TW: ...in this case circa 1903 via Shorpy (click on image to enlarge). A shot of Grand Central Station.Thursday, December 31, 2009
New Year's Eve Means NYC To Me...
TW: ...in this case circa 1903 via Shorpy (click on image to enlarge). A shot of Grand Central Station.
It's almost over...
2009 is on its way out the door - are you ready for 2010 yet?
And by ready, I mean, do you have the items you will need to make the coming year a success? I thought not.
Never fear, listed below for your shopping convenience are the 'must have' items for 2010. You're welcome.
I'm pretty sure I don't need to say anything here. The product comes with the following Warning: Your lips will smell like bacon, but they are not bacon. Do not bite your lips.
Find it for $3.99 at Perpetual Kid
Much as I hoped, it seems that Zombies are not going away. So grab some friends and board game it up until the walking dead arrive at your door.
$21.95 at Nerd Approved
Seriously, if the cats would let me near them with it, I would definitely buy one.
$29.95 at Total Diva Pets
What a pleasant way to adulterate your tea or coffee. Sweeten your drink with the life blood of a snowman.
Greener Grass Design has the little Frostys for $60
Finally, what says class or romance more than a baby's head candle holder on your dining table? Imagine the fun you can have with red or brown candles...just $115 at A&R Store
And by ready, I mean, do you have the items you will need to make the coming year a success? I thought not.
Never fear, listed below for your shopping convenience are the 'must have' items for 2010. You're welcome.
I'm pretty sure I don't need to say anything here. The product comes with the following Warning: Your lips will smell like bacon, but they are not bacon. Do not bite your lips.Find it for $3.99 at Perpetual Kid
Much as I hoped, it seems that Zombies are not going away. So grab some friends and board game it up until the walking dead arrive at your door.$21.95 at Nerd Approved
Seriously, if the cats would let me near them with it, I would definitely buy one.$29.95 at Total Diva Pets
What a pleasant way to adulterate your tea or coffee. Sweeten your drink with the life blood of a snowman.Greener Grass Design has the little Frostys for $60
Finally, what says class or romance more than a baby's head candle holder on your dining table? Imagine the fun you can have with red or brown candles...just $115 at A&R Store
Ah Those Good Old (Smelly) Days
TW: Economist is behind a firewall now, but their end of year piece on the evolution of personal hygiene was a nice reminder that the good, old days were perhaps not only not so good but most definitely not particularly well scented...
From Economist:
"...young Louis XIII, born in 1601, was not given a bath until he was almost seven. Throughout the 17th century, writes Georges Vigarello, in “Le Propre et le Sale”, it was thought that linen had special properties that enabled it to absorb sweat from the body. For gentlemen, a wardrobe full of fine linen smocks or undershirts to enable a daily change was the height of hygienic sophistication. Racine and Molière owned 30 each.
Indeed, bathing, certainly in hot water, was considered a veritable health risk. France’s Henri IV was famously filthy, “stinking of sweat, stables, feet and garlic”. Upon learning that the Duc de Sully had taken a bath, the king turned to his own physician, André du Laurens, for advice. The king was told that the poor man would be vulnerable for days. So a message was dispatched informing Sully that he was not to go out, or he would endanger his health. Instead, he was told, the king would visit his Paris home: “so that you come to no harm as a result of your recent bath.”
In England, Elizabeth I bathed only once a month and James I, her successor, seems to have washed only his fingers. One medical pamphlet printed at the time by Thomas Moulton, a doctor of divinity and Dominican friar, advises particular caution during outbreaks of the plague: “use no baths or stoves; nor swet not too much, for all openeth the pores of a manne’s body and maketh the venomous ayre to enter and for to infecte the bloude...”
TW: The other point being the accepted "experts" and mores at the time were in fact completely foolish.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108662
From Economist:
"...young Louis XIII, born in 1601, was not given a bath until he was almost seven. Throughout the 17th century, writes Georges Vigarello, in “Le Propre et le Sale”, it was thought that linen had special properties that enabled it to absorb sweat from the body. For gentlemen, a wardrobe full of fine linen smocks or undershirts to enable a daily change was the height of hygienic sophistication. Racine and Molière owned 30 each.
Indeed, bathing, certainly in hot water, was considered a veritable health risk. France’s Henri IV was famously filthy, “stinking of sweat, stables, feet and garlic”. Upon learning that the Duc de Sully had taken a bath, the king turned to his own physician, André du Laurens, for advice. The king was told that the poor man would be vulnerable for days. So a message was dispatched informing Sully that he was not to go out, or he would endanger his health. Instead, he was told, the king would visit his Paris home: “so that you come to no harm as a result of your recent bath.”
In England, Elizabeth I bathed only once a month and James I, her successor, seems to have washed only his fingers. One medical pamphlet printed at the time by Thomas Moulton, a doctor of divinity and Dominican friar, advises particular caution during outbreaks of the plague: “use no baths or stoves; nor swet not too much, for all openeth the pores of a manne’s body and maketh the venomous ayre to enter and for to infecte the bloude...”
TW: The other point being the accepted "experts" and mores at the time were in fact completely foolish.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15108662
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
That Deficit Thing
TW: As the demagougery continues relative to the federal budget deficit. A little data never hurts. For the umpteenth time- take your pick: tax increases, entitlements, national security- so what would you do?
Have you heard the News?
I thought this was a pretty interesting graphic. From the folks at Good.is - a chart of the news stories that got national coverage in 2009 depicting the relative size of each.
I knew that the financial crisis/meltdown/armageddon was a big story, I didn't realize that it got what looks like 40% of the year's news coverage.
That's 4 out of every 10 printed articles, television, radio and internet news stories devoted to the biggest financial mess since the Great Depression EVERY SINGLE DAY.
No wonder I was bummed out every time I picked up the paper.
Check out this site to learn how it was created and launch a large version of the chart
Good.is
The Book Tipping Point
TW: This is one of those stories that make me feel old. I yearn for the look and feel of an actual book in my hands. Yet I know such sentiments will increasingly date me as an archaic relic...tis always been so. I do not rue it, in fact on this one I embrace it.
From Reuters:
"Amazon shares rose on Monday after it posted strong growth in holiday season orders and said its customers bought more e-books than physical books for the first time ever on Christmas Day, thanks to its hot-selling Kindle electronic book reader.
The U.S.-based Internet retailer said over the weekend its Kindle reader had become the most-purchased gift in the company's history.
...With electronic readers one of the hottest selling items over the holidays this year, the Kindle also gained ground as both Barnes & Noble and Sony were unable to keep up with demand. The two companies both sold out of their stock of readers more than a month before Christmas.
The Kindle Store now includes more than 390,000 books, Amazon said. The company also provided details on its holiday season sales, saying that Dec. 14 was its peak shopping day with more than 9.5 million items ordered worldwide.
On the peak day of the season, Amazon said it shipped more than 7 million units..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2816898520091228
From Reuters:
"Amazon shares rose on Monday after it posted strong growth in holiday season orders and said its customers bought more e-books than physical books for the first time ever on Christmas Day, thanks to its hot-selling Kindle electronic book reader.
The U.S.-based Internet retailer said over the weekend its Kindle reader had become the most-purchased gift in the company's history.
...With electronic readers one of the hottest selling items over the holidays this year, the Kindle also gained ground as both Barnes & Noble and Sony were unable to keep up with demand. The two companies both sold out of their stock of readers more than a month before Christmas.
The Kindle Store now includes more than 390,000 books, Amazon said. The company also provided details on its holiday season sales, saying that Dec. 14 was its peak shopping day with more than 9.5 million items ordered worldwide.
On the peak day of the season, Amazon said it shipped more than 7 million units..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN2816898520091228
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Good News: Crime Is Down...Again
TW: Crime stats came back well in 2009 continuing an improving trend. Folks like to attribute the improvement to their favorite reasons (more prisons etc.) but I recall an expert claiming crime stats correlate tightly with the relative number of 18 year old males entering the population. Regardless the numbers are better despite the Great Recession.
"ONE of the happy trends of 2009 has been that crime is down in major American cities, even the ones that have had a rough year in other respects. Today the New York Times reports that New York City is on track to have its smallest number of murders since 1962:
...The trend can be understood as crime being on a downward trajectory for years, for a variety of reasons—the end of the crack epidemic, better gun control, new policing strategies, and so on—rather than something special about 2009..." http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/12/crime_in_decline
They're Gone!
Anyone who's been to San Francisco in the last 20 years has likely been to the tourist extravaganza called Fisherman's Wharf. And if you've been to Fisherman's Wharf, you've seen the sea lions that camp out on Pier 39.
I lived in SF for a couple years early in my consulting career, just up the street from Pier 39 in fact. The seals weren't in residence when I was there, they showed up just after I moved back to Chicago in 1988. No one knew why the sea lions felt the need to take over the docks that used to provide water access to private boats, but since this was California, the city decided that making a safe environment for the sea lions was more important than making a pleasant waterfront for the humans in the area.
And so the loud, smelly and dirty sea lion colony / "attraction" was born. OK, so I'm not a lover of sea lions. Aside from being marginally entertaining to watch for the odd 3 or 4 minutes when you have nothing else to do, I'm not sure what value they add.
Anyway, it seems that the sea lions have left. Yep, just up and wandered off right after Thanksgiving. Been there for 20 years and then just decide out of the blue to be on their way. You really can't trust sea lions.
via Wired
Keep an eye out for Vogon spaceships...
The Picture Says It All
(click to enlarge)
TW: The expressions on Verdell Jones (right) and Derek Elston(center) say it all. IU's super frosh Mo Creek's kneecap ended up in a bad place on a drive last night in a nothing game. IU's basketball team cannot catch a break (or at least a good one, the kneecap is fractured taking Creek out for the season) these days.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Amazing
(click on image to enlarge)
From Boston Globe's Big Picture blog:
"This is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. Starting in late 2003, astronomers pointed Hubble at a tiny, relatively empty part of our sky (only a few stars from the Milky Way visible), and created an exposure nearly 12 days long over a four-month period. The result is this amazing image, looking back through time at thousands of galaxies that range from 1 to 13 billion light-years away from Earth. Some 10,000 galaxies were observed in this tiny patch of sky (a tenth the size of the full moon) - each galaxy a home to billions of stars."
TW: Our knowledge of the universe is ridiculously limited.
Classic Posts: Iran!!
From June 15, 2009
TW: Big things are happening in Iran. Regardless of the outcome, our lives will be impacted for better or worse, count on it. That we have a proper POTUS can only help but will not be the primary driver, some things are just not about us.
From Mike Schearer at Time:
"Despite the occasional English-language sign toted amid the protesting masses in Tehran, one fact remains: the protests in Iran this week, unlike the turmoil that preceded the 1979 Iranian revolution, does not have so much to do directly with the United States. The dispute now gripping the Iranian streets is one of domestic politics in the most literal sense, with different factions of the government and political elite struggling against each other over mostly domestic issues.
...But the White House is consciously working to avoid any statements that might provide fuel for Ahmadinejad's populist rants. All of the public comments so far have sought to minimize the United States role in adjudicating or intervening in the Iranian dispute. "The point is this is not about us," said one administration official, who has been working on the issue of Iran. "The point here is we will continue to monitor the situation to see how it, in a sense, resolves itself over the coming days. The pressure is on them to demonstrate to the world that this was a legitimate election and that the outcome reflects the will of the Iranian people."
...This position makes diplomatic sense. Obama is seeking expanded relations with the Iranian government no matter who controls the presidency. But as Scott Wilson points out in the Washington Post today, the wait-and-see approach is also not always the rule in U.S. diplomacy. It took just one day for the Bush Administration to recognize the unelected interim government in Venezuela, after Hugo Chavez was briefly toppled in a coup in 2002. The decision quickly turned into an embarrassment for the White House, as Chavez regained power a few days later."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/06/15/obama-aide-on-iran-its-not-about-us/
From Andrew Sullivan:
"This blog has long been interested in Iran, especially in its younger generation so open to the West. Part of it is that I've long believed that Iran was much more likely to become a democracy than its neighboring Arab states - and that this might be the key to unwinding the clash of civilizations that was hurtling us toward apocalyptic scenarios. Part of it is that being immersed in online media, I'm perhaps more aware of the vibrant debate, evolving culture and amazing passion of Iran's Millennials. So this day is a moment of great hope and joy for those of us who have been waiting for it and knowing that one day, it would come. But many Americans have, sadly, been left unaware of this phenomenon - and a glance at the cable news of the weekend helps explain why..."
TW: Big things are happening in Iran. Regardless of the outcome, our lives will be impacted for better or worse, count on it. That we have a proper POTUS can only help but will not be the primary driver, some things are just not about us.
From Mike Schearer at Time:
"Despite the occasional English-language sign toted amid the protesting masses in Tehran, one fact remains: the protests in Iran this week, unlike the turmoil that preceded the 1979 Iranian revolution, does not have so much to do directly with the United States. The dispute now gripping the Iranian streets is one of domestic politics in the most literal sense, with different factions of the government and political elite struggling against each other over mostly domestic issues.
...But the White House is consciously working to avoid any statements that might provide fuel for Ahmadinejad's populist rants. All of the public comments so far have sought to minimize the United States role in adjudicating or intervening in the Iranian dispute. "The point is this is not about us," said one administration official, who has been working on the issue of Iran. "The point here is we will continue to monitor the situation to see how it, in a sense, resolves itself over the coming days. The pressure is on them to demonstrate to the world that this was a legitimate election and that the outcome reflects the will of the Iranian people."
...This position makes diplomatic sense. Obama is seeking expanded relations with the Iranian government no matter who controls the presidency. But as Scott Wilson points out in the Washington Post today, the wait-and-see approach is also not always the rule in U.S. diplomacy. It took just one day for the Bush Administration to recognize the unelected interim government in Venezuela, after Hugo Chavez was briefly toppled in a coup in 2002. The decision quickly turned into an embarrassment for the White House, as Chavez regained power a few days later."
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/06/15/obama-aide-on-iran-its-not-about-us/
From Andrew Sullivan:
"This blog has long been interested in Iran, especially in its younger generation so open to the West. Part of it is that I've long believed that Iran was much more likely to become a democracy than its neighboring Arab states - and that this might be the key to unwinding the clash of civilizations that was hurtling us toward apocalyptic scenarios. Part of it is that being immersed in online media, I'm perhaps more aware of the vibrant debate, evolving culture and amazing passion of Iran's Millennials. So this day is a moment of great hope and joy for those of us who have been waiting for it and knowing that one day, it would come. But many Americans have, sadly, been left unaware of this phenomenon - and a glance at the cable news of the weekend helps explain why..."
Viewing Terror Dispassionately
TW: Certainly terrorism retains symbolic impacts challenging to define by cold hard numbers. But at some point I would hope Americans could, unlike its MSM media, foil terrorism by not fixating and obsessing about it. This weekend's coverage has been ridiculously overwrought and self-absorbed...as usual. No doubt the coming week will add the spice of partisan demagougery.
From Nate Silver at 538.com:
"...Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas.
...Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.
These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.
Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.
There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning..."
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html
From Nate Silver at 538.com:
"...Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas.
...Over the past decade, according to BTS, there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.
These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 mles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune.
Assuming an average airborne speed of 425 miles per hour, these airplanes were aloft for a total of 163,331,261 hours. Therefore, there has been one terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne. This can also be expressed as one incident per 1,134,245 days airborne, or one incident per 3,105 years airborne.
There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning..."
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html
Classic Posts: How Big Is This Iran Thing?
From September 2009
TW: BIG. Very big.
The world is witnessing an organic push for democracy, not imposed by the West, an internal organic push by its own citizens. This would be a first in that part of the world. Mind you this is not a push for liberalized Western democracy with codified individual liberties, strong judiciary etc. so the resulting regime, should it ever assume power, would be a different animal than say a Vaclav Havel Czech republic. Yet it would be a massive improvement compared to the status quo.
Two pivotal events occurred in 1978-1979, the overthrow of the Shah with an installation of the Shiite theocracy in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both events have led to a spiraling series of negative impacts on the West.
An agitating Iran seeking to foment problems for the West at many turns (i.e. Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, indirect terrorist acts in the 1980's etc.). While the Afghani Soviet freedom fighters originally strongly supported by the West morphed directly into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda (two related but very different entities).
Imagine an Iranian regime less outward focused on causing distracting mischief and more inwardly focused on addressing its own population's needs and desires. The Iranian economy has never come close to its potential under the clumsy leadership of the theocracy and the populist Ahmadinejad. The economic sanctions imposed by the West while by no means 100% effective could if reduced greatly help the economic development of a nation under more enlightened leadership.
An Iranian pluralistic revolution would also create a template which could have serious implications for the balance of the Middle East and South Asia. The Islamic Revolution of Khomeini launched the strident, radicalized Islam with which the West has wrestled for thirty years. Radicalized Islam replaced the nationalistic but secular movements of Nassar in Egypt and Assad in Syria as the leading anti-Western alternative.
A less theocratic, more pluralistic Iranian revolution could provide (especially combined with the evolving Iraqi nation) a means by the people of the region could engage with the West in a far more constructive manner.
Will this happen? who knows. Even if it does the challenges will be considerable- the Iranian nuclear program will not go away and a less theocratic and pluralistic Iran would still have no interest in being the West's lackey. That said should this revolution occur, and perhaps even it does not, this revolution unlike the last may make the world a less dangerous place.
TW: BIG. Very big.
The world is witnessing an organic push for democracy, not imposed by the West, an internal organic push by its own citizens. This would be a first in that part of the world. Mind you this is not a push for liberalized Western democracy with codified individual liberties, strong judiciary etc. so the resulting regime, should it ever assume power, would be a different animal than say a Vaclav Havel Czech republic. Yet it would be a massive improvement compared to the status quo.
Two pivotal events occurred in 1978-1979, the overthrow of the Shah with an installation of the Shiite theocracy in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Both events have led to a spiraling series of negative impacts on the West.
An agitating Iran seeking to foment problems for the West at many turns (i.e. Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Palestine, indirect terrorist acts in the 1980's etc.). While the Afghani Soviet freedom fighters originally strongly supported by the West morphed directly into the Taliban and Al-Qaeda (two related but very different entities).
Imagine an Iranian regime less outward focused on causing distracting mischief and more inwardly focused on addressing its own population's needs and desires. The Iranian economy has never come close to its potential under the clumsy leadership of the theocracy and the populist Ahmadinejad. The economic sanctions imposed by the West while by no means 100% effective could if reduced greatly help the economic development of a nation under more enlightened leadership.
An Iranian pluralistic revolution would also create a template which could have serious implications for the balance of the Middle East and South Asia. The Islamic Revolution of Khomeini launched the strident, radicalized Islam with which the West has wrestled for thirty years. Radicalized Islam replaced the nationalistic but secular movements of Nassar in Egypt and Assad in Syria as the leading anti-Western alternative.
A less theocratic, more pluralistic Iranian revolution could provide (especially combined with the evolving Iraqi nation) a means by the people of the region could engage with the West in a far more constructive manner.
Will this happen? who knows. Even if it does the challenges will be considerable- the Iranian nuclear program will not go away and a less theocratic and pluralistic Iran would still have no interest in being the West's lackey. That said should this revolution occur, and perhaps even it does not, this revolution unlike the last may make the world a less dangerous place.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Naughty Obsolescence
TW: Huffington put together 12 key tech/everyday things which have become at least nearly obsolete since the turn of the century. Would be interesting to predict the coming decade's list. See here.
Nuclear Power At Sea?
TW: Cargo ships are big and prodigious users of oil, usually highly pollutive dirty oils. What about creating nuke powered ships? Innovators will search for workarounds, perhaps nuke cargo ships will provide an answer.
From Gahlran at Info Dissemination:
"...The head of Chinese shipping giant Cosco has suggested that container ships should be powered by nuclear reactors in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, said to account for 4% of the global total. Shipping companies have gradually been introducing 'super slow steaming', a measure designed to cut fuel consumption and substantially reduce emissions by running engines at very low speed. However, Wei Jiafu, Cosco's president and CEO, speaking at the Senior Maritime Forum of the China International Maritime Exhibition (Marintec China) in Shanghai, said that introducing nuclear-powered ships could be an even cleaner solution. He said, "As they are already onboard submarines, why not cargo ships?" He said that Cosco is in talks with China's nuclear authority to develop nuclear powered freight vessels.
...Let’s begin by noting that a merchant vessel with nuclear power is likely going to be gigantic and will require a highly specialized crew. The costs of operating such a ship will be very high, but with its great size, potential speed, endurance, and cost tradeoffs there may in fact be a lucrative profit margin behind such a vessel. It is also important to note that the vast majority of trained nuclear propulsion experts today are American, so to expect American business interests to immediately dismiss this would be to misunderstand the size, scope, and depth of the discussion.
...What about accidents and piracy? The seas are not immune to Murphy's Law. What happens when a nuclear powered COSCO ship hits a bridge in San Francisco?
...The political ramifications will be enormous, from national security to environment; the range of policy issues will be quite large. Many countries do not allow nuclear powered ships in port, although with ships as large as the ones likely envisioned by COSCO, most countries who object may not have the facilities or the demand to support such large ships. For example, Canada may reject allowing such a ship into their country, but the US may allow nuclear merchant vessels into specific ports. It would be interesting if it ever became more efficient for China to ship into the US on large nuclear ships, then rail cargo into Canada instead of shipping directly to Canada. That is just an example, because I can envision a scenario where Mexico allows huge nuclear ships, and California, Washington, and Oregon did not..."
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2009/12/will-cosco-save-planet-with-nuclear.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InformationDissemination+%28Information+Dissemination%29
From Gahlran at Info Dissemination:
"...The head of Chinese shipping giant Cosco has suggested that container ships should be powered by nuclear reactors in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from shipping, said to account for 4% of the global total. Shipping companies have gradually been introducing 'super slow steaming', a measure designed to cut fuel consumption and substantially reduce emissions by running engines at very low speed. However, Wei Jiafu, Cosco's president and CEO, speaking at the Senior Maritime Forum of the China International Maritime Exhibition (Marintec China) in Shanghai, said that introducing nuclear-powered ships could be an even cleaner solution. He said, "As they are already onboard submarines, why not cargo ships?" He said that Cosco is in talks with China's nuclear authority to develop nuclear powered freight vessels.
...Let’s begin by noting that a merchant vessel with nuclear power is likely going to be gigantic and will require a highly specialized crew. The costs of operating such a ship will be very high, but with its great size, potential speed, endurance, and cost tradeoffs there may in fact be a lucrative profit margin behind such a vessel. It is also important to note that the vast majority of trained nuclear propulsion experts today are American, so to expect American business interests to immediately dismiss this would be to misunderstand the size, scope, and depth of the discussion.
...What about accidents and piracy? The seas are not immune to Murphy's Law. What happens when a nuclear powered COSCO ship hits a bridge in San Francisco?
...The political ramifications will be enormous, from national security to environment; the range of policy issues will be quite large. Many countries do not allow nuclear powered ships in port, although with ships as large as the ones likely envisioned by COSCO, most countries who object may not have the facilities or the demand to support such large ships. For example, Canada may reject allowing such a ship into their country, but the US may allow nuclear merchant vessels into specific ports. It would be interesting if it ever became more efficient for China to ship into the US on large nuclear ships, then rail cargo into Canada instead of shipping directly to Canada. That is just an example, because I can envision a scenario where Mexico allows huge nuclear ships, and California, Washington, and Oregon did not..."
http://www.informationdissemination.net/2009/12/will-cosco-save-planet-with-nuclear.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+InformationDissemination+%28Information+Dissemination%29
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Looking Back At "Things I Wanted To See Happen In 2009"
TW: Early in January I mentioned a hodgepodge of things I was hoping would happen in 2009. See here.
http://treylaura.blogspot.com/search/label/Things%20I%20Would%20Like%20To%20Happen%20in%202009
While I doubt much has been done to reduce the influence of lotteries, we did manage to achieve several of the hopes: more balance between Israel and Palestine, ending the eastern European missile shield, some increased funding for science amongst others.
http://treylaura.blogspot.com/search/label/Things%20I%20Would%20Like%20To%20Happen%20in%202009
While I doubt much has been done to reduce the influence of lotteries, we did manage to achieve several of the hopes: more balance between Israel and Palestine, ending the eastern European missile shield, some increased funding for science amongst others.
Friday, December 25, 2009
Thursday, December 24, 2009
How Is He Doing?
From Andrew Sullivan at Atlantic:
"I remain...extremely bullish on the guy. There is a huge amount to come - finding a way to bring down long-term debt, ensuring health insurance reform stays on track and reformed constantly to control costs, turning the corner on non-carbon energy, reforming entitlements, finding a new revenue stream like a VAT, preventing Israel from attacking Iran, preventing Iran's coup regime from going even roguer, withdrawing from an Iraq still teetering on new sectarian conflict, avoiding a second downturn, closing Gitmo for good, ending the gay ban in the military ... well, you get the picture.
Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it.
Yes, we have. And yes, we still are the ones we've been waiting for - if we still care enough to swallow purism and pride and show up for the less emotionally satisfying grind of real, practical, incremental reform."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/meep-meep.html
TW: It is never easy, never has been, never will. In talking to my more independently minded friends, most of whom voted for Obama but also had voted for W. Bush at least once; I get the feeling they agree with the sentiments above. Who else would be doing better given the circumstances? Certainly no visible Republican. His opponents are loud and obnoxious but loud and obnoxious is just that.
"I remain...extremely bullish on the guy. There is a huge amount to come - finding a way to bring down long-term debt, ensuring health insurance reform stays on track and reformed constantly to control costs, turning the corner on non-carbon energy, reforming entitlements, finding a new revenue stream like a VAT, preventing Israel from attacking Iran, preventing Iran's coup regime from going even roguer, withdrawing from an Iraq still teetering on new sectarian conflict, avoiding a second downturn, closing Gitmo for good, ending the gay ban in the military ... well, you get the picture.
Change of this magnitude is extremely hard. That it is also frustrating, inadequate, compromised, flawed, and beset with bribes and trade-offs does not, in my mind, undermine it. Obama told us it would be like this - and it is. And those who backed him last year would do better, to my mind, if they appreciated the difficulty of this task and the diligence and civility that Obama has displayed in executing it.
Yes, we have. And yes, we still are the ones we've been waiting for - if we still care enough to swallow purism and pride and show up for the less emotionally satisfying grind of real, practical, incremental reform."
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/meep-meep.html
TW: It is never easy, never has been, never will. In talking to my more independently minded friends, most of whom voted for Obama but also had voted for W. Bush at least once; I get the feeling they agree with the sentiments above. Who else would be doing better given the circumstances? Certainly no visible Republican. His opponents are loud and obnoxious but loud and obnoxious is just that.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
A Lesson On Something You Do Not Want To Do
TW: Food eating contests are a really bad idea to me, but then that is me so here is a guide if you feel the need to compete.
From Wired:
"…How to Win an Eating Contest
With good technique, you, too, can be a gustatory champion. We consulted with chowhound Crazy Legs Conti, who holds four world records in competitive eating, and Gerard Mullin, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, to find a safe and speedy method of gold-medal gluttony. The only question now is, have you got the guts?
— Jen Trolio
1. Pick the right food.
Rookies should cut their teeth on soft, single-component items like meatballs, funnel cakes, and grits. Gradually work your way up to multitextured, bread-and-meat combos like hot dogs and hamburgers.
2. Eat strategically.
You can’t just shovel it in and hope for the best. With pizza, for instance, try the reverse-fold: The cheese on the outside acts as a lubricant and protects the roof of your mouth from the abrasive crust.
3. Breathe through your nose.
An eating contest is no time to be a mouth-breather: You’ll risk choking and waste precious seconds stopping to gasp for air. For unimpeded consumption, breathe carefully through your nose while you gorge.
4. Divide to conquer.
“Reversing” food means instant disqualification. Suppress your gag reflex by dividing the chow mentally into smaller, more manageable portions. Drink water to push vittles to the small intestine and free up your gut."
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/st_howto_1801/
From Wired:
"…How to Win an Eating Contest
With good technique, you, too, can be a gustatory champion. We consulted with chowhound Crazy Legs Conti, who holds four world records in competitive eating, and Gerard Mullin, associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins, to find a safe and speedy method of gold-medal gluttony. The only question now is, have you got the guts?
— Jen Trolio
1. Pick the right food.
Rookies should cut their teeth on soft, single-component items like meatballs, funnel cakes, and grits. Gradually work your way up to multitextured, bread-and-meat combos like hot dogs and hamburgers.
2. Eat strategically.
You can’t just shovel it in and hope for the best. With pizza, for instance, try the reverse-fold: The cheese on the outside acts as a lubricant and protects the roof of your mouth from the abrasive crust.
3. Breathe through your nose.
An eating contest is no time to be a mouth-breather: You’ll risk choking and waste precious seconds stopping to gasp for air. For unimpeded consumption, breathe carefully through your nose while you gorge.
4. Divide to conquer.
“Reversing” food means instant disqualification. Suppress your gag reflex by dividing the chow mentally into smaller, more manageable portions. Drink water to push vittles to the small intestine and free up your gut."
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/st_howto_1801/
Banker Hypocrisy
TW: This piece frames the relative hypocrisy of many business folks their mantra is simple: if something goes wrong it is the government's fault, if something goes right it is due to their own brilliance. Ironic coming from a banker. And somehow this banker survived the government's malevolence whilst his poor competitors did not. An on-going theme now is to give the Fed and the government no credit for averting a catastrophe whilst accepting little or no personal responsibility for the crisis. Again ironic coming from those who constantly get all righteous about various forms of personal responsibility.
Anyone who spouts Ayn Rand is immediately dubious in my eyes. Many of my contemporaries came of age reading Rand during the Reagan administration, I fear they have been scarred for life especially as many of them did not read more than one or two books total the entire time I knew them.
From Economist:
"...the latest guest is John Allison, CEO of BB&T a regional American bank. Mr Allison is hard-core devotee of the work of Ayn Rand, and consequently, the interview is not very interesting. His answer to basically every question asked is: the government did it. Like so:
Question: What bank regulatory mechanisms, if any, might have prevented the crises?
John Allison: In my opinion, the crisis was primarily created by government policies, specifically the Federal Reserve putting in too much money under Greenspan where we had negative real interest rates for two years. And then Bernanke inverted interest rates, which created terrible pressure on bank margins. We couldn’t have had a bubble in the economy if the Fed hadn’t printed too much money. It ended up in the housing market because of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, these two giant government sponsored enterprises. So it wasn’t really the regulatory structure that created the problems, it was government policy from the Fed and through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
This is wrong in many different ways. First, the suggestion that a bubble was impossible without a complicit Fed is absurd; Mr Greenspan was holding rates low to clean up after a bubble that had just popped, which inflated in an environment of high Fed rates. Secondly, low rates or no, America was running a massive trade deficit with China and a huge petroleum deficit with oil exporters, the flipside of which was a capital account surplus. Other countries were purchasing huge amounts of American debt, including gobs of mortgage debt. Mr Greenspan might have raised the fed funds rate high enough to deflate the rising housing bubble, but only at the cost of a severe recession. The whole of the blame for the money pouring into housing cannot be pinned on the American government.
Meanwhile, the definition of a subprime loan is one which cannot be guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The story of the massive growth in subprime originations in the latter stages of the bubble is the story of growth in non-agency mortgage lending. Fannie and Freddie did begin purchasing mortgage debt originated by other lenders, which did free up capital for additional mortgage lending, but it's just not right to say that the government is responsible for the housing bubble.
And Mr Allison essentially acknowledges this fact just a few minutes later:
Question: What was responsible for BB&T’s relative success and why weren’t other banks so fortunate?
John Allison: Well, BB&T certainly, we’ve had our challenges and we always have made mistakes, but we have done much better than other financial institutions and I primarily think it’s because of the value system we have at BB&T. We’ve had some good strategies and good execution, but they are very secondary to the fact that we were very much a principal driven organization. We’ve had a very strong culture around ethics and values for a long period of time and we’ve reinforced that over and over again. And that value system is based on rationality, which demands honesty, demands integrity, demands a long-term perspective on your business...
Interestingly enough, our value system kept us from making the negative amortization or what are the pick-a-payment mortgages. I remember pick-a-payment mortgages where somebody buys a house and their interest is $1,000 a month, but they only pay $500 a month. We chose not to do those kind of mortgages, not over some grand insight, because at the time, you could sell them in the secondary market, but because one of the fundamental commitments in our mission is to help our clients achieve economic success and financial security. We expect to make a profit doing it, but we don’t consciously want to ever do anything that’s bad for our clients. We knew real estate markets wouldn’t appreciate a 10% a year forever, we didn’t except them to depreciate like they had, but we knew that people would be taking an inordinate risk with those pick-a-payment mortgages and we chose not to do them over ethics, not over economics. So BB&T’s strength, I believe, has been its value system.
Mr Allison credits BB&T's relatively good performance through the crisis with its policy of not doing dumb, irresponsible, excessively risky, or unethical things. But if BB&T were free to not be stupid and unethical, then surely other financial institutions were as well. But, he implies, they opted not to follow that path, and as a result they suffered big losses, which triggered the broader financial crisis. Thus Mr Allison argues that the crisis stemmed from poor decisions made by his competitors.
As much as I support that conclusion, I'm forced to rethink it by Mr Allison's later espousal of a return to a gold standard and an elimination of deposit insurance. That is, he very much wants to reverse the main policy changes that prevented this recession from turning into the Great Depression."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/12/pointing_the_finger
Anyone who spouts Ayn Rand is immediately dubious in my eyes. Many of my contemporaries came of age reading Rand during the Reagan administration, I fear they have been scarred for life especially as many of them did not read more than one or two books total the entire time I knew them.
From Economist:
"...the latest guest is John Allison, CEO of BB&T a regional American bank. Mr Allison is hard-core devotee of the work of Ayn Rand, and consequently, the interview is not very interesting. His answer to basically every question asked is: the government did it. Like so:
Question: What bank regulatory mechanisms, if any, might have prevented the crises?
John Allison: In my opinion, the crisis was primarily created by government policies, specifically the Federal Reserve putting in too much money under Greenspan where we had negative real interest rates for two years. And then Bernanke inverted interest rates, which created terrible pressure on bank margins. We couldn’t have had a bubble in the economy if the Fed hadn’t printed too much money. It ended up in the housing market because of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, these two giant government sponsored enterprises. So it wasn’t really the regulatory structure that created the problems, it was government policy from the Fed and through Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
This is wrong in many different ways. First, the suggestion that a bubble was impossible without a complicit Fed is absurd; Mr Greenspan was holding rates low to clean up after a bubble that had just popped, which inflated in an environment of high Fed rates. Secondly, low rates or no, America was running a massive trade deficit with China and a huge petroleum deficit with oil exporters, the flipside of which was a capital account surplus. Other countries were purchasing huge amounts of American debt, including gobs of mortgage debt. Mr Greenspan might have raised the fed funds rate high enough to deflate the rising housing bubble, but only at the cost of a severe recession. The whole of the blame for the money pouring into housing cannot be pinned on the American government.
Meanwhile, the definition of a subprime loan is one which cannot be guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The story of the massive growth in subprime originations in the latter stages of the bubble is the story of growth in non-agency mortgage lending. Fannie and Freddie did begin purchasing mortgage debt originated by other lenders, which did free up capital for additional mortgage lending, but it's just not right to say that the government is responsible for the housing bubble.
And Mr Allison essentially acknowledges this fact just a few minutes later:
Question: What was responsible for BB&T’s relative success and why weren’t other banks so fortunate?
John Allison: Well, BB&T certainly, we’ve had our challenges and we always have made mistakes, but we have done much better than other financial institutions and I primarily think it’s because of the value system we have at BB&T. We’ve had some good strategies and good execution, but they are very secondary to the fact that we were very much a principal driven organization. We’ve had a very strong culture around ethics and values for a long period of time and we’ve reinforced that over and over again. And that value system is based on rationality, which demands honesty, demands integrity, demands a long-term perspective on your business...
Interestingly enough, our value system kept us from making the negative amortization or what are the pick-a-payment mortgages. I remember pick-a-payment mortgages where somebody buys a house and their interest is $1,000 a month, but they only pay $500 a month. We chose not to do those kind of mortgages, not over some grand insight, because at the time, you could sell them in the secondary market, but because one of the fundamental commitments in our mission is to help our clients achieve economic success and financial security. We expect to make a profit doing it, but we don’t consciously want to ever do anything that’s bad for our clients. We knew real estate markets wouldn’t appreciate a 10% a year forever, we didn’t except them to depreciate like they had, but we knew that people would be taking an inordinate risk with those pick-a-payment mortgages and we chose not to do them over ethics, not over economics. So BB&T’s strength, I believe, has been its value system.
Mr Allison credits BB&T's relatively good performance through the crisis with its policy of not doing dumb, irresponsible, excessively risky, or unethical things. But if BB&T were free to not be stupid and unethical, then surely other financial institutions were as well. But, he implies, they opted not to follow that path, and as a result they suffered big losses, which triggered the broader financial crisis. Thus Mr Allison argues that the crisis stemmed from poor decisions made by his competitors.
As much as I support that conclusion, I'm forced to rethink it by Mr Allison's later espousal of a return to a gold standard and an elimination of deposit insurance. That is, he very much wants to reverse the main policy changes that prevented this recession from turning into the Great Depression."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2009/12/pointing_the_finger
Could There Be a Stronger Argument For Gun Control?
TW: Chuck Schumer and Ben Nelson "hunting" in Nebraska...what has the world come to...those two trying to hunt has to mess up the cosmos somehow. Some folks really should not be allowed to dress up and use a gun that way.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Feynman the Rubber Band Man
TW: The late Richard Feynman was noted for not only his brilliance but his ability to articulate the complex into simplified explanations. In other words he was truly brilliant.
Kinda Harsh...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/opinions/anntelnaes/?hpid=opinionsbox1&referrer=emaillink
TW:...but we always like blog reader suggestions....
TW:...but we always like blog reader suggestions....
No Kidding!!
From Joe Klein at Time:
"A friend suggests that one of the reasons why support for health care reform has ticked upwards in recent days--and that support for the war in Afghanistan ticked upward after the President announced his policy--is that people hate DC gridlock, with its accompanying ration of pettiness. They want action and hope it works. I hope it works, too."
TW: I would file this under the no shit category. Why do you think the Republicans have adopted the oppose everything 24/7/365 approach. Because it works. And also because the corralary is true. If Obama with some Republican help was blazing trails with a united front to address climate change, health care, the economy etc. all incumbents would be polling through the roof, instead there is talk of a 2010 Republican wave. Folks like to say it does not but it does which is a shame (for the governance of our nation) but a reality of life.
"A friend suggests that one of the reasons why support for health care reform has ticked upwards in recent days--and that support for the war in Afghanistan ticked upward after the President announced his policy--is that people hate DC gridlock, with its accompanying ration of pettiness. They want action and hope it works. I hope it works, too."
TW: I would file this under the no shit category. Why do you think the Republicans have adopted the oppose everything 24/7/365 approach. Because it works. And also because the corralary is true. If Obama with some Republican help was blazing trails with a united front to address climate change, health care, the economy etc. all incumbents would be polling through the roof, instead there is talk of a 2010 Republican wave. Folks like to say it does not but it does which is a shame (for the governance of our nation) but a reality of life.
Picture Of the Year
TW: Someone asked me what I thought of Obama's first year. It is simple. Times are challenging, they always are. There is no other human being I would rather have in the office and there has been no other one during my lifetime. Folks on the left have fantasies about him being able to wave a magic wand to accomplish their goals despite the rest of the country not buying into them. To them I say trying managing something in real life instead of theorizing lala land stuff. Folks on the right, just do not like the concept of a progressive POTUS black, white or whatever. To them I say, I can only hope our side keeps winning enough elections to keep the luddites, reactionaries and "good, old days" fetishists out of power.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Best Of 2009: Yum, Yum, Yum
TW: This really should have been part of a Laura "food" post but she refused...I have always been more or less impervious to the occasional hair etc. in my food, this piece validates my cynicism...
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...insects and mold in our food are not new. The FDA actually condones a certain percentage of "natural contaminants" in our food supply - meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.
In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet "The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans," the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such "defects" for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.
Among the booklet's list of allowable defects are "insect filth," "rodent filth" (both hair and excreta pellets), "mold," "insects," "mammalian excreta," "rot," "insects and larvae" (which is to say, maggots), "insects and mites," "insects and insect eggs," "drosophila fly," "sand and grit," "parasites," "mildew" and "foreign matter" (which includes "objectionable" items like "sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.").
Tomato juice, for example, may average "10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams - the equivalent of a small juice glass - or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots." Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation - 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.
Canned mushrooms may have "over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid" or "five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid" or an "average of 75 mites" before provoking action by the FDA.
The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.
Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one's food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.
Peanut butter - that culinary cause célèbre - may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.
In case you're curious: You're probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.
The FDA considers the significance of these defects to be "aesthetic" or "offensive to the senses," which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the "mouth/tooth injury" one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is "impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects."
The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited six times since first being issued in May 1995) reassuringly states that "the defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products - the averages are actually much lower." Instead, it says, "The levels represent limits at which FDA will regard the food product 'adulterated' and subject to enforcement action."
...But the unsettling reality is that despite food's reassuring packaging and nutritional labeling, we don't really know what we're putting into our mouths...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/news/edlevy.php
From Int'l Herald Tribune:
"...insects and mold in our food are not new. The FDA actually condones a certain percentage of "natural contaminants" in our food supply - meaning, among other things, bugs, mold, rodent hairs and maggots.
In its (falsely) reassuringly subtitled booklet "The Food Defect Action Levels: Levels of Natural or Unavoidable Defects in Foods That Present No Health Hazards for Humans," the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition establishes acceptable levels of such "defects" for a range of foods products, from allspice to peanut butter.
Among the booklet's list of allowable defects are "insect filth," "rodent filth" (both hair and excreta pellets), "mold," "insects," "mammalian excreta," "rot," "insects and larvae" (which is to say, maggots), "insects and mites," "insects and insect eggs," "drosophila fly," "sand and grit," "parasites," "mildew" and "foreign matter" (which includes "objectionable" items like "sticks, stones, burlap bagging, cigarette butts, etc.").
Tomato juice, for example, may average "10 or more fly eggs per 100 grams - the equivalent of a small juice glass - or five or more fly eggs and one or more maggots." Tomato paste and other pizza sauces are allowed a denser infestation - 30 or more fly eggs per 100 grams or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams.
Canned mushrooms may have "over 20 or more maggots of any size per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid" or "five or more maggots two millimeters or longer per 100 grams of drained mushrooms and proportionate liquid" or an "average of 75 mites" before provoking action by the FDA.
The sauerkraut on your hot dog may average up to 50 thrips. And when washing down those tiny, slender, winged bugs with a sip of beer, you might consider that just 10 grams of hops could have as many as 2,500 plant lice. Yum.
Giving new meaning to the idea of spicing up one's food, curry powder is allowed 100 or more bug bits per 25 grams; ground thyme up to 925 insect fragments per 10 grams; ground pepper up to 475 insect parts per 50 grams. One small shaker of cinnamon could have more than 20 rodent hairs before being considered defective.
Peanut butter - that culinary cause célèbre - may contain approximately 145 bug parts for an 18-ounce jar; or five or more rodent hairs for that same jar; or more than 125 milligrams of grit.
In case you're curious: You're probably ingesting one to two pounds of flies, maggots and mites each year without knowing it, a quantity of insects that clearly does not cut the mustard, even as insects may well be in the mustard.
The FDA considers the significance of these defects to be "aesthetic" or "offensive to the senses," which is to say, merely icky as opposed to the "mouth/tooth injury" one risks with, for example, insufficiently pitted prunes. This policy is justified on economic grounds, stating that it is "impractical to grow, harvest or process raw products that are totally free of non-hazardous, naturally occurring, unavoidable defects."
The most recent edition of the booklet (it has been revised and edited six times since first being issued in May 1995) reassuringly states that "the defect levels do not represent an average of the defects that occur in any of the products - the averages are actually much lower." Instead, it says, "The levels represent limits at which FDA will regard the food product 'adulterated' and subject to enforcement action."
...But the unsettling reality is that despite food's reassuring packaging and nutritional labeling, we don't really know what we're putting into our mouths...
http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/02/13/news/edlevy.php
Best Of 2009: Laura Misses Her Flight
TW: She has been taking language lessons which came out spontaneously
Best Of 2009: Every Mummy Needs a Spritz
TW: As you many know the Soviets mummified Lenin 90 or so years ago when he took the down card. But like any mummy he apparently needs a tune-up once a year or so, a bath to refresh.
TW: The interesting thing about this post which originally went up last March is that it still garners hits generally from international surfers.
TW: The interesting thing about this post which originally went up last March is that it still garners hits generally from international surfers.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
I Wonder....
TW:...if back in 1918 every little snowstorm became a national headline event like it does now...it could snow a foot in Chicago, Cincy, Pittsburgh, Denver, KC etc. and the media hardly notices...but the East Coast...noooo, stop the presses...oooh it is snowing soooo much
Friday, December 18, 2009
What Was New Becomes the Obsolete
TW: Always heart me some old high tech advertisements...things do evolve.
Happy Holidays??
Have you sent your Holiday cards out yet?
Maybe you're waiting because you haven't had time to do the annual newsletter.
Wait no more - help is here. It's the Merry Newsinator
Just answer some brief questions and the Merry Newsinator will put your news into a fun and slightly accurate format to share with friends and family.
Happy Holidays!
Maybe you're waiting because you haven't had time to do the annual newsletter.
Wait no more - help is here. It's the Merry Newsinator
Just answer some brief questions and the Merry Newsinator will put your news into a fun and slightly accurate format to share with friends and family.
Happy Holidays!
How Not To Be a Media Relations Manager
TW: Have never heard of any of the companies or people below, but I thought the quote from the media person to be priceless. Usually media managers are smarmy spinners, not so much in Ms. Laumaea's case.
From Felix Salmon at Reuters:
"On Monday, Barry Minkow put out a press release accusing a NYSE-listed company, InterOil, of being “nothing more than hype”. InterOil has had a large short interest for some time, and it seems that Minkow touched a nerve, because InterOil’s senior manager for media relations, Susuve Laumaea, went borderline insane via email in response:
'you are a gutless coward of the highest order, a jealous and envious SOB… You are a loser, a non-achiever and a sour-grape. Piss off you good for nothing… Do not be afraid on account of me being a descendant of cannibals … no, no, believe me, I will not cannibalise you or feed you to the swamp crocodiles…
you are known crook, conman, convicted felon, a psychopath and a pathological liar who is jealously envious… You have no sense of common decency. You are neither here nor there among the cream of decent God- fearing humanity. You are a scum of the earth, a creepy-crawlie who should have been locked away and the key thrown away too so that you rot away like the dung heap you are. You are a coward of the highest order… I can’t use you as crocodile feed because you are too poisonous … those alligators will die eating you, cooked or uncooked…
Who gave you the authority to investigate InterOil, you piece of shitty non-entity? You are nothing more than an internet pirate, a low-life manipulator who is out to profit by your dishonest, fraudulent, slanderous and cowardly methods. Up yours.'
Well, the “convicted felon” bit is actually true, but in many ways that just makes Minkow more believable as an uncoverer of fraud. But somehow it’s not easy to trust a company which accuses its critics of being a “dung heap”, and tells them they are too poisonous to feed to crocodiles."
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/12/17/media-relations-emails-of-the-day-interoil-edition/
From Felix Salmon at Reuters:
"On Monday, Barry Minkow put out a press release accusing a NYSE-listed company, InterOil, of being “nothing more than hype”. InterOil has had a large short interest for some time, and it seems that Minkow touched a nerve, because InterOil’s senior manager for media relations, Susuve Laumaea, went borderline insane via email in response:
'you are a gutless coward of the highest order, a jealous and envious SOB… You are a loser, a non-achiever and a sour-grape. Piss off you good for nothing… Do not be afraid on account of me being a descendant of cannibals … no, no, believe me, I will not cannibalise you or feed you to the swamp crocodiles…
you are known crook, conman, convicted felon, a psychopath and a pathological liar who is jealously envious… You have no sense of common decency. You are neither here nor there among the cream of decent God- fearing humanity. You are a scum of the earth, a creepy-crawlie who should have been locked away and the key thrown away too so that you rot away like the dung heap you are. You are a coward of the highest order… I can’t use you as crocodile feed because you are too poisonous … those alligators will die eating you, cooked or uncooked…
Who gave you the authority to investigate InterOil, you piece of shitty non-entity? You are nothing more than an internet pirate, a low-life manipulator who is out to profit by your dishonest, fraudulent, slanderous and cowardly methods. Up yours.'
Well, the “convicted felon” bit is actually true, but in many ways that just makes Minkow more believable as an uncoverer of fraud. But somehow it’s not easy to trust a company which accuses its critics of being a “dung heap”, and tells them they are too poisonous to feed to crocodiles."
http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2009/12/17/media-relations-emails-of-the-day-interoil-edition/
Thursday, December 17, 2009
The Health Care Reform Will Address Cost Containment
TW: Atul Gawande reports on health care for New Yorker and has put together excellent stuff which we have highlighted before. He is out with a new piece focused on the cost containment measures in the proposed health care reform pending in Congress. The fundamental point is the bill attempts a plethora of approaches integrating cutting edge thinking on the topic. As I have said repeatedly, one person's health care cost is another's revenue. One person's frivolous test is another's reassuring procedure. Containing costs is complex at least the bill attempts to address the issue unlike those who merely sit back demagogue merrily along towards their next election.
From Atul Gawande at New Yorker as summarized by Ezra Klein:
"Pick up the Senate health-care bill -- yes, all 2,074 pages -- and leaf through it. Almost half of it is devoted to programs that would test various ways to curb costs and increase quality. The bill is a hodgepodge. And it should be.
The bill tests, for instance, a number of ways that federal insurers could pay for care. Medicare and Medicaid currently pay clinicians the same amount regardless of results. But there is a pilot program to increase payments for doctors who deliver high-quality care at lower cost, while reducing payments for those who deliver low-quality care at higher cost. There’s a program that would pay bonuses to hospitals that improve patient results after heart failure, pneumonia, and surgery. There’s a program that would impose financial penalties on institutions with high rates of infections transmitted by health-care workers. Still another would test a system of penalties and rewards scaled to the quality of home health and rehabilitation care.
Other experiments try moving medicine away from fee-for-service payment altogether. A bundled-payment provision would pay medical teams just one thirty-day fee for all the outpatient and inpatient services related to, say, an operation. This would give clinicians an incentive to work together to smooth care and reduce complications. One pilot would go even further, encouraging clinicians to band together into “Accountable Care Organizations” that take responsibility for all their patients’ needs, including prevention -- so that fewer patients need operations in the first place. These groups would be permitted to keep part of the savings they generate, as long as they meet quality and service thresholds.
...Which of these programs will work? We can’t know. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t credit any of them with substantial savings. The package relies on taxes and short-term payment cuts to providers in order to pay for subsidies. But, in the end, it contains a test of almost every approach that leading health-care experts have suggested. (The only one missing is malpractice reform. This is where the Republicans could be helpful.) None of this is as satisfying as a master plan. But there can’t be a master plan."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all#ixzz0ZlZtZebl
From Atul Gawande at New Yorker as summarized by Ezra Klein:
"Pick up the Senate health-care bill -- yes, all 2,074 pages -- and leaf through it. Almost half of it is devoted to programs that would test various ways to curb costs and increase quality. The bill is a hodgepodge. And it should be.
The bill tests, for instance, a number of ways that federal insurers could pay for care. Medicare and Medicaid currently pay clinicians the same amount regardless of results. But there is a pilot program to increase payments for doctors who deliver high-quality care at lower cost, while reducing payments for those who deliver low-quality care at higher cost. There’s a program that would pay bonuses to hospitals that improve patient results after heart failure, pneumonia, and surgery. There’s a program that would impose financial penalties on institutions with high rates of infections transmitted by health-care workers. Still another would test a system of penalties and rewards scaled to the quality of home health and rehabilitation care.
Other experiments try moving medicine away from fee-for-service payment altogether. A bundled-payment provision would pay medical teams just one thirty-day fee for all the outpatient and inpatient services related to, say, an operation. This would give clinicians an incentive to work together to smooth care and reduce complications. One pilot would go even further, encouraging clinicians to band together into “Accountable Care Organizations” that take responsibility for all their patients’ needs, including prevention -- so that fewer patients need operations in the first place. These groups would be permitted to keep part of the savings they generate, as long as they meet quality and service thresholds.
...Which of these programs will work? We can’t know. That’s why the Congressional Budget Office doesn’t credit any of them with substantial savings. The package relies on taxes and short-term payment cuts to providers in order to pay for subsidies. But, in the end, it contains a test of almost every approach that leading health-care experts have suggested. (The only one missing is malpractice reform. This is where the Republicans could be helpful.) None of this is as satisfying as a master plan. But there can’t be a master plan."
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/12/14/091214fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all#ixzz0ZlZtZebl
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Eeech...
TW: These shots were from a 2009 fifty weirdest celebrity shot list. I do not even have a clue how a person could manage to create arms like Madonna's much less try to do so. As for Stevie Tyler, lead singer of Aerosmith; he appears to have morphed into an elderly women.
Health Care Pragmatism
TW: One of the reason I like Silver so much is his pragmatism (Ezra Klein is similiar). Without pragmatism nothing gets done in politics, which is the Republican strategy of 24/7 opposition can be effective if getting nothing done is the goal. Some liberal Dems are getting seriously agitated that their dreams of a "pure" health care (and many others) bill is not emerging. It is all about the votes, either you have them or you do not.
From Nate Silver at 538.com:
"1. Over the medium term, how many other opportunities will exist to provide in excess of $100 billion per year in public subsidies to poor and sick people?
2. Would a bill that contained $50 billion in additional subsidies for people making less than 250% of poverty be acceptable?
3. Where is the evidence that the plan, as constructed, would substantially increase insurance industry profit margins, particularly when it is funded in part via a tax on insurers?
4. Why are some of the same people who are criticizing the bill's lack of cost control also criticizing the inclusion of the excise tax, which is one of the few cost control mechanisms to have survived the process?
5. Why are some of the same people who are criticizing the bill's lack of cost control also criticizing the inclusion of the individual mandate, which is key to controlling premiums in the individual market?
6. Would concerns about the political downside to the individual mandate in fact substantially be altered if a public plan were included among the choices? Might not the Republican talking point become: "forcing you to buy government-run insurance?"
7. Roughly how many people would in fact meet ALL of the following criteria: (i) in the individual insurance market, and not eligible for Medicaid or Medicare; (ii) consider the insurance to be a bad deal, even after substantial government subsidies; (iii) are not knowingly gaming the system by waiting to buy insurance until they become sick; (iv) are not exempt from the individual mandate penalty because of low income status or other exemptions carved out by the bill?
8. How many years is it likely to be before Democrats again have (i) at least as many non-Blue Dog seats in the Congress as they do now, and (ii) a President in the White House who would not veto an ambitious health care bill?
9. If the idea is to wait for a complete meltdown of the health care system, how likely is it that our country will respond to such a crisis in a rational fashion? How have we tended to respond to such crises in the past?
10. Where is the evidence that the public option is particularly important to base voters and/or swing voters (rather than activists), as compared with other aspects of health care reform?
11. Would base voters be less likely to turn out in 2010 if no health care plan is passed at all, rather than a reasonable plan without a public option?
12. What is the approximate likelihood that a plan passed through reconciliation would be better, on balance, from a policy perspective, than a bill passed through regular order but without a public option?
13. What is the likely extent of political fallout that might result from an attempt to use the reconciliation process?
14. How certain is it that a plan passed through reconciliation would in fact receive 51 votes (when some Democrats would might have objections to the use of the process)?
15. Are there any compromises or concessions not having to do with the provision of publicly-run health programs that could still be achieved through progressive pressure?
16. What are the chances that improvements can be made around the margins of the plan -- possibly including a public option -- between 2011 and the bill's implementation in 2014?
17. What are the potential upsides and downsides to using the 2010 midterms as a referendum on the public option, with the goal of achieving a 'mandate' for a public option that could be inserted via reconciliation?
18. Was the public option ever an attainable near-term political goal?
19. How many of the arguments that you might be making against the bill would you still be making if a public option were included (but in fact have little to do with the public option)?
20. How many of the arguments that you might be making against the bill are being made out of anger, frustration, or a desire to ring Joe Lieberman by his scruffy, no-good, backstabbing neck?"
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/20-questions-for-bill-killers.html
From Nate Silver at 538.com:
"1. Over the medium term, how many other opportunities will exist to provide in excess of $100 billion per year in public subsidies to poor and sick people?
2. Would a bill that contained $50 billion in additional subsidies for people making less than 250% of poverty be acceptable?
3. Where is the evidence that the plan, as constructed, would substantially increase insurance industry profit margins, particularly when it is funded in part via a tax on insurers?
4. Why are some of the same people who are criticizing the bill's lack of cost control also criticizing the inclusion of the excise tax, which is one of the few cost control mechanisms to have survived the process?
5. Why are some of the same people who are criticizing the bill's lack of cost control also criticizing the inclusion of the individual mandate, which is key to controlling premiums in the individual market?
6. Would concerns about the political downside to the individual mandate in fact substantially be altered if a public plan were included among the choices? Might not the Republican talking point become: "forcing you to buy government-run insurance?"
7. Roughly how many people would in fact meet ALL of the following criteria: (i) in the individual insurance market, and not eligible for Medicaid or Medicare; (ii) consider the insurance to be a bad deal, even after substantial government subsidies; (iii) are not knowingly gaming the system by waiting to buy insurance until they become sick; (iv) are not exempt from the individual mandate penalty because of low income status or other exemptions carved out by the bill?
8. How many years is it likely to be before Democrats again have (i) at least as many non-Blue Dog seats in the Congress as they do now, and (ii) a President in the White House who would not veto an ambitious health care bill?
9. If the idea is to wait for a complete meltdown of the health care system, how likely is it that our country will respond to such a crisis in a rational fashion? How have we tended to respond to such crises in the past?
10. Where is the evidence that the public option is particularly important to base voters and/or swing voters (rather than activists), as compared with other aspects of health care reform?
11. Would base voters be less likely to turn out in 2010 if no health care plan is passed at all, rather than a reasonable plan without a public option?
12. What is the approximate likelihood that a plan passed through reconciliation would be better, on balance, from a policy perspective, than a bill passed through regular order but without a public option?
13. What is the likely extent of political fallout that might result from an attempt to use the reconciliation process?
14. How certain is it that a plan passed through reconciliation would in fact receive 51 votes (when some Democrats would might have objections to the use of the process)?
15. Are there any compromises or concessions not having to do with the provision of publicly-run health programs that could still be achieved through progressive pressure?
16. What are the chances that improvements can be made around the margins of the plan -- possibly including a public option -- between 2011 and the bill's implementation in 2014?
17. What are the potential upsides and downsides to using the 2010 midterms as a referendum on the public option, with the goal of achieving a 'mandate' for a public option that could be inserted via reconciliation?
18. Was the public option ever an attainable near-term political goal?
19. How many of the arguments that you might be making against the bill would you still be making if a public option were included (but in fact have little to do with the public option)?
20. How many of the arguments that you might be making against the bill are being made out of anger, frustration, or a desire to ring Joe Lieberman by his scruffy, no-good, backstabbing neck?"
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/20-questions-for-bill-killers.html
Big Government I Strongly Believe In...
From Craig Crawford:
"Finally, Congress might do something worthwhile: Turn the volume down on TV commercials.
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, has drafted a bill aimed at preventing TV ads from playing noticeably louder than the programs they sponsor.
...As much as I'd like to see other things done on Capitol Hill, this would be a triumph. How annoying it is to dive for the remote when commercials come on. Since Congress apparently cannot do anything more significant for us, I'll take it.
Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.
Go for it, Rep. Eshoo! Small a matter as it might be, this could be the most effective move by Congress in decades"
"Finally, Congress might do something worthwhile: Turn the volume down on TV commercials.
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat, has drafted a bill aimed at preventing TV ads from playing noticeably louder than the programs they sponsor.
...As much as I'd like to see other things done on Capitol Hill, this would be a triumph. How annoying it is to dive for the remote when commercials come on. Since Congress apparently cannot do anything more significant for us, I'll take it.
Right now, the government doesn't have much say in the volume of TV ads. It's been getting complaints ever since televisions began proliferating in the 1950s. But the FCC concluded in 1984 there was no fair way to write regulations controlling the "apparent loudness" of commercials.
Go for it, Rep. Eshoo! Small a matter as it might be, this could be the most effective move by Congress in decades"
Some Stats On Climate Change
TW: Climate change is relatively complex. Faced with complexity many if not most folks simplify by falling back on biases or reliance on their reference groups or persons. I do not (unfortunately) follow too many statistical bloggers but one I do follow is pretty good at keeping things relatively simplified (within the context of stats). He and others on his site have made multiple climate change related posts. If you have the time take a peek at them. They seek to put meat on the bones of the climate change debate.
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/say_a_little_pr.html
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2009/12/say_a_little_pr.html
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
More Whiny Beeetches....
TW:... or also how doing the right thing receives so little press. Obama apparently is not stroking wealthy donors the way his recent predecessors did. This would appear to be a good thing relative to reducing the influence of big money within government although one never hears about it. The Trib probably frames the piece to make the donors come off as whiny beetches but then having known some of these types at least peripherally, they live to have their egos stroked and when the stroking is not there...they become whiny beeetches.
From Chicago Tribune:
"Some of President Barack Obama's wealthiest supporters are becoming a bit whiny, and it has nothing to do with policy.
Tickets for tours of the presidential residence are scarce, even for those who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for last year's campaign. Private fundraisers tend to be brief, businesslike affairs. And there have been no sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, weekends at Camp David or intimate lunches with the first couple.
Nearly a year into his presidency, that pattern has led some top Democratic donors across the country to grumble that they aren't getting the kind of personal attention from Obama and special access to the White House that they became used to during the eight years of the Bill Clinton presidency..."There is no connection between the administration and money people," he said. "If they do have any connection ... it is very limited as far as the fun stuff is concerned."
..."Obama is clearly not appointing bundlers to the same extent as the Bush administration did," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a group that monitors ethics in government.
"Under Clinton, we did spend time in the White House. We did spend time in Camp David. We did spend time with the president in Los Angeles," Spahn said. "There has been real frustration in the donor community in general. There is so much less of that than I think ever occurred in the past."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-white-house-donorsdec14,0,5720357.story
From Chicago Tribune:
"Some of President Barack Obama's wealthiest supporters are becoming a bit whiny, and it has nothing to do with policy.
Tickets for tours of the presidential residence are scarce, even for those who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for last year's campaign. Private fundraisers tend to be brief, businesslike affairs. And there have been no sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom, weekends at Camp David or intimate lunches with the first couple.
Nearly a year into his presidency, that pattern has led some top Democratic donors across the country to grumble that they aren't getting the kind of personal attention from Obama and special access to the White House that they became used to during the eight years of the Bill Clinton presidency..."There is no connection between the administration and money people," he said. "If they do have any connection ... it is very limited as far as the fun stuff is concerned."
..."Obama is clearly not appointing bundlers to the same extent as the Bush administration did," said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a group that monitors ethics in government.
"Under Clinton, we did spend time in the White House. We did spend time in Camp David. We did spend time with the president in Los Angeles," Spahn said. "There has been real frustration in the donor community in general. There is so much less of that than I think ever occurred in the past."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-talk-white-house-donorsdec14,0,5720357.story
Jim Cramer: Whiny Beeetch
From Jim Cramer appearing on Meet the Press:
"The CEOs I talk to, they’re hiring. They’re hiring in Brazil, they’re hiring in Russia, China. Why are they hiring in those countries? Because it’s steady, we know what to get from the government. It’s a rather — it’s rather quizzical that we know what the Communists will give us but we don’t know what the capitalists will give us."
From Jim Bianco (another Wall Street investor) via Big Picture blog:
"Let us get this straight, in corrupt and Communist countries companies are hiring. They have transparency … that the government can nationalize your company whenever they want and execute you if you complain. Here we are paralyzed because we don’t know whether our tax rate will be 40% or 42% next year"
TW: The sentiment expressed by Cramer is not unique. Wall Street and conventional American business folks are the whiniest bunch of bitches of all-time. Last summer and fall, you may recall Cramer on TV literally pounding the table demanding government intervention. Now that Armageddon (apparently) is averted, he is leading the charge back to laissez-faire. Meanwhile, heaven forbid the wealthy go back to 2000 tax rates or face any regulations to prevent the next crisis.
"The CEOs I talk to, they’re hiring. They’re hiring in Brazil, they’re hiring in Russia, China. Why are they hiring in those countries? Because it’s steady, we know what to get from the government. It’s a rather — it’s rather quizzical that we know what the Communists will give us but we don’t know what the capitalists will give us."
From Jim Bianco (another Wall Street investor) via Big Picture blog:
"Let us get this straight, in corrupt and Communist countries companies are hiring. They have transparency … that the government can nationalize your company whenever they want and execute you if you complain. Here we are paralyzed because we don’t know whether our tax rate will be 40% or 42% next year"
TW: The sentiment expressed by Cramer is not unique. Wall Street and conventional American business folks are the whiniest bunch of bitches of all-time. Last summer and fall, you may recall Cramer on TV literally pounding the table demanding government intervention. Now that Armageddon (apparently) is averted, he is leading the charge back to laissez-faire. Meanwhile, heaven forbid the wealthy go back to 2000 tax rates or face any regulations to prevent the next crisis.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Universal Care Saves Lives...
TW: On a day when a douche bag like Joe Lieberman is getting the publicity he so slavishily craves by screwing over his former party, it is good to re-visit yet again why health care reform is important. What does it mean in terms of lives saved if uninsureds are integrated into our deeply flawed system?
From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...The Institute of Medicine developed a detailed methodology for projecting the lives lost due to lack of insurance...We're very comfortable talking about the financial cost of health-care reform. We're less comfortable talking about the human benefits. But the fact that health insurance saves lives isn't controversial. A 2003 study examining cancer records from Kentucky found that uninsured women with breast cancer were 44 percent likelier to die than their insured counterparts. And that was after controlling for demographics, stage of diagnosis and initial treatment. A 2007 study found that the uninsured were 24 percent to 56 percent likelier to die of stroke, depending on the type. That study, too, controlled for all the relevant variables...
All this is intuitive. The uninsured are less likely to seek early care. They are less likely to get good care. They are less likely to return for follow-up care. They are less likely to be able to afford the maintenance of chronic conditions. At its most basic level, that's what this is all about. That's why people have been fighting for universal health care for almost a century now. That's why this matters, and why the basics of the bill -- subsidized access to health-care insurance -- are so terribly important. This is life and, well, death. Lots of it, in fact.
...Medicare saved lives. Medicaid saved lives. The health-care coverage that costs the average worker more than $13,000 saves lives. That's why we shoulder these expenses. And health-care reform will save lives, too. That's why we're doing it..."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/the_150000_life_health-care_pl.html
Industrial Policy In Action
TW: Some folks support industrial policy especially as it relates to new technologies and particularly alternative energy. Some folks support Keynesian stimulus. I support both. For better or worse this is what it looks like in actual practice. Will all or even most of these work, no. But I like the fact that we are priming the pump, just like the Chinese, Germans, French and most other developed or emerging markets. I list only a handful, go to the link for the complete list.
From Robert Rapier's Energy Blog:
"Bluefire Ethanol
DOE Grant: $81,134,686
Non-fed funding: $223,227,314
Fulton, MS: This project will construct a facility that produces ethanol fuel from woody biomass, mill residue, and sorted municipal solid waste. The facility will have the capacity to produce 19 million gallons of ethanol per year.
BioEnergy International
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $89,589,188
Lake Providence, LA: This project will biologically produce succinic acid from sorghum. The process being developed displaces petroleum based feedstocks and uses less energy per ton of succinic acid produced than its petroleum counterpart.
Enerkem
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $90,470,217
Pontotoc, MS: This project will be sited at an existing landfill and use feedstocks such as woody biomass and biomass removed from municipal solid waste to produce ethanol and other green chemicals through gasification and catalytic processes.
INEOS New Planet BioEnergy
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $50,000,000
Vero Beach, FL: This project will produce ethanol and electricity from wood and vegetative residues and construction and demolition materials. The facility will combine biomass gasification and fermentation, and will have the capacity to produce 8 million gallons of ethanol and 2 megawatts of electricity per year by the end of 2011.
Sapphire Energy
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $85,064,206
Columbus, NM: This project will cultivate algae in ponds that will ultimately be converted into green fuels, such as jet fuel and diesel, using the Dynamic Fuels refining process.
Algenol Biofuels
DOE grant: $25,000,000
Other funding: $33,915,478
Freeport, TX: This project will make ethanol directly from carbon dioxide and seawater using algae. The facility will have the capacity to produce 100,000 gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year..."
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/12/doe-funding-recipients.html#links
From Robert Rapier's Energy Blog:
"Bluefire Ethanol
DOE Grant: $81,134,686
Non-fed funding: $223,227,314
Fulton, MS: This project will construct a facility that produces ethanol fuel from woody biomass, mill residue, and sorted municipal solid waste. The facility will have the capacity to produce 19 million gallons of ethanol per year.
BioEnergy International
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $89,589,188
Lake Providence, LA: This project will biologically produce succinic acid from sorghum. The process being developed displaces petroleum based feedstocks and uses less energy per ton of succinic acid produced than its petroleum counterpart.
Enerkem
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $90,470,217
Pontotoc, MS: This project will be sited at an existing landfill and use feedstocks such as woody biomass and biomass removed from municipal solid waste to produce ethanol and other green chemicals through gasification and catalytic processes.
INEOS New Planet BioEnergy
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $50,000,000
Vero Beach, FL: This project will produce ethanol and electricity from wood and vegetative residues and construction and demolition materials. The facility will combine biomass gasification and fermentation, and will have the capacity to produce 8 million gallons of ethanol and 2 megawatts of electricity per year by the end of 2011.
Sapphire Energy
DOE Grant: $50,000,000
Non-fed funding: $85,064,206
Columbus, NM: This project will cultivate algae in ponds that will ultimately be converted into green fuels, such as jet fuel and diesel, using the Dynamic Fuels refining process.
Algenol Biofuels
DOE grant: $25,000,000
Other funding: $33,915,478
Freeport, TX: This project will make ethanol directly from carbon dioxide and seawater using algae. The facility will have the capacity to produce 100,000 gallons of fuel grade ethanol per year..."
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2009/12/doe-funding-recipients.html#links
The Devolution Of American Politics
TW: The tendency is always claim things were easier way back when. But what if a sea change in American politics has occurred? What if our governance processes rather than being tried and true through over 200 years of history are becoming time bound and sclerotic? What if obstructionism is a rational political approach but an irrational governance method.?
From Democratic House #2 leader Steny Hoyer (Maryland) via Ezra Klein:
"...it's not clear that minority obstructionism is bad politics. Back in the early 1990s, of course, Bill Kristol, among others, urged Republicans to kill the Clinton health-care bill. Not modify it, or improve it, or amend it, but kill it. And then they picked up more than 50 seats.
Newt Gingrich was of course the chief proponent of that policy, and he and Bob Michel, who was leader of the Republicans, disagreed. And Gingrich eventually succeeded in pushing Michel out. Michel’s view was you sit down, offer your input, and move forward. The theory was that the American people elected the legislative body to make policy and so you make policy. Gingrich’s proposition, and maybe accurately, was that as long as you, Bob Michel, and our party cooperate with Democrats and get 20 or 30 percent of what we want and they get to say they solved the problem and had a bipartisan bill, there's no incentive for the American people to change leadership. You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public. To some degree, he was proven right in 1994."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/hoyer_draft.html
From Democratic House #2 leader Steny Hoyer (Maryland) via Ezra Klein:
"...it's not clear that minority obstructionism is bad politics. Back in the early 1990s, of course, Bill Kristol, among others, urged Republicans to kill the Clinton health-care bill. Not modify it, or improve it, or amend it, but kill it. And then they picked up more than 50 seats.
Newt Gingrich was of course the chief proponent of that policy, and he and Bob Michel, who was leader of the Republicans, disagreed. And Gingrich eventually succeeded in pushing Michel out. Michel’s view was you sit down, offer your input, and move forward. The theory was that the American people elected the legislative body to make policy and so you make policy. Gingrich’s proposition, and maybe accurately, was that as long as you, Bob Michel, and our party cooperate with Democrats and get 20 or 30 percent of what we want and they get to say they solved the problem and had a bipartisan bill, there's no incentive for the American people to change leadership. You have to confront, delay, and undermine and impose failure in order to move the public. To some degree, he was proven right in 1994."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/hoyer_draft.html
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Watching Fox Will Fry Your Brain (cont.)
TW: Yep another graph where somehow numbers that should add up to 100% do not. But then ponder the question. If asked I would respond it is very likely a scientist- somewhere, sometime- has falsified data. Of course, that is essentially irrelevant to global warming one way or the other. This is not an effort to educate, it is propaganda for a particular viewpoint. And given the numbers sloppy propaganda at that.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
For These Amongst Other Reasons Why Governance Is Challenging
From Foreign Policy mag a compilation of polls (which makes comparison dubious but I think the implied gist remains valid):
"Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55
Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39
Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36
Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34
Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34"
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/food_for_thought
"Percentage of Americans who believe in angels: 55
Percentage of Americans who believe in evolution: 39
Percentage of Americans who believe in anthropogenic global warming: 36
Percentage of Americans who believe in ghosts: 34
Percentage of Americans who believe in UFOs: 34"
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/12/07/food_for_thought
Some Climate Change Info...
TW:...as opposed to ranting. At the risk of equating the two positions (which vastly overstates the deniers validity), here is a pretty detailed presentation of climate change perspectives from both sides. Obviously one needs to click on the image to make it readable in fact one may want to click on the link below for the full blown chart.http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/climate-change-deniers-vs-the-consensus/
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