"The Global Consciousness Project, also known as the EGG Project, is an international multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists, engineers, artists and others continuously collecting data from a global network of physical random number generators located in 65 host sites worldwide. The archive contains over 10 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials every second."
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 13, 2015
TVA Announces 80 MegaWatt Solar Farm in Lauderdale County Alabama
At their quarterly board meeting, the Board of Directors for the Tennessee Valley Authority moved Thursday, February 12, 2015, to adopt resolutions which would allow TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson to:
Establish a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with NextEra for electricity from its planned 80MW solar farm in Lauderdale County, AL. The installation would be significantly larger than any existing solar facility in the Tennessee Valley.
and
Acquire for $340 Million Quantum Utility Generation’s Choctaw combined cycle Natural Gas (NatGas) plant near Ackerman, MS. TVA has been buying power from the 760MW plant since 2008. This would be TVA’s sixth combined cycle plant, with two more under construction, all since 2007.
Confidential terms of the agreements were not released.
Concerning the NatGas plant, Mr. Johnson said, “We can purchase the gas plant for substantially less than it would cost to build one, and the solar power is at a price competitive with other energy sources.”
The board unanimously approved the purchase of Quantum Utility Generation’s 760MW Choctaw combined-cycle power plant near Ackerman, MS, for about $340mn, or $447/kW, half the cost to build a new gas plant, according TVA Chief Operating Officer Charles Pardee.
TVA has bought most of the output of the Choctaw gas plant since 2008. If the deal closes, Choctaw will be the sixth combined-cycle gas plant TVA has purchased or built since 2007. Two more combined cycle plants are under construction.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, April 4, 2014
It occurred to me recently in a couple conversations I had with friends in various parts of our United States, that equal representation is a matter with which we still struggle.
While on occasion I’ve opined about injustice through inequality – the United States’ Constitution guarantees Equal Protection and Equal Rights under law via the 14th Amendment – it occurred to me recently that there are some who “just don’t get it.”
More to the point, I was spurred by a photograph sent to me by a friend in one of our Northern sister states – the Land of the Frozen Chosen, sometimes also referred to as “The Great White North.”
It was a photograph of my friend’s co-worker which sparked my interest, and subsequent curiosity.
The co-worker was Afro-American, aka “Black.”
I was somewhat surprised to see a Black person in Minnesota, so I queried the Census Bureau for some Quick Statistics about our United States.
Here’s what I found:
Only 5.5% of Minnesota’s population is Black.
In comparison to the United States at large, 13.1% of our American population in general is Black. And in Alabama, 26.5% are Black, while in neighboring Mississippi, 37.4% of that state’s residents are Black. Alabama’s Eastern neighbor Georgia has a closely similar percentage with a 31.2% Black population, while Tennessee is nearly half, with a 17% Black population.
Examining some other states, I found that Alabama’s Southern neighbor, Florida has a very closely similar Black population with 16.6%, while Louisiana’s Black population is just about double with 32.4%. The “Natural State” of Arkansas has a 15.6% Black population, while North and South Carolina are almost evenly tied with 22 & 28% respectively.
On the other hand, Texas has a lower Black population than either Tennessee or Arkansas with only 12.3%.
Kentucky? Only 8.1% of Kentuckians are Black.
Interestingly, of the 16 players on the Kentucky Wildcats Basketball team, only 6 are not Black. In other words, 62.5% of the team is Black – a clear majority. And yet, the state’s general population is completely and disproportionately unrepresentative of the team.
What about Virginia? With a 19.7% Black population, Virginia stands in distinct contrast to West Virginia, which only has a 3.5% Black population – a very stark contrast, indeed.
But what about some of the other Midwestern states?
Missouri has an 11.7% Black population, while only 3.2% of corn-fed Iowans are Black.
From Minnesota moving West, South Dakota has a mere 1.7% Black population, while Montana…
Well.. there just about no Black folks in that state, at all. Only a mere 0.6% – 6/10ths on one percent – of that state’s residents are Black.
A casual observation would be that it’s mighty White up North.
This FRAUD was because of INCOMPETENCY in Alabama governance.
The HHS OIG found that the Alabama state agency overstated its FYs 2009 and 2010 current enrollment in its requests for bonus payments. The State agency overstated its current enrollments because, rather than Read the rest of this entry »
Senator Orr represents the Third District, which includes Morgan, Madison and Limestone counties in the Alabama State Senate.
He attempts to justify his position by asking a rhetorical question, on pretense of being modern: “The fundamental question, I think, for us as legislators and as a state, is, should the state of AlabamaRead the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, September 3, 2013
I’ve decided to take a different track with this entry.
I choose to grocery shop at Kroger.
I don’t grocery shop at Wal-Mart. I don’t grocery shop at Publix. I don’t grocery shop at Winn-Dixie. For the most part, I don’t regularly grocery shop at local Mom & Pop grocery stores, though on occasion, I have. On occasion, I do shop at Aldi. I don’t shop at Sav-a-Lot. On rare occasion, I have shopped at various local ethnic grocery markets for specialty items. But on the whole, I do the exceeding majority of my grocery shopping at Kroger.
I have grocery shopped at Kroger for well over 10 years. In the Tennessee city where I’ve resided for the past year, there is Read the rest of this entry »
The headline “Public Food Establishment Not Fit For Human Consumption” would be adequate, I suppose, but I really like this lead as a headline much better: “I feel like I should’ve eaten a cucumber sandwich.”
That was actually a SMS which I’d sent a good friend of mine, who had mentioned that earlier in the day, he purchased some cucumbers at a local Farmer’s Market, was pondering how to prepare them, and was considering preparing cucumber sandwiches. Naturally, I gave him a fair amount of good-natured ribbing over the matter (suggesting perhaps that he should consider joining a ladies tea party group) particularly given that he has a penchant for sausages & “fair food,” sometimes aka “carnival food.”
How did I feel after that decidedly “ungastronomic” experience? A picture is worth a thousand words. Here is but one.
As the guest spoke, it occurred to me that the primary difference between this era, and the era of the late Civil Rights leader is that the exceeding majority of today’s youthful musicians are out for the almighty dollar, rather than speaking their hearts and minds for the causes of truth, justice, and the American way.
It’s all about the money.
And according to some, there is perhaps no better representative of the “me” generation than Taylor Swift.
Not being familiar with the body of Miss Swift’s work, I must rely upon interviews with her, and from remarks by those whom are familiar with her work. And it seems that there are many who utterly despise her work, for no other reason than that “practically every song she sings is about herself.”
And in defense of Miss Swift, regarding her work, she has said, “I’ve been very selfish about my songs. I’ve Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Sunday, January 13, 2013
Behold but one of the effects of climate change… the mighty Mississippi River going dry.
And really, why argue about what’s causing it when we need to be responding to the problems it creates?
—
Initial Mississippi River Rock Removal Complete, Says Army
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said contractors have completed the first phase of emergency work to remove rocks that have held up barge traffic in the drought-stricken Mississippi River.
Contractors have excavated about 365 cubic yards (279 cubic meters) of limestone from the river near the town of Thebes in southern Illinois, deepening the channel by about two feet, the Corps said in a statement today.
About 18% of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion, the CDC noted. Factors from the availability of abortion providers, state laws, the general economy and access to health services including contraception, can Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Time and time again, the politicians in Alabama continue to prove the truth of that February 1, 1993, story Washington Post news story authored by reporter Michael Weisskopf which stated that followers of the Christian Right are “largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command.”
By the time Governor Bentley and his GOP henchmen get through with Alabama, the only thing the citizens will need is a kiss.
The reason why, is that they’ll already have been screwed.
—
Alabama is great for business, unless you’re in the business of being a kid
Published: Monday, October 22, 2012, 10:25 AM Updated: Monday, October 22, 2012, 1:04 PM
Only here in Alabama we sing it, like we sing most of our tunes, in our own peculiar way.
We believe that corporations are our future.
Seed them well and let them have their way.
As for the children? Well, to hell with them. They’re too little to make us any real cash, anyway. What good are they if they can’t produce jobs, jobs, jobs?
You see the reports and statistics all the time, rankings that paint Alabama as gloriously business friendly, with cheap labor costs, low corporate taxes and a government so eager to lure jobs it’s willing to toss in the barn when it gives away the family farm.
A development magazine this month ranked Alabama as the fourth-best state for business. And of course Alabamians cheered.
It’s a party hijacked by radicals – genuine radicals – whose solitary bent is the destruction of government. Tear down this, destroy & eliminate this, that and the other, shift responsibility to the states for various programs, knowing full well that they do not, and will not have the ability to fully or appropriately fund them because tax rates continue to decline… it’s a “Starve the Monster” approach which has been taken – quite literally.
We have experienced already the devastating effects of it – significant tax cuts and a 10-year long war which has driven up the deficit, a BIG BUSINESS Bailout resulting from financial deregulation, which has cost jobs, houses, increased homelessness & bankruptcies, and off-shoring of American manufacturing.
And all this is predicated – so they purport – to be symptomatic of “a welfare state” that rewards so-called “welfare queens” who have children precisely to obtain more welfare money (a genuine misnomer if ever there was one)
But the biggest question is: What’s for dessert?
I don’t think we want to know.
—
FiveThirtyEight – Nate Silver’s Political Calculus
October 11, 2012, 6:24 pm
One recurring theme in the states we have profiled so far has been the exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party, yielding a striking transformation. The Solid South — so named for the regional hegemony of Democrats — has been reversed, and states that were once Democratic from top to bottom are becoming (or already are) equally Republican.
The evolution has progressed particularly far in the Deep South, but Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas are all at different stages.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, June 18, 2012
Slowly, but surely, the signs that our nation’s economy is improving are emerging.
They’re not rapid, they’re not massive, but they’re there.
And like a trickle that becomes a raging river, it’s beginning to rain.
—
District employment increases modestly in May
06/18/2012
Payroll employment 6th district 1/11-5/11
The Sixth District as a whole added 9,000 jobs in May, following 9,600 new payrolls in April, and 18,900 in March, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Alabama, Florida, and Georgia recorded payrolls increases while Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee reported payroll decreases. Georgia was primarily responsible for the net positive District increase.
(Reuters) – The Jackson, Mississippi, school district has agreed to stop shackling students to fixed objects, after it was sued for handcuffing pupils to railings and poles at a school for troubled children, officials said on Friday.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Bowl Championship Series executive director Bill Hancock said the words that many college football fans have been waiting more than a decade to hear: “The BCS as we know it with the exact same policies will not continue.”
Hancock made the declaration at the end of a day of meetings of BCS leaders at a hotel in Hollywood, Fla., to negotiate possible new formats for when the BCS’s current TV contract expires after the January 2014 bowl games. College football’s 11 major-conference commissioners plus Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet again Thursday and hope to release a shortlist of formats under consideration.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, March 12, 2012
Face it folks, Alabama MUST change its tax policy and law – something about which Alabamians have been warned for quite some time. It’s not as if we’ve never heard the idea or notion, for indeed, Alabama’s income tax assesses a heavier levy upon the poor than the wealthy, and many large corporate timberland-owners (Georgia Pacific, Weyerhauser, International Paper, Gulf States Paper, et al) pay little or nothing on their vast holdings by comparison to others.
As the issue of a potential shut-down of state services (the forensics lab in Huntsville) relates to criminal prosecution, I could imagine that a sharp attorney could move for dismissal of charges based upon delay of prosecution – which is a federal Constitutional issue – because the Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused the right to a speedy trial, among other aspects of prosecution.
And that issue – a violation of the Sixth Amendment – is one reason why I can imagine former UAH professor Amy Bishop – accused of murdering her colleagues – may have a federal case on her side, because the state of Alabama has virtually shut down all funding of public defense and defenders.
Just to remind the readers, the Sixth Amendment reads: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”
And for those readers whom, for one reason or another, are not up to speed on the wranglings of Alabama politics, India Lynch vs. State of Alabama – the federal case in which Alabama’s tax policies were on trial – ended in October 2011, with a 854-page ruling in the state’s favor by His Honor, Judge Lynwood Smith in which existing tax structures & organization were found not to be unconstitutional. That story may be found here.
Alabama State Capitol Building, Montgomery, AL
The background: Alabama’s state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600. Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent. Alabama relies heavily on state sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula.
A primary reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using ”current use” rules, which significantly underestimate its value. Then individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, which is a boon for those in the top income brackets.
And while the GOP controls the Governor’s Office, State House & Senate and most all high-level state offices, there are no signs of progress toward equity or justice.
But read on to learn why…
Potential cuts for state forensics: ‘It’s going to impact everybody’s lives’
The evidence spans 18,000 different cases. And maybe by 2013, Lonnie Ginsberg hopes, the state will process most everything on those 12 shelves.
Maybe.
This is the uncertain world Ginsberg oversees in cash-strapped Alabama. The director of the Huntsville lab on Arcadia Circle, Ginsberg manages a complex he describes as overworked and understaffed – which is why some drugs confiscated by law enforcement may sit on a shelf for a year before being analyzed.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Monday, May 16, 2011
The opening lyric to Hank Williams, Jr.‘s – aka “Bocephus” – 1982 song “A County Boy Can Survive,” is “And the Mississippi River she’s a goin’ dry.”
At this juncture, that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.
The Mississippi River has flooded to such an extent that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has decided to open floodgates and allow excess water from the river to flow toward the Gulf of Mexico through alternate routes.
Weeks of heavy rains and runoff from the melting of an extremely snowy winter have raised Mississippi River levels to historic proportions. Over 3 million acres (1.2 million hectares) of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas along the river have been flooded, evoking memories of floods in 1927 & ’37.
On Saturday, the Corps opened two of 125 floodgates at the Morganza Spillway, and opened two more today (Sunday, 15 May 2011). The spillway is 45 miles northwest of Louisiana’s capitol, Baton Rouge. The Corps hopes that by opening them, it will Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Friday, February 4, 2011
It’s a disheartening state of affairs to learn that even such accusations could even be considered partially, even possibly true. Where is our political “high road”? The more secretive our government becomes – and we are witnessing increased secrecy, much under the guise of “privacy,” or “executive privilege” – the more tyrannical and prone to corruption our government becomes. The Founding Fathers knew that well. Open government demonstrates to EVERYONE that accountability to EVERYONE is ongoing. When there are no “smoke-filled backroom deals,” no “cloak and dagger,” there is no reason to hide. Political partisans are are NOT enemies, we are brothers living in the same house.
Riley’s final days filled with checks, deals
Posted: Thursday, February 3, 2011 6:00 am
by Bob Martin, The Montgomery Independent, TheWetumpkaHerald.com
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Late American Blues guitarist/singer/songwriter Robert Johnson, a Negro, died at the tender young age of 27, in 1938. There are less than 50 recordings of his, of which historians are aware. Among musicologists, researchers and others, his performances are considered treasures and remain the subject of great debate, even today.
Posted by Warm Southern Breeze on Saturday, January 22, 2011
I think it’d be funny… only if it weren’t too weird. Or should it be serious? Heck, it’s weird and funny… and sad. I mean, come on! What’s next? Injecting powdered milk? Doctor, I feel real funny. You see, I took a bath, and next thing you know…
Officials fear bath salts are growing drug problem
AP – In this Jan. 18, 2011 photo, Itawamba County inmate Neil Brown describes at the jail in Fulton, Miss., self-inflicted injuries he incurred while having hallucinations after ingesting a bath salt powder that is being sold at convenience stores and over the Internet. The product, which can be legally purchased, contains stimulants which authorities claim can cause hallucinations, paranoia and suicidal thoughts and are now among the newest substances law enforcement agents are having to deal with in the streets. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis) …
By SHELIA BYRD, Associated Press Shelia Byrd, Associated Press –
FULTON, Miss. – When Neil Brown got high on bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven’t been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Snow, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky.
