Roger Budd III read a speech about socialism and communism
and government oppression.
He didn’t like not being able to build a restaurant
because he hadn’t yet been able to get a building permit.
Hm, I guess he wouldn’t like the city paying for
making videos of its meetings available to the public,
like me and my socialist buddy Dan Davis suggested.
He didn’t like it —Roger Budd III @ VCC 21 April 2011
Regular monthly meeting of the Valdosta City Council (VCC),
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 21 April 2011,
Videos by George Boston Rhynes for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Saturday I heard somebody bragging about how fast the Internet is in Atlanta.
That would be maybe a tenth of the speed it is in Tokyo.
But still blazing fast compared to the broke-down wagon in a muddy ditch
speeds we get in south Georgia:
I wrote that article more than a year ago, and Internet speeds in rural
Georgia have not improved much if at all.
This isn’t just about playing Farmville.
It’s about communicating with your relatives,
about competing in business,
Continue reading →
All these protesters were in favor of the groundbreaking today for the
Wiregrass Solar LLC plant, but they wanted to object to the
related biomass plant proposed for next door.
Here you can see Valdosta police saying they’re going have to
issue a summons to some protesters because they didn’t have a permit,
Valdosta Mayor Fretti saying the permit process is simple,
and Dr. Michael Noll president of Wiregrass Activists for Clean Energy (WACE)
explaining that they only heard of the event recently,
and besides he’d be happy to pick up a shovel and help with the
groundbreaking for the solar plant:
Wiregrass Solar LLC groundbreaking, 21 Feb 2011,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia.
Video by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.
Larry Hagman, most famous for playing Texas oilman JR Ewing, has gone solar.
He says the east coast blackout of 2003 made him think of the fragility of the grid,
so he installed enough solar panels and inverters to power his rather large estate:
He spent about $750,000 and got about $300,000 back in rebates. With the current Georgia 35% rebate and the federal 30% rebate on renewable energy installation, an investment of that amount could get back around $487,500 in rebates.
Of course, the average home solar installation isn’t nearly that big, more like $15,000, with something like $9,750 rebate, or around $5,250 net.
Malynda Fulton
writes in the VDT that,
according to its CEO Paul Stecko, Packaging Corporation of America (PCA)
is building
…the greenest mill in the U.S. and possibly the least costly to operate.
This mill will become the mill of the future instead of the mill from the past.
Through the new boilers, PCA was able to eliminate the use of fossil fuel and run the boilers on renewable energy, Stecko explained.
In other words, it’s a biomass plant.
The article doesn’t say whether the biomass is entirely materials that
would otherwise have been discarded, nor how efficient it is.