WorldNetDaily has a story today about commercial truckdrivers possibly staging a strike in the very near future, to protest the rising cost of fuel. I've heard this talked about for at least the past month or so and... well, I'm of the mind that this is altogether possible. Not to mention easily understandable given the frustrations of these truckers. Most of them are independent contractors who have to purchase their own fuel, and a lot of 'em are running in the red right now. I don't blame them at all but it must be admitted that in the wake of the blow this country's taken from Katrina, a trucker's strike all over the place would be a severe test of the tipping point on a lot of things.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Katrina victims to get $2000 debit cards from U.S. government
From the Associated Press...
Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit CardsAt the risk of being called cold-hearted: this is a really stupid thing to do. There's going to be all kinds of abuse opening up with this scheme. And what happens to everyone else who becomes a victim of a hurricane? Do we give them two thousand dollars from the public coffers also?
Sep 07 3:42 PM US/EasternBy DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press WriterThe federal government plans to hand out debit cards worth $2,000 each to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff, under fire for his agency's response to the disaster, held a conference call with governors of states with evacuees and described the plan. While many details remained to be worked out, the plan was to quickly begin distributing the cards, starting with people in major evacuation centers such as the Houston Astrodome.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the cards are aimed at providing "some immediate cash assistance to those who are in shelters, those that were evacuated."
Republican Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who participated in the conference call, said the cards will be offered "to people in shelters as well as people who are not in shelters but who have evacuated the area and need help." He said the hope is the cards will encourage people to leave shelters voluntarily.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is administering the program. FEMA officials said the program is aimed at those most in need, so not all families that fled their homes will be eligible...
This smells too much like a political ploy, if anything.
Bush kept cancer patients from getting chemo?!?
Unbelievable, but apparently true.
Someone is probably going to jump flunky on me for posting this though, likely tell me something like "Bush was there to boost patients's morale" or something.
Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Gilligan has left the island. Maynard G. Krebs has banged his bongos for the last time.
Nothing else to say, 'cept another legend has left us. Say hello to the Skipper and Thurston Howell III up there, little buddy.
Monday, September 05, 2005
So, ummm... you saying the hurricane was GOOD for some people?!
Barbara Bush said this today at the Astrodome, no joke:
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this... this is working very well for them."Now, what kind of person is it that would divy-up the victims of something so impartial into either "privileged" or "underprivileged"?
I'm almost reminded of the "steerage" passengers aboard the Titanic.
Europeans building Doctor Octopus fusion machine
Physicsweb.org has the scoop on some scientists re-enacting the plot of a Hollywood blockbuster...
Europe plans laser-fusion facilityFusion? Lasers? Tritium?!? I think somebody's been watching Spider-Man 2 way, WAY too many times...2 September 2005
Laser physicists in Europe have put forward plans to build a £500m facility to study a new approach to laser fusion. A panel of scientists from seven European Union countries believes that a "fast ignition" laser facility could make a significant contribution to fusion research, as well as supporting experiments in other areas of physics. The facility could be up and running by the middle of the next decade.
The laser would be used to compress and heat a small capsule of deuterium and tritium until the nuclei are hot enough to undergo nuclear fusion and produce helium and neutrons. In a reactor the energy of the neutrons would be used to generate electricity without the emission of greenhouse gases or the generation of long-lived nuclear waste...
Together from across a century...
This now ties with the photo of Jabbar Gibson behind the wheel of the schoolbus as my favorite photo to come out of Katrina.
Hoping CBS doesn't turn this into "Survivor: New Orleans"
Another uplifting story: holdouts in New Orleans's French Quarter banded together into "tribes" to help each other out.
I think in years to come, what's happened in the Big Easy because of Katrina is going to be a hotly-discussed topic in sociology circles. This has brought out the worst in some people, and the very best in others. Why that happened is going to be well debated for a long time.
About Bush and me...
I feel the need to clarify something that really can't be emphasized enough:
I do not hate George W. Bush.
I do hate the things he is doing to this country.
F'rinstance, he is committing treason by letting untold millions of illegal immigrants flood across the border from Mexico. Illegal immigrants and God only knows who else: it's a would-be terrorist's dream come true.
He lied us into a war with Iraq. The reasons for this war have never been consistent. If he wanted to take out Saddam because he was "a bad man", fine, market it like that. See how the American people would feel up to going in on that rationale. The entire impetus - no matter what else has come out since then - for the invasion was the weapons of mass destruction. And there really were none. And now the reason for our war is that we have to stay there to honor the memory of those who've died there...?!?
Bush is the President most far-removed from the American people that there has ever been. This alone is why I don't consider him to be a real President: he's just filling a position, without the sense of honor that comes with that position. You cannot be a servant of the people unless you are willing to meet with the people... no matter how their opinion of things differs from your own.
Bush has employed - and continues to employ - some of the most wicked agents of personal destruction that modern politics has ever known. I say again: why should a good Christian choose to associate with Karl Rove? Witnessing to him would be one thing. Encouraging him to continue hurting people without reason is quite another. Seems there's a thing or two in the Bible about that.
Bush, I hate to say, believes he really is above the American people. God never set up a sovereign or a king over us. He didn't anoint Bush to be the first such either. This kind of attitude isn't going to win him any favorable spot in the history books. He will, at best, be considered a bully on par with Lyndon Johnson.
Bush has gone fully in the face of everything that Ronald Reagan believed about the role of government. Reagan believed in smaller government. Under Bush it has ballooned beyond belief. The Department of Homeland Security is a disgrace to everything that traditional "conservatives" have stood for.
Bush pushed the PATRIOT Act into being. 'Nuff said.
Bush supported CAFTA. Also, 'nuff said.
So many other reasons for not trusting the man. For holding him in outright contempt, even.
Do I believe that George W. Bush is beyond redemption? No.
Do I believe he could still change some things for the better? Yes.
Defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States would be one place to start. So would making himself a real man of the people, instead of some far-away politician literally scared of his constituents.
Admitting that mistakes were made. And he has made some. Nobody's perfect. I would trust the man who DOES admit mistakes far more than I could trust a man who does not.
It's almost funny: for not falling into line behind him as a rabid supporter, and for pointing out his faults, I am called "a bitter little man". If I were to throw my hands up in adoration of the man and not question anything, I would be called "a good American citizen" by the same mindset.
Funny still: in the past 72 hours I have... -blasted Louisiana Governor Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Nagin... especially Nagin - paid homage to the memory of William Rehnquist - condemned Democratic Underground for some vicious things posted on that site - suggested drilling the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge - pointed out that New Orleans officials ("Democrats" mind ya) failed to follow their own hurricane emergency plan- defended Bush against some accusations he's faced about the hurricane (the issues regarding aid are one thing, arguing that he caused the devastation is quite another)
Weighing one against the other, I've been a lot harsher on the "Democrats" in the past several days than I have been on the "Republicans" by a vast margin.
It ain't easy being an unaffiliated individual, I tells ya...
By any other name, Divx still sux (Blu-Ray news)
No not DivX the AVI video codec, which I like a lot. I mean Divx: that bastardized DVD format that was sold at Circuit City several years ago, just when DVD was getting to be popular.
Good lord those were some of the most shameless TV commercials ever made. I actually felt sorry for that poor guy who was being paid to smile into the camera as he explained how Divx players "play both DVD and Divx titles". The really scary thing is that some studios - like 20th Century Fox - seriously considered releasing their movies in the Divx format. Then reality came crashing down upon them when they discovered that most consumers were not keen on the idea of trusting their credit card numbers to a household appliance.
What the heck was Divx? Pay-per-view DVD, plain and simple. You'd buy a Divx disc, which looked exactly like a DVD disc. You take it home and you could put it in your Divx player. It might play your movie two or three times with no problem. But if you wanted to watch it more than that you had to make sure that your Divx player was plugged into your telephone line, because the Divx player had a modem inside that would dial up somewhere and charge to your credit card every time you played the movie from there on out. The encoding on the disc was such that you couldn't play it without proper decryption from Divx Central, only after you'd forked over the money to watch your disc.
This was an idea so bad it made New Coke taste good. Personally, I did not want to plug my DVD player into a telephone jack. I did not want to give my DVD player access to my credit account. I did not care for complete strangers to have a record of what I choose to watch with my DVD player (if I view John Carpenter's The Thing fifty-seven times then that's my own business). I did not want to pay a "user's fee" every time I employed said DVD player. I did not... well, you get the picture.
Geez Louise, who in the world actually bought into this thing, anyway?!
Long story short, Divx bombed. It got yanked off the market and Circuit City offered a refund of some sort to those that did purchase Divx players. And you'd think that a lesson would be learned after such a fiasco, right? Right?!
From Engadget.com comes this item:
Blu-ray players to "punish" users who hack their gear?So my Blu-Ray player will connect to the Internet. And this differs from connecting my DVD player to the phone line... how?
Posted Sep 2, 2005, 11:14 AM ET by Ryan BlockOf course the looming next-gen optical format war about to go down between Blu-ray and HD-DVD might be kind of interesting if it weren’t taking place, well, in your very livingroom. But with talks broken down and devices starting to crop up, it looks like the first blows will soon be felt—but aren’t they supposed to be hitting one another and not the end user? Because this little bit in a Reuters piece this morning left us a little unsettled:
On top of that, consumers should expect punishment for tinkering with their Blu-ray players, as many have done with current DVD players, for instance to remove regional coding. The new, Internet-connected and secure players will report any "hack" and the device can be disabled remotely.
Are they talking about PVP-OPM techniques and rejected HDMI keys, or something else far more sinister? Because apparently "A hacked player is any player that is doing something it’s not supposed to do," which open to a pretty fair amount of interpretation—most of which egregious.
If this happens, HD-DVD will become the preferred consumer standard. Practically by default. Blu-Ray will go the way of Divx, New Coke and Betamax (GREAT video quality, horrible business decision to make it only record one hour of footage though). And I can't believe that I might be watching this happen all over again...
Sunday, September 04, 2005
The Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon is on
It's a little different this year: it's raising money for both the Muscular Dystrophy Association and for the Hurricane Katrina victims. Jerry Lewis is lookin' good: a few years ago he didn't look so hot but he's buff enough now to do the Nutty Professor again it seems. And darn, Ed McMahon looks pretty good too! Anyway see if it's on locally and if it's not head over to the MDA website and watch a live streaming RealVideo feed of it as it happens. I had to use Internet Exploiter... I mean, Explorer to get it to work, and the RealMedia player 'course, but it's well worth a looksee if ya have the time.And please, if you can, think about donating to the MDA during this thing.. It's a really good charity, with one of the least amounts of overhead of any nonprofit: whatever is raised at the local level stays at and is used at the local level. Every year Jerry's broken the record for the amount of money that was pledged during the last telethon... let's make him do it again!
Goofs and all, I like this new show Rome on HBO
It holds nothing back in showing how colorful, brutal, lecherous and oratorical those wacky Romans really were. Tonight's was the second episode and it was decidedly better than the first one. By the end of the hour I just knew where this chapter of the story was gonna end, on the other side of a certain lil' creek on the northern border with Italy. Definitely recommended but I did catch something that, maybe it's just the historian in me but it did jar me somewhat out of the illusion: early in tonight's episode one of the characters uses the expletive "f***ing". Well, that particular word didn't even exist in 49 B.C.! They were about sixteen hundred years away from its origin and that was with the Puritans, believe it or not. Remember how in The Scarlet Letter they made Hester wear that big red "A"? Well something like that: if the Puritans found someone among them in an adulterous relationship, they made that person wear a sign around their necks with the letters F.U.C.K. inscribed on it. That was a well-understood acronym meaning "For Unclean Carnal Knowledge". I know it's funny to cast blame for the worst profanity in the book on the pious Puritans, but there ya go. And these Romans definitely ain't the pious sort. But I guess some lingual license was in order anyway, right? Anyhoo, if ya like a healthy dose of historical realism and don't mind the risque, give HBO's Rome a shot.
Happy 75th Anniversary to Dagwood and Blondie!
EDIT: There is a HYSTERICAL piece by David Grimes at Jewish World Review about the unsolved mysteries of Blondie. Like, how does Dagwood eat all those horridly huge sandwiches and stay so rail thin? Nice readin' in light of today's festivities :-)
We could kiss Saudi goodbye: VERY cool news on the fuel front
The boys at Shell R&D have been busy: "a billion barrels a square mile" would make the United States energy independent until the end of time. From Rocky Mountain News via Scripps:
...Since 1981, Shell researchers at the company's division of "unconventional resources" have been spending their own money trying to figure out how to get usable energy out of oil shale. Judging by the presentation the Rocky Mountain News heard this week, they think they've got it.There's plenty more at the story's main link. This may be the first really good news on this kind of front to report in a long, long time.Shell's method, which it calls "in situ conversion," is simplicity itself in concept but exquisitely ingenious in execution. Terry O'Connor, a vice president for external and regulatory affairs at Shell Exploration and Production, explained how it's done (and they have done it, in several test projects):
Drill shafts into the oil-bearing rock. Drop heaters down the shaft. Cook the rock until the hydrocarbons boil off, the lightest and most desirable first. Collect them.
Please note, you don't have to go looking for oil fields when you're brewing your own.
On one small test plot about 20 feet by 35 feet, on land Shell owns, they started heating the rock in early 2004. "Product" - about one-third natural gas, two-thirds light crude - began to appear in September 2004. They turned the heaters off about a month ago, after harvesting about 1,500 barrels of oil.
While we were trying to do the math, O'Connor told us the answers. Upwards of a million barrels an acre, a billion barrels a square mile. And the oil shale formation in the Green River Basin, most of which is in Colorado, covers more than a thousand square miles - the largest fossil fuel deposits in the world.
Wow.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Chief Justice Rehnquist has died
I saw him preside over a Supreme Court case in January 1997. I heard from a lot of people who worked there that he was a really nice guy. A real gentleman through and through.
The bad news just keeps coming lately, it seems. A good man is gone.
I hope people are mindful about that.
This sounds horrible, but I'm wondering how long it will be before "the ghouls" come out relishing the now-vacant Supreme Court seat.
EDIT 11:22 PM EST: Well, that didn't take too long...
Hey. LiferjJudge Ginsberg doesn't look so hot either and may have to be carried out of the Supreme Court building feet first. She'll die with her boots (are made for walking) on. Then GW will get a threeferThat is honestly the #1 thing on their minds right now, believe it or not.
EDIT 11:26 PM EST: That was from Free Republic. There's also this one from Liberty Post:
Bush will get a minimum of 4 picks. Ginsburg and that old guy (Stevens?) will be next.And this one...
A good man. God, I wish it had been that satanic witch BaderGinsburg instead.EDIT 11:29 PM EST: I'm not even gonna bother linking to anything from Democratic Underground. There is some real nastiness going on there right now. I did take a look in there and... it's disgusting folks, trust me.
I'd be more ashamed of how some on Free Republic and Liberty Post are treating this. There are some people on those boards practically wringing their hands with delight that there's an opportunity for "their kind" of Supreme Court justice to be appointed.
Funny, but I never thought Supreme Court justices should be "conservative" or "liberal". They should have but one mindset: an abiding love for the Constitution and the desire to interpret it as best as God might guide them. It's not an office for political opportunism.
But hey, what do I know: I'm just a guy with a blog.
Rehnquist was on the court that ruled in Roe v. Wade, I just realized. Turns out he was in the minority on that one, even writing the dissenting opinion. That's the kind of justice I would rather see: a believer in judicial restraint.
I seriously doubt that either of the two sides now lining up is very much interested in that, though.
"Plan? You mean there was a PLAN?!"
City of New Orleans Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan pertaining to hurricanes.
I'm wondering how much of this was actually followed-through on.
So Bush is selling crude oil from the strategic reserve...
...to supposedly help with the fuel shortage.
Dumb, dumb, dumb.
The problem is not so much supply right now as it is a refining problem. Simply putting more crude out there on the market is not going to have any significant effect on gasoline prices.
I've no idea why he would do such a thing, but there it is, defying all wisdom regarding petroleum economics.
