The official election season does. You still get ads before then but not a lot. (And mostly they are the government saying this new policy of ours is a good idea)

79 seat swing total in the last two state elections is a big change (total is 89)

18/76 non major two parties in the senate.

Without mandatory voting only those who have been convinced to vote will vote - which also generally means the major parties who have the money will be the ones they vote for.

which is 1/40th of 100m.

24500J per 1m^3 according to your figures.

24500J * 1 billion = 2.45 × 10^13J or 6.80555556 Gigawatt Hours

With the 4 changes in the tides I get 27GWh per day.

It does seam coal in general is being reduced though.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/...

You mean temperatures have not risen since the super el-nino that put a lot of heat from the ocean into the atmosphere?

What happens if you look at 10 or 20 years?

So people are wanting to get back down to 280 and somehow this would mean going down to 150?

Yeah the Republicans are that. Renaming it to climate change so that it sounds less scary.

If it replaces a coal or natural gas station it does.

Although the Tea Party has embraced home solar.

Of course the far right likes to ignore that China has so many people that it's per captia emissions are much lower.

2.45 * 10 ^ 4 J per M^2 * 10^9 m ^2 = 1 X 10 ^ 13 J per change in state.

Oops.

So using your assumptions, with the triangle. 1 billion m^3 of water

The height is 1/40th of the 100m referred to from Wikipedia. So about 6GWh per tide.

To use an example of a real word situation. 28.6 million metres^3 at 100m would generate 5GWh. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wivenhoe_Power_Station)

What I was saying about the pot hole was , I rarely see them at all public or private.

The only cost I can think of is labor + permits to put the fiber into the conduit.

Yeah the US governments are really bad at doing things. Although what is your opinion of the US postal service? From down here in Australia they seem to be doing the job they were made for(Although losing money as time change). From what I understand the government only owns but does not control it.

I will tell you what I know. Their were two companies Telstra And Optus who both laid cable. Mostly around Melbourne Victoria (which is in the south of Australia but not the state of South Australia). I am not too sure about the details and most of the things online is about the NBN. (which was a full fibre to the home rollout until a new government came in and decided to use copper instead)

Here electricity is run mostly be a company ( http://www.aemo.com.au/About-t... ) that covers the whole east coast and South Australia. Everyone bids and they get the price of the amount they need. (I.e if they need 1000MW and the bids are -$5 100MW, 20 for 500 MW , 40 for 1000MW , 1000 for 1000MW , would mean the first 3 companies get $40 and the 3rd only provides 400MW)

It is not just the ISP, Down here their are quotes of 40k for electricity connections. (of course with solar and storage they are competing their)

Was it TWC last mile cable or backhaul cable? Apparently you can't just hook into backhaul cable for consumers.

It is also possibly that it the council and permits that drive the cost up so much.

$100,000 is too much to run a cable 2 miles though, for what ever reason the cost is so much. Especially when I believe you could get away with 500 for routers. And I would put multiple fiber lines through the conduit. Cheaper to have the lines in their in case one breaks then have to run another one though later.

I am not justifying it, I just believe you do not want the other extreme either. Two networks that only cover a small part of a city with neither making a profit like what happened down south in Australia.