The construction site, with the nacelles and rotors. The nacelle are first set up in the "bunny" position, ie with 2 blades attached, and transported offshore. The last blade is attached once the turbine is installed on its mast.

The installation is done with a jackup, ie a barge with legs that pull down and set on the sea bottom:

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

I guess it wouldn't feel complete if your best friends couldn't join the party... at least virtually.

Everybody...a big cheer for a faithful front-pager (and husband :))!!!!!

"If you cannot say what you have to say in twenty minutes, you should go away and write a book about it." Lord Brabazon

AND NOTHING?????

SO this is the clebration side of the open thread...

to celebrate the 6 million mark and the 60.000 viewers per month we are stabilizing on..

So full of 6 I guess someon did  some kind of arrangementqwith someone starting with Dev and finishing with il.

Ei but I know nothing. I am from Barcelona

A pleasure

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

Still running around lost in a fog of mis-translations. Need lessons, (start tomorrow).

Tired from a long swim and sauna (yea, life's a bitch ain't it ? :-))

keep to the Fen Causeway

you are the media you consume.

A general hospital has said it is having to turn patients away because of a major alert which has left it with no beds available to new admissions.

The Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital is on Black Alert and has declared a major incident in order to discharge non-urgent patients.

<blockqoute>Forget what the pundits and some of the elements of the Democratic corporate establishment think: John Edwards is reflecting the sentiment of Iowans when he points out the dangerous effects of globalization.</blockqoute>

Trade is shaping up to be a huge issue in the 2008 Democratic primary.  You guys should be paying attention, the way that things are going on the continent, you could be having these discussion with the same intensity in 10 or 15 years.  

Sarkozy looks a lot like Reagan, provoking a confrontation with labor in order to crush them.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

But knowing most of you may (probably correctly) feel this an issue that is really mine and mine alone, I'd just like to quote this from gender.org

the media's reluctance to cover our deaths lies near the heart of this project. It can be all-but-impossible to find honest, reliable media on the death of a transgendered person: It either does not exist (which is how one can cover thirty years of cases and still only have as many as I have to present), or it uses names that the deceased did not own, and pronouns that did not fit their reality.

There is no "safe way" to be transgendered (Helen's emphasis - believe me that's not an exagerration): as you look at the many names collected here, note that some of these people may have identified as drag queens, some as heterosexual crossdressers, and some as transsexuals. Some were living very out lives, and some were living fully "stealth" lives. Some were identifying as male, and some, as female. Some lived in small towns, and some in major metropolitan areas.

In fact, one thing that has come to light in doing this project is how much more is yet to be done. Over the last decade, one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

My new flickr photo gallery is only three BBC News screenshots so far.

Very juvenile.

(I need to find the original articles, btw.)

The top one (blue) is relevant for US oil consumption. The bottom one is relevant for European oil consumption. Discuss.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

A beer tour of Czech republic. No golden tiger pub tho' and having been to the Eggenberg brewery tap in Cesky Krumlov, that'd be high on my list too.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Until then, if you get bored, here are some things to read.  

1. Bush 'involved' in CIA leak case

A former White House press secretary has said the US president was involved in misinforming the public over the leaking of a CIA agent's identity.

In an excerpt from his book, Scott McClellan says George W Bush helped mislead the public over the role in the affair of two White House aides.

The CIA agent, Valerie Plame, says her identity was leaked because her diplomat husband opposed the Iraq war.

2. Does the Bomb Iran! crowd have any credibility left?

It now appears that the Bomb Iran! crowd is just making it up as they go along. The latest case in point is Joshua Muravchik's column in this morning's USA Today. Let's take a look at Muravchik versus reality:

(...)

Muravchik:

Iran also might launch a nuclear missile at Israel, which Ahmadinejad wants 'wiped off the map.' Israel could strike back, but so what?"

Reality: As Blake noted earlier today, Israel has second-strike capability in its submarines. A nuclear strike by Iran would mean its complete destruction. So, please, someone in the Bomb Iran! crowd logically explain to me why Iran is the first nation in history to defy more than a half century of mutually assured destruction (MAD) theory? Give me a break. Rhetoric from politicians is one thing, but there's absolutely nothing to suggest ordinary Iranians are prepared to die by the millions in order to "wipe Israel off the map." Get real.

Muravchik:

Only strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities can forestall these terrible scenarios.... We would send no troops, conquer no land. Rather, we would act in pre-emptive self-defense."

Reality: I'll believe this when someone in the know tells me that our intelligence on Iran is far better than our intelligence was on Iraq. So far, I have yet to meet such a person from inside the U.S. government. I have met Israelis who say their intelligence on Iran is good, and it's not improbable they would share it. Still, what exactly will airstrikes accomplish? Setting Iran's program back another five years? Or does the Bomb Iran! crowd intend to send special ops in to assassinate Iran's scientists? That's what it would really take to "eliminate" their program. It's laughable that the same people who criticized Bill Clinton's cruise-missile approach to national defense now want to mimic it.

"Stark choices" make for good newspaper copy. But reality is far more complicated. Mao, Stalin, Kim -- they were all far worse than the wanna-be dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. We negotiated with all of them. And in the end, we won.

3. Edward Lucas' Cold War Hustle

"Ed is known at the paper, as even he would admit, as a bit of a loon."

       --Anonymous Economist Correspondent

Just go read the whole thing.  It's really funny...

4. And can someone explain to me wtf is up with THIS?

The Russian government's English-language overseas news network, Russia Today, wants you to make them your preferred source for cable and satellite news.

So they recruited a new mascot for their advertisements: Josef Stalin. In a series of ads promoting the network, Russia Today asks if you knew the brutal, genocidal dictator also wrote romantic poetry.

Between the extermination of the kulaks, the genocide of the Ukranians, the exile of an entire generation of intellectuals to labor camps, the brutal invasion of the Baltics, the planned genocide of Russia's Jews, his iron-fisted rule of Eastern Europe and the massive deportations to Central Asia... Russia Today would like to let you know that Stalin was really a pretty nice guy.

Normally I'd think this was a product of the hysterical imagination of the NCW crowd.  But no.  These ads are running on Kommersant.  I'm admittedly worried about what it might mean if I did not know Stalin wrote romantic poetry...    I hope that Surkov fellow is not behind this.  Why are all the cute guys evil?!?!

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

vodafone has sued to stop apple locking the iphone to one network, and they've come to a compromise, the locked phone goes for €400, the unlocked will cost €999!

germany taking the lead here...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

my partner and i went up to a hot springs near bologna, and spent a couple of nights for a treat.

i can't describe the feeling these waters leave me with, though 'grand' and 'integrated' come to mind!

taking the waters...so timeless...

back in the groove again, it feels good to be home.

i saw a trenchant piece by norman mailer yesterday, which i think some here will appreciate: hat tip to counterpunch http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair11132007.html

Here's a taste of Mailer at full-throttle from Miami and the Siege of Chicago. He's writing about the origins of the Yippies and the entropy eating at the American soul:

So the Yippies came out of the Hippies, ex-Hippies, diggers, bikers, drop-outs from college, hipsters up from the South. They made a community of sorts, for their principles were simple-everybody, obviously, must be allowed to do (no way around the next three words) his own thing, provided he hurt no one doing it-they were yet to learn that society is built on many people hurting many people, it is just who does the hurting which is forever in dispute. They did not necessarily understand how much their simple presence hurt many good citizens in the secret valve of the heart-the Hippies and probably the Yippies did not recognize the depth of schizophrenia on which society is built. We call it hypocrisy, but it is schizophrenia, a modest ranch-house life with Draconian military adventures; a land of equal opportunity where a white culture sits upon a Black; a horizontal community of Christian love and a vertical hierarchy of churches-the cross was well designed! A land of family, a land of illicit heat; a politics of principle, a politics of property; nation of mental hygiene with movies and TV reminiscent of a mental pigpen; patriots with a detestation of obscenity who pollute their rivers; citizens with a detestation of government control who cannot bear any situation not controlled. The list must be endless, the comic profits are finally small-the society was able to stagger on like a 400-lb policeman walking uphill because living in such an unappreciated and obese state it did not at least have to explode into schizophrenia-life went on. Boys could go patiently to church and wait their turn to burn villages in Vietnam.

I don't believe we will ever see writing with that kind of electricity again.

he's obviously not coming to ET enough!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

ENAR - New on this site

Press Release: ENAR's Shadow Report paints a serious picture of the situation of racism in the EU

 - Manifestations of racism in Europe continue, some forms of racism are on the increase, notably Islamophobia, and there has been a significant upsurge of racist violence and crime.

These are the conclusions of ENAR's 2006 Shadow Report on racism in Europe. (21.11.2007)

There are 26 European countries reports.

The struggle of man against tyranny is the struggle of memory against forgetting.(Kundera)

what do you think?

The fact is that democracy is noisy and Pakistan's elites (rather like America's at this point) are not used to any noise but their own.

Let's add to the mosque flatteners-who are not, it must be noted, secular either-the people who often assert Pakistanis don't want Taliban rule or Islamist vice squads banning music and shrouding women. These people may seem similar but are not always the same. They produce as counterevidence South Asian Sufism, Pakistan's shrine culture, its wonderful tradition of devotional and antinomian music. But this vision is also balanced on the wobbliest foundation: all it takes is a determined and destructive minority to shut down the traditions of religious openness and dissent, to turn them into memories held in huddled solitude. This is, in fact, what has slowly been happening since the eighties when Zia-ul-Haq launched his assault on Pakistani culture.

What faces Pakistan, then, is a kleptocratic military, arteries pumped with money from the US, a reckless, inbred and corrupt middle class, feudals, (Benazir Bhutto included) who seem to belong in a Transylvanian nightmare, exercising their seigneurial rights, and a growing body of petty bourgeois Islamist clerics who want their piece of the national and global pie, and are determined to leave anything that's heterodox and wonderful about the Muslim tradition smouldering and ruined.

Meanwhile, as in Swat, where an Islamist cleric is trying to set up a little mini state, the radical Islamists of the Pakistani kind try to ensure that children don't get polio vaccinations and forbid education for girls in the name of God. One of the most heartwrenching sights during the Lal Masjid catastrophe was that of parents and family members of students of the madrassa who had come to get their children back-they seemed lost and reduced, caught between a contemptuous bureaucracy they didn't know how to negotiate and clerics who had promised their children a free education and turned them, instead, into indoctrinated cannon fodder.

Most striking, though, was that they had sent their sons and daughters from villages across the NWFP for an education. It is in the absence of a functional educational system and the presence of tremendous poverty that such crises thrive. Yet the Musharraf government and its supporters seem to think that BMW and Porsche outlets in the major cities that are now, more than ever, centres of consumption will fix the ills of the nation. Segments of Karachi have begun to seem like a giant mall-people dashing back and forth in greedy paroxysms while the poor watch the carnival of consumption.

Right, off for the holiday in a few hours.  Spending tomorrow in New Jersey, The Armpit of the Northeast^TM.  Hope all are well, and Happy Needless Turkey Murder Day to fellow Yanks.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Just watched the 'Perfect Stranger' - halle berry good for the first time, but the last 10 minutes sucks. Then I watched High Stakes Poker season one - wonderful! Now I'm going to watch a couple of episodes of 4400 with my friends and some G+T's upstairs. Nothing serious to do now till a recording session at 14.00 tomorrow.

Yessssssss.........

You can't be me, I'm taken

starts at 1:45

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process.

Adam Curtis

It's a wider thing than the internet, but the internet sums it up. It's that on the surface it says that "the internet is a new form of democracy". So what you're seeing is a new pluralism, a new collage, a new mosaic of all sorts of different ideas that's genuinely representative.

But if you analyse what happens, it simplifies things.

First of all, the people who do blogging, for example, are self-selecting. Quite frankly it's quite clear that what bloggers are is bullies. The internet has removed a lot of constraints on them. You know what they're like: they're deeply emotional, they're bullies, and they often don't get out enough. And they are parasitic upon already existing sources of information - they do little research of their own.
What then happens is this idea of the 'hive mind', instead of leading to a new plurality or a new richness, leads to a growing simplicity.
The bloggers from one side act to try to force mainstream media one way, the others try to force it the other way. So what the mainstream media ends up doing is it nervously tries to steer a course between these polarised extremes.

o you end up with a rigid, simplified view of the world, which is negotiated by mainstream media in response to the bullying extremities.

Far from being "the wisdom of crowds", it's the stupidity of crowds.

Collectively what we are doing is creating a more simplified world.

(...)

What's happening on the internet is that people are retreating into their citadels where they will not have that. And if you try and do it, they don't like it. Because you're joining up the dots in a way that isn't the way they joined up the dots.

What really happens now, is that they're so entrenched in their self-referential groups, anyone who joins up the dots any other way is a bad person.

There's more.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Well, here's the scandal: During an investigation into Luigi Crispi's ("I couldn't have committed the crime: I'm a Buddhist!") poll and Marketing company investigators uncovered extensive and routine news-fixing between the State TV and the Berlusconi Mediaset. For years the two giants colluded to glorify Berlusconi, hide his numerous false steps and create ad hoc media events to keep his adversaries out of the limelight. As if any acute observer of Italian affairs wasn't perfectly aware of it.

So, now we got the proof. Hundred of calls between the major (rival!) news brokers with the sole intent to glorify Silvio during prime time. The pope's dead? Stall the breaking news until Silvio finishes his monologue! The President of the Republic is going to deliver an important speech? Get Silvio to do something splashy to distract attention! Tell that anchorman to say "Berlusconi" more often when on the air! Berlusconi lost the elections? Downplay it, use bad lighting for the winners!

Reminds me of that passage in Estienne de La Boetie's Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.

The rest of you - enjoy those transit strikes and workdays.

Now you know what it feels like to be us. ;)

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.