Midday open thread: Floating wind turbines hold promise, Christie’s popularity at record low

A majority of New Jersey voters now have an unfavorable impression of Gov. Chris Christie, according to a new Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, with just 42 percent of registered voters carrying a favorable impression of him—the lowest ever recorded by the poll. […]

Voters say taxes (24 percent), and the economy’s effect on jobs (21 percent) are their top two concerns, followed by corruption and abuse of power (16 percent) and education (12 percent).

Poison control workers say that as the e-cigarette industry has boomed, the number of children exposed to the liquid nicotine that gives hand-held vaporizing gadgets their kick also has spiked.

More than 2,700 people have called poison control this year to report an exposure to liquid nicotine, over half of those cases in children younger than 6, according to national statistics. The number shows a sharp rise from only a few hundred total cases just three years ago.

The battery-powered electronic vaporizers often resemble traditional cigarettes and work by heating liquid nicotine into an inhalable mist. The drug comes in brightly colored refill packages and an array of candy flavors that can make it attractive to young children, heightening the exposure risk and highlighting the need for users to keep it away from youngsters.

Despite seeming a bit “extravagant” or “exotic,” floating wind turbines are about simplifying offshore wind power. Building permanent foundations for conventional offshore wind turbines in the sea bed and then constructing the wind turbines on top of them is quite difficult and expensive. Floating wind turbines can be almost completely put together on land, and then simply towed out into place and anchored down (not with an actual boat anchor, of course, but using various potential methods).

Aside from that benefit, floating wind turbines can be placed in deeper waters where there are strong and steady winds. That means more electricity production, which translates to greater commercial competitiveness.

Back in 2010, Sondra Arquiett was arrested in connection with her boyfriend’s cocaine ring. She eventually got five years of probation after cooperating with the cops, but before her sentence came down, she granted DEA agents permission to search her phone. What she did not do was tell them they could use photos—some a bit sexy, some that included her niece and nephew—and information from that device to make a new Facebook page under her previous name, Sondra Prince. But that’s exactly what happened, and now she’s suing DEA Agent Timothy Sinnigen for violating her privacy and endangering her safety.

Everyone seems to agree that the feds violated something here—definitely Facebook’s terms of service, and probably the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But let’s be honest: They won’t be punished for it. With parallel construction, ICREACH, and their weird commando squads that tear through foreign countries, the DEA is as secretive and lawless as the CIA or the NSA is at this point. What happened to Arquiett is disturbing, but it’s a grain of sand on the beach of the war on drug’s overwhelming awfulness.