Month: December 2008

Tom, over at Talk Polywell, and I have been having a discussion about Global Warming and how the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) may be affecting trends. And what the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has to say about all this. Now shouldn’t it be the Scientific Panel on Climate Change? Or some such? Of…

“I think the deniers should put their names on a big list to be handed to future generations,” writes Smiths. “These are the people that screwed the planet.” Very well, “Smiths”. The big list begins. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago discusses how money can buy happiness and also how money can cost you happiness. His bottom line is that only you can decide what you value but that it is the wise person who knows or at least has thought about (often with the help of others) the…

The Green movement really has nothing to worry about. If coal is shut down and electricity prices spike or the grid becomes unreliable the people who voted against coal will be out of office. For decades. The only way to get off coal is to find a cheaper alternative. Keep up with just say no…

Click on the image to read the whole thing. And here is a two minute introduction: You can buy it here: The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need Brought to you by The Online Investing AI Blog which is currently the best economics blog on the ‘net. Funny. Readable. Sensible.…

Not safe for work. The only recycling that makes sense economically is metals recycling. And you know what? It has been going on for at least several hundred years for common metals and for thousands of years for precious metals like gold and silver. Let me add that industrial recycling works in some situations. You…

You can learn more about wind turbine noise by watching these videos. So what is the answer? I think offshore wind is the way to go for now until the issues brought up in these videos are sorted out. An alternate view. Farm machinery is nosier. And from the look at the blade construction on…

Some very nice pictures in high style of Obama during his Occidental College days. You really have to take a look. Trust me. Cross Posted at Power and Control

It seems like Obama’s Attorney General nominee Eric Holder once had a job working for Illinois Governor Blagojevich as an investigator. And what was he investigating? The mobbed-up Rosemont, Illinois casino deal. CHICAGO–Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich’s pick to sort out a mess involving…

Ann Arbor has a local daily newspaper that is supposed to be subscription-only. Because I get the Detroit Free Press, I decided not to subscribe to another local paper. However, for whatever reason, they decided to start delivering it, and now I don’t want it (especially because I’m not there). So I called to stop…

This is better than pennies from heaven. Tony Rezko is trying to get a better deal. So Tony’s sentencing has been delayed by the judge in the case. A federal judge has indefinitely postponed the Jan. 6 sentencing for Tony Rezko, the prominent political fund-raiser and former adviser to Gov. Blagojevich. The move this morning…

While I was having trouble sitting in my seat because of construction issues, I appeared on a very cool PJTV show with Stephen Green and Andrew Ian Dodge, and we discussed a variety of topics. Including… Dick Cheney and whether he’s a changed man for being so surreally fond of Obama’s National Security Team. Nancy…

Even though I am in the middle of a renovation project and don’t have time, when I heard about a demonstration in support of the Iraqi shoe-throwing journalist in front of Berkeley’s Marine Corps Recruiting Station, I decided to go a little out of my way to a hardware store in the area so I…

H/T Backyard Conservative Cross Posted at Power and Control

Alan Boyle at Cosmic Log announces the results of the WB-7 Bussard Fusion Reactor (BFR) experiments. And the results? No show stoppers so far. An EMC2 team headed by Los Alamos researcher Richard Nebel (who’s on leave from his federal lab job) picked up the baton from Bussard and tried to duplicate the results. The…

The semiconductor industry is about to report its first back to back years of declining sales based on projected sales for 2009. Gartner Inc this morning reported that for the first time in the semiconductor industry’s history, 2008 and 2009 will show back-to-back revenue declines. The report follows on estimates from Gartner made late last…

I was looking for some information on the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago and came across this interesting bit. When he first came to office, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich proposed selling the building to assuage the state budget. The proposal won many critics. Lawmakers at first agreed to the plan, but later a $200…

Evidently it is not just Senate seats that are up for sale. Siemens AG apparently paid for contracts. The problem with such schemes is that the contracts go to the highest bidder. And now you know one of the reasons government costs so much and accomplishes so little. Siemens’ scam ran like a suspense novel.…

I’m sure someone else has made observations along these lines, but I think the “journalist” who threw the shoes at President Bush was, while acting out, expressing a largely unacknowledged collective rage on behalf of many of his fellow “journalists” — and not just the ones in Iraq. Showing extreme and contemptuous disrespect for the…