Thursday, October 18, 2007
Bush's fault?
Michigan's jobless rate climbs to 7.5%: "Michigan's unemployment rate is up slightly to 7.5 percent. State officials say the seasonally adjusted rate last month rose one-tenth of a percentage point higher than the August rate. The state's unemployment rate continues to lead the national rate, which was 4.7 percent last month. "
Low income kids get a new "benefit"!
Everyone must be so proud!
What new "benefits" are being cooked up by enlightened libs?
Maine school to offer contraceptives - Yahoo! News: "King is the only one of the three schools with a health center, primarily because it has more students who get free or reduced-price lunch, said Lisa Belanger, who oversees Portland's student health centers."
What new "benefits" are being cooked up by enlightened libs?
Maine school to offer contraceptives - Yahoo! News: "King is the only one of the three schools with a health center, primarily because it has more students who get free or reduced-price lunch, said Lisa Belanger, who oversees Portland's student health centers."
The truth that none dare speak?
Is there scientific proof that all races have identical intelligence?
Controversial DNA pioneer's talk halted - Yahoo! News
London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.
James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."
He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
The comments drew condemnation from British lawmakers, scientists, and civil rights campaigners. On Wednesday The Independent newspaper put Watson on its front page, against the words: "Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer."
Watson, who serves as chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., was to deliver a sold-out lecture at the Science Museum, but on Wednesday night the institution said Watson's comments had gone too far and the event had been canceled.
Call to Watson's book publisher and his office in New York were not immediately returned.
This is not the first time Watson's speaking engagements have caused a stir.
The Independent catalogued a series of controversial statements from Watson, including one in which he reportedly suggested women should have the right to have abortions if tests could determine their children would be homosexual.
In 2000 Watson shocked an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, when he advanced a theory about a link between skin color and sex drive.
His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin — which give skin its color — had been found to boost subjects' sex drive.
"That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
Telephone and e-mail messages left with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after business hours Wednesday were not immediately returned.
Controversial DNA pioneer's talk halted - Yahoo! News
London's Science Museum canceled a Friday talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the co-discoverer of DNA's structure told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.
James Watson provoked widespread outrage with his comments to The Sunday Times, which quoted the 79-year-old American as saying he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."
He told the paper he hoped that everyone was equal, but added: "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."
The comments drew condemnation from British lawmakers, scientists, and civil rights campaigners. On Wednesday The Independent newspaper put Watson on its front page, against the words: "Africans are less intelligent than Westerners, says DNA pioneer."
Watson, who serves as chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y., was to deliver a sold-out lecture at the Science Museum, but on Wednesday night the institution said Watson's comments had gone too far and the event had been canceled.
Call to Watson's book publisher and his office in New York were not immediately returned.
This is not the first time Watson's speaking engagements have caused a stir.
The Independent catalogued a series of controversial statements from Watson, including one in which he reportedly suggested women should have the right to have abortions if tests could determine their children would be homosexual.
In 2000 Watson shocked an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, when he advanced a theory about a link between skin color and sex drive.
His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin — which give skin its color — had been found to boost subjects' sex drive.
"That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English patient."
Telephone and e-mail messages left with the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory after business hours Wednesday were not immediately returned.
The lies of omission
Not a major surprise, but nowhere in this article do the unbiased CNN folks mention that the US economy is in marvelous health. By every traditional measure, GDP growth, productivity, total employment, unemployment, deficit % of GDP, stock market, inflation, consumer spending, etc. Most at record positives.
I guess those are not important enough to report to the unwashed.
Sophistry!
CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker Poll: Nearly half think U.S. in recession «: "Nearly half of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a recession — close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country’s economy is in a recession while 51 percent of those questioned say no."
I guess those are not important enough to report to the unwashed.
Sophistry!
CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker Poll: Nearly half think U.S. in recession «: "Nearly half of Americans think the U.S. economy is in a recession — close to 46 percent of those surveyed in a new CNN-Opinion Research Corporation Poll out Thursday morning say the country’s economy is in a recession while 51 percent of those questioned say no."
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Water for oil?
If the Senate's new "renewable fuels" mandate becomes law, get ready for a giant slurping sound as Midwest water supplies are siphoned off to slake Big Ethanol. House and Senate negotiators are preparing for an energy-bill conference, and if the Senate's language prevails, America's economy will be forced to consume more than five times current ethanol production.
Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices. But the Senate's plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than seven billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers.
Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that's only a fraction of ethanol's total water habit. Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O. Backers of the Senate bill say that less-thirsty technologies are just around the corner, which is what we've been hearing for years.
Some corn-producing regions are already scrapping over dwindling supply. The Journal's Joe Barrett recently reported that Kansas is threatening to sue neighboring Nebraska for consuming more than its share of the Republican River. The Grand Forks Herald reports local opposition to a proposed ethanol plant in Erskine, Minnesota, with anti-refinery yard signs sprouting up and residents concerned about well water. Backers of a proposed plant in Jamestown, North Dakota, recently withdrew their application when it became clear that the plant's million-gallon-a-day appetite would drain too much from a local aquifer. In Wisconsin, new ethanol plants are encountering opposition in Sparta and Milton.
"There are going to be conflicts," says Iowa State hydrogeologist Bill Simpkins, "and there are going to be lawsuits." Even in Iowa, which enjoys abundant rainfall, there are no guarantees that supply can meet the new demand. "The problem is we don't know enough about some of these areas to say whether people can pump out a lot more water," Mr. Simpkins says.
The political fights could get ugly, because plants tend to pop up near cities, not necessarily near the biggest water supplies. Ethanol needs a rail system to be distributed, and ethanol factories save money on boiler maintenance when they get the same kind of high-quality water that humans prefer. In states like Iowa, where ethanol plants are considered agricultural projects deserving of preferential treatment, ethanol can also muscle out other business uses.
Ethanol's big environmental footprint is not limited to water, because biofuels like ethanol are highly inefficient. In September, the Chairman of the OECD's Roundtable on Sustainable Development released a report entitled, "Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?" Authors Richard Doornbosch and Ronald Steenblik compared the power density of different energy sources, measured in energy production per unit of the earth's area. Oil -- because it requires only a narrow hole in the earth and is extracted as a highly concentrated form of energy -- is up to 1,000 times more efficient than solar energy, which requires large panels collecting a less-concentrated form of energy known as the midday sun.
But even solar power is roughly 10 times as efficient as biomass-derived fuels like ethanol. In other words, growing the corn to produce ethanol means clearing land and killing animals on a massive scale, or converting land from food production to fuel production. Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute says that the best-case scenario promoted by ethanol cheerleaders will actually cause the greatest environmental disaster. If people can actually refine cheap, low-maintenance production techniques that don't require huge water supplies, Mr. Huber predicts a world-wide leveling of forestland as farmers turn vegetation into fuel.
Writing in Science magazine, Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracklen estimate that in order to replace just 10% of gasoline and diesel consumption, the U.S. would need to convert a full 43% of its cropland to ethanol production. The alternative approach -- clearing wilderness -- would mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than simply sticking with gasoline, because the CO2-munching trees cut down to make way for King Ethanol absorb more emissions than ethanol saves.
Slowly but surely, these problems are beginning to alert public opinion to the huge costs of force-feeding corn ethanol as an energy savior. The ethanol lobby is still hoping it can keep all of this under wraps long enough to shove one more big mandate through Congress, but the Members need to know the problems they'll be creating. We hope that House conferees, who did not include a new mandate in their energy bill, insist that any final bill is ethanol-free.
Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices. But the Senate's plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than seven billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers.
Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that's only a fraction of ethanol's total water habit. Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O. Backers of the Senate bill say that less-thirsty technologies are just around the corner, which is what we've been hearing for years.
Some corn-producing regions are already scrapping over dwindling supply. The Journal's Joe Barrett recently reported that Kansas is threatening to sue neighboring Nebraska for consuming more than its share of the Republican River. The Grand Forks Herald reports local opposition to a proposed ethanol plant in Erskine, Minnesota, with anti-refinery yard signs sprouting up and residents concerned about well water. Backers of a proposed plant in Jamestown, North Dakota, recently withdrew their application when it became clear that the plant's million-gallon-a-day appetite would drain too much from a local aquifer. In Wisconsin, new ethanol plants are encountering opposition in Sparta and Milton.
"There are going to be conflicts," says Iowa State hydrogeologist Bill Simpkins, "and there are going to be lawsuits." Even in Iowa, which enjoys abundant rainfall, there are no guarantees that supply can meet the new demand. "The problem is we don't know enough about some of these areas to say whether people can pump out a lot more water," Mr. Simpkins says.
The political fights could get ugly, because plants tend to pop up near cities, not necessarily near the biggest water supplies. Ethanol needs a rail system to be distributed, and ethanol factories save money on boiler maintenance when they get the same kind of high-quality water that humans prefer. In states like Iowa, where ethanol plants are considered agricultural projects deserving of preferential treatment, ethanol can also muscle out other business uses.
Ethanol's big environmental footprint is not limited to water, because biofuels like ethanol are highly inefficient. In September, the Chairman of the OECD's Roundtable on Sustainable Development released a report entitled, "Biofuels: Is the Cure Worse than the Disease?" Authors Richard Doornbosch and Ronald Steenblik compared the power density of different energy sources, measured in energy production per unit of the earth's area. Oil -- because it requires only a narrow hole in the earth and is extracted as a highly concentrated form of energy -- is up to 1,000 times more efficient than solar energy, which requires large panels collecting a less-concentrated form of energy known as the midday sun.
But even solar power is roughly 10 times as efficient as biomass-derived fuels like ethanol. In other words, growing the corn to produce ethanol means clearing land and killing animals on a massive scale, or converting land from food production to fuel production. Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute says that the best-case scenario promoted by ethanol cheerleaders will actually cause the greatest environmental disaster. If people can actually refine cheap, low-maintenance production techniques that don't require huge water supplies, Mr. Huber predicts a world-wide leveling of forestland as farmers turn vegetation into fuel.
Writing in Science magazine, Renton Righelato and Dominick Spracklen estimate that in order to replace just 10% of gasoline and diesel consumption, the U.S. would need to convert a full 43% of its cropland to ethanol production. The alternative approach -- clearing wilderness -- would mean more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere than simply sticking with gasoline, because the CO2-munching trees cut down to make way for King Ethanol absorb more emissions than ethanol saves.
Slowly but surely, these problems are beginning to alert public opinion to the huge costs of force-feeding corn ethanol as an energy savior. The ethanol lobby is still hoping it can keep all of this under wraps long enough to shove one more big mandate through Congress, but the Members need to know the problems they'll be creating. We hope that House conferees, who did not include a new mandate in their energy bill, insist that any final bill is ethanol-free.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Kiwi women are the world's most promiscuous-UK-World-The Times of India
Kiwi women are the world's most promiscuous-UK-World-The Times of India: "A new survey has shown that Kiwi women are the most promiscuous in the world, with an average of 20.4 sexual partners. "
Politics | $4.5 million for a boat that nobody wanted | Seattle Times Newspaper
Politics $4.5 million for a boat that nobody wanted Seattle Times Newspaper: "Why would the Navy waste taxpayer dollars on a boat that nobody wanted? Blame it on Sen. Patty Murray and Congressmen Norm Dicks and Brian Baird. All three exercised their political muscle to slip language into a 2002 spending bill to force the Navy to buy the boat from Edmonds shipbuilder Guardian Marine International."
Friday, October 12, 2007
John Edwards walks into a bar ... - By Mickey Kaus - Slate Magazine
John Edwards walks into a bar ... - By Mickey Kaus - Slate Magazine: "Crops Rotting in the Fields! ... Oh wait. That's last year's crops-rot-in-fields story. Sorry. Here's this year's. They haven't rotted yet... [Thanks to reader C.B.] .. Update: Is the Bush administration rushing to declare a crisis and use it as an excuse to open the door to more illegals? I don't know the answer. But the LAT reports the administration is 'quietly rewriting federal regulations to eliminate barriers that restrict how foreign laborers can legally be brought into the country' under the existing H-2A and H-2B programs for temporary workers. ... I can see why it might be useful to simplify applications. But if it's seasonal work, why would it be necessary to 'extend the definition of 'temporary' beyond 10 months'? Do all these legal workers actually return when their 'temporary' work is over? ... The Bushies are also considering expanding 'the definition of 'agricultural' workers to include such industries as meatpacking and poultry processing. Is it really impossible to get American citizens (or existing legal immigrants) to do meatpacking jobs? ... If an unlimited number of non-temporary 'temporary' workers in can be allowed in under existing law, then why did the Administration feel it needed an explicit new guest-worker program as part of 'comprehensive' reform? ... Krikorian? ... "
Friday, October 05, 2007
Mae West would have loved this story
"Is that an iPod in your pocket or are you really, really happy to see me?"
iPod Sets Man's Pants On Fire - News Story - WSB Atlanta: "The new iPod Nano is hot. But one Douglasville man said his old Nano got even hotter -- hot enough to burst into flames. “So I look down and I see flames coming up to my chest,” said Danny Williams. Williams said the burn hole from the pocket of his pants marks the spot of his 15 seconds of flame. He said he had an iPod Nano and an glossy piece of paper in his pocket. He believes the paper shielded him from being burned."
iPod Sets Man's Pants On Fire - News Story - WSB Atlanta: "The new iPod Nano is hot. But one Douglasville man said his old Nano got even hotter -- hot enough to burst into flames. “So I look down and I see flames coming up to my chest,” said Danny Williams. Williams said the burn hole from the pocket of his pants marks the spot of his 15 seconds of flame. He said he had an iPod Nano and an glossy piece of paper in his pocket. He believes the paper shielded him from being burned."
Monday, October 01, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
NC cops AGAIN?
newsobserver.com Nasty cough, nasty run-in with the law: "When Morrisville police officer Chris Gill handed him a ticket, Kent Kauffman coughed. Next thing Kauffman knew, Gill was charging him with assault on a government official."
Monday, September 24, 2007
Go Al Go...re....
WTOL-TV Toledo, OH: Petition drive launched to put Al Gore on Michigan ballot: "Michigan supporters of Al Gore are launching a petition drive to make sure his name can be on the January 15 presidential primary ballot if he decides to enter the race. They are required to submit more than 12,000 valid signatures to the secretary of state's office by October 23 to get the job done."
Men are smartest and dumbest, say scientists - Times Online
Men are smartest and dumbest, say scientists - Times Online: "However, individuals often defy the patterns. Carol Vorderman, the broadcaster – who has a reported IQ of more than 150 – has made a career out of her mathematical skills."
Imagine that! "Individuals often defy the patterns". Imagine that......
Imagine that! "Individuals often defy the patterns". Imagine that......
9/11 coalition set to 'Swift-boat' Rudy Giuliani today
9/11 coalition set to 'Swift-boat' Rudy Giuliani today: "'We intend to Swift-boat Rudy the way they Swift-boated Kerry,' said Deputy Fire Chief Jim Riches, the group's leader, whose firefighter son Jimmy was killed in the terror attack."
I thought the left use the term "Swift-boat" was an unfair attack.
As from Wikipedia:
"Swiftboating is American political jargon that is used (primarily) as a strong pejorative description of some kind of attack that the speaker considers unfair—for example, an ad hominem attack or a smear campaign."
I thought the left use the term "Swift-boat" was an unfair attack.
As from Wikipedia:
"Swiftboating is American political jargon that is used (primarily) as a strong pejorative description of some kind of attack that the speaker considers unfair—for example, an ad hominem attack or a smear campaign."
Opinion: Mark Steyn: Nurse Hillary knows best | health, million, uninsured, insurance, people - OCRegister.com
Opinion: Mark Steyn: Nurse Hillary knows best health, million, uninsured, insurance, people - OCRegister.com: "So, out of 45 million uninsured Americans, 9 million aren’t American, 9 million are insured, 18 million are young and healthy. And the rest of these poor helpless waifs trapped in Uninsured Hell waiting for Hillary to rescue them are, in fact, wealthier than the general population. According to the Census Bureau’s August 2006 report on “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage,” 37 percent of those without health insurance – that’s 17 million people – come from households earning more than $50,000. Nineteen percent – 8.7 million people – of those downtrodden paupers crushed by the brutal inequities of capitalism come from households earning more than $75,000. "
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Free healthcare don't work if ya don't use it.
Who needs toothpaste? Certain ideas of Europe Economist.com: "Who needs toothpaste? Posted by: The Economist BRUSSELS Categories: France ONE OF the tired cliches about Europe is that its inhabitants all have mossy teeth, and have limited enthusiasm for matters of personal hygiene. This is a deporable generalisation, and not a serious subject for discussion. That said... crikey there is a jaw-dropping piece in today's Le Figaro, tucked away in the health pages (alas, not seemingly available on the internet). The article quotes a pair of dentists, one from a Paris teaching hospital and one from the French dentistry association, and offers the following statistics (without citing sources). - one million French citizens never brush their teeth - half of all French do not brush their teeth in the evening - 57% of French children under five have never brushed their teeth"
Smart?
- Financial planner accused of $2 million scam: "GRAND RAPIDS - A financial planner accused of scamming clients out of $2 million stood mute at his arraignment in federal court Tuesday. Robert Smart allegedly used bogus documents to show he was investing his clients' money in prominent West Michigan companies. Instead, he's accused of pocketing the money."
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