She's a roamer, isn't she! I haven't found cutting to the ground makes any difference to the amount of spreading. I need to dig a bunch of mine out, but I can't make myself do it at this time of year.

They say the US has boosted its Nat Gas reserves by 50% by new methods of measuring reserves. Yet my gas bill just went up 30% in September. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-29-natural-gas_N.htm Something wrong with that equation? A 50% rise in reserves yet my gas bill goes up 30%?? Can you imagine once all the cars and trucks start using CNG. NG prices will really skyrocket and large amounts of people will freeze to death. We heat with NG and keep the thermostat set at 64 at night and keep the heat OFF during the day. If it is in the teens outside the house gets down into the low 50's in daytime. I usually turn on the heat around 9 PM and shut it down at 8 or 9 am. To heat this 'part time' way cost us $325 a month for a modern, highly insulated 2400 sq ft house. (including garage as it has some water pipes in its ceiling). Let's get real about renewable energy...a survivalists view I marvel at some of the cornucopian's outlooks for our future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian Recently the cornucopians are putting their hopes in keeping the jets flying on algae oil? Well, who knows?? I am not like the atheists that claim they know everything under the sun...I am just a lowly agnostic that in the end does not know. But the cornucopians still have a way to go with algae powered jets. When the cornucopians can pave roads and make roofing shingles out of corn instead of asphalt and make tires out of sewage sludge instead of crude - maybe their time will have arrived. Whether one is an intellectual, cornucopian or survivalist, they all have to live in the future to some extent with their thoughts. The difference between a survivalist and the other two is this. The intellectuals can keep their mind fixated on the future and fantasy as long as they want. They have no reckoning in the present. Their currency of trade is in 'thought' and not in practical application. The survivalist on the other hand must come back to the present to prepare for and implement via 'practical application' what his future needs will be. As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances. So I'd suggest to Al Gore or any politician that takes up the renewable energy challenge to open up your eyes to truth of 'what is,' develop a survivalists mentality and not get lost in the fantasy of 'wishful thinking' with how you hope things to be. But being truthful is lofty goal in and of itself for politicians, irrespective of changing our entire world when it comes to powering it. The mantra of the ego based, power hungry politician is; "Give me power for a day and I hope the roof waits to falls in on the next guy and the music wont stop on my presidency." Everything they do while in office is aimed not at truth and what is best for our country, but at spin, lies and making themselves look good in the eye of the voters. All you political knuckleheads that go to these rallies to kiss the asses of your political deities - pin them down on 'Peak Oil' and see what they say. What you will get is NOTHING from them. They could not utter the words Peak Oil if their life depended on it. So it goes with truth and politicians - they do not mix. Al Gores proposed a challenge to both political candidates to switch all electric generation in the US from fossil fuels to renewables within 10 years. Mr. Gore is way off mark with what we will need for future energy generation in the US. He has not addressed a realistic view of the problem. He needs to increase his goal to a minimum of 300% to 400% of our current electric generation capacity. Then he may be approaching what America will really need. And I am conservative in my outlook. The actual number may be closer to 500% to 600% of our current capacity when we factor in the IF'S, AND'S & BUT'S. In the US, 93.2% of our electric comes from nonrenewable, fossil burning or greenhouse gas producing methods. If we are looking to hydroelectric and renewable sources, 4.46% of our electric comes from hydroelectric and 2.34% comes from renewable energy production. Out of this 2.34% of renewable sources, an undisclosed portion still contributes to global warming despite its prestige of being a 'renewable energy source' as it involves the burning of wood, black liquor, wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts and biomass. Only a fraction of the 2.34% of renewable electric energy that is produced comes from geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind. These are the areas that Gore wishes to expand. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html Electricity is where mankind will turn to for power requirements when all fossil fuels as well as uranium dry up in the near future. We can see that humans love affair with fossil fuels will look like a blip on the screen of humans historical record on earth. from:LATOC If you don't know what peak oil has to say about our world and don't want to read the rest of my post, then at least check out: http://www.energybulletin.net/primer 1) When everyone switches to electric cars and plug into the grid, the demand for electricity will go up tremendously. 2) Homes that use natural gas, propane, heating oil will switch to electricity as the fossil fuels will dry up. The highest demand areas such as heating our homes, heating water and cooking are areas that can't be done on practical basis with solar in many parts of the country Sure if you life in CA or AZ you got some hope with the solar hot water. Maybe the NE can also get some hot water in the hot humid summers. But the goal of this massive energy change is to make it as seamless as possible. Proper planning is the difference between part time and full time power. Proper planning is the difference between less deaths versus massive deaths. http://dieoff.org/ 3) All trucks, trains and airplanes will have to find new power sources. Trains can switch to steam, electric or electromagnet. Truck may have to be smaller and run on electric or bio fuels. Farm equipment can be powered by bio fuels. But all these bio fuels take away from our food production. We can see that adding 5% of corn ethanol does to the food picture - and we still use 95% gasoline. What will happen to food when we are 0% gas and 0% diesel and 100% bio fuels and ethanol? Airlines? My prediction is they will eventually shut down. Although one commentator on CNBC puts her hopes in running planes on algae oil. Again time will tell. But as a survivalist I must go with 'what is' and not fantasy of the cornucopians. In any case, trains, especially electric trains will be a big area of transport in our future both for products, food and people when airlines cease operate. 4) Population increase. More people = more demands for electric. When people feel bad they look for diversions from pain. If they can't get drugged up with alcohol or drugs, they also like some genital situation to escape a hellish life. More sex = more people. I don't see the pop trend changing any time soon unless people can't get food and starve or freeze from lack of heat. 5) Global warming - hotter people demand more electric for A/C. 6) Solar and wind are good supplemental power sources but crappy uninterrupted power sources. One person said that on average a wind farm that is spread out will yield power about 33% of the time, as the wind is blowing on average in some part of a large geographic area. So, to make up for when the wind does not blow, we will need much larger scales of wind generation than we anticipate now. We get brownouts even with full capacity and fip the switch, fossil fueled convenience. Exporting the power is another problem. We can make electricity in high wind areas, but will lose much of it if we have to export the wind generated electric long distances to the big cities. Solar only works for a few hours a day in ideal circumstances...and does not work much at all if the sun is not out. Our countries power needs are 24 hours. The sorry thing about electricity is it cannot be easily stored. (We can store the 'energy' of electricity by pumping water via electric pumps uphill and having the water drain back downhill to power a turbine at a later time.) 7) The US will go back to being a manufacturing nation and have to cut it's addiction to cheap Chinese and other foreign goods. All these cargo tankers run on diesel. So, as we cut back on shipping, local manufacturing will return more so out of design than by desire. More industrial manufacturing = more need for electricity. 8) Without energy our country is open for takeover ... no jets...no tanks...no transport on the ground or in the air. Luckily we will still have nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers as long as the uranium holds out. But the jets on the flattop all use jet fuel. All the supplies for those subs and carriers petroleum dependent. Will our military be as successful as it is today when it is all electric? I don't know, but I do know an all electric military will drain the grids capacity even further. As a survivalist I cannot afford to live in dream land as the mind manacled intellectuals and cornucopians do, I don't pretend to have a crystal ball and be able to predict the future. I can only prepare for 'possibilities' of what are to come. Intellectuals and cornucopians put all their faith in predicting an unknown future that is based on lofty hopes, dreams and wishful thinking. Whereas the successful survivalist puts their hopes and dreams in preparing for an uncertain future and knows that 'wishful thinking' does not go far in life or death situations. In Richard Heinberg's book 'Power-Down' he contrasts the survivalist mentality with that of the preservationist. The wiki on this topic: "A survivalist is a person who anticipates and prepares for a future disruption in local, regional or worldwide social or political order." "Preservationism...as a term distinguishing between survivalist groups who wish merely to survive a collapse of civilization, and communities who wish to preserve as much of human culture as is possible in the event of collapse." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservationist Mr. Heinberg talked about a gene bank founded by Nikolai Vavilov in Russia and the dedicated preservationists that guarded the seed and gene pool. He went on to say how 9 of the scientists and workers starved to death because they refused to eat the seeds and tubers in the gene bank. Now, I don't know if a few seeds or tubers would have made much difference in their surviving. But I can say a survivalist would have eaten the first one to die. While their efforts were most admirable, we can say their life was not an enviable one for us to emulate. And in the end they failed miserably at self preservation and survival. But Mr. Heinberg brings up a good point - balancing the two areas of survival with preservation. For we may well survive, but if we do not preserve a semblance of a somewhat livable world to survive in, we may not wish to survive in what remains. In summation: Renewables are our future. Renewable are not a seamless and fungible replicant for fossil fuels. Renewables do not replace the petrochemical uses of crude oil. Renewables do not replace the specialized uses of natural gas in industry or food production. Renewables will be our future by design and not by desire. But they are the default choice for our furture power needs as ALL fossil fuels and nuclear energy source will be depleted in the near future. The more realistic we are with our evaluation of the conversion to renewable energy, the less deaths will occur from fantasizing about the improbable future that the intellectuals, cornucopians and political spin doctors have dreamed up.. Book and DVD list. All available from your local library. Beyond Oil: the view from Hubbert's Peak by Deffeyes, Kenneth S. http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ The Coming Economic Collapse - how you can thrive when oil costs $200 a barrel by Leeb, Stephen A Crude Awakening - the oil crash Lava Productions AG, Switzerland DVD http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/ The End of Suburbia - oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream by Greene, Gregory DVD http://www.endofsuburbia.com/ Fed Up http://www.amazon.com/Fed-Up-Angelo-Sacerdote/dp/B000CNGC6G High Noon for Natural Gas: the new energy crisis by Darley, Julian http://www.highnoon.ws/ The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century by Kunstler, James Howard Oil Apocalypse History channel DVD Peak Oil Survival: preparation for life after gridcrash by McBay, Aric Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world by Heinberg, Richard Resource Wars: the new landscape of global conflict by Klare, Michael T http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-Introduction/dp/0805055762 A Thousand Barrels a Second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world by Tertzakian, Peter Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy by Simmons, Matthew R. Well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields. Who Killed the Electric Car? Sony Pictures Classics release http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ Zoom:the global race to fuel the car of the future by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.

Chris, Your plant looks to me to be an excellent example of a well grown orchid, and if it were mine, I would be getting ready to do something to prevent it from becoming a huge very difficult plant to manage. Here's what I would consider doing. There is one pseudobulb just about exactly in the middle of the plant that appears to have a dried flower spike coming from its base. I would cut the plant just in front of that bloom spike creating two approximately equal sized plants. If the front half of the plant will come out of the pot without serious damage to the new roots, take it out and repot it in a new pot with fresh mix.(you may need an inch larger pot) Be careful not to damage the new roots on the new growths on the front end of the Plant. Put this plant back on the shelf where it was growing before, since it has already told you it likes it there. Use wet potting mix, and when it is potted, let it dry out for at least a week to give any damaged roots time to heal before you go into your normal watering routine. As for the back end of the plant that is already in the pot with the old mix, if you have not had to tear those older roots up getting the front out of the pot, leave those back bulbs in the pot, and continue with your normal watering routine. One or more of those old bulbs will probably sprout new growths, and give you a new plant. If you have to damage the roots on the back of the plant getting the front out of the pot, unpot the plant and cut the damaged roots off down to healthy tissue, and put the backbulbs in a bread bag (with ventilation holes, with a small clump of wet sphagnum moss, and seal the bag. Hang the bag in a warm shady location. Keep the sphagnum wet, and wait for the old bulbs to start growing one or more new growths. When you get new roots on the new bulbs, pot the clump of new and old bulbs in a new pot with fresh mix, and you will soon have a second blooming plant. Have fun. Bill

My friends primary job at Amazon was to study sales statistics of the highest selling items on Amazon's own website. From shoes to backpacks, light fixtures, you name it... everything that was a breakout best seller. He'd send this select list of items to the 'redesign' department, who worked closely with their legal dept to narrowly skirt any existing patents in order to apply for their own patents on the same product. Then the new prototypes were made in the US, my friend would fly with them to China where he would stay for weeks or months working with the factories that were gearing up to mass produce these items. Amazon having ripped off their own paying vendor clients, the knock offs were then sold in the US under the 'Amazon Select' or a few different brands, always undercutting the price of the original creator of the item. Jeff Bezo was was called before congress in an antitrust lawsuit because of this and other schemes. He denied it all. I personally know that he lied under oath. My friend quit because of the relentless schedule of the redesigning and the rebranding of thousands and thousands of items. Bezos agreed to dissolve certain Amazon brands but I'm sure the redesign department still exists.