Slight movement back to the Coalition on the BludgerTrack poll aggregate this week after a soft result for Labor from Essential Research, which together with a Queensland-only result from Galaxy was the only new federal poll this week. This causes a 0.3% cut in the Labor primary vote and two losses on the seat projection – one in New South Wales and one in Queensland. Essential also had leadership ratings this week, and while the weak result for Bill Shorten hasn’t made too much difference to the poll aggregate reading, the difference is sufficient to put Malcolm Turnbull back in the lead on net approval.
Tricot Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:46 pm
Aw Gawd! Who turned the bloomin’ Grammar Gestapo loose? The rest of the day will be spent working out whether an exclamatory question should have placed after it, a ? or a/an !……and then when bored with this type of trivia, time to get stuck into apostrophes……..give us a break……..
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“It never ceases to amaze me how prosaic, pedestrian, unimaginative people can persistently pontificate about classical grammatical structure as though it’s fucking rocket science. These must be the same people who hate Picasso, because he couldn’t keep the paint inside the lines and the colors never matched the numbers.”
― Abbe Diaz
I hope you’re right Voice Endeavour – and that people put their money (and their votes) where their mouth is.
frednk @ #1189 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:46 pm
As usual, those annoying facty things get in the way. See my post above.
A lot of the posts on here (I won’t name names) should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks grammar is unimportant in the 21st century.
A lot or arguments seem to develop because people can’t tell the difference between what they actually posted and what they think they posted. Judicious use of full stops, commas and capital letters goes a long way to helping your argument.
ajm Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:43 pm
I suspect there’s also been some successful framing around the term renewables. I suspect when people think about renewables they think about words or images like clean, environmentally friendly, natural, etc.
This is one of the reasons why I think Turnbull has been so keen to reframe renewables as unreliable and expensive.
socrates @ #1190 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:47 pm
Its somehow reassuring that the ‘future’ of the tories – “the young foggies” propose to use their collective feet to walk backwards on policy.
They are consistent I’ll give them that.
psyclaw @ #1164 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:14 pm
I rather like ‘plectra’. 😛
“A lot of “…
Proof-reading your posts helps too 🙂
The reason I am a bit of a grammar ‘stickler’ is that as a writer I see grammar and punctuation as my road rules. These elements sharpen meaning/tone etc.
P1,
Ah, not so fast. Again you are conflating plant and turbine sizes, and in the case of CCGT, plant, turbine and turbine sizes.
First, looking at turbine sizes, specifically at gas-fired Brayton cycle turbines: good efficiency can be had at 100-250 MW. There is your gas turbine and one heat source.
This feeds heat to the boiler for a sub-critical steam turbine. So can solar heat collected in CSP arrays. Fore efficiency, you do want a larger Rankine cycle turbine, lets say of 500 MW.
Accordingly, to begin, you have a CCST plant comprising three gas-fired Brayton cycle turbines at 170MW each feeding a steam turbine and one solar thermal array directly feeding the boiler.
In operations, flog one of the gas turbines to lengthen the working life of the other two. Then decommission this gas turbine and build another solar array, this time with integrated storage.
Repeat.
Or do something like that. Get creative.
I haven’t ventured into the energy discussion as it isn’t my forte but I was chatting to science nerd/engineer son about it last night and he suggested the answer might well be “liquid fluoride thorium reactors” in the future.
I don’t know whether any of you have discussed this, but if not … has any of you looked into it?
jenauthor Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3:11 pm
The reason I am a bit of a grammar ‘stickler’ is that as a writer I see grammar and punctuation as my road rules. These elements sharpen meaning/tone etc.
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Some tips to write good :
1.Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
2.It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
3.Avoid archaeic spellings too.
4.Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
5.Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
6.Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
7.Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
8.Subject and verb always has to agree.
9.Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
10.Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to
catch typograhpical errers. 11.Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
12.Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
13.Don’t never use no double negatives.
14.Poofread carefully to see if you any words out.
15.Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless
of how others use them.
I often wondered whether the late Rugby league journo Peter Frilingos referred to his family as the Frilingi
Hardly any guitarist call them plectra or plectrums.
Picks.
I use the big triangular 1.14mms Dunlop Tortex picks.
If anyone cares.
Which they most probably don’t.
libertarian unionist @ #1210 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3:13 pm
I wish some of the alt-left here would do that, instead of just parroting stuff they read at RenewEconomy!
Since you are here, perhaps you can answer – do all CST plants typically also burn natural gas to get started, like Ivanpah does? Or perhaps this applies to just the larger ones? Would thermal storage reduce the need for this?
jenauthor @ #1211 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3:15 pm
Thorium reactors are not yet practical, and could be decades away yet. They are certainly not going to replace uranium reactors any time soon.
bk @ #1094 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 12:26 pm
Like you I abhorred English at school and probably learnt most of my grammar when studying science at Uni.
You needed to be clear and concise with your writing with no superfluous bullshit and correct grammar was the easiest way to achieve this.
It wasn’t until I started teaching English that I learnt what that grammar was called.
New thread.
No.
There are so few it’s impossible to generalise. Remember that many of these plants are effectively trials. Gas backup is useful in any case.
My understanding is yes, because “cold” molten salt is still relatively hot. Two-tank molten salt CST with storage seems to be emerging as the most useful technology.
I think that the libs have found the perfect way to stop leadership speculation: have absolutely no talent on your front bench.
Many great musicians can read music. The existence of geniuses (genii?) who have an intuitive grasp doesn’t mean we discard learning music theory altogether.
zoomster @ #1173 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 2:24 pm
Try ‘plectra’. It has captured my imagination. 😉
I concur with this. Building out massive amounts of conventional gas turbine plants is too much of a risk. However, you can design a generating plant that has a future worth investing in and can sensibly include gas as a heat source.
Its fairly simple in engineering terms, scalable and can be built tomorrow. What you essentially do is design a concentrating solar thermal plant with storage. The core is a modular molten salt storage system. But you don’t need to build the storage system out to full scale initially. On top of that a gas heater. No gas turbine. The gas is simply there to provide heat to the molten salt. The back end of the system is a conventional super-critical steam turbine.
You don’t need a huge amount of storage initially. Instead you get your cash flow going as quickly as possible and upgrade the plant storage (in modules) over time and as the market allows. Initially what you have is a plant that is capable of driving late afternoon/early evening loads. That’s the kind of load we need to meet in the immediate future. The plant would also have a role in the medium term as a backup generator in the rare circumstances where wind does not provide enough power late at night.
Point here is that you’re building a future proof generator so its investable. In future you can upgrade it with other sources of heat – even carbon neutral fuels. So there isn’t the risk in having stranded assets as there would be if you were to build pure gas turbine systems on a tens-of-GW scale (as a certain idiot here seems to be advocating).
phoenixred @ #1212 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 3:17 pm
LOL!!!!!!!
Zoomster
#1098 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 12:28 pm
It’s a regular frustration when teaching English, you see something that appears wrong, but on searching you find references to it and your view.
And then there is American English, don’t get me started.
Peter Piper @3pm
“A lot of the posts on here (I won’t name names) should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who thinks grammar is unimportant in the 21st century.
A lot or arguments seem to develop because people can’t tell the difference between what they actually posted and what they think they posted. Judicious use of full stops, commas and capital letters goes a long way to helping your argument.”
Fantastic post PP.
The fact is that many (though perhaps not all) grammar rules have evolved in the interests of clear and unambiguous communication.
Unambiguous communication is especially important when significant events depend on it.
Anyone who writes a will, a legal contract, a MOU, a diplomatic letter (in the formal sense , or even in the sense whereby two ordinary people are in dispute and wish to solve the dispute), a complaint, an appeal (say to an insurance claim knockback) etc etc has a vested interest in unambiguous communication. If their message is not clearly understood, they are the loser, even monetarily.
A relative of mine with no sense of grammar at all frequently sends SMSs which are quite indecipherable. Once the message is more than a simple sentence (“meet me at the corner”) she may as well have not sent it, if communication was her purpose.
The simple rule that a relative pronoun must immediately follow the noun it refers to, is a classic rule which if broken totally destroys meaning viz ……
The man was shot by the assassin who was walking across the street
Being a smart copper, I know to put a security cordon around the 3 story building just down the street, where the assassin had actually fired from a top story window.
Those coppers who don’t understand grammar, and can’t see the error, go running up the street in pursuit of the pedestrian assassin.
Don,
Congratulations!
But would it be churlish of me to ask how many did 3 unit Latin?
Thank you. 🙂
As I understood it, most of the Private Schools at the time still did it, as well as my Selective Public School and others like it in the Public system, actually a lot more then than now, so I would have put the 2 Unit cohort at about 1000 and the 3 Unit numbers at about 250.
I also remember that we went to Sydney Uni once for the Latin Speaking Competition (though I don’t know why, to this day, as it’s a dead language 🙂 ), and there were about 150-200 competitors from schools all over the State, I think even TAS(The Armidale School) was represented, but mainly the Sydney Privates and Selectives. I didn’t do very well in the competition to speak Latin, btw. However, it was fun to be given a text and then to give it your best shot at pronunciation.
I think I loved 3 Unit Latin because we were given a whole text to translate and learn about. I did ‘De Rerum Natura’ and found it fascinating to learn about the scientific principles that the Romans were discovering and how they viewed the scientific world.
It chimed in very nicely with the 12 Units of Science that I was doing as well. As the History of the different arms of the Sciences was also part of the curriculum.
I have also studied a bit of Classical Greek, which I learned when I went to Classics Camp one year.
However, put a Latin text in front of me today and I would struggle. 😀
“Zoomster
#1098 Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 12:28 pm
As for grammarians, you do know that grammar text books not only disagree amongst themselves, but are almost always (I don’t know of any exceptions, but am allowing for them) self contradictory?”
I don’t think this is at all so. Could you give an example please.
Where opinions vary is as to whether the particular rule has now outlived its usefulness, and by and large this depends on whether the rule was a rule of style, or a rule of function.
There are grammar rules and grammar rules. Some are very minor and pedantic, for example ending a sentence with a preposition. This rule has now pretty well lapsed, and there are few (or no) consequences to this.
But rules which are essential for the production of unambiguous meaning are widely agreed upon, and will not lapse while written communication is employed.
Your very post is ironically most ambiguous.
“grammar text books disagree amongst themselves!”
Really. I hope they don’t come to fisticuffs and destroy the library furniture.
“but they are almost always self contradictory”
Now are you saying here (“self contradictory”) that each grammar book contradicts itself.
Or are you saying that Grammar Book 1 contradicts Grammar Book 2, in which case they would be contradictory, not self contradictory.
I am sure that these ambiguities can be easily cleared up by rule-correct sentence structure.