Click the icons on MyPermissions to go a social networking site to review and remove services. Nice. I nuked about 15 Facebook apps and still have 20 left.
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It’s quite an exercise in arrogance when the Little Union that Can’t (Industrial Workers of the World) wants to dole out advice to the most popular and dynamic social movement we’ve seen in decades. This article, written by John Reimann of the San Francisco Bay area general membership branch of the I.W.W. illustrates just how out of touch the Wobblies are. This is, after all, a union that after over a century of organizing has approximately 2,000 dues paying members. Reimann specifically complains about the lack of worker participation in the port shutdowns on the West Coast and the need to “make a drive into the work places,” something the Wobblies have been doing unsuccessfully for over a century. As questionable as all that is, what really got me was the list of demands:
From the union which claims to want to abolish the wage system we have the rather strange idea of a “guaranteed job” at a wage of $15 per hour. I suppose slaves had guaranteed jobs. But this entire laundry list of demands seems to illustrate just how out of touch the Wobblies are. Take the demand to finance and run a home building program, for instance. Why on earth would we do that in a country with nearly 18.5 million vacant homes and only about 3.5 million homeless? We don’t need to build more homes. We need to get people into the homes that have already been built and find uses for the rest of the millions of empty structures. The notion that we need to link up the Occupy movements is nonsense. The Occupy movements are linked up and working together all the time. In fact, the Port Shutdown was a great example of this where we had Occupies up and down the West Coast participating and lots of solidarity actions across the country including here in New York where we staged demonstrations against Goldman Sachs. No concessions sounds good, but you have to be able to exert real power in order for that to happen; and at this point our unions just don’t have that kind of strength. A mass union organizing campaign sounds great, but what would it matter in a nation where labor laws–and laws in general– are routinely ignored as a cost of doing business? Lastly, Reimann really surprised by actually questioning the leaderless nature of this movement:
We all know this is true? I certainly don’t know this; and I think thousands of folks who have participated in this movement can vouch for that; it’ is, in fact, the leaderless, horizontal structure that is so appealing to people. This from the little union that prides itself on having no leaders and striving toward a world with no bosses. And yet this really does illustrate just how broken the I.W.W. really is, because while they officially talk about abolishing the wage system and have a horizontal, leaderless union, the reality is much different with routine calls for various wage reform ideas spouted by leaders within the union. This article illustrates not only how out of touch the Wobblies are with the Occupy Movement as a whole, but how far they have strayed from the basic tenets of their own union.
Several proposed big solar projects, including one in California, have switched from concentrated solar power (CSP) to the more familiar photovoltaic (PV). The trend now seems irreversible. Photovoltaic will now be the dominant technology usedfor big solar plants. CSP, with one notable exception, is losing out everywhere. CSP reflects the heat of the sun off parabolic mirrors to a central tower where it creates steam to power turbines and thus create electricity. Its big advantage is that excess heat can be stored, often in molten salt, to be used to create power when the sun isn’t shining. But it has one big technological drawback. It needs water, lots of it and in deserts too. Obviously this puts CSP up against all the other interests competing for scarce desert water. Some CSP plants recycle water. This does decrease consumption, but still uses substantial amounts of water. The other challenge CSP faces is the disruptive technology of solar photovoltaic. The PV market is competitive. Prices are plunging and will continue to do so. CSP used to be cost-competitive against PV but no longer is. It’s difficult to see how it ever will be again. Plus, PV uses way less water than CSP, which is another significant factor in its favor. The recently approved Sonoran Solar Energy project in Arizona decided against using CSP and will now use PV. The proposed Blythe Solar Power Project in California has also decided to switch from CSP to PV. This was a huge loss of business for German solar giant Solar Millennium and probably a contributing factor in its recent filing for bankruptcy. The Blythe plant was supposed to be the first 1 GW solar plant in the world, but the switch to PV will slow development. Instead, a South Africa project may be first. Construction at Blythe has temporarily been suspended until right-of-way issues are resolved. It received $2.1 billion in loans from the federal government in 2011 but that’s not nearly enough for the entire project. I’m not able to determine if the loan is still valid after the project switched to PV. Solar Millennium was the second German solar company to file for bankruptcy. Solon was the first. Germany has been a world leader in solar but these two bankruptcies have plunged their solar industry into chaos. Relentless competition and price-cutting from Chinese solar companies powered by government subsidies are the driving factors in the PV market now. Even Germany is no longer immune from what some say is Chinese dumping of PV at below cost prices. There is one project that is still ostensibly committed to concentrated solar power, however. That is the behemoth Desertec Project which plans to install enormous amounts of CSP in North Africa and the Middle East, and use it to power Europe. Siemens, one of its backers, says it is still backing CSP. But Solar Millennium was to be its provider so it’s difficult to see where its CSP technology will come from now. Also, as an aside, Desertec has been remarkably tone-deaf in partnering with, or even involving in discussions those countries where it plans to install the solar. It may well be that political problems sink this project (if water issues don’t). After all, Desertec solar plants will use spectacular amounts of water in some of the driest areas on the planet. If Desertec gives up on CSP, then it is effectively dead as a technology. If it chooses CSP, then it will probably limp along for a few more years. But for all practical purposes, this battle is over. PV has won. The only thing that “trickles down” is wet and warm, and often yellow. And speaking of yellow… while the vast majority of today’s politicians – those so enamored of sending our kids off to war – were enjoying multiple draft deferments or cushy gigs with the Texas Air National Guard I and my compatriots were pulling down multiple 24, 36 and 72 hour patrols in-country. I don’t much like Ron Paul, but at least when he was drafted, he went.
Disruptive technology is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology Jason Calcanis on The Cult of Amazon Prime, where $79 a year gets you free 2-day shipping (and more) and why that changes everything.
You can buy just about anything you need from Amazon now with free shipping with no minimum order size. So why go shopping at stores when you can order online from a trusted retailer instead? Make no mistake. This is disruptive technology, the creative destruction of earlier industries and businesses by something that replaces them. For some it will be painful
But, he asks, do we really need or want malls anyway?
Buying online also saves huge amounts of energy and gas, especially when tens of millions of people are doing it. I spoke recently with a Fedex driver with a route betwen Salt Lake City and Cedar City. He said during the Christmas rush that 40% of the packages were from Amazon. Is Amazon the new Walmart? It’s Ifttt for Dropbox, says Techcrunch. Put a file in Dropbox folder and Dropbox Automator will do any number of automated tasks like converting documents to PDFs then sending them to Google Docs, uploading photos to Facebook or Flickr after writing text on them, or sending a status update to Facebook. Lots more too. Whee.
So they will insult and slime each other about what they themselves do too. Do I have that right? And both will avoid any discussion of how to end our corrupt political corporatism. The end of the world will be on May 27, 2012. From Worldwide Church of God preacher Ronald Weinland, a list of events that will occur before this date:
“God”, prove to me you’re real… slap these bitches down, shut them up.  Electron microscope image of the microbe, Geobacter sulfurreducens, the core of the microbial fuel cell-based system. (NRL photo) That’s what the U.S. Navy Research Laboratory (NRL) is doing these days.
This research is still in its early days, but it’s a new way to approach the problem of powering equipment far from home. |
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