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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> Comments, anyone?

It is a perennial koan amongst us self-sufficient types.  Is it possible to 
generate all the electricity you use on you own homestead?

Tricksty, that.

There is the old saw where the enterprising child has a lemonade stand with 
the sign "All you can drink for ten cents,"

The patron plucks down a dime and drinks a glass of lemonade.

"I'll have another."
"That will be ten more cents."
"But your sign says 'All you can drink for ten cents.'"
"Right.  That's all you can drink for ten cents."

Like that, I could just run some wires out to the battery of the truck and 
get all the electricity I use from that.  IF that was all the electricity I 
used.

This fellow has the full nine yards as far as eletrical gadgets go and a 3500 
sq ft house no less.  I got to the middle of the second page of the article 
and Firefox decided it didn't like it.  But from what I read, this fellow's 
doing the world and environment no good.  Sure, he's demonstrating that given 
enough resouces and acreage, one person with a LOT of money could unplug from 
the 
grid and use all the electricty they wanted.  The teaser is that if he could 
do it, anyone could do it.

A friend of mine did him one better in a lot of ways.  He built a boat that 
uses no fossil fuel whatever, a steam boat.   He built it all himself.   Of 
course, he owns a machine company with sixty Bridgeport machines, has access 
to 
all sorts of odd and exotic bits and pieces of metal.  Could everyone build a 
boat like that and get around by burning driftwood?   Not likely.

The fellow in the article got off the grid and spent $500,000 doing it.  That 
half a million dollars represents a great deal resources natual and human 
that went into providing electricity just for him alone.  That much money 
would 
buy a lavish use of electricity on my homestead for 700 years.   </HTML>