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I'd like to see a cartoon...
A view into a "camp" scene where Jews are methodically and efficiently receiving High Quality Health care at an Affordable Price.
Ok, so I am actually appreciating these gun toters that protested at Obama's event.
It appears that they forewarned, and have been generally responsible.
Ultimately, they do have the right, and they're making use of it and testing it.
So, it puts Obama at potentially higher risk, and the Secret Service is probably experiencing some extra stress, but so be it, it's the way it should be.
Honestly, I don't have a bunch of quotes from any of the armed folk, but that doesn't matter. Even if they were total freaks, I think that as long as there's no shooting then they are doing something potentially valuable.
As for Obama and his people, I think it shows some class on their part. They don't seem to be overreacting to the situation, and so are supporting the 2nd Amendment.
I just can't help but suspect that under GW, if I and a bunch of the Liberals around here were to pack a bunch of weaponry anywhere near a Bush Event, we'd be in jail in a heartbeat, even if what we were doing was technically perfectly legal. The Bush Administration wasn't known for its grasp of subtle technical details of Law.
Now, if a bunch of Conservative Rednecks were carrying weapons around Bush, that wouldn't be a problem... unless of course, it was Dick Cheney.
http://soylemedenduramadim.blogspot.c
I don't speak the language, but something seems out of place.
Help me!
What's the point?
If I were to put a statement on Twitter, who would see it? How would they find it? How would it spread?
One, It's disappointing. Kwai Chang Caine was a bit of a hero to me (at least from the old season). Most of the stories and proverbs that he used were real, typically either Buddhist or Taoist. Also, he played a peaceful monk, and I liked that. If they had put Bruce Lee in the role, they would have had an actual Chinese Person, which would have been a plus, and they would have had a much better martial artist, also a plus, but I can't help but wonder if Bruce Lee's massive intensity would have supported the humble and calm flavor of the character.
This whole way of dying... well, whatever... to each his own, but it seems pretty funky and stupid.
If you don't know, Taoism, which is at the root of Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, and Tai Chi, has a kind of well developed set of sexual practices and theories. It has to do with focusing and manipulating Chi, for health, and in some circles, the goal of immortality. Do a search if you want to know more... I'm just sayin'.
I don't really know if this kind of thing is officially part of some Taoist practice, but this fellow does effectively join the two.
I can only imagine that some of the same kinds of experiments done by Taoists in body control and altered states could very well lead down this path. And I can imagine, like any altered state, if it has pleasures and is accessible, a person can become addicted even in the face of overwhelming risk.
This does remind me, though... I haven't done Tai Chi in about two years. It's about time to get back to it. Ehem...
So, I just saw a little clip on Bloomberg news. It showed a doctor doing checkups of people for the flu; maybe in a non-US location. Then it showed the line of people standing around waiting to see the doctor.
Ok, so if you think you might have the flu, and you see a long, packed line of people waiting to see the doctor...
Don't stand in that line!
At least get a mask first, because if you don't have it when you go in, you're about certain to have it by the time you get out.
At this point, pretty much the entire existance of this Nation, which was defined under the Constitution, is predicated on the stability of a stock market and various other paper financial markets that didn't even exist when the nation was concieved.
I don't even know what to say, other than that this seems to be disturbing to me.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st
Interesting, Maddening, and Informative, on AIG, GS, CDO's, CDS's, etc.
The US is keeping AIG alive at the taxpayer's expense. It's TERRIBLE. Right?
AIG is taking losses on bad paper bets with other companies and people.
The risk is that AIG goes bankrupt. If AIG goes bankrupt, then they write off the dept from those bad bets, and so those that took the other side of those bets with AIG won't ever see their winnings, and so they have to write it off (and potentially go bankrupt).
So, it's not so much that the US is propping up the company AIG, it's that the US Government is propping up those that made bets with AIG. I think they're called counterparties.
Yuck.
There are Trillions of Dollars on the line. Some of it is betting on economic destruction, and some is betting on growth. Recently, the only winners have been those betting against. We need to make sure that we get back to growth ASAP IN SPITE of those that are profitting off of our destruction.
AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
FUCK, IT HURTS!
IDIOT.
LIE AFTER LIE AFTER LIE.
http://www.yahoo.com/s/1042814
'Short-selling did not cause this economic crisis. But some short-sellers contribution to the crisis has evoked moral issues.
"Imagine you are a salvaging company. You make money off salving refuge on buildings that collapse," said Waheed Hussain, an assistant professor of business ethics at University of Pennsylvania 's Wharton School. "It's one thing to make money off a bridge collapsing. It's another thing to send extra trucks over the bridge to get it to collapse."
The government concluded during the Great Depression that short-selling exacerbated the market collapse. A so-called uptick rule was implemented in 1938 to regulate bearish traders to only shorting a stock on the uptick--when the price has increased. The Securities and Exchange Commission canceled the rule in 2007.
The impact of the uptick rule is debated. But no less than Wall Street giant Charles Schwab wrote in December that the uptick rule, "slowed the short selling process making it more expensive and limiting the ability of short sellers to manipulate stocks lower by piling on, driving the share price quickly down and quickly profiting from the downdraft they created." And as Schwab put it, "without this vital control mechanism, short-sellers have been having a field day."'
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/11
Good stuff here. Make sure your State, City, and County Representatives know about these benefits, and push them to get moving to take advantage of them if location permits. This money will only be available for projects started by 2011.
http://community.livejournal.com/libert
Can someone please create a feed for http://feeds2.feedburner.com/grist/gris
Thanks in Advance! :)
I haven't watched Baseball in a few years. The last time that I was really into Baseball was back when they had that record number of wins (for the M's), and I seem to remember a very tight race with New York (their last great season). Looking around, I see that it must have been 2001. Arod was there, and he rocked. There were quite a few good seasons with him.
Well, now he's admitting to taking steroids in Texas (where it was apparently part of the culture), and I just saw him say "I don't even remember hearing of a person on Steroids" back in Seattle.
Thinking about Steroids, I have to say that I'm not a fan of drug laws, it all depends on alot of factors, and I'm not a fan of victimization of drug users unless they're named Rush, but in Sports, I do think it's offensive to take, or to support the taking of performance enhancers. Not that I care if a person takes a drug, but if you're an athlete taking steroids, you're offending history by breaking the records of mere unenhanced humans, and you're also creating a culture in which the only way to compete is to use those drugs. There's some kind of coersion there, I'm pretty sure.
Anyway, so hearing him say that about Seattle made me particularly proud of that team.
Edit: I didn't look close enough, and didn't remember right. That great year was AFTER Arod was gone. I'm starting to slip up.
Copied to Senators, Whitehouse, etc.
Dear Representative Larsen,
In a few days, the Stimulus Package will come back to the House.
Senate Amendments have, to a great extent stripped, the Bill of its most critical core function, which is to provide not just Economic stimulus, but Immediate Stimulus with true long-term value. The Renewable Energy provisions were among the most critical components in support of that core function, and they've been summarily slashed, without any public debate.
It's incredibly important that this stimulus needs to be smart and focused, but under pressure from Senate Republicans it has become badly flawed, and will provide for a much less sustainable stimulus.
The Senate has added $50 Billion Dollars in Additional Loan Guarantees for the Construction of Nuclear Power Plants. It is intolerable that Renewables in their growth phase are squeezed out by Nuclear in its Death Throws. You must act to reduce the Nuclear Loan Guarantees, and Increase the Renewable Energy Component of the Bill.
Thanks,
D P
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2
Well, I got rescued, anyway.
Here's the specific Diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/3
So, on a whim, I just flipped on Hatha Yoga on TV. I don't know anything about it, and was really just listening to it in the background while I was writing stuff online.
It was soothing. Peaceful music, calm instruction, you know, like Yoga.
Then came the Commercials... "BOOM BOOM BOOM YADDA YADDA YADDA DOO DOO DOO," etc.
AAARRRGGHHHH!!
Yeah, I'm not sure that commercial TV is the way to relax with Yoga. LOL!
Ahh, ok, Commercials are over, time to really crank out some relaxation before the next break.
So, it's raining and flooding. The power to the house is out, and the roads to town are all closed by either water or a landslide.
I made it in by taking about a 1.5 hour detour up to Sumas (Canadian Border) and then back down to Bellingham by way of flooded roads along flooded fields.
The 17 year old son (Aaron) tried coming the same way and ended up with a dead car in Sumas, but got a ride back home from some nice folk. He'll be ok, he's got food, water, heat, cats.... just no electricity.
The 7 year old (Mark) is at the babysitter's, and will stay there overnight till I'm done with work tomorrow, and can pick him up and head home for a weekend of camping.
I'm staying at "the Pitt" tonight.
Per Wikipedia, Total World Consumption of Energy in 2005 was somewhere in the area of 15TW. It's suggested that 86.5% of this total is derived from Fossil Fuels, which amounts to a total World rate of Energy Consumption of 13TW. Note, this value includes the energy content of Oil and Liquid Fuels, so is not just the Electricity component.
Using 2005 as a rough basis:
The Total Energy Consumed over the whole Year could be written as 13TW*1Year.
There is a growing consensus in the World that the first International Targets will be in the area of 20% production of Energy from Renewables by 2020. Let's be conservative, and suggest that this target will be missed, at least on a Worldwide scale. There are several major Economies that might not play along, particularly among the heavy coal users.
We'll go with just a 15% target. 15% of 13TW*1Year = 1.95TW*1Year of renewables needed for, say, the year 2020.
Pulling a number out of my butt, let's say that Solar PV will provide just 10% of this amount of Energy by 2020. That makes for a Solar PV contribution of 195GW*1Year in 2020.
Since a Solar Panel doesn't provide constant Energy, we can take some averages, and assume that over an entire year, the panel will have provided a total Energy of about about 20% of its Peak Power Rating, so in order to provide 195GW*1Year, you'd need to install 971GWp of Solar Panels.
Hmm, 971GW of installed Solar Panels by 2020. Sounds crazy.
2007 Total Installation was in the area of 8.7 GWp. That leaves 962GWp to produce over the next 12 years.
What would this look like?
Photon Consulting put out some numbers quite some time ago suggesting what the growth curve in Solar would look like up to 2012. I took 10% off of the top from each of their yearly estimates to reflect the effects of the present slowdown, and came up with the following path to 962GWp by 2020.
The Spreadsheet is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k
For sake of completeness, I also made a more conservative scenario where the present downturn caused the Photon Numbers to be slashed by 30% over the next 3 Years. See the "Scenario 2" tab.
In the end, it makes little difference whether we slow down a bit for the moment, as the long term goal is largely set, and will almost certainly be acted on with great vigor by the Obama Administration.
Is it any wonder that I look with some scorn at the short-sighted calculations regularly drawn up by bashers on Yahoo? The market that we're talking about is simply larger by orders of magnitude than most people can visualize, and it follows that so is the opportunity at a time when wholesale replacement of Existing Technology and Energy Sources are the order of the day.
X-Posted to: http://americansolareconomy.blogspot.co
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/12/12/mcc
LOL!!!!
Now THIS is some kind of professionalism.
Just another example of the kind of fucking bullet that we dodged on Nov 4th.
Can someone with a paid account please syndicate the following feed?
http://change.gov/newsroom/blog/
Thanks!
http://community.livejournal.com/psycho
Ottawa — Researchers say they have located the world's oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.
The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.
The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.
I took today, tomorrow, and Thursday off of work, or at least as much off of work as I ever get.
I've been playing Baldur's Gate II, and I got in a solid nap today.
Not much else going on... other than an Obama Victory!!!
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