Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

Categories


All categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Add to Google

Subscribe with Bloglines

Monday, July 12. 2010

Monday morning links

Sea Turtle Egg Evacuations Begin Along Oiled Gulf


How to fool people into thinking that you are attractive. Amusing.


Killed for bad hijab in Iran


Fred Barnes: A chance to fix Social Security


Politico: Liberals analyze their Obama 'despair'


Reason: Legislation oozing its way up the Hill threatens open markets in beer, wine, and liquor.


IPCC shifts its focus from science to PR


Gingrich: Obama doesn’t understand America


Popular Mechanics: Debunking the Top 10 Energy Myths


Neo: US v. Arizona: where’s the conflict?


Struggling states seeking more aid from Washington


BP Assailed by Naked Code Pinkos. Good grief.


Guy freaks out on learning that Arlo Guthrie is a Repub


Public-sector pensions in New Jersey and other states completely ignore the risk and cost to taxpayers of investing in increasingly risky assets.


Virginia Lawmaker Challenges Feds to Sue His State Over Immigration Enforcement


Via SDA:



Having just moved to BC from Saskatoon, I expected to find Lotus land to be just that. But upon receiving my daughter's Grade 2 report card, the top category that was graded was "Social Responsibility"


I assumed they'd mastered the instruction of Mathematics, Science, English, and other subjects completely, as moving on to designing society would remove valuable time from the classroom.



Aw, math is too hard. Designing Society is easy, and, the less you know, the easier it is.


Telegraph: Copying the NHS is the last thing the US should do


Barbour:



“The issues are jobs, spending, the deficit, debt, taxes and the economy,” he adds. “Republicans should not do anything to take away attention from that.



Am Thinker: Alinsky, Stalinsky, It's Still the Same Old Agitprop


The Climategate Whitewash Continues

Posted by The News Junkie in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 05:00 | Comments (4) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Very good selection of articles this morning.

Here is a money quote from the Politico article about an article that Alterman wrote for The Nation.

“Whatever the motivation, it has become easier and easier for a determined minority to throw sand in the gears of the legislative process,” Alterman writes. “It is therefore no coincidence that the 40 Republican senators with the ability to bottle up almost anything in the Senate represent barely a third of the U.S. population.”

The Democrats pass the Stimulus, the Health Care Deformed Bill, the recent financial regulations bill, and Alterman blames the Republicans for "throwing sand in the gears of the legislative process." They write a horrid Stimulus Bill, which got NO Republican input, and he blames the Republicans for it.It is also interesting that Alterman states that those "40 Republican senators...represent barely a third of the U.S. population,” when the polls indicated that a majority of the populace was against the Health Care Deformed Bill, for example.

I highly recommend the Popular Mechanics article on energy myths, especially for those who keep dumping on wind energy. I have a disagreement about Popular Mechanics's "debunking" of drill, baby drill. While it is true that much can be done regarding energy conservation , that is NOT a reason for not increasing domestic drilling. The more we get from domestic oil, the less money we send to autocrats and terrorist supporters in Venezuela and the Middle East. While many energy conservation claims are valid, Oilbama's claim two years ago that energy saved from inflating tires and tune-ups would be equivalent to the energy gotten from increased drilling is simply not so. That Oilbama refused to admit that he was wrong is but another reason why I didn't vote for him.
#1 Gringo on 2010-07-12 05:46 (Reply)
The entire Popular Mechanics article was one great big couched piece of AGW propaganda. This is the site, remember, that doesn't just advocate taking extreme economic measures to cut down on the dreaded, evil CO2, but actually proposes taking proactive measures, such as dumping billions of tons of iron oxide into the ocean to promote plankton growth or putting up a space blanket between us and the sun.

They received a lot of deserved kudos for their outstanding post-Katrina debunking article, and nobody ever says anything bad about them because, you know, Glenn Reynolds writes for them and everything, but these guys are one of the worst. A subliminal piece of agitprop like this does far more damage than the latest "We're All Going To Die!" piece on Popular Science.

Money quote:

"The most optimistic projections calculate that wind can supply about 30 percent of the planet's electricity by 2030, so power sources like nuclear, hydropower and solar will be needed as supplements."

Subliminal Message:

"Wind power is the way to go, folks, although we might have to supplement it with other clean sources such as nukes, water power and solar. Oil, coal and natural gas, however, are strict no-nos and are not even to be considered."

Yep, nothin' like fair and balanced.

And that's great news about Arlo. That means I can finally post the great "Alice's Restaurant" and not get stoned to death. Cool!
#2 Dr. Mercury (Link) on 2010-07-12 10:26 (Reply)
Agreed...very anti-coal, anti-oil pro highly speculative near term alternate energy sources. But this is what I'd expect from engineering/fantasy geeks. I have an engineering buddy who's always creaming about something like these alternate energy sources because they're an interesting engineering challenge not because it makes any economic sense.

I did appreciate their stance on nuclear, but that is a bit of a no brainer and is still scores high on the geekiness factor.
#2.1 phil g on 2010-07-12 14:07 (Reply)
Nothing you have written has debunked the main point of the wind energy part of the article: the intermittent nature of wind energy is at least in part canceled out by interconnecting grids over a large area of wind energy,smoothing out regional fluctuations.

I would disagree with PM that the issue is NOT "clean energy," but actual and available energy. Anyone who believes that in 20 years the energy mix will be not more varied than today doesn't know a joule from a piece of jewelry. Regarding the precise percentages, that is debatable. Thirty percent electricity from wind doesn't seem realistic to me.

I have no objection to my paying 7 cents per KWH for wind energy, as I have done for years. Nor would I have an objection to more nukes.
#2.2 Gringo on 2010-07-12 22:55 (Reply)

Add Comment
(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)

By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email
addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications.

Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u],
[url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here.

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed
 
 
A Chris Southern Consulting website.