Sep 19 2007
I think I’m going Puritan. Everywhere I look I see Degradation and Degeneracy, and a foul slippage into the primordial sludge of Apathy. Oh sure, you say, give us another laugher, Dubious One. Ah, but I insist- I haven’t been only looking in the mirror this time, gang. I have been gazing out across the narrow fissure of All These Bent Tubes, and verily I say to thee it is a Waste Land, with no shining sword of justice to smite the raging masses.
Sep 19 2007
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Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations. iv. 43 |
There are some things that will always be constant. Things infinite in the sense that it is beyond imagining a time ahead in which such things do not occur or exist. The tide is one of these things.
Sep 19 2007
City Dog Catcher of Reno, NV Endorses Mike Gravel
Reno, NV – Local Dog Catcher Joe Karren has announced he will be endorsing Democratic Nominee hopeful Mike Gravel. He even called the campaign headquarters himself to let them know he was firmly in their camp and planned on a press conference at the local diner, Angie’s Spot, to formally announce.
“I was shocked Mr. Gravel picked up the phone,” said Karren, whose support is supposed to bring in at least 2 votes for the Gravel ticket. “Even more shocking was when he said he would actually show up to my presser. I was just joking, I was really just going for a cup of coffee. But now he is coming, I feel like I gotta get a banner or something.”
“It’s about meeting the people,” said Mike Gravel, who once led a filibuster that led to the end of the Vietnam War, and who was shat upon at last summer’s Yearly Kos. “About meeting one voter at a time.”
If Gravel completes his quest to meet every voter in America, he will be prime to win the nomination in 3012.
Sep 19 2007
You’ll call me crazy. Tell me I’m insane. And you’d be right, by the way, but not necessarily with regards to what this essay is about. What if I told you that we have, right now, the technology to turn just about anything into oil? And when I say “anything” I mean mostly nasty stuff that we don’t want… Like “tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores.” In fact, pretty much anything except nuclear waste. I’ll provide a source to my quote below the fold.
Sep 19 2007
Wanna know what I think about the Pervian meteorite?
Worst case: there’s a shooting war in space.
Keep readin’, stranger.
Sep 19 2007
(Photos by A. Chandler Moisen, except where indicated. Click the pics to enlarge)
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Impressions of the Burning Man
The Burning Man was eighty feet high
~ Gawaine Caldwater Ross |  flickr creative commons |
Sep 19 2007
Condi’s apology to al Maliki may not have yet made it to the ‘hood’.
BAGHDAD – The United States on Tuesday suspended all land travel by U.S. diplomats and other civilian officials throughout Iraq except in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone following a weekend incident involving private security guards in which a number of Iraqi civilians were killed.
Sep 19 2007
is that what we need to do?
is it what we’re doing?
is it even possible?
who knows how to do it?
is there more than one way?
are some ways better than others?
what if people won’t be changed?
can we only change ourselves?
can we even change ourselves?
must we change ourselves?
Sep 19 2007
We are shareholders of brand AmericaTM. It is our brand and our reputation.
How proud we were of brand AmericaTM. The brand name on any product we produced set it apart from all others. We were proud of brand AmericaTM and all that it stood for. Our products were not perfect, but they were always improving. When a product was defective, we owned up to it and vowed to do better! Never satisfied with the status quo, we always demanded better of ourselves and everything brand AmericaTM produced. Most of all, we took pride in the fact that our most cherished and sought after brand AmericaTM products such as liberty, freedom of speech, voting rights, and protection of civil liberties, were available and affordable to all.
Seven years ago, brand AmericaTM was hi-jacked by a band of counterfeiters. They have robbed the company coffers, gutted the warehouse, and sold the contents on the black market. These interlopers refuse to provide the resources to produce quality brand AmericaTM products. They exploit the employees and treat their customers with disdain.
Sep 19 2007
Three recent news accounts reveal the reality and complexity of the looming global disaster. Anyone who has studied human evolution knows that we’re a resilient species, but we’re going to be put to the test.
Bad.
The Associated Press had this little story:
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
At face value, that sounds kind of cool. Take a cruise from Alaska to Europe. Or from Alaska to New England, via the Beaufort Sea.
Except that this could make for some brand new military tensions. As the University of British Columbia’s Liu Institute explains:
With the ice disappearing, the currents and narrow channels pose less of an impediment to navigation: an experienced sailor could now take a large tanker through the straits during the late summer and early autumn. Governments are gradually waking up to this new reality. In 2001, a report prepared for the US Navy predicted that, ‘within five to ten years, the Northwest Passage will be open to non-ice-strengthened vessels for at least one month each summer.’ A briefing given to the Canadian defence minister, Gordon O’Connor, in February 2006 was confident that ‘the Northwest Passage could be open to more regular navigation by 2015’ if ‘the current rate of ice thinning continues’.
And as CNN and the BBC explain, the valuable natural resources under the Arctic are already causing disputes.
But even more dangerous than any of that is what this means for the rest of the world. The melting of the ice up north means rising sea levels. Everywhere. More on that, below.
Sep 19 2007
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Posted for NuevoLiberal, due to the 24hr rule
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I found the incident at the John Kerry event at University of Florida to be very disturbing from several perspectives.
Based on the following video clips:
1. http://www.youtube.c…
2. http://video.nbc6.ne…
3. http://www.starbanne… (youtube version)
4. http://www.youtube.c…
here are my thoughts: once the student (Andrew Meyers) was given the mic, he should have been allowed to properly finish the questions and then allowed to hear what Kerry had to say. Should he have been unruly beyond that point, then removing him from the hall may have been justified.