De-evolution of a Beard

I've been meaning to post this for a month and haven't gotten around to
it, so allow me to present the creative trimming of a winter coat.


This is kind of a scary picture, but unfortunately
the only one I took of myself with the whole deal. My goal: to attain
the longest chin whiskers possible during the official winter months.



This look could be categorized as "Olde Tyme Bartender" or US President circa 1860-1900. I sported this business for one entire day and it felt ridiculously uncomfortable. I spent the entire day desperately wanting this off of my face.


This one was alright. Not nearly as uncomfortable as
the previous incarnation, but still weird (for me at least). This went
on for about five days. Apparently, it lookeddisappointingly normal.


This is only slightly different than the last. Notice the subtle narrowing of the handle's?


And here, finally, is the full blown Ben-stache. Yay.

GPA and SAT Imply False Precision and Authority

I was very amused to hear that my favorite alma mater is thinking about discontinuing its cooperation with well known college rankings magazines. Of course the decision is based only on the highest principles. Of course….[cough]

So in light of this brave stand I hope they are willing to reciprocate the trust the absence of impartial data demands of prospective students. Why I think the following would only be fair:

Dear Admissions Committee:

Thank you for your inquiry about my high school and SAT transcripts. It is no mistake that you have not yet received them. I have decided not to recognize the false precision and authority of these artificial measures. Your admissions selection process is too important to be based on data from an outside, synthetic measure that is so fundamentally flawed and incomplete. Does a weather report convey all that is beautiful about a sunny fall afternoon in Vermont? Of course not! A four digit number is just as insufficient to describe all the character, culture and beauty contained in all the welcoming hallways and anterooms that dwell within my mind. Look over there past my shrine to Donald DeFreeze. There is a tire swing hanging from rafters reclaimed from an old barn with multi-hued bears frolicking with much merriment. Why even my whimsy exudes acceptance and tolerance! Oh if only some day I could have friends of such diversity in which to share my gaiety. But I digress…the SAT is nothing more than a construct of the corporate machine which seeks to grade our wonderful, unique, free-thinking minds like cuts of beef. Like a blast of poisonous carbon monoxide thousands of for-profit corporations like Kaplan and Princeton Review seek to extract payment with the promise that we can outperform our peers. How is it moral to take money to make someone else a loser? I suppose others can receive absolution from that pagan creed of Capitalism but I know as Friends we’re simply too good for that. It’s a pity others can’t be as concerned about social-justice as we are. There are just so many greed-battered souls that litter this Caligula’s wasteland of Amerikkka it shouldn’t be a surprise that I had so many as my high school teachers. So oppressed were they by this controlling, paternalistic society and so deprived of the sensitive, worldly and engaging re-education within your walls are they that they seek to damn all free spirits in their charge to their sad fate. As my llama power animal has often told me, hurt people hurt people. In consideration of this truth I proudly view my grade point average with the same regard as a tattoo marking the forearm of a Survivor; a mark of unspeakable oppression.

Absent of my brands of conformity I’m sure you’d like to have some information about me in which to base your consideration. I descend from principled, non-conformist, English stock who were among the first to lead the fight against slavery. Through determination and hard work they left my parents with a legacy of world renown. My parents did their best to build on what their progenitors left them and pushed forward with an agenda of non-violent, compassionate progressivism. As they were somewhat less industrious than their forbearers their accomplishments were rather modest but their passion was just as strong! My upbringing in this environment has influenced me greatly. I value peace in this world more than anything. So much so that I sold all the land my grandparents left me to allow my family and I to tour the country converting the ignorant to our culture of peace in our new bio-diesel bus and help fund a yearly trip to Palestine to help me understand peace even better. Included with this letter is a tastefully designed view book constructed of paper I made myself filled with autumn pictures of me trying to impose peace on others through high decibel wisdom and colorful signage. I also included a video of me helping my Palestinian peace friend Khaled build the beautiful, traditional “Katyusha” firework for a peace festival in his basement.

Some lesser institutions of learning might receive the enclosed with some skepticism. "How can any of this information be verified? Even if it is true, how does this demonstrate that you've received a legitimate education? ", they may ask. To which I'll respond with righteous outrage, "Did you not read my essay on my impressive values? Did you not see the pictures of me with friends of many colors and creeds...smiling....in the fall!? Are you so obtuse as to not see that my quality is self evident?!" I know you will let me tell you the story of me using my tongue of tolerance rather than the imposed language of greed to which other institutions will only listen.

Thank you for your consideration,
Earl M. Coolege

Update: I wonder if this is the type of student they're now shooting for? They seem to approve....

Thailand's off the list

As a rule I despise country music. In the rare instances I actually allow myself to pay attention when it's played in grocery stores or Jiffy Lubes I always find I can predict what the lyrics are going to be despite never hearing the song before. Unfortunately doing so triggers a deep sense of self loathing because somehow these odes to morons apparently somehow resonates with me. The rather crappy movie The Beach was sort of the same way. As a rule I also hate hippies and this movie was all about hippies being hippies but for some reason the movie made we want to visit Bankok until the following changed my mind:

Khao San Road is where WTO protesters go to vacation. It is a collection of
cheap hostels, Internet cafes, semi-legit massage parlors, disreputable travel
agents, nightclubs, and endless stalls manned by Thai merchants willing to cater
to the desires of the First World's spiritually confused, culturally eclectic
youths. And what do they want? Primarily, tattoos, henna, and dreadlocks. As I
walked past a Thai grandmother braiding Bob Marley hair into a twentysomething
Japanese head while a Thai man was needling Superman's symbol onto his shoulder,
I thought: If this is where peace, love, and understanding lead, then let's give
war a chance.

UPDATE:

The Crawford Peace House recently lost its corporate charter with the state, and a former member who now has rights to the name is threatening legal action because the group continues operating.

Sara L. Oliver and some others are calling for a state investigation as to why only $14,700 is now in its bank account, saying tens of thousands donated during Cindy Sheehan's 2005 war protest are unaccounted for.

Why the surprise? Everyone knows Cindy Sheehan needs to train with Bangkok masters for her Ping-Pong Show for Peace.

Andrew's gonna love this

I followed a link from Boing Boing (A Directory of Wonderful things) that featured this picture of Hillary lookin freaky. But things get really good if you follow through to Something Awful. Some folks have photoshopped her head into all manner of amusing settings.

This one was my favorite.


"watching her dreams of an atmosphere on mars fade away, or is it just a memory???"

Update: So apparently there's no linking from wherever that one came from. That's sad cause it was damn funny. This one will do however.



Updated update: Got around the no linking thing so here you go...

Karla's blog

Though she hasn't posted anything lately, Karla has a blog and you should check it out. It's called That Crafty Karla. According to some, it's more interesting than this one. But then their biases are rather transparent. It certainly makes up for this blog's gross neglect of crafty things.

Another NASA Jackass

For the last few years this jackass has been at the vanguard of those alleging that the Bush administration is waging a “war on science” by “stifling” views on climate change counter to their own. He accused the Bush administration of threatening him through mysterious back channels and forcing NASA to deny him access to the media*:

He fell out of favor with the White House in 2004 after giving a speech at the
University of Iowa before the presidential election, in which he complained that
government climate scientists were being muzzled and said he planned to vote for
Senator John Kerry.

[…]

He said he was particularly
incensed that the directives had come through telephone conversations and not
through formal channels, leaving no significant trails of documents.

[…]

After that speech and the release of data by Dr.
Hansen on Dec. 15 showing that 2005 was probably the warmest year in at least a
century, officials at the headquarters of the space agency repeatedly phoned
public affairs officers, who relayed the warning to Dr. Hansen that there would
be "dire consequences" if such statements continued, those officers and Dr.
Hansen said in interviews.

He also compared the White House to a “propaganda office” and said "It seems more like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union than the United States."

Inconvenient to this conspiracy narrative was a revelation yesterday that during the time period where Dr. Hansen alleges being “muzzled” he participated in over 1,400 (!!!) on the job interviews and that the real reason he was denied permission to give an interview to NPR (the only documented “muzzling” – he proceeded to give 15 more interviews later that month) was that NASA was sick of him giving interviews all the time without following procedure rather than doing his job.

Mr. Deutsch, who was 23 at the time, said Mr. Hansen was prohibited from doing
the interview because of his prior refusal to notify NASA officials when he was
granting interviews, not for political reasons.
Citing
what he called his "constitutional right" to give interviews, Mr. Hansen
admitted violating NASA's press policy but defended his actions.

*Note how the NYTimes never questions Hansen’s version of events and treats them as fact despite there being no known evidence to support the allegations. In addition, prior to this article he was a paid advisor to Gore’s Inconvenient Truth and was given $250,000 by Teresa Heinz Kerry’s Heinz foundation. Nothing to see here…

jackass

Gavin Schmidt, one of the more odious advocates for radical political and economic solutions to the “Global Warming Crisis” before a recent debate on the subject:

I'm quite looking forward to this, but I have to admit to conflicting thoughts. Does participating help perpetuate the idea that global warming per se is still up for debate? Is this kind of rhetorical jousting useful for clarifying issues of science that most people there will only superficially grasp? Can this be entertaining and educational? Or does it just validate the least serious opposition? Is it simply a waste of time that would be better spent blogging?

It certainly appeared like quite the opportunity to preach to the choir: NPR hosted the event and produced an audience that agreed with his position nearly 2-1 (57-30%).

Except that by night’s end the previously friendly audience didn’t seem to find the Gavin’s arguments all that convincing with only 42% still agreeing (46% disagreeing) with his apocalyptic assessment.

Naturally the reaction to his poor showing has been to criticize the intelligence of the audience and lament that “Science isn’t a popularity contest”. However when considering that Gavin and his “scientific consensus” have the news media, Hollywood and the EU on their side one must begin to question if salesmanship is really the problem and conclude that they’re just peddling crap.

Update: Science isn't a popularity contest

I can't tell them apart!

Global Warming jumps the shark…

NY Times is walking their rhetoric on the subject back.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that
questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some
reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming. Geologists
have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with
ignoring such rhythms.
“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of
the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental
change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook
University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any
evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its
historical pattern of constant change.” In October, Dr. Easterbrook made similar
points at the geological society meeting in Philadelphia. He hotly disputed Mr.
Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental
shift remotely similar to this” threatened change. Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook
told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for
the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval
warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the
warming in the past century.” Getting personal, he mocked Mr. Gore’s
assertion that scientists agreed on global warming except those industry had
corrupted. “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company,” Dr. Easterbrook
told the group. “And I’m not a Republican.”
Biologists, too, have gotten into
the act. In January, Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects
and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur
Institute in Paris, faulted Mr. Gore for his portrayal of global warming as
spreading malaria.
“For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against
the unsubstantiated claims,” Dr. Reiter wrote in The International Herald
Tribune. “We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they
continue to ignore the facts.”

So like those foreign exchange students in high school sporting the acid wash jeans it appears the Europeans have again bought heavily into a fad that has likely run its course.

Milwaukgineering

Robotic Beer Launching Refrigerator - The funniest bloopers are right here

Of Democrats and Dialect

This weekend in Selma Alabama while commemorating the Selma March Barack Obama, who is as southern as I am, increasingly picked up the cadences of a evangelist preacher. Hillary sounded like an alternating mix of Foghorn Leghorn, Rosanne and Nell. I was forced to relive this inexplicably asinine behavior repeatedly while listening to NPR gush at Hillary and Barak’s thoughtfulness and political acumen for using tragedy opportunistically while running errands this weekend. Over and over I wondered why southern black people don’t feel slighted when people who don’t typically talk like them start doing a bad MLK or Mammy impression. If Bush started talking like one of the Mario Brother’s when addressing the Order Sons of Italy in America, delivered a speech pronouncing his “W’s” as “V’s” when addressing Germans in Milwaukee or larding up a town hall meeting with “you betcha’s” with a clothes-pin on his nose in Brainerd would people hoot and holler in appreciation? Probably not. People would probably rationally assume the man was brain damaged or an unbelievable fraud.

Big Fat Phoney

This has been getting a lot of play on drudge and Instapundit but I still feel the need to share an observation. A friend of the family built a 7000sqft+ home in Wisconsin a few years ago. Despite being over 3 times larger than my house (2200sqft) his average monthly energy costs are only 60 percent more than mine ($200 vs $125). His house is well insulated, has good windows and I’m assuming a decent furnace/AC unit but it’s by no means a “green” home with the 3ft mud and straw walls and whatnot. For Gore’s home in much milder Nashville to be using over $1000 in natural gas and $1300 in electricity per month is absolute insanity however many carbon offsets, cfl’s and token solar panels he buys. This is the lifestyle of an energy company profiteer (he is!) seeking to assuage guilt over excess not the worlds most famous environmentalist. It reeks of the elitist hypocrisy: “rules are for the little people”.

I’ll recycle (come on, Kansas screams landfill) and get a Prius when Gore gives up the outdoor hot tubs and the dual Sub Z’s. Till then I’m going to continue pursuing my dreams of having 10 hp for every year I’m alive (I’ll make it). I’ll just plant a tree and get one of those solar cell phone charger thingies.

UPDATE: The Heinz-Kerry’s have also jumped onto the “save the earth” hypocrisy fad. They just wrote this book about:

The environment, and the movement that grew up to protect it, is under attack--concerted and purposeful [!!!].

Of course the Kerry’s are thinking globally but acting locally:

But soon it was clear that maintaining Heinz's property would need more water. So she and her neighbor, Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, applied for a permit to build a pipeline and take water from the Big Wood River, which is adjacent to her property, up the hill to water her lawn and maintain her landscaped greenery. But the county had just passed a new policy and ordinance preventing that type of transfer.

Marti Bridges, then-water policy head for Idaho Rivers United, told the Boston Herald at the time that the amount of water Heinz and Wynn wanted to divert would fill ten large municipal swimming pools each year, a volume that she said "could be the difference between a fish population making it through summer during spawning or rearing."

Mmm’kay maybe not…but of course Teresa Simões-Ferreira Heinz Kerry is more equal than the unwashed commoners this book is being marketed to.

Based on the leaders the educated left currently holds en vogue I secretly suspect that in their heart of hearts they do not believe in the workers-of-the-world-unite populism they evoke so readily. FDR, Kennedy, Gore, Kerry…Clinton was an aberration (and I’m not certain he’s that idolized). I think on some deep, dark, unacknowledged level they want to be courtesans of King Louis 14^th where they can let live the fantasy there are betters to aspire to and where power is gained through cultural and political influence rather than merit. If the left had any real understanding of the wealthy in this country they’d see that it’s much more mundane and populist than anything they would find in academia or Hollywood. They reject this reality of course because it would mean they are owned by their intellectual and cultural inferiors.

UPDATE: To see just how unevenly the news media holds democrats and republicans accountable to charges of hypocrisy, in six months count how many stories there are about Al's house and compare it to the number of stories about Dick Cheney having lesbian daughter. As of today NPR alone has done 7 stories on this otherwise unremarkable person while right now Al is getting a pass.

Oh what side will I choose?

Yes if everyone shared the genetic material of this unfortunate hipplet I’m confident the human race would end with his generation because there would be 8 billion angst ridden Starbucks baristas and no one to continue the ridiculous rate of technological improvement everyone who is allowed to watch channels other than PBS and ingest refined sugar is awestruck over. Anyone with an iota of perspective would realize that the human race did okay against an ice age, numerous plagues and a cold war. Is 5-6 degrees in 93 years really worth getting your sponge-bob skivvies in a knot?

At least Captain Euro is on his side....

NYTimes Doing Something about their Retards

Apparently the stable of typewriter-chained Corkys maintained by the Sulzberger family is becoming something of an embarrassment. NYTimes Ombudsman/part-time-censor Byron Calame writes the following after the Times publishes a ridiculous story purporting that the majority of women in the US are living single for the first time ever!....after including 15 year olds in their data:

It was discouraging to find yet another article with an unusual angle that
didn’t seem to encounter many skeptical editors as it made its way to the front
page.

As a result:

In the wake of this controversy, Bill Keller, the executive editor, has decided
to meet with staffers with expertise in statistics and demographics to create a
“vetting network to help with the editing of articles dealing with those
subjects,” Craig R. Whitney, an assistant managing editor and the standards
editor, said Thursday.

Translation: Tard handlers.

If only Reuters and AP followed suit…

UPDATE: Uh oh! Looks like someone didn't get their snack pack...

$35,000 a year for making the Royal w/ Cheese

For anyone that’s read this blog it should not be a surprise that among the developed world I consider France to be the Pinnacle of leftist economic stupidity. It really seems as if they’re really on some suicidal mission to single handedly prove the superiority of the free market system.

The newest twist comes as the country considers Chirac’s replacement. Naturally the French consider the antidote to economic malaise resulting from crippling entitlements and regulation is even more entitlements and regulation. This idiocy is embodied in Ségolène Royal who among other things wishes to raise the French minimum wage to the equivalent of $2000 a month (that’s $24k a year if you’re a journalist). Considering that French per-capita GDP is $30,000 while the US is $43,500 that would translate into a US minimum annual income of nearly $35000 a year.

God I hope she gets elected.

Kyoto Cost Benefit

This is the only cost benefit analysis I've seen to date on Kyoto. If anyone else has different numbers I'd love to see them. I seriously doubt we'll get anything other than agitprop from the Boxer committee.

The sloppy logic of the Kyoto advocates is surprising. The protocol would demand the biggest international financial commitment in history, yet it rests on an elementary fallacy: it compares the total costs of potential damage with the marginal costs of slightly ameliorating the problem. Even if every industrial country met the Kyoto goals of reducing carbon emissions 30 percent by 2010, the impact would be tiny. By 2100 that would have postponed global warming by a mere six years. The guy in Bangladesh driven from his home by rising sea levels would have to move in 2106, instead of 2100.

This makes little sense. The best estimates of the cost of implementing Kyoto run between $150 billion and $350 billion a year. The best estimates of the damage from global warming reach about $500 billion annually in 2100. Proponents argue that paying $150 billion to avoid $500 billion in damages is a good deal. But that's not what's on offer. We still have to pay the $500 billion, only six years later. So the real offer is: we pay $150 billion each year for 100 years to postpone payment of $500 billion annually, starting in 2100. All economic models show this to be, as the Copenhagen Consensus put it, a "bad" deal.

Journalists are Retarded cont.

In reporting how those noble French are teaching us about sacrifice by turning off the lights on the Eiffel Tower for 5 whole minutes Reuters reports the following:

The Eiffel Tower's illuminations are one of the most notable features of the French capital's skyline and account for 9 percent of the 7,000 megawatts consumed hourly by the structure.

7,000 Megawatt hours! Holy crap! That’s more power than is generated by all of Iraq and more than has ever been consumed by customers of Duke Energy – the largest energy provider in Indiana.

Most likely the sum total of the editors education on all things electric came from Back to the Future.

To make matters worse over 75% of electric generation in France comes from nuclear generation which has zero net effect on greenhouse gas emissions. So this entire action/story is meaningless.

UPDATE:According to this site, the lighting system at the tower is 120KW. Assuming the AP/Reuters article is correct in stating that lighting is 9% of total power usage then we can surmise that total consumption is 120KW(100 *.09) = 1.08MW. A bit lower than 7000.

UPDATE: CNN’s corrected the obvious mistake. Apparently assuming it was a simple order of magnitude issue (KW vs. MW – I’m not so sure. These dummies still have the original version.)

Starving Baby Polar Bears Drowning Makes Democrats Angry

“The arguments of liberals are more often grounded in reason and fact.”
– Barack Obama


Boxer said she wanted to hold the hearing so she could take the temperature of Congress before she launches into crafting climate legislation.

So in other words the process from which democrats begin crafting policy that could result in trillions of dollars of impact to the US economy is not one of fact finding or even the debate of “facts” but a forum to express feelings about climate change.

I realize that in order to pass policy that requires taking things away from Americans that they like requires adding a little sizzle to the steak but reducing what is inarguably a very complex engineering and economic problem into inflammatory vignettes is not how good policy gets made. Similar tactics of simplistic rhetorical bludgeoning were used to pass Johnson’s War on Poverty. How did that work out?

Heh.

Somehow, this e-mail to Andrew Sullivan was diverted to me, so I'm publishing it. Because Andrew would.

Thank you so much, Andrew Sullivan. You are the light that illuminates the path
to reason. You are, in fact, the reason that the light shineth at all. Because
of you, I have come out of the closet. Because of you, I oppose outing. Because
of you, I voted for Bush. Because of you, I voted for Kerry. Because of you, I
supported the war in Iraq. Because of you, I oppose the war in Iraq. Because of
you, I have sleep apnea. Because of you, I have cured my sleep apnea. Because of
you, I believe in a conservatism of doubt — although because of you, I must of
necessity doubt the conservatism of doubt that represents the doubtful
provenance of my conservatism. Because of you, I have entirely jettisoned my
sense of humor, as it gets in the way of my self-regard. I owe it all to you.
Or, should I say, You.

Heh again: Here's a perfect example of Sullivan not letting facts interfere with his pre-existing perspective of a situation.

This is good to see

(AP) Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a fierce critic of President Bush, focused Friday on a new American target: newly named U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Chavez took issue with comments Reid made just hours earlier to the National Press Club in Washington, citing the Venezuelan leader as among the threats facing the United States in 2007 because "Chavez and (Cuba's Fidel) Castro want to put their leftist marks on young democracies."

This surprised me, but it shouldn't have. Democrats have long and recently been sympathetic to leftist dictators. If they ever are to again become the dominant political force in this country they need to go back to Truman.

Commie hating + ditching the cynical populism could get me to vote democratic.

Uranium's Peaceful Cousin

This is a pretty interesting article about Thorium being almost the ideal fissile material for nuclear power generation. (Yes I read Treehugger. It's the reason our house is down to 6 incandescents. A renaissance man am I...)

Basically the only reason nuclear energy is based on Uranium (and byproducts of Uranium) is because controllable nuclear fission technology was just a byproduct of the Manhattan Project. It's very possible in some parallel universe where WWII or the Cold War never happened some university developed a Thorium based fission process and they're fossil fuel free -- or very much reduced. The reason the Hippies would desist in the banner making is that the Thorium atom breaks apart much more gracefully than ol' #92:

In today's "once-through" uranium-fueled reactors, we mine uranium, enrich it a
little in uranium-235, burn-up some of that U-235, and then throw it away,
supposedly in Yucca Mountain. (very much in the model of a ‘throw away society’)
When we start out with pure uranium oxide, (roughly 97% U-238 and 3% U-235) and
run it though current methods we end up with three broad categories of "stuff"
in the fuel.
First, there’s the unburned uranium-238 and uranium-235. This
uranium is no more dangerous after being in the reactor than it was before
(except that now it’s mixed with other products). It has billion-year
half-lives, which means it practically never decays (which is why it's still
around to dig up five billion years after it formed in a supernova). So the
uranium’s not a risk.
Then second group of leftovers are the fission products
(the actual waste of fission). These fission products are very radioactive, and
give off dangerous radiation. We have to keep these fission products away from
people and the environment. But because the fission products are so radioactive,
they decay quickly. Most decay to stable elements in a few hours, some take
days. And a very few take years or decades. But, if we leave the fission
products alone for a few hundred years, they will decay to normal background
levels of radiation (Safe enough we don’t need to worry about them as
much).
Finally, there are the transuranic isotopes. These are formed when
uranium absorbs a neutron and doesn’t fission, and include some nasty elements
like neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium. The transuranics are radioactive
for hundreds to tens of thousands of years, and as they decay they give off
different kinds of radiation. It's the transuranic waste that is the reason why
you have to build a place like Yucca Mountain that must remain geologically
isolated for tens of thousands of years.

In contrast Thorium byproducts are highly energetic with half-lives measured in human timescales:

Thorium is better because it has to absorb five neutrons before it will turn
into a transuranic isotope, whereas common uranium only has to absorb one- a
built in buffer. So by operating a reactor on pure thorium and uranium-233, you
can avoid producing the kind of long-lived waste that needs a place like Yucca
Mountain.
Thorium is a great possibility- it could be a high density source
of clean energy. The fluoride salt thorium reactor can produce nuclear wastes
that consist only of fission products, which quickly decay to stable elements -
in fact some elements like xenon or rhodium represent valuable commercial
products after a few months 'cooling down'.

The best part is that Thorium is three times more common than than Uranium. Easily exploitable reserves could last for tens of thousands of years.
Maybe instead of attempting to transform anthropogenic climate change from an engineering problem into a moral/religious issue the Pelosi posse could annouce reasearch into this.

Holy Carp!

When I was home in Indiana for the holidays my Dad talked a about an invasive species that he had read about called the Asian Carp which has been making its way up the Mississippi River and its tributaries, threatening to invade the Great Lakes. The only thing keeping the carp from making its way into Lake Michigan is an underwater electronic barrier that has to be re-funded every year. The bummer is that there is the ever-present threat that some short-sighted committee with revoke the funding which would be a disaster. Check out the following videos to get an idea of just how big of a disaster I'm talking about.

(The second part is much more entertaining/ridiculous.)

Part 1


Part 2


On the good side though, an emerging market for the fish has evolved that may take some of the urgency out of the problem. From Andrew's fav, NPR:

The fish weigh at least 15-to-25 pounds each, and some are much larger. They fetch about 14 cents a pound. That's not a lot, but Briney says the huge volume of carp he catches more than makes up for the low price-per-pound. Since he started fishing for carp, Briney says he's doubled his income.

Briney used to think carp were ugly. "But now, I think they look pretty good," he says, laughing, noting that they bring "about $4 a fish."

A Growing Market

On a recent day, Briney and his stepson, Jeremy Fisher, took in about 10,000 to 12,000 pounds of Asian carp from the Illinois River. Their catch ended up at Schafer Fisheries, a processing plant in Thomson, Ill.

Plant owner Mike Schafer has spent the last seven years developing a market for Asian carp. He says his company sells more than 2 million pounds each year -- mostly in Asian-American communities in California, New York and Chicago.

The carp now account for 20-30 percent of Schafer's business. He hopes that a new flash freezer he invested in will help him start selling to China and other Asian markets.

Illinois State Senator Mike Jacobs also wants to expand the market for Asian carp. For one thing, he'd like to see it on the menu in state prisons.

"Some people say that smoked, it's better than salmon," Jacobs says of Asian carp's taste. But the name "carp" is likely putting non-ethnic Americans off trying the fish, he says.

"Chilean Sea Bass wasn't always known as Chilean Sea Bass," Jacobs notes. "There was a time it was known as a Patagonian Toothfish, and people wouldn't eat it."

His suggested name-change? "I'm from Rock Island, so I'm thinking of 'Rock Island Sole,'" Jacobs muses. "Schafer Fisheries is near Savanna, [Ill.,] so Savanna Sole might work, too."

Update: If you have to see anything, scroll to minute 2:45 of the second video. It's worth it.

insight-less 2.0

OK, let's try this again.

You may have noticed something different about insight-less. If so, great! At least you're looking at the thing. Something I haven't managed to do in quite some time. Anyway, this version is powered by Blogger instead of Blogger (beta). And I was just in the process of bragging about it when I tried to publish the post and got an error, hence I'm trying this again. It still seems pretty snappy and easy to make editorial changes 'n such, despite my misgiving but time will tell whether this will improve my posting regularity.

So if there's anything that seems stale and tired on this site, or if more regular posters have requests, comments etc., please let me know.

Why I’m Glad Journalists Don’t Run the economy….

While perusing Newsweek’s International edition I ran across this sentence in a story about social and economic challenges in the EU.

“[The EU’s] economy is outperforming the United States.”

Holy tap-dancing Christ! What on earth is this based on?

So I looked and looked and looked and came across this article reporting on a business confidence survey that for the first time in five years showed Europeans more optimistic about their region’s future economic prospects than Americans over the same period. Oh if only believing made it so!

Here’s a reality check for ol’ Denis:

EU economic growth was only 2.8% in 2006. It was 3.3% in the US – the slowest since 2003.

EU unemployment was 7.7 percent. US unemployment remains steady at 4.5%

So I’m not sure how Denis can conclude that things are better on his side of the pond. The only thing I can think of to account for the inexplicable difference in optimism is the 2006 election media which spiked positive economic news and amplified the bad. Economically things in the US remain far ahead of the rest of the G-7.

Oh yeah this genius is the author of “Chavez is a populist, not a socialist”. Boy was he right.

NPR Loves Donkeys with Boobs from San Francisco

After 6 years of having to stomach GOP leadership I really shouldn’t be surprised at the lack of restraint NPR has had in displaying their glee at finally having a Democrat controlled congress. But after burning so much airtime on the previous “do nothing congress” and “Halliburton cronyism” I’m a little amused at the NPR coverage the new speaker has been getting.

After first cheerleading “tough minded” Nancy Pelosi’s “100 hour” agenda for passing 7 bills with broad bi-partisan support they failed to mention that nothing had actually been accomplished in the first 100 hours and that the 100 hour plan wasn’t really that at all with Democrats arbitrarily deciding what activities count against the clock (current projections show the “100 hour” plan expiring by end of day Jan 18 or 336 hours). However while not passing the recommendations of the 9/11 commission Pelosi did find time to make the Speaker’s Lobby non-smoking –foiling those nasty smoking Republicans- for which she was awarded a profile in courage by NPR.

The most important piece of legislation passed by the democratic house for “people not the powerful” populist democratic base might be the increase in the minimum wage. NPR had ample victory lap coverage replete with Democratic congressmen magnifying the significance of the measure on Americans lives in preacher’s cadence, but to date, has completely failed to mention the most interesting part of the bill. It seems that while every company will be required to pay their minimum wage workers more, one small territory – American Samoa – will not. Star-Kist Tuna is the largest employer of American Samoans and Star-Kist is owned by Del Monte Foods. Of course Del Monte is headquartered in Madame Speaker’s district.

Do you think just maybe NPR would have devoted 5 minutes of their precious news time to report/analyze if the previous congress raised corporate income taxes on everyone except Halliburton?

Pretty good Jimmah takedown

Not surprisingly, Alan Dershowitz isn’t a big fan of Jimmah’s last book. What is surprising is that after writing a book that’s purported purpose was to “stimulate debate”, Jimmah wants no part of it.

YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when a public figure has written an indefensible book: when
he refuses to debate it in the court of public opinion. And you can always tell
when he's a hypocrite to boot: when he says he wrote a book in order to
stimulate a debate, and then he refuses to participate in any such debate. I'm
talking about former president Jimmy Carter and his new book "Palestine Peace
Not Apartheid."

Carter's book has been condemned as "moronic"
(Slate), "anti-historical" (The Washington Post), "laughable" (San Francisco
Chronicle), and riddled with errors and bias in reviews across the country. Many
of the reviews have been written by non-Jewish as well as Jewish critics, and
not by "representatives of Jewish organizations" as Carter has claimed. Carter
has gone even beyond the errors of his book in interviews, in which he has said
that the situation in Israel is worse than the crimes committed in Apartheid
South Africa. When asked whether he believed that Israel's "persecution" of
Palestinians was "[e]ven worse . . . than a place like Rwanda," Carter answered,
"Yes. I think -- yes."

[…]

Carter's refusal to
debate wouldn't be so strange if it weren't for the fact that he claims that he
wrote the book precisely so as to start debate over the issue of the
Israel-Palestine peace process. If that were really true, Carter would be
thrilled to have the opportunity to debate. Authors should be accountable for
their ideas and their facts. Books shouldn't be like chapel, delivered from on
high and believed on faith.

Since Ford and Bush Sr. have some concept of how to conduct themselves after leaving office, Clinton is actually intelligent and there’s just no way that Bush is writing anything after 2008 it’s safe to say that Carter has the “Worst Ex President” prize all wrapped up.

Or maybe Amy, his moral compass, just isn't talking to him anymore….

Update: Here's another good question/observation regarding Jimmah:

But what of men like Carter, a man who's worked in government, knows
how jacked-up (Marine word, btw) it is, how far away from the
conventional liberal-left understanding of participatory politics it
really is, a man who's seen the world, worked with the tyrants
face-to-face, spoken with the dissidents, set up meetings with
virtually all competing sides of all major conflicts, monitored their
elections on the ground? How does a man like that keep on sympathizing
with the bad guys at the end of the day? Is it really just pragmatic
politics on his part, another realism? Or is there a real, active
sympathy there (with Castro, Chavez, Arafat, Assad, you name it)? I
think the latter gets more at the truth, which is to say Carter really
isn't the kind of liberal he makes himself out to be. And all the
intelligent, informed self-avowed liberals like him aren't really the
liberals they say they are either.

The Miraculously Evolving Sullivan

Alright, Andrew Sullivan’s principles have fundamentally changed post 2004. I eagerly await to hear how the Christianist agenda led him to this:

Andrew Sullivan today savagely attacks Mitt Romney for ceasing to support employment discrimination protection for homosexuals.

Everything he said in the 1990s is now to be dismissed. He was once for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act; now he's against it. He was once for domestic partnerships for gays; now he's against them. He was once for ending the ban on gays in the military; now he's for keeping it. In the same interview with theocon Kathryn-Jean Lopez, he says that he opposes "unjust discrimination against anyone, for racial or religious reasons, or for sexual preference," while he favors allowing gay people to be fired from their jobs for being gay without any sanction.

Pretty harsh. But doesn't Romney have any arguments on his side? Well as one writer generally regarded as sympathetic to gay rights has put it:

Are gay people generally victims in employment? Have we historically been systematically barred from jobs in the same way that, say, women, blacks, and the disabled have? And is a remedy therefore necessary? My own view is that, while there are some particular cases of discrimination against homosexuals, for the most part getting and keeping jobs is hardly the most pressing issue we face. ...

Even in those states where job-protection laws have been enacted, sexual orientation cases have made up a minuscule proportion of the whole caseload.

Most people—gay and straight—know this to be true; and so they sense that the push for gay employment rights is unconvincing and whiny. I think they're right. ...

Instead of continually whining that we need job protection, we should be touting our economic achievements [and] defending the free market that makes them possible ....

Of course, we're told that until we're protected from discrimination in employment, we'll never be able to come out of the closet and effect the deeper changes we all want. But this is more victim-mongering. ...

Who said these things? You've probably already anticipated the punchline: One Andrew Sullivan, in the April 14, 1998, issue of The Advocate.

Of course it is perfectly fine to have a change of heart but one should always acknowledge having done so. Sullivan should cease the charade that he’s been steady as a rock while the world has moved around him. He’s degraded into little more than an excitable hack which is very disappointing given the moral clarity he once articulated so well.

Bonus Sullivan Hypocrisy: Why is it that Sullivan finds it perfectly acceptable to concern himself with Romney’s religious beliefs (comical as they may be) but finds it deplorable that others have made Minnesota Congressman Ellison's (a Muslim) an issue?

Craziest thing I’ve ever seen….

This is the orientation video for Scientology. I was friends with some Jehovah’s Witnesses in high school (technically not allowed) and thought that their religion was the high water mark for comically messed up cults (at least originating from the US) but this left my jaw hanging the entire time.

Not really a joke exactly...

...but still funny. This is an actual animal. The scientists who caught it nicknamed it Mr. Blobby. I like his nose thing.

A Fathead (genus Psychrolutes) trawled during the NORFANZ expedition at a depth between 1013 m and 1340 m, on the Norfolk Ridge, north-west of New Zealand, June 2003 (AMS I.42771-001). Photo: K. Parkinson © Australian Museum. The scientists and crew on board the RV Tangaroa affectionately called this fish 'Mr Blobby'. Note the parasitic copepod on Mr Blobby's mouth.

(Hat tip:Boing-Boing)

On Jokes

Now that my readership has dwindled to zero in response to my sudden and long-term departure from the blogosphere, it seems appropriate to rekindle the raging fire of joe-mania with some simple observations about making jokes.

Organized religion has more or less failed to provide me with enough emotional energy to sustain my lust for life in the face of all the crap that life entails. Other things, thankfully, have done better, but I'm sure many other things will let me down too before I die. Throughout my life, and in my life still, though, laughter has provided me with light in dark times. It, more than anything else, is my religion now. I like to make jokes. I like to make people laugh, I like to make myself laugh, and I like for other people to make me laugh. As other sources of sustenance fade, laughter loses more and more of its constraints for me. There is almost nothing in my personal life that I would not subject to the gentle renderings of comedic analysis.

Now, much has been said lately about the ethical desirability of certain types of humor, thanks in large part to the popularity of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat movie. When it comes to understanding the rationale behind tasteless, offensive, iconoclastic, politically incorrect, and infantile humor, I hazard to assume that I am able to speak with some authority. For this is precisely that type of thing that has most appealed to my funny bone over the better part of my life. I will now attempt to explain why this type of humor appeals to me and why I think it's ok.
I am not a particularly dumb person. I am relatively well-read, informed, and engaged with wider world. Nor am I particularly callous. I consider myself pretty sensitive to the plights of other human beings. Nevertheless, from the time I first laughed at the sound and smell of flatulence, I was hooked on low-brow humor. Here's why, I think.

Humor is about truth. Things are funny because they cut through all the layers of bullshit and express what everybody knows, or thinks, deep down. Humor is the opposite of political correctness.

First, farts are funny because they smell bad, sound funny, and come out of people's butts...everybody's butt. They are the great equalizer. Plato farted. Angelina Jolie farts. George Bush farts. The body and its functions are funny because they point out a simple, overwhelming truth that we try our damndest to obfuscate...that we are mortal beings doomed to die (yes, that's a line from lord of the rings). Sex is funny for the same reason. We are stupid little creatures trying to eat, sleep, shit, and fuck. Next time you watch the Oscars, or a french art movie, or a poltical speech, or go to a museum, or engage in a long and emotional kiss with your lover...remember and laugh.

Second, shock humor is funny because it can let us explore the dark aspects of life without having to endure them or see other people endure them. Shock humor is a lot like horror movies in that way (no wonder that I like horror movies). In this way, we can acclamate ourselves to the darkness that we will inevitably have to face in this life. We can be ready for it, having stripped it of some of its power.

This is probably the most delicate and controversial of the opinions I'll express here. Third, shock humor often occurs in the context of the comedian adopting a persona. If I say something offensive as a joke, particularly something that deals with race or sex or sexual orientation, then I'm trying to point out the ridiculousness, the laughability, of having those opinions. Borat is funny because the stereotypes of jews as mystical monsters who love money, and the stereotypes of eastern europeans/central asians as anti-semitic and backwards, etc, etc, ....these notions are ridiculous! A racist joke is not funny...the stereotypes that underlie the joke ARE funny, because they are so irrational and ridiculous.

Fourth, shock humor is way to channel creativity. Why? Because it's hard to shock people these days. It really becomes an art form. Poets are constrained by their forms. Offensive comedians are constrained by the number of dirty words they can think of. Coming up with a really visceral, innovative, emotionally potent insult, or sexual act, or something like that, is really a form of art...the one that appeals most to me, for better or worse.

The real questions is this: do ethics and comedy have any business being discussed together? Is there anything that we "shouldn't" laugh at, or is comedy simply a factual phenomenon...either it's funny or it's not. There certainly seem to be things that just aren't funny to me...mostly anything that involves real people getting really hurt (by real people I mean concrete individuals who actually lived here on earth). But that isn't really normative. It's factual. I don't find that funny. Borat, on the other hand, is fucking hilarious TO ME.

I would like to close by saying that I understand that not everyone gets the joke, and not everyone knows that I'm not an idiot, and not everyone automatically sees my secretly sensitive heart. Not everyone will make the distinction between persona and racist. Not all who get the joke will find it funny. I also realize that these kinds of jokes certainly could be offensive, depending on a person's background, because people have a variety of experiences. Therefore, it's good to be careful about these things and to cultivate more "genteel" types of humor for the general public....because the worst thing of all if for people not to laugh. That's just awkward and embarassing.
(also on my personal blog)

Welcome Madame Speaker

There comes a time for every sports fan of a once great team inescapably trending towards mediocrity to begin looking towards rebuilding rather than suffering season after season of not-too-bad/not-too-good seasons. The hope is that you will be eventually rewarded for accepting one or two crappy seasons by a new resurgent team with the potential to do things that are fun to watch and that your opposition isn’t in a position to capitalize at your expense. After watching the GOP pretty much piss away complete control of govt. (Honestly, when will this happen again?) on basically nothing of merit it clear the Republican party needs to cut loose the underperforming veterans and rebuild(Hastert, the Oswego Bob Evans misses you). If there was some smart, charismatic southern, yellow dog democrat representative in line for speaker I’d seriously be concerned about the GOP being in the minority for a long, long time. Buuuuttttt….the democrats are actually going to select someone who represents San Francisco and who's intense but simultaniously vacant stare seems to confirm the myth that blinking equals thinking.

So I say welcome Madame Speaker and thanks in advance for your help rebuilding.

more election media frustration...

If got forbid Republicans somehow manage to hold onto congress (I now believe the GOP needs a re-org and what better time than now?) you can count on there being weeks, even months, of MSM amplified outrage over Republicans seemingly magical powers to suppress the vote and steal elections undetectably – now aided with their new sinister ally….the com-pute-err.

Likewise when Democrats likely take at least the house you can count on there continuing to be next to zero reporting on actual democratic voter fraud despite recent convictions in two states and indictments and ongoing investigations that exist in at least 3 more.

I truly do believe that the democrats should come out ahead in this election simply based on merit – or the GOP’s lack there of. However, as with the last 3 elections I find myself extremely frustrated with the brazenness of the national media to not call things with the dispassionate eye they so frequently represent themselves as having.

UPDATE: Thank goodness. Based on current election reporting it appears everyone’s fears of unprecedented voter fraud were unfounded. How do we know this? Well it’s clear the once corrupted natural order of things has been restored by a Democratic sweep of the house and senate silly. No prolonged, result delegitimizing investigations into phantom GOP bullying are needed like in the previous three elections because it’s clear they didn’t. Democrats were finally allowed to fairly win. Everyone should just be satisfied with this result and enjoy all the news reports of people being happy with their new democratic leadership rather than the spiked stories of widespread election fraud we’d surely see if things had worked out differently.

the gaffe

Michael Kinsley once observed that in US politics "a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth".

So when I heard of Kerry’s gaffe...I mean botched joke, I really didn’t find it that surprising. No one should be shocked that, like most on the left, he views those in the armed forces as largely unjust victims of our unjust society's unjust degree of socioeconomic injustices.

What I did find surprising was how under whelmed the MSM was by Kerry's statement. It's obvious that the US military is no sacred cow to the MSM, and I don't think it should be, however when viewed in the context of constituencies that very clearly are sacred cows to the MSM the controversial nature the botched joke becomes apparent.

Lets try a thought experiment that may reveal just how lacking in self-awareness the media is of their own biases.

Kerry said:

You know, education, if you make the most of it,
if you study hard and you
do your homework, and
you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can
do well. If you dont, you get stuck in Iraq.

Now imagine the MSM reaction if a Republican said:

You know, education, if you make the most of it,
if you study hard and you
do your homework, and
you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can
do well. If you dont, you _________________.

will be a journalist.
will be a public school teacher.
will be a social worker.
will be a union worker.
will be like a (insert minority name) person.

If a Republican said any of these things the hoodoo would be so deep the RNC would be digging out until next summer but apparently calling the military dummies? Well that’s just some strait shootin. Give him another silver star.....

Sappy Human Interest Story

Usually, when confronted with the "Human Interest" story I tune out. But on Friday I was supremely bored at work and scoured the internet for anything that might be considered entertaining. So, in poking around I came across Boing-Boing, a site I've checked out a handful of times and have always been led in interesting directions. Anyway, there I found a link to a post on Scott (creator of Dilbert) Adams's blog that was human-interest-y but of a cool sort.

Apparently he has a very unusual medical problem, and about 18 months ago he lost his voice after a bout of allergies and with the odd exception of public speaking can't get it back. It's something called Spasmodic Dysphonia and basically has no cure. All treatments seem to be extremely unpleasant and not terribly effective...

Just because no one has ever gotten better from Spasmodic Dysphonia before doesn’t mean I can’t be the first. So every day for months and months I tried new tricks to regain my voice. I visualized speaking correctly and repeatedly told myself I could (affirmations). I used self hypnosis. I used voice therapy exercises. I spoke in higher pitches, or changing pitches. I observed when my voice worked best and when it was worst and looked for patterns. I tried speaking in foreign accents. I tried “singing” some words that were especially hard.

My theory was that the part of my brain responsible for normal speech was still intact, but for some reason had become disconnected from the neural pathways to my vocal cords. (That’s consistent with any expert’s best guess of what’s happening with Spasmodic Dysphonia. It’s somewhat mysterious.) And so I reasoned that there was some way to remap that connection. All I needed to do was find the type of speaking or context most similar – but still different enough – from normal speech that still worked. Once I could speak in that slightly different context, I would continue to close the gap between the different-context speech and normal speech until my neural pathways remapped. Well, that was my theory. But I’m no brain surgeon.

The day before yesterday, while helping on a homework assignment, I noticed I could speak perfectly in rhyme. Rhyme was a context I hadnÂ’t considered. A poem isn’t singing and it isn’t regular talking. But for some reason the context is just different enough from normal speech that my brain handled it fine.

Jack be nimble, Jack be quick.
Jack jumped over the candlestick.

I repeated it dozens of times, partly because I could. It was effortless, even though it was similar to regular speech. I enjoyed repeating it, hearing the sound of my own voice working almost flawlessly. I longed for that sound, and the memory of normal speech. Perhaps the rhyme took me back to my own childhood too. Or maybe itÂ’s just plain catchy. I enjoyed repeating it more than I should have. Then something happened.

My brain remapped.

My speech returned.

Pretty cool... Go Dilbert guy.

Oh, and if you check out his post, browse some of the 1300-odd responces this post of his garnered, they're also rather interesting/uplifting.

Say it ain’t so!

BBC discovers it's biased:

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

One veteran BBC executive said: 'There was widespread acknowledgement that we may have gone too far in the direction of political correctness.

Quoting a George Orwell observation, Randall said that the BBC was full of intellectuals who 'would rather steal from a poor box than stand to attention during God Save The King'.

Thank goodness PBS is waaay different.

Baron Hill vs. EFF

I just came across this article on FactCheck.org regarding some rather dubious methods used by a group called the Economic Freedom Fund in the campaign against former Rep. Baron Hill as he seeks to regain Indiana's 9th district.

Here's the summary that appears on the site:

An automated attack call claims Indiana House candidate Baron Hill "voted to allow the sale of a broad range of violent and sexually explicit materials to minors." That's an apparent reference to a vote Hill cast in 1999 against a Republican-sponsored measure to bar the sale of certain items to kids. It's also misleading. Hill, along with a majority of Democrats and a significant number of House Republicans, voted to stick with existing law. Almost twice as many lawmakers opposed the bill as voted for it, with many making the argument that it was overly broad and a possible violation of the First Amendment.

The calls were sponsored by the conservative Economic Freedom Fund – an outside group wholly funded by Texas millionaire homebuilder Bob Perry. Perry was the main backer of the 2004 campaign by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth against John Kerry and he has already funded EFF, which was formed last month, at an even higher level - $5 million so far - than he funded the Swiftboaters. This indicates that the group could become a big player this fall. But it may have to alter its strategy in Indiana; the attorney general there has sued EFF, alleging the calls violate state law.

Check it out here.

Big Shocker

Oil companies see the world rationally; NPR does not.

In my first post on this subject on May 1 I contrasted the competing perspectives of NPR’s self-rightious chicken littleing everyone’s gotta conserve right now or we’re gonna die! regurgitation of Matthew Simmons to oil company analyst’s somewhat less exiting forecasts on oil prices.

Today the Seattle Times reveals that the Oil companies read on the situation was exactly right. Nearly the entire recent rise in oil prices was due to temporary factors that had little to do with available oil in the ground. The floor has fallen out of the oil market and it could be quite sometime before it stabilizes.

I know I-told-you-so’s are always annoying but someone needs to identify the endless streams of BS that media organizations with editorial proclivities like NPR pump out with what seems like impunity. Grasping at any novel idea that reinforces a desired policy (environmen…I mean sustainability in this case) like a fat kid plowing through a happy-meal isn’t anything close to responsible journalism.

L-A-M-E

My 3G ipod and cell phone are getting a little long in the tooth so I eagerly awaited today’s announcement from Steve Jobs to hear about what new revolutionary consumer electronics his flip-flop wearing elves would build next. I read numerous articles on digg and Slashdot that speculated that a widescreen IPOD with touchscreen interface and/or an apple cellphone would be announced. Instead he revealed that they shiney’d up the nano with some metallic appliqué, converted the stupid chewing gum form factor of the shuffle into a stupid matchbook form factor and somehow managed to figure out a way to make downloads of Disney movies available in sub VHS quality for $15. Where ever do they find the time?

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t seem to learn from its past mistakes. Until at least 1993 Apple had a superior product that dominated the market. For years they justifiably ridiculed the competition for even attempting to equal them. The problem is that eventually the competition succeeded and they never recovered. Now in the portable media player market they are similarly vulnerable. Already Toshiba has produced a media player that’s widely considered to be superior to anything apple has and Microsoft is on the verge of releasing a wide format media player and an increasing number of cellphones contain impressive media playback capabilities.

Steve, your serve has again been broken. Can we look forward to you flaking out, getting fired by the board and trying to start a company that makes ridiculously expensive and underperforming cube shaped cell phones that virtually no one but Earlham will purchase* only to come back in 2020 to save the day? That would be insanely great.

*Yeah, for some inexplicable reason someone at Earlham decided to buy NeXT workstations in the 90’s instead of the cheaper and much more powerful Suns like everyone else.

Pants Stuffer and Pals Grumpy

I think the uproar over the last week involving aspects of the upcoming ABC historical dramatization “Path to 9/11”, like the previous hullabaloo regarding CBS’ “The Reagans”, is completely absurd. In both cases critics latched onto less than flattering portrayals of events that transpired behind closed doors offering instead versions of events that reek of the best possible spin while remaining silent about all the potentially embarrassing situations that still are known only to those involved. Did Reagan sound like a bigoted codger in the Oval office when Nancy pleaded with him to fund AIDS research? Maybe not, but we do know that he dragged his feet in signing a bill authorizing funding to a degree that could be fairly interpreted as animus. It shouldn’t be a reasonable expectation that public officials, particularly those whose actions have the far reaching implications of say a president can have things both ways. While I’m certain the portrayals of Clinton officials are far from accurate their decisions, policies and their ultimate outcomes are very much a matter of public record. To claim that the Clinton administration took the threat of Muslim extremism with the seriousness it warranted just isn’t borne out by the clear increase in frequency and severity of attacks and the comparable inaction by the administration. If bad things happened during and because of a president’s term unflattering dramatizations should be the least of their concerns.

* January 25, 1993: Mir Aimal Kansi, a Pakistani, fired an AK-47 into cars waiting at a stoplight in front of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Virginia, killing two CIA employees.
* February 26, 1993: Islamic terrorists try to bring down the World Trade Center with car bombs. They failed to destroy the buildings, but killed 6 and injured over 1000 people.
* March 12, 1993: Car bombings in Mumbai, India leave 257 dead and 1,400 others injured.
* July 18, 1994: Bombing of Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 86 and wounds 300. The bombing is generally attributed to Hezbollah acting on behalf of Iran.
* July 19, 1994: Alas Chiricanas Flight 00901 is bombed, killing 21. Generally attributed to Hezbollah.
* July 26, 1994: The Israeli Embassy is attacked in London, and a Jewish charity is also car-bombed, wounding 20. The attacks are attributed to Hezbollah.
* December 11, 1994: A bomb explodes on board Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. It develops that Ramzi Yousef planted the bomb to test it for the larger terrorist attack he is planning.
* December 24, 1994: In a preview of September 11, Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by Islamic terrorists who planned to crash the plane in Paris.
* January 6, 1995: Operation Bojinka, an Islamist plot to bomb 11 U.S. airliners over the Pacific Ocean, is discovered on a laptop computer in a Manila, Philippines apartment by authorities after a fire occurred in the apartment. Noted terrorists including Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed are involved in the plot.
* June 14—June 19, 1995: The Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis, in which 105 civilians and 25 Russian troops were killed following an attack by Chechan Islamists.
* July—October, 1995: Bombings in France by Islamic terrorists led by Khaled Kelkal kill eight and injure more than 100.
* November 13, 1995: Bombing of OPM-SANG building in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia kills 7
* November 19, 1995: Bombing of Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan kills 19.
* January 1996: In Kizlyar, 350 Chechen Islamists took 3,000 hostages in a hospital. The attempt to free them killed 65 civilians and soldiers.
* February 25 - March 4, 1996: A series of four suicide bombings in Israel leave 60 dead and 284 wounded within 10 days.
* June 11, 1996: A bomb explodes on a train traveling on the Serpukhovsko-Timiryazevskaya Line of the Moscow Metro, killing four and unjuring at least 12.
* June 25, 1996: The Khobar Towers bombing, carried out by Hezbollah with Iranian support. Nineteen U.S. servicemen were killed and 372 wounded.
* February 24, 1997: An armed man opens fire on tourists at an observation deck atop the Empire State Building in New York City, United States, killing a Danish national and wounding visitors from several countries. A handwritten note carried by the gunman claims this was a punishment attack against the "enemies of Palestine".
* November 17, 1997: Massacre in Luxor, Egypt, in which Islamist gunmen attack tourists, killing 62 people.
* January 1998: Wandhama Massacre - 24 Kashmiri Pandits are massacred by Pakistan-backed Islamists in the city of Wandhama in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
* February 14, 1998: Bombings by Islamic Jihadi groups at an election rally in the Indian city of Coimbatore kill about 60 people.
* August 7, 1998: Al Qaeda bombs U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya, killing 225 people and injuring more than 4,000.
* August 31 – September 22, 1998: Russian apartment bombings kill about 300 people, leading Russia into Second Chechen War.
* December 1998: Jordanian authorities foil a plot to bomb American and Israeli tourists in Jordan, and arrest 28 suspects as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 14, 1998: Ahmed Ressam is arrested on the United States–Canada border in Port Angeles, Washington; he confessed to planning to bomb the Los Angeles International Airport as part of the 2000 millennium attack plots.
* December 24, 1998: Indian Airlines Flight 814 from Kathmandu, Nepal to Delhi, India is hijacked by Islamic terrorists. One passenger is killed and some hostages are released. After negotiations between the Taliban and the Indian government, the last of the remaining hostages on board Flight 814 are released in exchange for release of 4 terrorists.
* January 2000: The last of the 2000 millennium attack plots fails, as the boat meant to bomb USS The Sullivans sinks.
* August 8, 2000: A bomb exploded at an underpass in Pushkin Square in Moscow, killing 11 people and wounding more than 90.
* August 17, 2000: Two bombs exploded in a shopping center in Riga, Latvia, injuring 35 people.
* October 12, 2000: AL Qaeda bombs USS Cole with explosive-laden speedboat, killing 17 USAden, Yemen. sailors and wounding 40, off the port coast of

government authority

I'm starting school again, this semester just going half time, and I'm taking two law classes. One is a general administrative law class (law and public affairs) and one is about election law.

The general law class has been fascinating so far, because I've already learned more about how government operates than I did in my entire public management class. Part of the reason for that, I think, is that government is essentially about authority...who has it, and where does it come from, which means that government is essentially about law. In other words, there isn't really a strict line between law and policy, or between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

I find this question of authority fascinating for some reason. I'm not sure why. I guess because I always find myself asking, "do they really have the power to do that?" This is particularly relevant these days in light of the push for greater executive branch authority by W and other Presidents. So, I always find myself asking, what exactly does the President do? And what can he (or she) do? It turns out to be a pretty complex set of questions.

Higher Prices = More Supply

The first of what I expect will be many similar announcements:

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the region where the well is
located could become the nation's biggest new domestic source of oil since the
discovery of Alaska's North Slope more than a generation ago.
The Journal
said Chevron and Devon officials estimate that recent discoveries in the Gulf of
Mexico's lower-tertiary formations hold up to 15 billion barrels' worth of oil
and gas reserves, a total that would boost the nation's current reserves by 50
percent.

But by all means, windfall taxes must be what’s best for consumers since peak oil is surely upon us.