March 9, 2011 archive

Today on The Stars Hollow Gazette

Our regular featured content-

And these articles-

The Stars Hollow Gazette

from firefly-dreaming 9.3.11

Regular Daily Features:

mishima takes us back to 1979 in Late Night Karaoke.

Gha!

Essays Featured Wednesday, March 9th:

TheMomCat most kindly gives us a repeat performance of her Health & Fitness News

originally posted Saturday at The Stars Hollow Gazette

Youffraita‘s serving Fastnacht in Wednesday Open Thoughts

fake consultant tells a simple little story of a multinational corporation and the local opposition in On Being A Titan, Part One, Or, See It, Say It, Sue It

PeekABoo, a celebration of Spring from Xanthe

join the conversation! come firefly-dreaming with me….

Mad World

Enough Of Politics: Now On A More Serious Note

In Pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen.

Aleve is also called Naproxen.

Amoxil is also called Amoxicillin and Advil is also called Ibuprofen.

The FDA has been looking for a generic name for Viagra.

After careful consideration by a team of government experts, it recently announced that it has settled on the generic name of Mycoxafloppin.

Also considered were Mycoxafailin, Mydixadrupin, Mydixarizin, Dixafix, and of course, Ibepokin.

Pfizer Corp announced today that Viagra will soon be available in liquid form, and will be marketed by Pepsi Cola as a power beverage suitable for use as a mixer.

It will now be possible for a man to literally pour himself a stiff one.

Obviously we can no longer call this a soft drink, and it gives new meaning to the names of ‘cocktails’, ‘highballs’ and just a good old-fashioned ‘stiff drink’ . Pepsi will market the new concoction by the name of: MOUNT & DO.

CEO talks “clean power”

Those who know or use Duke power don’t really like them especially for their wide use of coal, mentioned in the opening of this article.

But with time on my hands, the past couple of years leading into early retirement with the collapse of the construction industry, I’ve been following them as well as trying to follow others, not much on the others, as to innovation in new energy development and needs and a green economy.

They have actually not been a big corporate machine that has been sitting on there bottom line these past couple of years. They’ve been moving rapidly into solar and wind. Either by themselves or partnering with others or buying up existing solar and wind developments others had already built. Not fast enough, especially here in NC, to make a big dent in all the unemployed trades, architects and engineers, but have put many back to work.  

Six In The Morning

Libyan rebels: ‘Why won’t the world help us?’

Protest movement pleads for intervention as Gaddafi’s forces step up counter-attack

By Kim Sengupta in Ras Lanuf Thursday, 10 March 2011

As Colonel Gaddafi’s forces carried out bloody assaults on rebel-held towns yesterday, those on the receiving end of the wrath were increasingly asking a stark question: Why is the West failing to offer help in our desperate time of need?

Two frontline towns held by dissidents came under sustained attack and an oil facility was set ablaze yesterday during ferocious fighting that left dozens dead as Gaddafi forces rolled back military gains of the opposition.

The feeling was growing in opposition ranks that the disorganised and disunited political and military leadership of the protest movement would not withstand for much longer the sustained pressure being applied by Colonel Gaddafi’s forces.

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Whole Grain Goodness, Straight From the Oven

Photobucket

The muffins available in most coffee shops and cafes are like oversize, unfrosted cupcakes: too sweet and too big. But muffins don’t have to be cloying – a bit of natural sweetener is all that’s required to make them taste like a treat. And they don’t have to be calorie-laden confections.

This week, you’ll find it’s possible to make muffins with a number of nutritious ingredients, particularly whole grains. Muffins made with buckwheat or cornmeal offer great taste and nourishment – without the feeling that you’re chewing on rocks.

Even if you don’t think of yourself as a baker, take a stab at this week’s recipes. They’re easy and come together quickly.

Buckwheat and Amaranth Muffins

Carrot Cake Muffins

Steel-Cut Oatmeal and Blueberry Muffins

Rye and Cornmeal Muffins With Caraway

Savory Cornbread Muffins With JalapeƱos and Corn

How much is that Sheepskin worth?

Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Krugman points out today that Education is no substitute for a Job and as someone who has programmed I’ll tell you flat out there is no repetitive task I can’t automate (well, once I install my compliers and linkers and blow the dust off my language skills).

Sort of off topic, I’m looking for a script that will cycle through a Soapblox database (they’re sequentially ordered) and save the page with contents, links, and comments to a hard drive so I can burn offline archive CDs and DVDs for the authors on our sites.

Yes, I could do it myself, but it’s mind numbing grundge work of the type suitable only for interns and computers.

Degrees and Dollars

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: March 6, 2011

(T)he idea that modern technology eliminates only menial jobs, that well-educated workers are clear winners, may dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date.

The fact is that since 1990 or so the U.S. job market has been characterized not by a general rise in the demand for skill, but by “hollowing out”: both high-wage and low-wage employment have grown rapidly, but medium-wage jobs – the kinds of jobs we count on to support a strong middle class – have lagged behind. And the hole in the middle has been getting wider: many of the high-wage occupations that grew rapidly in the 1990s have seen much slower growth recently, even as growth in low-wage employment has accelerated.



(A)ny routine task – a category that includes many white-collar, nonmanual jobs – is in the firing line. Conversely, jobs that can’t be carried out by following explicit rules – a category that includes many kinds of manual labor, from truck drivers to janitors – will tend to grow even in the face of technological progress.

And here’s the thing: Most of the manual labor still being done in our economy seems to be of the kind that’s hard to automate. Notably, with production workers in manufacturing down to about 6 percent of U.S. employment, there aren’t many assembly-line jobs left to lose. Meanwhile, quite a lot of white-collar work currently carried out by well-educated, relatively well-paid workers may soon be computerized. Roombas are cute, but robot janitors are a long way off; computerized legal research and computer-aided medical diagnosis are already here.



(T)here are things education can’t do. In particular, the notion that putting more kids through college can restore the middle-class society we used to have is wishful thinking. It’s no longer true that having a college degree guarantees that you’ll get a good job, and it’s becoming less true with each passing decade.

So if we want a society of broadly shared prosperity, education isn’t the answer – we’ll have to go about building that society directly. We need to restore the bargaining power that labor has lost over the last 30 years, so that ordinary workers as well as superstars have the power to bargain for good wages. We need to guarantee the essentials, above all health care, to every citizen.

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning

Time for a break from poetry…in order to create some art.

Care about people’s approval

and you will be their prisoner.

–Lao Tzu



Color Splash

Late Night Karaoke

On Being A Titan, Part One, Or, See It, Say It, Sue It

Got a simple little story for you today of a multinational corporation that wants to build a great big cement plant in North Carolina really, really, bad, and the local opposition to what appears to be a corrupt and distorted decision process.

Two local activists in particular have drawn the ire of Titan Cement, the Grecian corporation who seeks to build the plant-and because the Company doesn’t like what the activists have been saying about what the impact of that plant will likely be or how the deal’s going down…they’re suing Kayne Darrell and Dr. David Hill, residents of North Carolina’s New Hanover County, and the two folks who are doing the complaining the Company dislike the most.

The Company further claims that they were slandered and defamed by the damaging statements that were uttered by the two at a county commissioners’ meeting and that they have lost goodwill and the chance to do business with certain parties as a result of these statements.

But what if everything the Defendants said was not only true…but provably so-and the Company was, maybe…just looking to shut people up by sending teams of lawyers after them?

As I said, it’s a simple story today-but it’s a good one.

You Can Now Register As A Pirate In Massachussets

The Massachusetts Election Division has approved the Massachusetts Pirate Party as a political designation, allowing voters in the state to register as a “Pirate.”

The party strives to increase government transparency, promote personal privacy, reinforce the spread of knowledge through copyright reform, and abolish patents.

“We live in a country founded on the ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the Massachusetts Pirate Party said in a statement. “For many people, those ideals are not real. The Supreme Court and Congress have expanded the power of corporations and made them more powerful than people. Increasingly government officials ignore open meeting laws, make deals favorable to corporations behind closed doors and sell off our public information to private interests.”

James O’Keefe, the party’s organizer, told Raw Story that the party is now in the process of training activists and building local chapters. (Not to be confused with conservative activist James O’Keefe, otherwise known as the “ACORN pimp.”)

“Massachusetts has been a fairly good state for third parties with the Greens, Libertarians and Working Families parties being active here in the last ten years,” O’Keefe said in an email. “We are looking forward to our future in Massachusetts.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201…

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