Jonathan's blog

Last night we finished watching the documentary Spellbound (2002). From Wikipedia:

Spellbound is a 2002 documentary, directed by Jeffrey Blitz, nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It follows eight competitors in the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee: Harry Altman, Angela Arenivar, Ted Brigham, April DeGideo, Neil Kadakia, Nupur Lala, Emily Stagg and Ashley White.

We enjoyed it. The kids are pretty amazing, and it was also quite interesting to the engagement of the parents and how the whole thing is quite an experience (and lots of hard work) for both parents and children. I give it 4 out of 5.

From an article titled "Unlike boomers, Gen Y doesn't believe in disaster" by Garrison Keillor:

I am of a generation that believes in disaster; the younger generation does not. A Harris Interactive poll of Generation Y's feelings about work shows 92 percent want a "flexible work schedule," 96 percent want a job that "requires creativity," and 97 percent want a job that "allows me to have an impact on the world." All I can say is, Wow. Good luck. And now you know why we need illegal immigrants to do the inflexible uncreative stuff that simply needs doing right now. We've raised a generation of young people who want to be writers. Whassup? That's whassup, dude.

My father was a carpenter and a postal worker. He admired people who came early and stuck with a job until it got done. People who embraced work. His Republicanism was based solidly on that old bootstrap philosophy. Finish your coffee and get to work and let's get this hole dug and don't complain about the heat, it's the same heat for everybody. Stick with the job, rest, then resume. The kids surfing and snazzing up their Web sites at work would be aliens to him, and he wouldn't have a lot of sympathy for the gloomy old guy with visions of disaster either. The people most like my dad are the Mexicans coming across the border to work hard and send money home to their families. He would understand those people completely.

Here are a couple of stories that caught my eye back in June that share a common theme: From boing boing:

Dale Rippy, 62, killed a rabid bobcat with his bare hands when it attacked him on his porch in Wesley Chapel, Florida. The Vietnam vet was later treated for bites, scratches, and exposure to rabies. From Associated Press: Dale Rippy endured the (25 pound) bobcat's slashes and bites until it clawed into a position where he could grab it by the throat. Then he strangled it.

and from the Battle Creek (MI) Enquirer:

Swan allegedly attacks jet skiers at Goguac Lake
The Enquirer Michigan Department of Natural Resources is investigating reports of an aggressive male swan attacking jet skiers on the south side of Goguac Lake. Christine Hanaburgh, Michigan DNR wildlife biologist for Calhoun, Berry and Kalamazoo counties, said she's heard conflicting reports and is looking into the issue. "We're determining if the swan is a danger to humans," she said. Some lakeside residents are worried that the DNR will euthanize the male swan, who they believe is overly aggressive because his female partner has a broken beak. "That's a possible explanation, however, I would gravitate to another explanation," said John Lerg, acting supervisor for the state DNR Wildlife Division, southwest management unit. Swans often pair for life, or until one bird dies then the other finds a new mate. They also tend to nest in the same area year after year, he said. "Regardless of the condition of the female, it's not out of character to find the male, the cob, to be the more aggressive of the two," he said.

Who knew male swans were called cobs?

This story of the same title from The Week magazine is to me emblematic of a sickness in our government and society in general. On the advice of the lawyers, FEMA failed to investigate claims that fumes in trailers provided to Katrina survivors were making them sick. Rather than "undermine the agency's position in any court proceedings," FEMA leaves them to the formaldehyde fumes.

FEMA officials covered up concerns that trailers provided to survivors of Hurricane Katrina contained toxic levels of formaldehyde, congressional investigators said last week. Agency e-mails unearthed by a House committee show that FEMA lawyers vetoed a proposal to test the trailers for formaldehyde, a carcinogen. Some 120,000 people displaced by the 2005 hurricane lived in FEMA-supplied trailers, and hundreds have reported health problems such as nosebleeds and shortness of breath. Following the death of one hurricane victim who had complained of fumes in his trailer, agency lawyers advised against an investigation, saying it “could seriously undermine the agency’s position” in any court proceedings. FEMA officials this week apologized and said they were testing the 66,000 trailers still in use.

An article of the same title by Rebecca Smith appeared in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal. This caught our attention because a pulverized coal power plant has been proposed for our hometown and we are uneasy about this proposal, to say the least. The articles main thesis is huge number of new coal-fired power plants that have been announced in recent years as one-after-one they fall by the wayside due to either cost or environmental concerns.

From coast to coast, plans for a new generation of coal-fired power plants are falling by the wayside as states conclude that conventional coal plants are too dirty to build and the cost of cleaner plants is too high. If significant numbers of new coal plants don't get built in the U.S. in coming years, it will put pressure on officials to clear the path for other power sources, including nuclear power, or trim the nation's electricity demand...

As recently as May, U.S. power companies had announced intentions to build as many as 150 new generating plants fueled by coal, adding to the 645 existing units that produce about half the nation's electricity. One reason for the surge of interest in coal was concern over the higher price of natural gas, which has driven up electricity prices in many places. Coal appeared capable of softening the impact since the U.S. has deep coal reserves and prices are low. But the fleet of coal-powered plants that was supposed to be coming over the horizon is vanishing, a little more every week, as one developer after another cancels projects or quietly slows development activity. Coal has come under fire because it is a big source of carbon dioxide, the main gas blamed for global warming, in a time when climate change has become a hot-button political issue.

The article illustrates the trend by discussing some specific examples from TX:

An early sign of the changing momentum was contained in the $32 billion private equity deal earlier this year to buy TXU Corp. To gain support for the deal, the buyers decided to trim eight of 11 coal plants TXU had proposed in Texas. Recent reversals in Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and other states have shown coal's future prospects are dimming. Nearly two dozen coal projects have been cancelled since early 2006, according to the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh, a division of the Department of Energy.

and Florida:

The rapid shift away from coal shows how quickly and powerfully environmental concerns, and the costs associated with eradicating them, have changed matters for the power industry. One place where sentiment has swung sharply against coal is Florida. Climate change is getting more attention there because the mean elevation is only 100 feet above sea level, so melting ice caps would eat away at both its Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts. In mid-July, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist convened a climate change summit to explore ways the state could improve its environmental profile. In June, he signed into laws bill that authorizes the Florida Public Service Commission to give priority to renewable energy and conservation programs before approving construction of conventional coal-fired power plants.

It also mentions that coal gasification plants are having trouble because of higher costs:

Coal plants emit more than twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity produced as natural-gas-fired plants, but there's no cheap, easy way to capture and dispose of the greenhouse gas. Even proposals to build so-called "clean coal" plants have been met with skepticism. This new technology, which primarily involves converting coal into a combustible gas for electricity generation, has been touted as a solution to coal's global-warming problems.