The 21-Word Review: Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo by Zora Neale Hurston

It's hard to understand why this book took so long to be published. A little book with a very big impact.

The 21-Word Review: Dallas Buyers Club

Yes it's a tragic and inspiring story over overcoming hardships, but all I could think of was the amazing cheekbones throughout.

The 21-Word Review: The Ritual (Netflix)

I wasn't all that impressed. Then I read the glowing reviews ... written by horror fans whose psyches have been permanently marred.

The 21-Word Review: 1922 (Netflix)

Pet rats are wonderful, cute, intelligent, and lovable. Having lived with pet rats, it's hard to be terrified by movie rats.

The 21-Word Review: 47 Meters Down (Netflix)

So many good movies are available these days for streaming, yet I still picked the one with the teeny bikini cover.

The 21-Word Review: Suburbicon (Delta In-Flight)

I honestly thought this was a heavy handed, subtle-as-a-sledgehammer student production and was disappointed to see who directed.

The 21-Word Review: Geostorm (Delta In-Flight)

Better than some of the more recent disaster movies in the genre, but that's not exactly a high bar to set.

The 21-Word Review: Coco (Delta In-Flight)

If no reviewer has yet said "I'm cookoo for Coco" yet in their review, then I claim that phrase as mine.

The 21-Word Review: My Adventures with God by Stephen Tobolowsky

Once you start recognizing Mr. Tobolowsky's face, it is unnerving how many times you see it in movies and television shows.

The 21-Word Review: Straight Man by Richard Russo

When the entertainment system went out on my Atlanta to Seoul flight I managed to finish this entire book before landing.

The 21-Word Review: The Revenant (Delta In-Flight Movie)

I read the book so there were no surprises, but that did not diminish the power of the story and performance.

The 21-Word Review: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Delta In-Flight)

Three dimensional characters with complex motivations, superb manifestations, and gut wrenching stories? If only more modern films were so well done.

The 21-Word Review: The Foreigner (Delta In-Flight)

I have trouble believing a Chinese man could disappear into Northern Ireland so completely that the IRA could not find him.

The 21-Word Review: The Time Traveler's Wife (Delta In-Flight)

A secret to enjoying the movie based on a book that you enjoyed is to wait three years to see it.

The 21-Word Review: Daddy's Home 2 (Delta In-Flight)

Perhaps I am suffering from not having seen the firth movie in the series, but this installment almost rose to dreck.

The 21-Word Review: Ready Player One

Pedantic lovers of the book will find fault in the omissions and plot changes, but the movie captures the atmosphere admirably.

The 21-Word Review: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard

It's a tragic shame that we don't know more about President Garfield. A truly great man cut down by medical hubris.

The 21-Word Review: Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

I took it on a plane with me. The sex scene came up as a young woman sat next to me.

The 21-Word Review: Mother! (Delta In-Flight)

So it's an allegory? It's supposed to be some sort of homage to the religious mythos? Or it's just a mess.

The 21-Word Review: The Mountain Between Us (Delta In-Flight)

Two powerful, beautiful actors in a stark, striking environment and a stressful and exciting predicament. But I never believed the chemistry.

The 21=Word Review: The Lost City of Z (Delta In-Flight)

I read the book and found it fascinating. I would swear that most of this movie was not in the book.

The 21-Word Review: Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Delta In-Flight)

From the director of The Fifth Element, which I loved, comes a movie with just so much to dislike. Very disappointing.

The 21-Word Review: Atomic Blonde (Delta In-Flight)

I hate it when the trailer for the movie shows a scene from the penultimate action sequence. Like this one did.

Suburban 5-4-and-a-Door Solar: How Much Does Power Really Cost?

As we enter month seven of our solar panel installation, we've been doing some intensive numerical analysis to find out exactly how much we are saving. One of the problems that we encountered was determining exactly how much we were really paying for power.

Georgia Power publishes their official rates in cents per kWh based on the month of the year and the amount of power used. Theoretically, the numbers in the table below should add up to the "Service" line on the bill, but we discovered that they don't.

Month	less than 650kW	650 to 1000kW	more than 1000kW
October - May	5.6582	4.8533	4.7641
June - September	5.6582	9.3983	9.7273

After a few calls with Georgia Power, we discovered that there is an additional "fuel charge" included in the Service line. The fuel charge can change at any time, but is currently a $10 base charge plus 2.696 cents per kWh. Why these numbers are not included anywhere on any document that is published by Georgia Power is hard to understand.

In addition to service rates, there are per kWh charges for Nuclear Regulatory Fee, Environmental Fees, and Franchise Fees. The rates for these are also not published, so we did some linear analysis to figure out how to calculate them for arbitrary kWh. The equations below are almost certainly not correct, but they give numbers that are close for kWh values we've seen so far.

Nuclear Fee (dollars) = 0.009461*kWh-1.703

Environmental Fee (dollars) = 0.01243*kWh-2.269

Franchise Fee (dollars) = 0.00444*kWh-0.5845

And, of course, there is the 7% sales tax. All of this adds up to a cost of power between 10 and 16 cents per kWh. The graph below is what we have actually paid for power per kWh over the last few years.

Compare that to the 3.5 cents / kWh that Georgia Power pays to homeowners for generated power and the popularity of local storage options like the Tesla battery are easy to understand. Why sell power to the utility at 3.5 cents only to buy it back later at 16 cents? It also explains why net metering (which is available in some states and requires the utility to only charge for the net power used) is very popular with customers and not so popular with utilities.

The 21-Word Review: The Hitman's Bodyguard (Delta In-Flight)

Exactly what was promised in the preview. If you suspect you'd like it, you will. If not, you most certainly won't.