How much plastic surgery does it take

to have a horses ass?

Yea, you could say that, I'm excited to see ya.

Tell your farmer uncle look at this

All your Republican relatives living on those soybean farms or cattle ranches will want to know how much solar energy can save farmers, and protect them from local power failures.  And it's not a hippie magazine that did the study and wrote it.
http://cleantechnica.com/2014/11/15/farm-ranch-guide-talks-up-low-cost-solar-energy/
The link direct to the article is below, it wouldn't link, so copy/paste it.
http://www.farmandranchguide.com/news/agri-tech/solar-moves-beyond-early-adopters-in-upper-midwest/article_8f713c4a-6a87-11e4-a8e3-33615daaba45.html

China just insured us of falling energy prices

 A few days ago China and the US agreed to improving the environment, and thus the climate.  Clean air is good, keeping glaciers on the mountains is good.  But the right is pissed, war on coal and all that, some on the left says it is to weak, some of both says it will let China cheat.

Here's why it is good, really really a good deal for everyone.  Lower prices.  Yes, much lower prices, prices that will undercut oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear.  Why, how?   Well for starters the newest wind turbines are already the lowest form of energy and home solar is already lower than retail utility, and it's now sometimes competitive in solar farm wholesale situations too.  But with the economy of scale in the production wave coming our way to meet the goals of this agreement, prices will fall, a lot.  China may or may not meet the exact numbers of their goals but they are already dwarfing everyone else in their clean energy growth rate.  Add to that, last week they changed their electric rates, the rich, or people in a mansions or fancy apartment, or a company that makes a lot of money, your energy rates just went up.  They want even the rich to turn off the lights.  Also they just added a $6 a ton import duty on most coal to drive up costs at plants to stimulate conservation.

Then today, India announces they will stop importing coal in 3 years or less.  This is a stunner for Australia, their supplier.  Instead they will boost their own mines but mostly launch a giant wind and solar growth plan.
A sad note, in the US black lung suddenly jumped to numbers not seen since the 1970's.  Mines are cheating on their safety and health requirements, and no one is doing a damn thing about it, fines go unpaid, the Senate and Congress stand up for these bastards.  The industry will blow down a whole mountain ruining the community and wilderness, it will do little to prevent it's men from getting black lung, it's an industry that does not deserve to prosper.

Back to that war on coal thing.  It's actually a war on smoke, not coal.  You should know the laws gave each state a target to clean up air.  The utilities can buy scrubbers, and wind and solar, geo-thermal, what ever it takes to meet the standards, including closing coal fired plants if they don't want to install smokestack scrubbers.  These scrubbers are a product, industry here makes them, installs them, it's a business, it creates good jobs, and electric rates only go up a few pennys a month for each of us, don't listen to this shit about millions or billions it costs us, it lets you create jobs for a few cents, and you get clean air too. If they want they can still burn their beloved coal.

NPR had 3 full time reporters covering the environment.  Last week they cut it to 1 who can work on it 1/2 his time.  Lets see, I seem to remember that as Bush 43 left office they demanded for npr to keep it's support they had to let a right winger head up NPR.  Talk about a sleeper cell of terrorist.

Fracking cost me money now

About 5 years ago oil and gas companies started fracking about 45 miles southeast of here.  About 4 years ago we started having earthquakes.  Wednesday we had a real boat ride, lots of rocking, I was getting an eye exam and the doors were slamming and the fat ladies working there were moaning and holding on.  It was in the mid 4's, 4.6 I think.  In the fracking area bricks fell off some buildings, here no damage.

This morning I called the insurance agent and added earthquake coverage.  It's currently only a few dollars a year, but he said they may yank the rate higher if the shaking continues.  So, now fracking actually costs me something.  My expenses and risks (still a big deductable on masonry damage) go up so a few oil guys can get rich.

Kansas Gov. Brownback early this year set up a 3 man panel to see if fracking and the earthquakes are related since they started in the same place at the same time. 2 oilmen and a geologist that spent his life working for an oil company were his picks.  "Probably not related, no solid evidence, it's just a random thing" said Pope Brownback of the report.  Breaking up the stoney arches and layers under our feet is like going under your house and shattering the foundation, things are going to sag, fall, settle, slip, crack, shake, your not going to like it.   Unrelated?  Like sugar and obesity!

Things going on around here.

It was cool yesterday afternoon, I got out and mowed the yard before dinner.  Really nice out.  Yellow leaves from 5 100ft+ cottonwoods near the house mulched nicely under the old mower, a few red leaves out front from a neighbors maple.  My maple has not changed yet, still green as are some of the mulberries, hackberries.  The redbuds are about half green leaves and half yellow with some falling.  The elms and dogwoods still green, the walnuts turned yellow long ago and are almost bare.  The grass is dry so I turned the well on this morning and the fescue looks greener already, sprinklers still running and the wind came up to 22mph blowing water all over the yard, a few late robins are running through the mist.

So far we haven't had a frost, it's really late in the year to be frost free here.  I need to put some oil on my wooden deck floor, I did the rails already.  I don't want to do it when it's under 50°f, the oil won't soak in good enough, I don't want it drying laying on the surface.  It's suppose to get up into the 50's for a couple hours but I think I'll wait for a day when it will get warmer and stay up for several hours.

I am struggling with my latest sculpture, a full sized realistic and accurate bust of Hermann Hesse, 17" tall, author of Steppenwolf, Sidhartha, Glass Bead Game, If the War Goes On. In Sidhartha a young man leaves on a life long journey seeking spirituality and self and in the end he finds it, one of my favorite books, set in the time of the Buddha, it's one of my favorite books and with his other books was widely read in the 1960's.   Hermann fled Germany with his Jewish wife and was given citizenship in Switzerland just before the war.  He has a wrinkled forehead that has given me fits.  I have put the wrinkles on and scraped them off 5 times.  Plus I made one of the best mouths of all time, it looked like it could talk, only to see later it was too far forward compared to his nose and chin, my tutor cut it off, I couldn't do it, the new mouth is in the right place now, it's well done, but it doesn't have that look, it's not as good, and messing with it is dangerous, I don't want to do the 5 times forehead wrinkles routine on the mans lips.

The wife is lurking around with projects in mind, something is about to happen I can feel it.

Robertson of 700 club tells their listeners invest in oil stocks, it's biblical

A few days ago I found an article about the life of fracked oil and gas wells.  Thousands of the 1.1 million active wells in the US are fracked, leading to the industry boasting of energy independence.  Don't get your hopes up that fossil fuel can do that.  Fracked wells have a terrible habit of dying young.  Within 2 years the (national) average well production falls about 50%, within another couple of years the output becomes uneconomical which means re-frack or cap.  At this rate the industry needs to replace over 1/4 the fracked wells a year to maintain current output.  The payback may fall short over time at this rate if oil prices fall further, and natural gas prices don't rise faster.  Seeing your investment wiped out due to charlatans advice and greed, well that's biblical.

Your fathers oil wells produced for at least 5 years, most lasted decades with a few approaching a century.  Why the change?  In dad's day, they were going after the easy to recover oil and gas, now we are into the expensive hard to get at era.  We need to leave it lay, nature put it where it wouldn't hurt us, and gave us wind and sunshine.  Next time you see an add about energy independence, watch to see how much they talk about renewables, more efficient lighting and transport, energy stingy standards for homes and appliances, energy efficient industrial equipment, - these things will get us to energy independence quicker than any other method.