@DoctorGreeves

"Very recently my wife and I have been reading about the many detrimental health effects caused by living near giant windmills, which range from loss of balance to migrain headaches."

Relax. So the flat-earth lobby, having relentlessly killed off every other form of energy development it can get its filthy little mitts on, is starting in on wind. I knew they would do this as soon as any big-money funding appeared for this energy source. I'm confident that the flat-earthers' track record of being wrong about the apocalyptic effects of every single energy source out there will hold for wind, just as it has for nuclear. So the sight of wind turbines seen in the distance from Ted Kennedy's Nantucket mansion will cause "Loss of balance" and "migraines". Yeah, right. And I'm Lindsey Lohan.

Energy imports are a national emergency, and should be treated as such. The presidential candidate who can convince us that America needs to unleash its inventive creativity and industrial prowess to build all the energy options we can is the one who will be borne into office this November on the shoulders of a roaring crowd. Send the trial lawyers to Guantanamo and let's go to work building energy sources.

@dcmeserve

To put any fluctuating power source on the grid, you have to match it with a "spinning reserve" of other power plants that can be turned up or down at will to make up for the changes in the fluctuating source. Right now, this in practice means building more natural gas plants, another fossil fuel user. Better to keep wind off the grid and match it to uses that can handle a fluctuating supply. Pumped storage (another spinning reserve candidate) and desalination could soak up all the wind power we can generate without any need to massively change the grid to accommodate wind. And yes, charging electric car battery sets will be another such use, though economically viable batteries are not quite here yet. Watch ultracapacitor technology carefully, though!

On desalination, I'm saying that any fresh water wind can manufacture for Los Angeles is water the city does not have to import from inland. Desalination is also a handy way to use the waste heat from nuclear plants. This baseload source would crank out an assured supply of fresh water continuously, supplemented by water from whatever windpower is available.

@dcmeserv

Nuclear desalination is actually a hot field right now, because the current world interest in building new nukes comes at the same time as large cities worldwide fear running out of water. Fully ten percent of the water used in Israel is desalinated. Using 'nuclear desalination' as a search term elicits a huge sheaf of studies and applications, including a Journal of Nuclear Desalination. For a general survey, see

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf71.html

Whereas nuclear desalination advocates focus on using reactor heat for flash distillation, which is an energy hog but produces the best quality water, wind desalination advocates look to reverse osmosis, which more efficiently uses the energy output of windfarms, at cost of producing slightly lower quality water than the flash process. That's your agricultural water, right there. Use Pickens' windmills to pump seawater into the dry parts of Texas and then desalinate it, and you've saved the Oglalla Aquifer from depletion by farmers. Let's see some good old American creativity put to work on the problem, folks.

I have a friend, a yellow dog Democrat, not in any way a movement feminist, who has been so incensed over the Hillary-Obama fight that for the first time in her life, she has been leaning Republican this year. The choice of Palin as VP is going to seal this deal.

"Anyone who denies evolution is an ignorrant, and is keeping their children ignorant by denying the evolutionary process. Evolution has been proven over, and over, and over again, and continues as we blog."

I'm a Darwinist myself, but the whole 'Palin is a creationist' meme is based on a few offhand statements, obviously to placate Christians on an issue that is not in any way central to this campaign, she has made about "teaching both sides" in schools.

Liberals, on the other hand, are the ones who have sent teams of terrorists rampaging through the scientific community trying to have GM research biologists burned as witches, trashing their labs, torching their homes, ripping up their test plants. At the same time, they are trying to bully every single scientist into believing in their apocalyptic global warming religion. They lobby for unbelievers to be cast out, their credentials stripped.

Sorry, but I'll take my chances with Palin and the off chance that my kids will be exposed to a few ideas they disagree with. The scientific method evolved over centuries of trial and error as a neutral search for truth, not a punching bag for political Maoists.