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.
Loftus added that, while there is nothing inherently wrong with a date mentioning that he attended Yale University, bringing it up every 10 minutes is probably not a good idea.
"Yale this, Yale that," Loftus said. "Any way he could work it into the conversation, he would. It was so obvious that he was clinging to his Ivy League pedigree out of insecurity, as a way of making himself look like an intelligent man of substance. It really just made him look like a dick."
Maybe the Swiss never heard of playing doctor. Pedophiles with be grateful for this effort to overstimulate the kiddies. In fact, it comes pretty close to pedophilia. How would it be if your neighbor played with your little daughter's sex box?
Hayward’s First Axiom of Environmental Energy holds that there is no source of energy—“clean” or otherwise—that environmentalists won’t oppose if it becomes cheap, practical, and scalable. So for example the left once favored nuclear power...
From the Hill on Friday: “Al Gore on Friday bashed the notion that climate scientists are manipulating data for financial gain, a charge levied by global warming skeptics, including GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry.”
From the Telegraph on November 3, 2009: “Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world’s first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies. Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology. The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient. The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.”
Klavan with three quick tips for would-be pundits. Rule 2 is the best:
I am wondering if eBay's ever increasing fees have actually hurt their growth, much the same way in which increasing tax rates can lead to less revenue?
I do know sellers that are livid with eBay.They seem to have made it much harder for Mom & Pop sellers to succeed in the last few years. I have no empirical evidence, but personal observation suggests there are far fewer little sellers than there used to be. Their percentage of the merchandise offered has to down for sure.
I believe that due to the ever increasing fees, you can now go to online stores and buy merchandise for less money than it is being offered for on eBay. That used to not be the case.
I still buy on eBay. There is still unique merchandise offered and if one is patient it seems whatever one wants will show up eventually. However, bargains seem harder and harder to come by and one has to sift through a lot more rocks to find the nuggets.
I used to buy a lot of Vivitar Series 1 lenses for my Olympus cameras on eBay - I have a whole collection of original Vivitar lenses from 11mm to 300mm. They are still there, but now it's all "buy it now" at prices I don't want to pay for lenses that are that old.
The auction model that made eBay great just doesn't exist anymore.
The downfall of eBay was the "Buy It Now" feature - which, unlike most digital things, turned out to be a bug, not a feature. It became just another online store and in that sense, it wasn't as cheap nor could you get "good" deals - in particular for fishing gear or equipment - or camera gear for that matter.
Unfortunate.
Climate Change: And our EPA just keeps rolling along writing and publishing more "climate change agenda" rules and regulations. If there is anything that will bring down the Obama Administration, this might be it. Along with Obamacare which nobody likes or wants.
Hey - I'm sorry I forgot about this. You can get real time storm data from the National Buoy Data Center for your area.
I've been watching the data from the past 24 hours as it came up the coast and it has been curious - buoys directly in the path of iRene haven't been showing the same data as being reported on TV and weather channels. In fact, iRene may not have been a hurricane since early Friday morning if the buoy data is correct. And if you have been watching the weatherundergound radar site, the reported wind speeds there from ground observations are much lower than what is being reported on the TV. By half in fact. As in no hurricane - just an Extra Tropical Storm.
Which makes you wonder (no, I'm not a conspiracy guy) if NOAA is desperate for a hurricane to hit the US this year because their predictions ain't panning out. Just sayin' - I'm sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for it.
You think that's interesting? Try this: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/noaas-phony-hurricane-coming-on-shore-with-33-mph-winds/
Now it turns out that weather underground has removed all wind speed data from their site. Now they are claiming that wind speeds at altitude are different from wind stations reporting on the ground. Um...yeah? You're supposed to average them, but the physics of cyclonic activity requires you to average winds at height and winds at ground level to get an idea of the total strength of the storm. If you do that, the winds are still only at 70 mph on average - which is Extra Tropical Storm strength, not hurricane strength.
I'll say this - I've thought for the past few years that the data has been exaggerated on some of these storms - why that is, I don't know.
Yeah, you do know. It is grant dollars, Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter Squadron dollars, NOAA dollars, etc.
We could simplify it all with satellite photos and buoy data as you have just shown.
But that won't happen.
Every bump in the road must now be predicted, precisely. Because that is what government should be about, protecting one from the slightest chance of inconvenience.
That's a good point with respect to funding - maybe that's it. I just know that (1) wind at 80 mph is considerably different than a gust to 80 mph and that (2) average wind speed always runs towards the back side of the averaging curve (to the left) than the front side (to the right).
iRene was an Extra Tropical Storm that transitioned to a Nor'easter around the Cape Hatteras area. That's what it was , but the hurricane narrative is much too powerful to avoid the hype.
Mr. Obama is desperately looking to find something to look presidential about. I'm sure they are going to milk this for everything they can. Be on the lookout for him to "take command" to defeat the evil storm from some central disaster center (probably a mockup tv studio), with dozens of fawning press stories to follow. This guy puts the old Soviet and Chicom propagandists to shame.
It is said that Ella Grasso got herself re-elected Governor of CT in 1978 by having a conspicuous public presence during the great blizzard of 1978 [IIRC: 24 inches of snow in 24 hours..]. At least that was the viewpoint of a Republican neighbor of mine.
But Katrina didn't work out that well for Dubya, didn't it?
That is true for Grasso, but Dukakis in Massachusetts got hammered for his "sweater" emergency. And Massachusetts got a brand new, high tech, cost over run Emergency Management Center in Framingham.
Of course CBS brought out previous mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, during Katrina to tell everybody how to prepare for a hurricane. I didn't see it but I imagine it went something like: get out of town, when you come back, lock yourself in a hotel room and don't take questions.
As I said, if Maggie's is down for a while tomorrow - for hours or days - it will be due to Irene's knocking trees down. Our servers' power grid hates storms.
Tracked: Aug 27, 08:27