Important Stories below the fold

The price of solar energy is falling, meaning that it might be a meaningful solution to generate electricity for poor countries like India. Of course, one reason for the low prices are this:

The secret to these low prices? It turns out that a great way to reduce your soft costs is to pay your labor force and engineers next to nothing. (Markets with low-cost labor are more likely to use fixed-tilt systems, lowering turnkey system prices even more.) As the report points out, even in China soft costs are 11 cents per watt higher than in India.

headsup Instpundit.

wikipedia article on Electricity in the Philippines, but it seems to be a bit out of date (2014 data) and says 43 percent come from coal burning plants...and says we only get ten percent from hydroelectric power: then why do we get so many brownouts in the dry season?

Or maybe it's just here in north central Luzon...

I wonder if the article includes the energy produced by personal generators that most larger businesses and many middle class folks have.

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also via Instapundit: Kurzweil on linking our brain to the cloud...




again, this implies that we are our brain and that if we upload our brain information to the cloud we live forever.  Ah, but is that true?


because "you" would be dead, but the "you" in the computer essentially would be your twin, not you.
(ancients insisted we were composed of spirit, mind and body... Descarte started the "ghost in the machine" duality).

Lady Panc Ashash Call your office...

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"is the Pope Catholic" post of the day:

First he muddied up the 2000 year old rules on marriage, now he is muddying up the 3600 year old rules against killing the vulnerable and the 1800 year old rurules that forbid abortion.

What could go wrong? Crux explains

Whatever the admirable intentions of the leadership of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the real-world effect of appointing a pro-choice member is the same as if they had appointed a pro-slavery advocate: The appearance in the public eye that the Church does not take its teaching against abortion as seriously as it once did. This has a direct impact upon pro-life advocates on the ground, who stand exposed to the accusation of being "more Catholic" than the Vatican.

(and  you should read what the more orthodox Catholic sites are saying...).

how bad is it? Well, one MSM source insisted that the Pope was giving his new cardinals a beretta...
(catholic pun, explained at link).

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forget the Demogorgon:

Gorgon Stare is watching you...

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and the "say again" item of the day:

headsup Dustbury..