolled through the streets of Olympia, triggering local resistance. Recently, activists in Tacoma have organized a campaign intended to prevent the military from shipping a brigade of three hundred armored Stryker vehicles bound for Iraq through the streets of their town. Christian Hill of The Olympian reports that, “The 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division from Fort Lewis is scheduled to deploy to Iraq in April” as part of Bush’s recent troop surge for the war in Iraq. Activists have called for a sustained continuum of acts of civil disobedience and direct action to prevent the vehicles from leaving the port.

Navy veteran Wally Cuddeford, who was arrested and tasered during the protest at the Port of Tacoma on March 4th, explained the ambitious, if unproven, theory behind the actions that began a year ago:

Our goal is to stop military shipments from Fort Lewis going to Iraq. We were successful in stopping those shipments through the Port of Olympia, and now we are helping our friends in Tacoma stop the shipments there. The shipments are Stryker vehicles. They are speedy combat transports, armed transports. They are the backbone of the occupation. Half of these Stryker divisions are out of Fort Lewis. If we are able to cut off Fort Lewis’s supply of Stryker vehicles to Iraq, we could easily end this occupation. Democracy Now! 03/09/07

Cuddeford told hosts Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez that police officers grabbed him and threw him on the ground, rubbing his face in the gravel causing wounds which had yet to heal at the time of the interview. According to Cuddeford, with four police officers piled on top of him and his armed pinned beneath him, police proceeded to taser him in the back while barking orders for him to put his hands behind his back. Arms immobile beneath his own weight along with that of the officers, police proceeded to taser him three times before dragging him across the pavement, according to Cuddeford’s testimony. Cuddeford said police also assaulted Port Militarization Resistance organizer and Evergreen State student Caitlin Esworthy, and later shot organizer Jeff Berryhill in the leg with a rubber bullet. All three were charged with third-degree assault, which the county has since dropped.

On Tuesday, March 6th, Cuddeford and others attended the Tacoma City Council meeting to voice their concerns during the public comment period. After a few other activists had had their turn to speak, Cuddeford approached the microphone to read something he had written. Exposing police corruption with his words (according to a post on Infoshop News, accusations have been made that the Tacoma Police Department allowed their chief to use their resources to surveil his wife), the council attempted to cut him off. When he kept speaking, a council member asked the police to remove him. Arms forcefully pulled behind his back, he was dragged from the building screaming in pain. He was then arrested, thrown into a police cruiser, and taken to jail.

Police conduct—typical when dealing with this sort of political dissent—has been anything but exemplary. “This feels like Miami,” said Port Militarization Resister Ray Kavick, referring to the infamously heavy militarization and police state presence at the 2003 FTAA protests in Miami. According to a post by Kavick on Infoshop News, the police have infiltrated the Port Militarization Resistance listservs and have been planting disinformation. According to Kavick, an unspecified branch of the military also intentionally leaked false and misleading information to the Resistance, announcing a false transport route, and catching the protesters off guard. Police at the port have also been caught on tape refusing to identify themselves or provide badge numbers.

The Battle of Olympia

Last year, a convoy of hundreds of military vehicles rolled through the streets of Olympia. Though the community voiced strong objections to the military presence in their town, the military resumed use of its port after a seventeen year hiatus. By last May, community members had opposed military shipments through their town and port for two years, but had not developed a plan to actively respond and intervene in order to physically stop the shipments from occurring.

Then, on May 24th, on the fourth day of the military shipment, and with the majority of the cargo (nineteen of twenty convoys) already loaded and ready to head to sea, a coordinated act of civil disobedience and direct action went into effect. As a convoy rounded a curve, escorted and protected by the Olympia Police Department, a dozen activists or so stepped into the road, while several dozen more stood alongside the road in solidarity and witness. Activists, including members of the Olympia Movement for Justice and Peace, as well as many members of the Olympia and Tacoma branches of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), laid down in the road and locked arms to prevent being torn apart by police. After nine people had been arrested, another line of resisters stepped in to take the place of the first. Taking a detour to avoid the blockade, the convoy was pursued by protesters who again attempted to block the road, but were promptly and aggressively dragged away by Thurston County Sheriff’s deputies (allowing the convoy to pass), and later released without charges.

Several days later, on May 30th, a large demonstration outside the entrance of the port resulted in another coordinated act of civil disobedience, as protesters lifted a port fence off its hinges and laid it down on the ground. Crossing the invisible boundary, activists were pepper-sprayed by police, and over three dozen activists were arrested over a period of several days. Those who were arrested for removing the fence and entering the restricted area became known as the “Olympia 22,” and their trial is still pending, while those arrested on the 24th were never charged.

A statement from the Port Militarization Resistance articulated their opposition to the military’s use of their port:

The weapons shipments, and the use of our public property to prolong and supply the war in Iraq have made us complicit in crimes against humanity. We refuse to be complicit any longer. We will continue to utilize every available instrument of democracy, including direct action and disruption when necessary. We are working to stop the war machine by standing in front of the machines of war as they attempt to enter our port.

“We have developed and intend to pursue a continuum of actions designed to achieve our goal. Non-violent civil disobedience is part of that continuum,” said a Port Militarization Resistance statement of purpose.

Port Militarization Resister Sandy Mayes explained this continuum of actions:

It begins with public education to consistently and clearly communicate our goals and objectives. We then work on prevention of further military shipments by petitioning the Port Commissioners and other elected bodies. If those efforts are unsuccessful we use civil disobedience to block the convoys, openly communicating our intentions well in advance of planned actions. And if the convoys get through, all bets are off and other tactics will then be considered.

If the convoys get through, which it seems that they are, activists will have to consider moving beyond the polite and cordial acts of civil disobedience described by Frank and Graham. A more confrontational and militant attitude is certainly necessary if the Port Militarization Resistance wishes their tactics to be successful and their movement to spread to other ports. People are tired of tactics that do not work.

It is worth mentioning that many attribute the military’s shipment of the convoys through the Port of Tacoma as the direct result of last year’s campaign against shipments through the Port of Olympia, some thirty miles to the south.

A Global Struggle Against War & Militarism

As legislative channels continue to prove ineffective for bringing about genuine change, and the purely symbolic acts of protest and much civil disobedience become increasingly futile, direct action will become an attractive option. Port Militarization Resister Sandy Mayes wrote, “People are tired of being ignored by politicians and the media and are ready to take their actions to a higher level. For many, military convoys returning to Olympia would provide the perfect opportunity for CD [civil disobedience].”

Direct action, in general terms, means any action that is intended to circumvent indirect avenues to change (stopping military equipment shipments so the war machine cannot function, for example, as opposed to electing representatives, passing legislation, or even holding a placard at a protest). One particularly demonstrative example of direct action is the infamous Seattle General Strike of 1919, where workers brought the city to a halt, and did so peacefully. Despite predictions of chaos and rioting in the media, the five days were the lowest the city’s crime rate has ever been. It was State repression—then, as now—that brought the rebellion down.

Tactics of direct action are conspicuously absent from today’s anti-war movement, but they have a long history in the anti-war and labor movements, and more recently, the environmental movement. Though Port Militarization Resistance adheres to a code of non-violence, direct action in the past has included strikes, occupations, sabotage, sit-ins, and vandalism, among other things. SchNEWS reports that in 2003, rail workers in Scotland refused to move ammunition bound for Iraq. Irish activists chased commercial airlines—who had been shipping tens of thousands of Iraq-bound U.S. troops through Shannon airport before the invasion began—out of the country. Activists tore up runways, and one woman even heavily damaged a U.S. Navy Boeing 737, with a hatchet. Shannon has been the target of similar actions by Irish activists since Viet Nam.

Whether or not cutting off the supply of Strykers heading from Fort Lewis to Iraq would deal a deadly blow to the occupation, as Cuddeford suggests, is certainly debatable, but one thing that is certain is that such actions, on a coordinated and national level, could easily bring the U.S. military machine to a screeching halt. Strategic infrastructural components such as production points and transport systems (including truck, rail, air field, and sea port), are highly vulnerable to labor strikes, occupations, and sabotage. The U.S. war machine depends on the unimpeded operation of these key gears and engines of industrial militarism, and if they are brought to a halt, the illegal occupation of Iraq will not be possible. Only a large-scale and strategically coordinated effort on the part of the people is capable of such an accomplishment, and this level of decentralized and autonomous coordination is sadly lacking in the U.S. anti-war movement today.

The workers of this country (and the world) operate the U.S. war machine, and without us, it cannot function. Nor can it operate without constant supply of military hardware, which must be produced and transported, all by the same working class people who are enlisted to kill and die in the wars of the ruling class. It is within the power of the people to shut down the war machine, if they so choose. We built the infrastructure of this civilization, we maintain and operate it, and we have the power to dismantle or stop those aspects of it that do not serve our interests. If only we knew, and did not fear, the power that we have. If only we would use it.

For more information about Olympia’s resistance to the military’s use of its port visit www.omjp.org and www.olywip.org.

• Video: Give Peace A Chance — Tacoma Police Riot » » »
• Video: Stryker deployment protest, March 7, 2007 » » »
• Photos: Action & Arrests at the Port of Tacoma, March 11, 2007 » » »

How To Get To The Port Of Tacoma

Take Exit 136B off of I-5 which will put you on Port of Tacoma Road. Follow Port of Tacoma Road until you hit Lincoln. Take a left on Lincoln and follow it until you reach Milawakee. At the intersection of Lincoln and Milawakee there will be a police roadblock. Opposite it, on the right hand side of Milawakee, is the parking lot. Welcome to Port Militarization Resistance!

• Map of Port of Tacoma » » »

To protest the brutal treatment of the peaceful protesters please call the following numbers:

Mayor of Tacoma 253-591-5100
Tacoma Police 253-798-4721
Tacoma Police Public Information 253-591-5968
Tacoma Sector Command 253-591-5431
Tacoma Community Liaison 253-591-5583 and 253-591-7892

• More City of Tacoma Contacts » » »

Copyleft 2007, Guerrilla Media Collective

GNN contributor and blogger Nathan Coe is a guerrilla journalist and activist residing in the mountains of Southwest Colorado, where he is attending college and working on his Major in Humanities. He can be contacted at free_world_alliance@yahoo.com.

Visiting Pulau Ketam 7A Jetty at 2:30pm on 25th Nov 2009

The recently released World Bank report on Africa’s infrastructure, together with commentary.

Guardian’s top 10 green living myths.

An honest appraisal of  BMW’s recent Mini EV trial – useful hard data to direct efforts on the obstacles that need to be overcome.

Here’s an in-depth look at Aaron Million’s proposed pipeline from southwestern Wyoming to the Front Range and points south in Colorado, from Joel Warner writing for Westword. Here’s an excerpt:

Disclaimer: I’m quoted in the article.

Along the Green River in Wyoming, cities and towns are massing to fight a proposal that would pump up to 250,000 acre-feet of water per year from their river to thirsty cities and towns in Colorado. One meeting on the topic was so contentious that attendees have referred to it as a “Guantánamo Bay waterboarding.”

The focus of the uproar is a relatively unknown Fort Collins entrepreneur named Aaron Million, who came up with the plan to bring the much-needed water to Colorado. And these days, he has as many enemies on this side of the border as he does in Wyoming. Some of Colorado’s most powerful water suppliers oppose the project, while one is trying to build a similar pipeline himself. One ensuing squabble nearly came to blows.

Here’s a follow up the the Million story detailing the disappearing glaciers that are part of the Green River’s source waters, from Joel Warner writing for Westword. From the article:

When [Charlie Love, a colorful geology and anthropology professor at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs, Wyoming] isn’t busy living with New Guinea cannibals or erecting dinosaur displays on WWCC’s campus, he’s spent a lot of time over the past 25 years climbing around and flying over the glaciers that cling to the sides of the Wind River Mountain Range in western Wyoming, glaciers that feed the Green and several other major river systems. And what Love says he and his WWCC colleagues have discovered about these glaciers is disturbing: “They are going extinct before our very eyes.”

More Flaming Gorge pipeline coverage here and here.

From Highlights in Chemical Science (Amaya Camara-Campos):

High quality analysis of raw sewage is crucial to measure pollutants in the environment and the efficiency of wastewater treatments plants. Suspended solids in sewage can block analytical apparatuses and complicate analysis so samples are commonly filtered before analysis. But, appropriate corrections for the filtration step are not always made say Rolf Halden and Randhir Deo at Arizona State University, Tempe.

Some hydrophobic organic compounds adsorb onto these solid filters and disappear from the sample, so the analysis of the resulting aqueous phase does not show the total amount that was present before filtering, explains Halden. Halden and Deo studied reported data for 33 organic compounds in the aqueous phase and found that between 15-60% of some compounds’ mass was adsorbed onto the suspended solids, which led to estimates of organic pollutants being 50% lower than actually present. And at higher pH levels, the underestimation became more frequent.

More wastewater coverage here.

• The North Devon servers have been installed and Network connections have been ordered.
• Kevin Davies and the Transformation Team are meeting this week to discuss how RiO will work in a ward environment i.e. use of scanners, projectors etc.
• Remote access options need to be throroughly investigated and communicated to the Transformation Team to ensure that the staff they engage with at workshops and training are informed correctly.
• All infrastructure work is on schedule.

At least 44 people were killed in Jeddah after a heavy downpour. The rains caused a major infrastructure failure and the results were disastrous. My heart goes out to all Jeddawis.

This would not have happened if the people of Jeddah had a say in how their city is run. This would not have happened if there was transparency and accountability in how our country is governed.

I’m beyond angry and disgusted.

UPDATE 27/11/09 2:40: The death toll reaches 83. Keep in mind this is the official number announced by the Civil Defense. The actual number might be higher. More rains are expected on Jeddah tomorrow.