Control Your AppetitesA 6m, 90kg python swallowed a pregnant ewe in the village of Kampung Jabor, about 200km east of Kuala Lumpur. It was too laden to move, and firemen easily caught it, the local newspaper reported.
(a) Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) has already won the Democratic nomination. It's over. Regardless of how the remaining primaries and caucuses go, including Michigan and even Florida, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) can never catch Obama in elected delegates. His current lead of 170 pledged delegates will not be overcome no matter what happens. Even if Clinton beats him by 10 points in each of these primaries, he will still lead among elected delegates by over 100. The superdelegates will not override the will of the voters unless Obama is in jail. They will not let themselves in for a civil war by overruling a black man who is beloved by the young by going over the heads of the electorate and naming the candidate that lost the primaries as the nominee. Regardless of how damaged Obama may be by the Wright tapes, it will not provide sufficient cover or cause for them to do so.
(b) Wright's rantings are not reflective of Obama's views on anything. Why did he stay in the church? Because he's a black Chicago politician who comes from a mixed marriage and went to Columbia and Harvard. Suspected of not being black enough or sufficiently tied to the minority community, he needed the networking opportunities Wright afforded him in his church to get elected. If he had not risen to the top of Chicago black politics, we would never have heard of him. But obviously, he can't say that. So what should he say?
He needs to get out of this mess with subtlety, the kind Bill Clinton should have used to escape the Monica Lewinsky scandal -- but didn't. As the controversy continues, Americans will gradually realize that Obama stuck by Wright as part of a need to get ahead. They will chalk up to pragmatism why he was so close to such a preacher. As they come to realize that Obama doesn't agree with Wright but used him to get started, they will be more forgiving.
McCain, the 71-year-old Arizona senator who touts his national security experience as a main reason why he should be elected, gave Democrats a line of attack to use against him on Tuesday.
On a Middle East and Europe swing, he got tangled up in stating which Islamic extremist group in Iraq that Iran is accused of supporting.
At a news conference in Amman, McCain said Iran supported the Sunni group al Qaeda in Iraq, until he was corrected by a colleague. U.S. officials believe Iran has been backing Shi'ite extremists in Iraq, not a Sunni group like al Qaeda.
It was the first stumble of note that McCain has made since clinching the Republican presidential nomination early this month.
"Just yesterday, we heard Senator McCain confuse Sunni and Shi'ite, Iran and al Qaeda," Obama said.
"Maybe that is why he voted to go to war with a country that had no al Qaeda ties. Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades," the Illinois senator said.
He also mocked McCain's oft-stated vow to follow Osama bin Laden to "the gates of hell" if elected, arguing the U.S. focus should have been on Afghanistan and Pakistan instead of Iraq.
"We have a security gap when candidates say they will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell but refuse to follow him where he actually goes," Obama said.
Flying CarsExplorit Science Center in Davis will host a Science Café on Tuesday, March 18 featuring Paul Moller, inventor of a flying car called a Skycar. The event is the third installment in Explorit's Science Café and Lecture Series, sponsored by Intel. The public is invited to attend the free event, which will begin at 7:30 p.m. with coffee, cookies and informal conversation. At 8 p.m., Moller will give a talk titled “Flying Cars and the Future of Travel.”
The event will take place at Explorit’s neighbor in east Davis, the Davis Musical Theatre Company, 607 Peña Drive. The first part of the evening will take place in the theater lobby. Guests will then proceed into the theater itself for the talk. One of Moller’s Skycars, a red two-passenger model called the M200M, will sit on the stage for viewing.
Moller is founder and chairman of the board of Moller International, which is developing and marketing the Skycar, now in flight-testing. According to its Web site, moller.com, the Skycar is formally known as a personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle.
“You’ve always known it was just a matter of time before the world demanded some kind of flying machine which would replace the automobile,” the Web site says. “Of course, this machine would have to be capable of VTOL, be easy to maintain, cost effective and reliable. Well, we at Moller International believe we have come up with the solution. That solution is the volantor named M400 Skycar.”
At the Science Cafe, Moller will give an update on the Skycar’s progress toward the marketplace. The company is taking refundable deposits for the vehicles, which are expected to have a list price of close to $1 million.
The Skycar has has been featured on a number of TV programs including CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “Highway In the Sky”, NBC’s “Today” show, Today’s “American Story" and the History Channel’s “Greatest Movie Gadgets: Then and Now.”
Left: This prototype dates to about 1989. The vehicle has no frame - the exterior shell is the frame. Without engines (as here), the vehicle weighs 800 lbs.: with engines, it weighs 1,200 lbs. It is fueled with an ethanol fuel containing 30% water, so as to be safe in the event of a crash. Reliable, rotary Wankel engines power the fans.
Left: Take me to the food court, James!
Left: Greased Lightning.
Left: Steve helps out, by generating some theater fog.
Left and below: Informative slides.
x
x
I read in your blog about the Carlyle Group and others. Have you seen the Zeitgiest movie? Go to zeitgeistmovie.com and watch the movie, it is very disturbing, it refers to the Carlyle Group and other banks, politicians, wars, etc....right up your alley.Here is a basically sympathetic, yet critical, review of the movie:
The over-all temper of the video is rather like the John Birch Society on acid, with interludes by Harry Smith. Incongruously, after spending nearly two hours trying to scare the bejeezis out of its viewers, Zeitgeist ends on an oddly upbeat note, telling us that Love — not Fear — is the answer, We are all One, and featuring sound-bites from Ram Dass and Carl Sagan.I tend not to be a conspiracy theorist, but sometimes there are elements of truth to the alleged conspiracies. Actually, I’m surprised how slowly conspiracy theorists seized on 9/11 – probably a sign of just how scared people were that day, and willing to believe official explanations about anything, before ultimately becoming dissatisfied and reaching out to conspiracy theories.
It’s a shame, really, that Zeitgeist is, ultimately, such a mess. There are plenty of legitimate questions about what transpired on 9/11, just as there are plenty of shady doings in international finance or puzzling aspects of religious history, for that matter. And what is coming down in the name of National Security is truly unnerving. Yet, bundling them all together in disjointed fashion does justice to none of them. Time and again, Zeitgeist maximizes emotional impact at the expense of a more reasoned weighing of evidence. But, perhaps that’s the intention.
I’ve often pondered about what it might take to snap everyone out of the walking dream we collectively entered on 9/11/01. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall provided the emotional pivot for the end of the Cold War, only a collective experience of an intensity equal to that of 9/11 might jolt us awake as to what is really happening in the corridors of power and certain undisclosed locations.
It’s my hunch that Zeitgeist is one attempt to provide such a jolt, and it does indeed pack a certain punch. Too bad it also runs off in three directions at once, and is so indiscriminate in its sources and overly certain of its conclusions. Zeitgeist may be powerful, but its power is tainted with some simplistic and pernicious memes that have already received more propagation than they deserve. The video’s producer does inform us that “It is my hope that people will not take what is said in the film as the truth . . .”
Run for the BunsAMMAN, Jordan -- Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.
He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."
The mistake threatened to undermine McCain's argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy make him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.
Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.
The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.
So they have stopped investing. The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.
...I don't fault Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, for being so interventionist in trying to save the economy. On the contrary, Bernanke deserves credit for ignoring all the extreme free-market bloviation. He doesn't want the economy to collapse on his watch, so he is willing to violate all the conservatives' shibboleths about the dangers of government intervention. As a voter once told the legendary political journalist Richard Rovere: "Sometimes you have to forget your principles to do what's right."
But if this near meltdown of capitalism doesn't encourage a lot of people to question the principles they have carried in their heads for the past three decades or so, nothing will.
...[I]n the enthusiasm for deregulation that took root in the late 1970s, flowered in the Reagan era and reached its apogee in the second Bush years, we forgot the lesson that government needs to keep a careful watch on what capitalists do. Of course, some deregulation can be salutary, and the market system is, on balance, a wondrous instrument -- when it works. But the free market is just that: an instrument, not a principle.
In 1996, back when he was a Republican senator from Maine, William Cohen told me: "We have been saying for so long that government is the enemy. Government is the enemy until you need a friend."
Alan Dershowitz, writing last week in the Wall Street Journal, averred that the story of Spitzer's 'capture' doesn't entirely ring true to career prosecutors.And also this:
"There is no hard evidence that Eliot Spitzer was targeted for investigation, but the story of how he was caught does not ring entirely true to many experienced former prosecutors and current criminal lawyers," Dershowitz wrote. "The New York Times reported that the revelations began with a routine tax inquiry by revenue agents 'conducting a routine examination of suspicious financial transactions reported to them by banks.' This investigation allegedly found 'several unusual movements of cash involving the Governor of New York.' But the movement of the amounts of cash required to pay prostitutes, even high-priced prostitutes over a long period of time, does not commonly generate a full-scale investigation."
"We are talking about thousands, not millions, of dollars. We are also talking about a man who is a multimillionaire with numerous investments and purchases," he added. "The idea that federal investigators would focus on a few transactions to corporations -- that were not themselves under investigation -- raises as many questions as answers."
This week, Bernanke’s Fed, for the first time in its history, loaned a selected coterie of banks one-fifth of a trillion dollars to guarantee these banks’ mortgage-backed junk bonds. The deluge of public loot was an eye-popping windfall to the very banking predators who have brought two million families to the brink of foreclosure.
Up until Wednesday, there was one single, lonely politician who stood in the way of this creepy little assignation at the bankers’ bordello: Eliot Spitzer.
Who are they kidding? Spitzer’s lynching and the bankers’ enriching are intimately tied.
How? Follow the money.
...Now, what kind of American is ‘sub-prime.’ Guess. No peeking. Here’s a hint: 73% of HIGH INCOME Black and Hispanic borrowers were given sub-prime loans versus 17% of similar-income Whites. Dark-skinned borrowers aren’t stupid – they had no choice. They were ‘steered’ as it’s called in the mortgage sharking business.
‘Steering,’ sub-prime loans with usurious kickers, fake inducements to over-borrow, called ‘fraudulent conveyance’ or ‘predatory lending’ under US law, were almost completely forbidden in the olden days (Clinton Administration and earlier) by federal regulators and state laws as nothing more than fancy loan-sharking.
But when the Bush regime took over, Countrywide and its banking brethren were told to party hardy – it was OK now to steer’m, fake’m, charge’m and take’m.
But there was this annoying party-pooper. The Attorney General of New York, Eliot Spitzer, who sued these guys to a fare-thee-well. Or tried to.
Instead of regulating the banks that had run amok, Bush’s regulators went on the warpath against Spitzer and states attempting to stop predatory practices. Making an unprecedented use of the legal power of “federal pre-emption,” Bush-bots ordered the states to NOT enforce their consumer protection laws.
Indeed, the feds actually filed a lawsuit to block Spitzer’s investigation of ugly racial mortgage steering. Bush’s banking buddies were especially steamed that Spitzer hammered bank practices across the nation using New York State laws.
Spitzer not only took on Countrywide, he took on their predatory enablers in the investment banking community. Behind Countrywide was the Mother Shark, its funder and now owner, Bank of America. Others joined the sharkfest: Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup’s Citibank made mortgage usury their major profit centers. They did this through a bit of financial legerdemain called “securitization.”
What that means is that they took a bunch of junk mortgages, like the Grinnings, loans about to go down the toilet and re-packaged them into “tranches” of bonds which were stamped “AAA” - top grade - by bond rating agencies. These gold-painted turds were sold as sparkling safe investments to US school district pension funds and town governments in Finland (really).
When the housing bubble burst and the paint flaked off, investors were left with the poop and the bankers were left with bonuses. Countrywide’s top man, Angelo Mozilo, will ‘earn’ a $77 million buy-out bonus this year on top of the $656 million - over half a billion dollars – he pulled in from 1998 through 2007.
But there were rumblings that the party would soon be over. Angry regulators, burned investors and the weight of millions of homes about to be boarded up were causing the sharks to sink. Countrywide’s stock was down 50%, and Citigroup was off 38%, not pleasing to the Gulf sheiks who now control its biggest share blocks.
Then, on Wednesday of this week, the unthinkable happened. Carlyle Capital went bankrupt. Who? That’s Carlyle as in Carlyle Group. James Baker, Senior Counsel. Notable partners, former and past: George Bush, the Bin Laden family and more dictators, potentates, pirates and presidents than you can count.
The Fed had to act. Bernanke opened the vault and dumped $200 billion on the poor little suffering bankers. They got the public treasure – and got to keep the Grinning’s house. There was no ‘quid’ of a foreclosure moratorium for the ‘pro quo’ of public bail-out. Not one family was saved – but not one banker was left behind.
Every mortgage sharking operation shot up in value. Mozilo’s Countrywide stock rose 17% in one day. The Citi sheiks saw their company’s stock rise $10 billion in an afternoon.
And that very same day the bail-out was decided – what a coinkydink! – the man called, ‘The Sheriff of Wall Street’ was cuffed. Spitzer was silenced.
Photos From Last Weekend Of "My Fair Lady"
Left: Trevor Hoffman as Alfred P. Doolittle.
Left: Herb Shultz as Colonel Pickering, Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins, and Trevor Hoffman as Alfred P. Doolittle.
Left: Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins and Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle.
Left: Professor Zoltan Karpathy (Joshua Smith) dances with Eliza Doolittle (Lauren Miller) at the Embassy Ball.
Left: The Embassy Ball.
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time".
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time", featuring Trevor Hoffman as Alfred P. Doolittle.
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time".
Left: Trevor Hoffman as Alfred P. Doolittle and Herb Shultz as Colonel Pickering.
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time".
Left: Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins and Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle.
Left: Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle and Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins.
Left: Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle and Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins.
Left: Michael McElroy as Freddy Eynsford-Hill and Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle.
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time".
Left: "Get Me To The Church On Time".
Left: Steve Isaacson as Henry Higgins, Jenny Parks as Mrs. Higgins, and Lauren Miller as Eliza Doolittle.
Low visibility from blowing snow and slick roads led to multiple pileups involving more than 100 vehicles west of Flagstaff on Sunday, killing at least two people, seriously injuring 10 and sending a total of 53 people to the hospital.
The pileups happened on Interstate 40 about 3 miles west of Flagstaff near Bellemont shortly after noon, said Flagstaff Fire Department Battalion Chief Mark Wilson. A portion of Interstate 40, between milepost 171 to 190, was closed for up to nine hours. One of the accident victims was pronounced dead at the scene, while another died at FMC. No information on the deceased was available Sunday evening.
Four of the 10 listed as seriously injured required immediate surgery after being brought to FMC.
..."The magnitude of it was pretty severe," Wilson said. "We had a whiteout scene with the snow, and obviously a single-vehicle accident caused multiple-vehicle accidents, which continued to pile up due to the low visibility."
He said 15 people had to be extracted from their vehicles with hydraulic equipment or hand tools.
A total of 36 firefighters from Flagstaff, Summit and Highlands Fire Departments responded to the scene, providing emergency medical services to those injured in the pileups. No fires or hazardous material spills were reported, Wilson said.
The cause of the initial accident that led to chain reaction along both directions of the interstate is still under investigation, although unsafe speed was blamed as the primary cause for most of the collisions.
...National Weather Service meteorologist Clair Ketchum said whiteout conditions occurred off-and-on Sunday afternoon in the Flagstaff area and could occur overnight as a storm rolls across the state.
Ketchum said 3.8 inches of snow had fallen by 5 p.m. Sunday near where the collisions occurred.
...Jessica Naudziunas, 22, a University of Tulsa student, was on her way to California on spring break when she was caught in the middle of the pileup.
"Most of all you just heard brakes," she said via cellphone from the accident site, adding that she fishtailed in the slush but managed to stop without hitting anything.
It was only when she got out to look around that she realized the severity of the crashes directly in front of her and behind her.
"People were in shock -- they were crying," she said. "We were stepping in blood and oil."
Tornadoes In The Aiken, SC AreaWe had a pretty scary front with tornadoes come through here Saturday around 6 pm. It was serious enough that the local TV stations pre-empted normal programming to have about 90 minutes of nonstop weather coverage. As you can see from the atteched map, there were several tornado cells, spaced about 30 miles apart, and going ESE. In the vicinity of the tracks, there was 2 inches of rain. My house is between tracks; we got only 0.75 inches. The storm moved eastward at 55 miles per hour - I didn't know storms could move that fast.Oooh! That is frightening! Nothing matches a tornado for completely changing people’s lives in a minute.
I never heard so much thunder. For 10 minutes, it was continuous - there was not even one second without thunder. At one point, the wind blew strongly up the street, and then changed direction and blew strongly down the street. I thought - O Shit, here it comes - but it missed my neighborhood. We got hail, and one window was blown into my house, but no trees are down on my street, and we never lost power.
The tornado passed through the upper middle class development of Beaver Creek, 3 miles south of my house. Many trees down, several houses with missing roofs, and one tree which fell through a roof, all the way down to ground level. Nobdy was hurt; the people weren't home.
In the low-income town of Clearwater, a phone pole was snapped off. I figure it must be hard to blow down a phone pole; it doesn't present much surface area to the wind. Many houses without roofs, hundreds on trees down, and a post office messed up. The Red Cross set up in the Clearwater Bi-Lo, and gave out motel vouchers for the people with damaged homes.
You can see pictures at wjbf.com.
I wonder how low the air pressure got?
Cheap Seat To The Air ShowForeclosure used to be a last resort, something that hard-pressed homeowners would scrimp and plead to avoid. But as the subprime lending crisis sweeps up millions of borrowers nationwide, some are deliberately choosing foreclosure as an early option.
As their home values tumble and their mortgages rise, these "walk away homeowners" decide to cede their houses to their lenders.
"It's throwing good money away after bad" to pay an escalating mortgage on a home that's plunging in value, said Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicklaus Skaggs of Vacaville. He and his wife, Tishara, stopped paying their mortgage in February. They signed up with a new company called You Walk Away to help guide them through the multi-month foreclosure process.
The couple paid $455,000 for their Vacaville home almost three years ago, shortly after Nicklaus Skaggs returned from a year in Iraq. Now the home's value has dropped to $290,000. Their adjustable-rate mortgage, which started at about $3,000 a month, has reset twice, climbing to about $4,000.
...Walk-aways represent a profound shift in American attitudes toward homeownership - a shift that may have begun with the no-money-down subprime loans. People who don't have "skin in the game" - their own cash on the line - feel less attachment to their homes. People who bought homes expecting rapid appreciation may be quicker to dump them when they don't perform as expected.
The walk-away phenomenon is common enough that mailing in one's keys to the lender has earned its own nickname: jingle mail.
In California, purchase mortgages on residences are "nonrecourse," which means lenders cannot pursue foreclosed homeowners for additional money.
It is clear that many borrowers cede their homes without asking their lender for a break. More than half of foreclosures involve people who never spoke to their bank, studies show.
...But some financial experts, such as "mad man of Wall Street" Jim Cramer, say walking away makes economic sense.
"When your house drops 20 percent in value ... it's better to walk away, even if you're wealthy," he said on TheStreet.com TV last summer. "Because you don't want to lose your credit card and you don't want to lose your car. Your house is the one thing that's fungible. It's smart to walk away."
...You Walk Away (youwalkaway.com), based in San Diego, began in January to assist homeowners who want to let their homes go into foreclosure.
"What if you could live payment free for up to 8 months or more and walk away without owing a penny?" its Web site asks prospective customers. "Unshackle yourself today from a losing investment and use our proven method to Walk Away."
...Maddox said 70 percent of his customers are financially floundering, while 30 percent made an economic decision to walk away.
"They don't care about their house anymore," he said. "It's a big weight around their neck. They're trying to get out of it and get their heads above water again. They're paying too much for the title of homeowner."
...Some homeowners are sufficiently savvy - and brash - to try to turn the housing meltdown to their advantage.
A Discovery Bay man who asked not to be identified said he is "upside down" on his house by about $260,000. Instead of bemoaning the situation, he plans to capitalize on it.
"I refinanced a couple of years ago and pulled out $100,000 and put in a fabulous pool," he said. "Now I've got this fabulous pool and fabulous house, but it's not worth anything. Why shouldn't I be building equity over the next four to five years instead of playing catch-up?"
The man said he has not made a mortgage payment for five months.
"I'm playing the bank game," he said. "I'm playing chicken with them. I already got them to agree to put (the unpaid) payments on the tail end of the loan. What I'm really pushing them to do is to (adjust my mortgage) for the current market value and write off the rest. I'd love (to have it) lopped down to a $450,000 basis rather than $710,000."
If the bank won't negotiate, he'll walk away, the man said.
That kind of story sends chills down bankers' spines. To date, most loan modifications have involved freezing interest rates or repayment plans for arrears.
Every known culture of mankind in history so far, whether a happy or wretched one, presents us with a people who, at large, are engulfed within an intricate mass of axiomatic-like assumptions. Some simplistic opinion would describe such a population as "programmed." Others would refer to sets of false beliefs which either are, or pretend to be universal physical principles, as the so-called "laws of our universe." Against this reality, the virtual idiot is the man who insists that his judgment is not affected by such cultural-environmental "fences" around the range within which his mental processes are permitted to wander. We sometimes speak, for example, of "accident proneness," or of an individual controlled, like an enraged dog on a leash, by his, or her most gripping obsessions."Engulfed within an intricate mass of axiomatic-like assumptions": Yup! That's me!
This lack of rational rules of monetary and other economically relevant behavior, has created a British system of modern monetarism which is not merely utterly irrational, but is a degrading system of usury, which degrades the notion of economic value to the lunatic antics of a giant gambling casino, with no efficient regard for determining the relatively greater or lesser value of production and trade for specifically human objectives.LaRouche seems to believe scientists and mathematicians had much more political influence than I believe an examination of the historical record would merit. Politicians don't give a rip about scientists, most of the time, unless they come up with a new bomb or gun. LaRouche really doesn't like that bastard, Leonhard Euler, even though Euler is prominent in the canon of mathematical thought. I've never thought of the theories of Gauss and Euler as being anything but complementary, but Lyndon saith no:
This was the same period of the writing of "Specimen Dynamicum" and of the opening of the collaboration of Leibniz and Jean Bernouilli in elaborating the catenary-cued principle of universal physical least action. This preceded the opening of Leibniz's role as a crucial political factor in the process, under England's Queen Anne, in the English succession to the institution of the British United Kingdom. During that same period, the preference of Leibniz's enemies, was to counterattack against Leibniz's powerful influence of that time by adopting the work of Descartes as the basis for an anti-Leibniz program in England itself. In light of the fact that the Netherlands-programmed Descartes retained nominally French attributes, it was deemed impracticable to import Cartesian ideology under an explicitly Cartesian label, into a France-hating England of that time. So, Hooke and other suitably skilled and witting followers of Galileo's hoaxes, were employed to synthesize a neo-Cartesian, anti-Leibniz cult in England, including a faked attribution of the invention of a calculus to an obscure academic figure known as a specialist in black magic dogma, Isaac Newton.Amazing! LaRouche doesn't believe in the "Second Law of Thermodynamics", which states that the entropy of the universe increases with time. This is problematic, but LaRouche seems to believe these concepts were foisted on an addle-brained public by a corrupt cabal of scientists in league with corrupt economists and politicians long ago. Does this mean LaRouche also believes in perpetual motion machines? How does LaRouche explain the operation of refrigerators? Can't tell.
The most notable figure in the promotion of this creation of a synthetic, English-speaking "René Descartes" named Isaac Newton, was a Venetian, Abbé Antonio Conti, a devotee of the work of Descartes residing in Paris at that time. Conti would figure, until his death in 1749, as a keystone figure in the organizing of a network of anti-Leibniz salons throughout much of Europe, a network which included figures such as D'Alembert, de Moivre, Voltaire, Maupertuis, Leonhard Euler, Lagrange, et al., whose systemically vicious errors were demolished in an exemplary way by Carl F. Gauss in 1799. Important Nineteenth-Century followers of the legacy of those salons included London-sponsored adherents to the Newton clique such as Laplace, Augustin Cauchy, and the so-called founders of "thermodynamics" Clausius, Grassmann, and Kelvin. The concoction of the fraudulent "Second Law of Thermodynamics" was an outcome of this process.
The common feature which united such apparently diverse types of Fabians as Helphand, Crowley, Russell, and H.G. Wells, is the orchestration of diverse elements which combined "permanent war and permanent revolution," to the esteemed geopolitical advantage of an Anglo-Dutch Liberal domination of the world. "Information theory," as developed under Russell protégés Wiener and von Neumann, was among those means of the psychological-warfare methods developed with aid of the work of Rees's London Tavistock Clinic. The promotion of a recreational-drug culture, within the post-World War II U.S.A., and elsewhere, was a crucial element in this imperial scheme.Gee, and I thought recreational drug use was all about getting high....
He said "Anybody who knows me knows I would never read a comic book." Which to me, explains Batman. (much knowing laughter) "And I certainly would never read anything written by Kevin Smith." Whoa! The... the claws came out. The... the fucking scissorhands came out!Then, Smith somehow got the job to write the screenplay for a Superman remake:
Back in '96 and '97, when I was commissioned by Warner Brothers to write a script for a new Superman movie. And how it came about *I* think was that somewhat saw Mallrats and watched Brodie and T.S. talking about the Kryptonite condom and someone thought 'This guy seems to know a lot about Superman.'And his meetings with Producer Jon Peters, and how Peters had referred to himself and Smith as having much in common, because they were both "from the streets" - a claim that Smith knew was patently absurd all the way around. And how Peters, who was thinking about casting Sean Penn in the part, had just three requirements for Superman:
What you need:
Light corn syrup - unflavored
Gelatin, measuring cup, water
Microwave oven, or stove
What to do:
Heat 1/2 cup of water until it boils
Remove heat, sprinkle in 3 envelopes of unflavored gelatin. Let it
soften a few minutes and stir with a fork.
Add enough corn syrup to make 1 cup of thick glop. Stir with fork and
lift out the long strands of gunk.
As it cools, you'll need to add more water, spoonful by spoonful.
Before European pioneers began settling the West, three species of bighorn sheep, California, Rocky Mountain and Desert, inhabited much of Nevada's mountainous terrain.
By the 1960s, only Desert Bighorns were left in extreme Southern Nevada.
Today, because of an aggressive reintroduction program, biologists estimate there are 9,000 in all, scattered across the state.
In 1989, the Wildlife Department began re-establishing the species in the Hays Canyon Range, a chain of mountains roughly 50 miles northwest of Gerlach near the California state line. Since then the herd had continued to grow.
The first hint of trouble came in August 2005, when "one coughing and one sneezing" bighorn sheep were observed, according to the Wildlife Department.
There was no other indication of disease until last October, when a hunter reported seeing a sick ewe that was found dead a few hours later.
Game wardens retrieved the carcass for testing, which confirmed the ewe had died of bacterial pneumonia.
Over the next several weeks, wildlife biologists, assisted by the conservation group Nevada Bighorns Unlimited, conducted aerial and ground surveys of the region.
"After finding that one dead animal ... we went back in there to see if we could find other sheep and see if they were healthy or not healthy," Atkinson said.
What they found were some carcasses and sick and dying sheep, from which samples were taken.
"Just the fact we found six sheep in the process of dying is unusual," said Mike Dobel, the Department of Wildlife's western region supervising game biologist.
The extent of the die-off became clear by November.
"We realized we couldn't find very many sheep," Atkinson said. "The real finding was just the absence of sheep."
Dobel said the range has experienced severe drought conditions in recent years, which might have made the sheep more vulnerable to disease.
AT least 50 people in Kottayam district in India have reportedly lost their vision after gazing at the sun looking for an image of Virgin Mary.
Though alarmed health authorities have installed a signboard to counter the rumour that a solar image of Virgin Mary appeared to the believers, curious onlookers, including foreign travellers, have been thronging the venue of the "miracle".
St Joseph’s ENT and Eye Hospital in Kanjirappally alone has recorded 48 cases of vision loss due to photochemical burns on the retina. “All our patients have similar history and symptoms. The damage is to the macula, the most sensitive part of retina. They have developed photochemical, not thermal, burns after continuously gazing at the sun,” Dr Annamma James Isaac, the hospital’s ophthalmologist, said.
I was talking to a black coworker the other day (not the same one as previously) who was pissed at Hillary. He said that she, currently in second place, offered the vice-presidential spot to Obama, who is currently in first place. This guy felt that Hillary was being patronizing and disrespectful.I respond:
Everything your coworker is complaining about is true. Unfortunately, that’s just the way it is.
The Clinton camp is using a race-conscious (it may be too much to call it a racist) approach to winning. Frequently these kinds of appeals are usually unstated assumptions in, say, complaints about the unfairness of affirmative action, or complaints about misogyny in rap lyrics. Racist assumptions are unstated, but often lurk in the background. Hillary’s approach has been to use surrogates (Bill Clinton, Geraldine Ferraro, and others) to tap into these race-conscious themes, which generally amount to – there are more white women than black men in America, so back off!
Clinton is also using what the left blogosphere has dubbed the “bitch-slap” approach to dealing with Obama. You want a more-complaint Obama? Slap the bitch across the face. Or get someone else to slap the bitch across the face. It’s surprising how well it works. For the last decade, Republicans have bitch-slapped Democrats up-and-down Capitol Hill on any number of issues, and it has made Democrats battle-shy. Republicans have often prevailed, even when the odds were against them at first, by simply being rougher than the Democrats. So, Hillary simultaneously states that she is willing to consider Obama for the vice-presidential spot, but that Obama doesn’t have the experience to be commander-in-chief? That sounds like a classic bitch-slap.
The way to respond is for Obama to beat Hillary. Right now, it looks like the superdelegates will decide the race, but they are professional politicians – professional weathervanes – who will look at the race as dispassionately as possible and side with the contender who helps the superdelegates the most. Obama has to find a way of coping with Hillary’s approach, because McCain will likely follow the same approach, but with maybe less restraint.
The next big race is Pennsylvania, and there is an entire month to campaign. Clinton has a big advantage there, but if Obama can close the gap, or beat Clinton, Obama will be almost impossible to stop. So, if I were in Obama, I’d hop on a bus and campaign in every single small town in Pennsylvania for the next month – Hillary’s strongholds. Beat her there, or even come close, and the nomination is his. Then Obama can do his own trash-talking, if he likes, to the convention, and beyond.
A basketball analogy is appropriate: the 2002 NBA Western Division Playoff Series between the champion LA Lakers, and the challenger Sacramento Kings. Sacramentans were shocked at how the referees would not call obvious fouls by the rough-playing Lakers. The attitude of the referees seemed to be: “If you want the Western Division Championship - if you really want the Western Division Championship – you have to beat the Lakers, and not go whining to us, because we’re not going to do your job for you.” Sacramento couldn’t quite do it, which was bad for the team that Shaq liked to call the Sacramento “Queens.”
Here’s a bit more on that basketball series:
With the addition of Bibby, the Kings had their best season to date in 2001-02. The team finished with a league-best record of 61-21, going 36-5 at ARCO Arena, and stormed through the first two rounds of the playoffs. The Kings then faced the L.A. Lakers, the two-time defending champions in the western conference finals. In what has been widely acclaimed as one of the greatest playoff series of all time, the Kings jumped out to a 3-2 lead. In a highly contested game 6 at the STAPLES Center, the Kings lost narrowly. The Kings shot nine free throws in the fourth quarter to the Lakers 27. The Kings would go on to lose the series. In the seventh and final game, poor free throw shooting would doom the Kings; making only 16 of 30 free throws (53.3%).
Southwest Storm BrewingMy weather 'widget' says low 80's all week but takes a huge plunge Sunday--what's up Saturday night??????The Web Site I usually look at is off-line at the moment, but this Web Site shows the situation well enough - a massive trough that develops off the San Diego coast and sweeps inland over the Southwest.
IT is interesting to note that 5116 NSW students last year studied drama as an HSC subject – twice as many as a decade ago. There were also more than 700 HSC dance enrolments in 2007, triple the number of 1995.
Talent agencies, dance studios and drama classes are springing up all over Sydney at an unprecedented rate, with the highly regarded NIDA and long-established Australian Theatre for Young People (ATYP) about to substantially increase the number of their short courses and school holiday workshops such is the demand for acting classes.
Even in this celebrity era, the influx reveals an extraordinary desire for fame.
But does it also reveal an amazing level of naivety on behalf of not only these aspiring youngsters, but parents too?
How many of last year's 5000 HSC drama students will go on to be household names or, at best, have a career in the arts world successful enough to pay the bills? After all, for every Nicole Kidman or Russell Crowe there are many, many more "actors" waiting tables.
Even among those who reach the apparent pinnacle of stardom there can also be a high toll, with Britney Spears and Heath Ledger recent examples.
Yet youngsters continue to strive to be the next big thing, perhaps in a belief fostered by the likes of TV programs such as Australian Idol and So You Think You Can Dance.
Add to this the number of private schools seemingly outbuilding one another with state-of-the-art facilities such as cinemas, performing arts centres and video-editing suites plus government high schools dedicated to performing arts.
While I applaud teenagers choosing to spend holidays and weekends pursuing something other than loitering in shopping centres or spraying graffiti on trains, I also can't help but wonder if they all have real talent and appeal or are simply delusional in their aspirations?
How often have you been bored by parents espousing how their child is destined for the stage or screen when in fact they can't hold a tune, they dance as though they have two left feet and realistically has more chance of becoming a lesbian than a thespian?
But apparently, to point this out is rude. Instead, I believe you and I would be far better off cashing in on it like a host of others are currently doing. Take Nikki Webster, who rose to fame as the star of the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, and will shortly open a dance studio. Not even the delay in its opening (due to legal issues) has deterred wannabe pop-dancing princesses who ring daily wanting to know when classes start.
PHONE HOSTILITY....Lots of hating on telephones today:
Yglesias:
"I couldn't be more thrilled with the phone's decline. I used to be painfully
shy as a person, and while I've largely gotten over that IRL I still find it
incredibly stressful to talk to people on the phone."
Atrios:
"I think I enjoyed chatting with girls when I was 13 or so, but since then I've
pretty much hated the phone."
Alan Jacobs:
"This is a loathing I share, and have for a long time."
McMegan:
"Weird fact: every single (successful) blogger I know hates talking on the
phone. I'm gregarious face to face, and I'm an inveterate user of various kinds
of textual messaging, but I would rather scrub my floors with a toothbrush than
get on the phone."
She was an ambitious lawyer and TV commentator who starting going to Atlantic City casinos to relax and soon was getting high-roller treatment that included limousines whisking her to the resort.
Arelia Margarita Taveras said she was even allowed to bring her dog, Sasha, to the blackjack tables, sitting in her purse.
But her gambling spun out of control: She said she would go days at a time at the tables, not eating or sleeping, brushing her teeth with disposable wipes so she didn't have to leave.
She said her losses totaled nearly $1 million.
Now she's chasing the longest of long shots: a $20 million racketeering lawsuit in federal court against six Atlantic City casinos and one in Las Vegas, claiming they had a duty to notice her compulsive gambling problem and cut her off.
"They knew I was going for days without eating or sleeping," Taveras said. "I would pass out at the tables. They had a duty of care to me. Nobody in their right mind would gamble for four or five straight days without sleeping."
...The casinos denied any wrongdoing, maintaining in court papers that Taveras brought her problems on herself. Casino representatives either declined to comment for this report or did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
...Paul O'Gara, an attorney specializing in Atlantic City gambling issues, said it will be difficult for Taveras to prove that the casinos knew she had a problem but ignored it.
"How are you supposed to know whether this was a woman who was just having a good time, or had money and was just lonely, as opposed to someone who couldn't control themselves?" he said.
...As a young lawyer, Taveras made a name for herself representing the families of victims of American Airlines Flight 587, which crashed in New York City's borough of Queens in November 2001, killing 265 people.
Her practice had 400 clients and earned her $500,000 a year. She appeared on TV and radio to discuss legal issues, wrote a guidebook for women dealing with deadbeat dads in the court system, titled "The Gangsta Girls' Guide To Child Support," and was a regular contributor to Hispanic culture Web sites. In 2000, the New York Daily News named her one of "21 New Yorkers to Watch in the 21st Century."
As an escape from the seven-day-a-week pressures of her law practice, she started going to Atlantic City to unwind in September 2003.
During one five-day gambling jag at Resorts in June 2005, Taveras said, she existed on nothing but orange juice and Snickers bars that the staff gave her. On the fifth day, she said, a dealer told her to go home because she appeared exhausted and unable to keep track of her cards.
Taveras spent nearly a year in clinics to treat her gambling addiction. She filed her lawsuit last September, representing herself, and is now working at a telephone call center in Minnesota.
"Everybody says 'You gambled and you enjoyed yourself, then lost your money and now you want it back,'" Taveras said. "They think gambling is fun. It isn't, believe me. Not when you get like I did."
The law enforcement official said that several people running the prostitution ring knew Mr. Spitzer by the name of George Fox, though a few of the prostitutes came to realize he was the governor of New York.Boy, journalism never gets better than that!
Mr. Fox is a friend and donor to Mr. Spitzer. Asked in a telephone interview Monday whether he accompanied Mr. Spitzer to Washington on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Mr. Fox responded: "Why would you think that? I did not.”
Told that the Room 871 at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel was registered in Mr. Fox’s name but with Mr. Spitzer’s Fifth Avenue address, Mr. Fox said, "That is the first I have heard of it. Until I speak to the governor further, I have no comment."
The Navy admiral in charge of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan announced Tuesday that he is resigning over press reports portraying him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy.Like Josh Marshall says:
Adm. William J. Fallon, one of the most experienced officers in the U.S. military, said the reports were wrong but had become a distraction hampering his efforts in the Middle East. Fallon's area of responsibility includes Iran and stretches from Central Asia across the Middle East to the Horn of Africa.
"I don't believe there have ever been any differences about the objectives of our policy in the Central Command area of responsibility," Fallon said, and he regretted "the simple perception that there is." He was in Iraq when he made the statement.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a Pentagon news conference that he accepted Fallon's request to resign and retire from the Navy, agreeing that the Iran issue had become a distraction. But Gates said repeatedly that he believed talk of Fallon opposing Bush on Iran was mistaken.
"I don't think that there really were differences at all," Gates said, adding that Fallon was not pressured to leave.
...Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as at odds with a president eager to go to war with Iran. Titled "The Man Between War and Peace," it described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
Gates said he did not think it was that article alone that prompted Fallon to quit. Rather, Gates thought it was "a cumulative kind of thing" that he and Fallon had failed to put "behind us."
It is highly unusual for a senior commander to resign in wartime. Fallon took the post on March 16, 2007, succeeding Army Gen. John Abizaid, who retired after nearly four years in the job. Fallon was part of a new team of senior officials, including Gates, chosen by Bush to implement a revised Iraq war policy.
...Some Democrats in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, seized on Fallon's resignation to assert that it reflected an effort by the Bush administration to stifle dissenting opinion.
"I am concerned that the resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and a military leader with more than three decades of command experience, is yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts' views are not welcomed in this administration," Reid said.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the White House played no role in Fallon's move.
"People should not misconstrue this as the price to be paid for speaking out within the Pentagon," Morrell said. "This is not indicative of a hostile environment toward free thinking. This is indicative of what sadly became a perception problem that dogged Admiral Fallon - this perception that he was in a different place than the president and the administration when it came to Iran."
...Fallon, 63, a veteran of the Vietnam War and a former vice chief of naval operations, has had a 41-year Navy career. He received his commission through the Navy ROTC program at Villanova University in 1967. Before taking the Central Command job he was commander of U.S. Pacific Command.
The resignation of a CINC is a big deal, under almost any circumstance. But considering the Bush Administration's seven-year effort to put the Pentagon under its thumb, the resignation of a commander like Fallon, who by most accounts was willing to exercise his independent military judgment, is another setback for the professional officer corps as an institution.
Make no mistake. None of the Bush Administration's efforts in this regard has been about re-asserting civilian control over the military in some constitutional sense. The effort has been focused on degrading the autonomy, independence, and institutional authority of the Pentagon in order to further the narrow ideological and partisan aims of this particular White House.
