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Finance Friday TGIF - Thank Geothermal It’s Friday
Today we will discuss stocks that are in the area of geothermal energy. First we need a definition of geothermal energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power Geothermal comes form the Greek words for earth and heat. In essence there is the capability to take naturally occurring heat that is warmer than room temperature and use this to either heat homes and offices or even produce electricity from the heat (energy) source. Typically the temperature of the geothermal source is not very high like in a coal fired power plant but is still high enough to extract work out of the system to drive turbines to generate electricity. There are several companies that are listed in the US that are engaged in geothermal energy. Today we will discuss two. The first is Ormat Technologies Inc ORA on the NYSE. ORA is trading today at $43.17 and well off of its 52 week high of $57.93. The Price Earnings Ratio (PE) for ORA is still a very high 71.95 giving ORA a market capitalization of $1.79 billion. ORA has some very good underlying technology in its low boiling point fluid method of generating electricity form low temperature heat sources such as geothermal or concentrated solar. ORA is trading at just under 4 times its book value of $455 million and it is my contention that ORA will be a long term player in the alternative and green energy market because of the underlying technology it has in the low boiling point fluids. I put ORA in the HOPE column and I believe that they will be around in five years as an even bigger company than their present state. My belief is that all green stocks will see pricing pressure in the short term and ORA may still drop further over the next few months but long term this company will likely be one of the market leaders in geothermal and concentrated solar.
The second stock I will discuss falls into the HYPE column. This company is Raser Technologies Inc RZ on the NYSE. This is somewhat of a shell company that has recently made the move into leasing large tracts of land in the west that have geothermal potential. RZ is a development company and has announced they have lined up financing from the like of Merrill Lynch http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN1752875620080117?rpc=44
We all know that Merrill Lynch took a massive bath in sub-prime mortgages. With RZ they are likely to get into even more hot water and take a geothermal bath that will scald them. The location of RZs leases is in places where there is abundant coal, abundant gas, or abundant hydroelectric. This means the electricity that will be generated will have to compete with fairly low prices alternates. RZ has a puny balance sheet and is bleeding cash. With some 55 million shares outstanding and more dilution coming its way RZ is hardly worth the $13.82 it trades for. It had peaked at $18.44 a few weeks back. Long term RZ could end up in the trash heap and be a memory like some of the energy development companies like Calpine CPNLQ.PK or the dotcom companies that got on that band wagon. Actually Calipne which is now a pinksheet fallen star does operate some geothermal electric generation plants at the Geysers in Northern California. RZ also claims to have some super duper technology for improving electric motor efficiency and some technology for hybrid propulsion. I believe GE has great technology for electric motors and Toyota has great technology for hybrids propulsion and that RZ is pretty much hot air on these sectors. Therefore I put RZ into the HYPE column.
Be very careful with geothermal companies the water is hot and the stocks were recently hot, other than Ormat I believe you will get third degree burns in this sector.
Lindsay Leveen
Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Graves It’s Thursday
First before we start the rather macabre discussion of burial, I want to wish you all a happy new year. Also my blog this year will alternate between Thursdays and Fridays. Thursdays will remain the traditional Green Thursday and Fridays will be Finance Fridays in which I will dissect energy related stocks to help you discern if their business is based on hope or hype.
CNN carried an article on a trend toward using biodegradable coffins for burial. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/27/green.coffins.ap/index.html Below is a picture of a grieving relative of someone about to be buried in a coffin made from recycled newspaper. I hope they only used the obituary section not the sports section?
John in the carpool has asked me to opine on whether burial is more green than cremation. Well with the fattening up of the American population, the average adult now has enough fat content to self sustain their own cremation without the need of any fossil fuel.
Some nut in the UK has posted the average body composition on a web page http://www.rowett.ac.uk/edu_web/sec_pup/body_comp.pdf
I will use 20% fat content for the average American adult and an average mass of 175 pounds so we have 35 pounds of fat to contribute to our cremation. This is about 700,000 BTUs of available energy which is more than ample to “fire” the process. Burial in a cemetery that has its landscape maintained for the next 100 years will require mowing of the lawn around each gravesite. If the mowing is performed 25 times a year and the lawn around each gravesite is 100 square feet then the amount of lawn mowed over a 100 year period is 25 times 100 times 100 or 250,000 square feet or some six acre equivalent of mowing. To mow six acres of lawn requires at least 2 gallons of gasoline so I vote that even with the biodegradable recycled coffin, cremation is much more green than burial. Judaism has been green about burial for the past three thousand years as the rabbis require a very plan pine casket without any metal or adornment. In biblical times the body was buried in a pure white cotton shroud not a wood coffin so this was even more green http://www.deathonline.net/remembering/mourning/jewish.cfm
Enough about death and taxes!!
New York City rang in the new year with a brand new LED based ball. The new ball is twice as bright and uses half the electricity of the previous ball. NYC had been dropping the ball in time square for the past 100 years. The politicians in DC have always dropped the ball. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/31/tech/main3658180.shtml
Lastly taking about lighting up the world! A new 150 inch plasma display was unveiled at the consumer electronics show this week in Las Vegas. This display has a surface area in excess of 9,600 square inches and will need about 3.5 kilowatts of power. I found an interesting web site that compares the power requirements for various TV technologies http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-2.html I hope that the governator has a 35 amp electrical service in his den. Yes Arne has ordered one of these so he can watch reruns of Twins. He wants to see his buddy Danny DeVito in normal size and to see himself as the jolly green giant. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22540733/The word of the day is remonstrate or to plead or protest perhaps in this case one could start the word with a d and still be correct
remonstrate \rih-MAHN-strayt; REH-mun-strayt\, intransitive verb:1. To present and urge reasons in opposition to an act, measure, or any course of proceedings -- usually used with 'with'.
transitive verb:1. To say or plead in protest, opposition, or reproof.
If a hailstorm starts, surely instead of remonstrating with it, you try to take shelter.-- Victor Pelevin, A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other StoriesWhen things went beyond the control of her forceful personality, inventiveness or charm, if the problem was something she could not alter or manipulate, she didn't pine or remonstrate, she merely buried what was threatening or damaging to her sense of worth.-- Colin Thubron, "Sophisticated Traveler", New York Times, October 10, 1999
Tories and Liberal Democrats remonstrated with each other.-- Matthew Parris, "Cockney market forces drive Ginger bananas", Times (London), May 16, 2001
Remonstrate comes from Medieval Latin remonstrare, "to show again, to point back to, as a fault," from re- + monstrare, "to show."
Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Grande It’s Thursday
We are not talking about the Rio Grande but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes Starbucks has Short, Tall, Grande and Venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks
The Grande is a 16 oz size http://www.quicksilverweb.net/sbucks/sbcharts.htm
The quicksilver link helps you speak Starbuck Jargon. I was recently in the local Starbuck when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a 140 degree latte. Being a thermo expert I of course had to ask the Barista what this meant. The barista replied that the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. Of course my mind started doing mental arithmetic as to how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped. Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. They must sell something like 3 billion grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is power by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, so the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is about 50% carbon the rest is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the grande cups of Strabucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67 and we have that Strabucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to starbucks to get the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions
There is much debate about whether electricity can be generated from coal without the CO2 emissions. It is beginning to feel like Christmas and if you believe in Santa you will believe this nonsense of coal gasification and CO2 sequestration http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/19/future.coal.plant/index.html
Now that Vietnam is embracing a market economy and people have more money there to spend on Starbucks they are also buying lots of motorcycles and having lots of crashes. It was reported this week that Vietnam has instituted a Helmet Law for motorcyclists http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071215/lf_nm/vietnam_helmets_dc Amazingly the number of motorcycles in Vietnam has increased form 500,000 in 1990 to over 22 million currently. With this type of statistic perhaps we can all understand how the earth is headed toward a very warm perhaps 140 degree future in places like Death Valley.
Good news from Washington is that president Bush will sign into law the new higher efficiency standards http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071218/congress_energy.html To celebrate this momentous event the eggnog will only be heated to 140 degrees.
This is the last TT for this year as I will be on vacation through January 7 sipping my morning soy latte from Starbucks which I must confess will be only heated to 140 degrees because soy milk actually “burns” if it is heated any higher. Wishing you all seasons greeting and a happy, healthy, and energy efficient 2008
The word of the day is tocsin or ringing the bell for the purpose of alarm. Well I have been a pretty ardent bell ringer that we are simply adding toxins to the environment. With this let’s all sing Jingle Bells and do better next year
Word of the DayThursday December 20, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Helptocsin \TOCK-sin\, noun:1. An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm.2. A warning.
Some of the allegations put round are so frenzied, however, that some caution should be exercised before the tocsin is rung too loudly.-- "New President of the NUS", Times (London), April 10, 1969
The first atomic bomb fell and its radioactive cloud became a tocsin for mankind.-- Herbert Mitgang, "The Bomb as Horror and Warning", New York Times, August 1, 1990
But Mr. Beckett is wise in choosing the form of the myth in which to sound his tocsin on the condition of human society.-- Brooks Atkinson, "Beckett's 'Endgame'", New York Times, January 29, 1958
Tocsin derives from Medieval French touquesain, from Old Provençal tocasenh, from tocar, "to touch, to strike, to ring a bell" + senh, "church bell," ultimately from Latin signum, "sign, signal."
Green Thursday – TGIT - Thank Government It’s Thursday
Yeah today with tongue in cheek we thank our Government for their new found interest in Thermo. Today the Senate will not take up a vote on the energy bill as it stands with added taxes on oil companies. The end to the filibuster was one vote short http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/13/congress.energy.ap/index.html
The thermodynamic genii will take up the vote minus the added taxes provision. Hopefully the part on increased efficiency in energy use will remain intact.
While Congress was debating our energy future a global meeting was held in Bali and the US remained the sole holdout on the Kyoto Protocol http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_re_as/bali_us_under_siege
I had suggested the Gangrene Award for politicians and celebrities who pretend to be green while spewing more than average amounts of carbon dioxide. Steve Malloy of Junk Science must be a reader of TT. He blogged about the Greenest Hypocrites of 2007. He listed old Alfalfa as his numero uno pick. His number ten pick is the California Hypocritenator http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,315721,00.html
Enough about cold hearted politicians who pretend photosynthesis was intended to propel 800 million vehicles that weigh on average 3,000 pounds. Talking about cold Oklahoma got nailed with an ice storm of epic proportions. Can you see the truck that is hidden in the ice covered tree in the photo below?
For precipitation to occur as ice a warm front actually has to traverse over and above a cold front and then thermo takes over and it rains water in a solid form.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316271,00.html
I am glad to inform the TT readership that Smell Oil is getting into the Algae to BioDiesel game. I hove opined that algae to BioDiesel is a far better thermodynamic and social idea than using corn to produce BioEthanol. A lot of the research is being performed in Hawaii so I may just have to take a trip out there to investigate. I am asking TT readers to donate their frequent flier miles so I don’t use my personal Lear JET and increase my carbon Bigfootprint. The US DOE reports as follows:
Shell and HR Biopetroleum to Grow Algae for BiofuelsA researcher examines algae cultures at the Natural Energy Laboratory Hawaii Authority. See a larger version of this photo.Credit: Shell
Royal Dutch Shell plc announced yesterday that it will work with HR Biopetroleum to build a pilot facility for growing algae as a source of biofuels. The facility will cultivate algae in seawater ponds, then harvest the algae and extract oil from them for conversion into fuels such as biodiesel. Construction of the facility will begin immediately on a parcel of land leased from the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA), which is located on the shore of the Hawaiian island of Kona. The NELHA site is ideal for the project because it pipes in a constant supply of clean, fresh ocean water. NELHA was originally built to support a DOE project for ocean thermal energy conversion, and it continues to employ the project's seawater supply pipes to support a variety of research projects and commercial enterprises, including facilities that currently grow and harvest algae for pharmaceuticals and nutritional supplements. Shell and HR Biopetroleum have formed a joint venture company, called Cellana, to develop the biofuels project.
Algae grow rapidly and can have a high percentage of lipids, or oils. They can double their mass several times a day and produce at least 15 times more oil per acre than alternatives such as rapeseed, palms, soybeans, or jatropha. Moreover, algae-growing facilities can be built on coastal land unsuitable for conventional agriculture. The Cellana facility will grow only non-genetically modified, marine microalgae species in open-air ponds using proprietary technology. It will also use bottled carbon dioxide to test the algae's ability to capture carbon. To support the facility, academic research programs at the University of Hawaii, the University of Southern Mississippi, and Canada's Dalhousie University will screen natural microalgae species to find the strains that produce the highest yields and the most oil. See the Shell press release and the NELHA Web site.
Shell isn't the only oil company that's exploring the potential of algae. In late October, Chevron Corporation and DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced that they had entered into a collaborative research and development agreement to produce biofuels from algae. Under the agreement, Chevron and NREL scientists will collaborate to identify and develop algae strains that can be economically harvested and processed into transportation fuels such as jet fuel. See the NREL press release.
The word of the day is cacophony. This is the sound of the phonies in Congress disagreeing on how much to tax the poor oil companies. Interestingly the opposite of cacophony is euphony I guess the European Union (EU) had something to do with this definition
cacophony \kuh-KAH-fuh-nee\, noun:1. Harsh or discordant sound; dissonance.2. The use of harsh or discordant sounds in literary composition.
New York was then a cacophony of sounds -- a dozen accents ricocheting off surrounding buildings as immigrant mothers called their children home for supper, noon whistles blowing, vendors hawking their wares on the streets, children shouting, horses whinnying, and people yelling.-- Herbert G. Goldman, Banjo EyesThe mammoth central station towered over the platforms, and with the cacophony from whooshing steam, shrill whistles, shouts and the heaving of hand and horse carts, not only was it the biggest, noisiest, most confusing experience any of them had ever encountered, but the city was almost unimaginable.-- Christopher Ogden, Legacy: A Biography of Moses and Walter AnnenbergCacophony comes from Greek kakophonia, from kakophonos, from kakos, "bad" + phone, "sound." The adjective form is cacophonous. The opposite of cacophony is euphony.
Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Gates It’s Thursday
This is not about Billy the Billionaire but about gates that allow electrons to flow. It is the sixtieth anniversary of the invention of the first transistor . A transistor is a gate that allows electrons to flow or can stop electrons from flowing depending whether the gate is open or closed http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=AJUDVGU2Q0WAGQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=204300928
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor
The boys at Bell Labs came up with the transistor in 1947. http://i.cmpnet.com/embedded/2007/December07/1207esdGanssle03.gif This solid state device replaced the vacuum tube old Tommy Edison had invented back in the 19th century.
Eighteen years after the first working transistor Gordon Moore wrote a paper that became Moore’s Law in which he postulated that going forward from 1965 every two years manufacturers of solid state integrated circuits would be able to double the number of transistors in their devices. This has held true for the past 42 years and now we have memory and logic chips with over five hundred million transistors in each chip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
With all these transistors on a single device the big hurdle to overcome is the dissipation of the heat generated within the circuit and therefore Thermo is again the subject of much research.
Intel intends to produce a tri-gate or three dimensional based chip that will use less energy and therefore dissipate less heat. Intel is claiming they can obey Moore’s Law for at least another decade http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060612corp.htm
I am happy to report American motorists are getting smarter and the Smart car should sell well when it is introduced to the USA next year http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/industries/transportation/article/demand-smart-car-high-according-daimler-ag_389907_8.html
Everything is slimming down in the USA. We are now eating smaller plates of food. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071129/lf_nm_life/food_trends_dc Glad to see bottled water is non longer on the top twenty hot items.
Talking about smarts a five year chimp had better short term memory that a team of college kids in Japan. Perhaps we should all have a chimp as a pet so we can find our keys to our smart car http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/03/chimp.memory.ap/index.html
All this touching of screens reminds me of the new technology termed “energy harvesting” . Light switch that are wireless that get to emit a radio frequency signal by merely pressing on the switch are coming to market. Theses switches do not need batteries and are not wired into the wall. Just the pressure of touching them charges them to send a radio signal to the light in a room to turn on or off. A new 57 story skyscraper in Madrid spain will be equipped with the energy harvesting light switches. This will allow walls to be moved without have to deal with relocating wiring. http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=QGXC1ZWBKI13WQSNDLRSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=204600613
The word of the day is deracinate or to uproot. We will soon deracinate the humble light switch
Word of the DayThursday December 6, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Helpderacinate \dee-RAS-uh-nayt\, transitive verb:1. To pluck up by the roots; to uproot.2. To displace from one's native or accustomed environment.
In the People's Republic, communism's utilitarian bent first poisoned the culinary arts and then, in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, tried to deracinate what were regarded as the insidious strains of China's former culture.-- Benjamin and Christina Schwarz, "Going All Out for Chinese", The Atlantic, January 1999
He was a Jew who was never given a chance to belong anywhere, a deracinated intellectual.-- David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless MindDeracinate comes from Middle French desraciner, from des-, "from" (from Latin de-) + racine, "root" (from Late Latin radicina, from Latin radix, radic-). The noun form is deracination.
TGIT – Thank Gravlox It’s Thursday
Thanksgiving has come and gone and I have discovered that turkey meat is really not the largest source of triptophan. It has been shown that gram for gram cheddar cheese actually contains more triptophan than turkey meat. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20071121/sc_livescience/thankgivingmythturkeymakesyousleepy This why after eating a double double animal style at In and Out Burger I go to sleep for a week. For those of you who do not have a local In and Out Burger a double double has two slices of processed cheddar cheese
Now what does Gravlox have to do with this?
Fish oil that is prevalent in salmon can be fed to cows to lower their emissions of methane. http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/export/03-2003_449.html
I know by now some of you are chuckling that cows emit methane from their behinds but once again you have the wrong side of the argument. Cows burp out methane. In fact burped methane from cows and other animals is a significant fraction of the methane emissions on planet earth. The EPA reported that Enteric Fermentation, polite way of saying Greps (the Yiddish word for burp) emits about the same quantity of methane as Landfills. For us all these cows burping and causing the planet to warm is The Greps of Wrath. Remember from a previous TT that one pound of methane has the same greenhouse effect as 21 pounds of carbon dioxide. http://www.epa.gov/methane/sources.html
On a positive note the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center in NYC will be lit by some 30,000 LED lights this year and this will save 2,213 kilowatthours every night the tree is lit. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/11/21/green.christmas.ap/index.html
The word of the day is hirsute to be hippylike. This makes sense to me it means you have a suit made or hair from the Latin hirsutis
hirsute \HUR-soot; HIR-soot; hur-SOOT; hir-SOOT\, adjective:Covered with hair; set with bristles; shaggy; hairy.
The Bear . . . makes the rounds of the clubs "disguised" in trench coat and broad-brimmed hat, hoping (successfully, it seems) to be mistaken for a rather hirsute human.-- Richard M. Sudhalter, "The Bear Comes Home': Composing the Words That Might Capture Jazz", New York Times, August 29, 1999
First of all, your nose is nearly covered with your bloody moustache and your beard, Mr Gogarty replied. Mr Allen apologised for his "hirsute" appearance.-- Paul Cullen, "No ambush sprung on returning Gogarty", Irish Times, March 23, 1999
He was incredibly hirsute: there was even a thick pelt of hair on the back of his hands.-- Tama Janowitz, By the Shores of Gitchee GumeeHirsute comes from Latin hirsutus, "covered with hair, rough, shaggy, prickly."
Green Thursday TGIT - Thank GRide It’s Thursday http://www.gene.com/gene/about/environmental/commitment/gases.jsp
Today is the first anniversary of Genentech’s GRide program where employees are rewarded for not bringing a car to the campus. I have opined on the brilliance of this program and Andrew Tobias a TT subscriber as well as a very well known finance and political person carried the Carpooligans blog that I wrote a few months back http://www.andrewtobias.com/bkoldcolumns/070821.html
The Marin County Carpooligans can be proud. Collectively over the past 365 days we have 515 times that GRide has rewarded us with a $4 reward. We have therefore received $2,060 collectively for the past year. Assuming each round trip would have consumed 2 gallons of gasoline we reduced the gasoline consumption of the US by 1,030 gallons. Each gallon of gasoline equates to 22 pounds of CO2 emissions so the Carpooligans have collectively reduced CO2 emissions by 22,660 pounds over the past year. We have also reduced the GDP quite considerably by an amount of $8,240 as we estimate that each trip not taken saves approximately $16 dollars.
While the Marin crowd who frolic in hot tubs (according to Bush Senior) when not carpooling have been saving money and the air the US government continues to waste money on ethanol. Ethanol production is way up this year. We will likely produce over 6 billion gallons of ethanol in the US this year. Over $3 billion has been wasted on direct subsidies of the ethanol fuel and a similar amount was given to the farmers to produce the corn that feeds these ethanol plants. We chuckle about the Russians being a bunch of vodka drinking drunkards. Russia only produced 178 million gallons of ethanol last year primarily for drinking and their ethanol production is on the decline. The USA has overtaken Brazil on the ethanol binge. My data come from the ethanol trade group Renewable Fuels Association http://www.ethanolrfa.org/industry/statistics/#B
All this talk of booze is making my head spin. I am excited by the recent discovery of gamma ray bursts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst This phenomenal amount of energy release occurs when hypernova stars collapse into black holes. I can’t wait for the shares of Exxon Mobil to do likewise when all of America join the Carpooligan Gang. I remember reading the play The Effect Of Gamma Rays on Man In The Moon Marigolds back in high school. http://www.enotes.com/effects-gamma/
Forbes had an article on Fast Cars http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/103775/Most-Power-Packed-Cars;_ylt=AuHDzdjsFY.sJXAK911n2ZK7YWsA
100,000 American’s with a collective IQ of three below plankton were interviewed to yield the result that fuel economy is ranked eighth in most important feature for buying a car. Perhaps the firm that produced the survey J D Power biased the results toward horsepower so that they could become an even more powerful force in the survey world. Had a firm named J D Fuel Economy produced the survey the results would have certainly been different.
I hope you all enjoyed Halloween last night. I am happy to report that some of the world’s sugar still goes into its intended use of giving us the pleasure of eating sweets rather than being wasted on bio-fuels.
The word of the day is forcible. Dictionary.com must have been one of the J D Power survey respondents as there was all this discussion about the use of force required to have power packed cars. More next week
Word of the DayThursday November 1, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Helpforcible \FOR-suh-buhl\, adjective:1. Using force against opposition or resistance; effected or accomplished by force; as, "forcible entry or abduction."2. Characterized by force, efficiency, or energy; powerful.
Robbery, the forcible taking of property from the person of the victim, is the crime most likely to be committed by a stranger; 75 percent of victims are robbed by strangers.-- Adam Walinsky, "The Crisis of Public Order", The Atlantic, July 1995
The separation of religion from the state does not mean the establishment of irreligion by the state, still less the forcible imposition of an anti-religious philosophy.-- Bernard Lewis, "The Roots of Muslim Rage", The Atlantic, September 1990
Mr. Wilson replied to Mr. Evarts in a forcible argument, wasting no words, and showing clearly that there was no precedent in any impeachment case tried by the Senate for granting so much delay at this stage of the proceedings.-- "President Johnson's Answer to the Charges and Specifications", New York Times, March 23, 1868
It was a masterpiece, the Cincinnati Daily Gazette declared, "the most pointed and most forcible political letter ever written."-- "Thomas Jefferson: Radical and Racist", The Atlantic, October 1996
Forcible ultimately derives from Latin fortis, "strong."
