Never pass up a chance to sit down or relieve yourself. Or to have sex, or to be on TV.
-old Apache saying (with an assist from Gore Vidal)

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Re-thinking Nuclear Power

Indeed, I have been thinking about ... re-thinking about the use of nuclear power. It could be a good stopgap for us, as we try to transition off of our near-total addiction to fossil fuels.

I've been a nay-sayer against nuclear power for awhile now. This recent "conversion" of mine is not due to Sarah Palin's
Op-Ed in the Washington Post. She gave nuclear power only a fragment of one sentence.

No, it is due to the reasoned arguments of
James Lovelock in his most recent "Gaia" books, "The Revenge of Gaia" and "The Vanishing Face of Gaia." And surely, at some point (hopefully soon), we're going to figure out how to implement nuclear fusion.

Increased use of nuclear power at this time of over-pollution with carbon would be a wise move.

Sure, we still have that nasty nuclear waste problem to deal with, but generation of nuclear power is practically emission-free energy, unlike power derived from coal, oil or natural gas. We are still a long way from "clean" coal, but research in that direction should continue, because we have so much coal in the U.S.

1500 megawatts output per nuclear plant is a lot of power, and you don't have to worry about the wind not blowing (as you do with wind turbines), and it doesn't matter if it's a cloudy day (as it does with solar photovoltaic), and it's not really taking land that might go for food production (like most biofuel crops currently in favor - and growing plants for biofuel could end up taking a LOT of land that could be better used for food, or left in its natural state), and you don't have to dam up any more rivers (as you do with hydro power).

Each type of energy usage has its risks. Comparatively speaking, when you look at the numbers, nuclear power generation has shown to be much safer than any other type of power we generate.

Still have that pesky waste issue, of course, and the astronomical cost of nuclear plant construction. And many people have a harsh, near-autonomic denunciation of the technology. I used to, until I gave Lovelock a fair reading.

Just how close are we to fusion, anyway?

Monday, July 13, 2009

Morford: Don't Go, Sarah!

Don't go, Sarah Palin!

A nation turns its lonely eyes to your ditzy insufferable ramblings

Friday, July 10, 2009

I know, I know, we all said we were entirely sick to death of you, Sarah, never wanted to hear another folksy, semi-coherent peep, were hugely grateful that you had mercifully receded like a perky red tide back up to the rural bucolic animal-skinned parts of podunk rusticville from whence you came. I know.

We were all happy to hear you had finally removed all those expensive designer clothes you so gleefully hoarded from Neimans and charged to poor ol' grandpa McCain, and had returned to your baggy sweatpants and "I Heart Bowhunting" glitter sweatshirt, as we all hoped deep in our hearts to never hear much from you again, even as we all became instantly annoyed that the media kept insisting on reporting your every little hiccup and twitch and errant pantyhose episode, even long after you had left the building.

I know, good Sarah, we said all that. And oh dear God, we meant every word, too. No lie. We really, really meant it. Like you cannot believe. Really.

But now, something is amiss. Something feels, how do I say this, a little bit sad. Now that you've up and quit as America's favorite hottie milf ditzball politico moose-slashin' anti-choice anti-feminist destroyer of linear grammar, we feel adrift and lost, a nation without its favorite squeaky purple balloon.

Look, we all knew you were slightly weird, offbeat, entirely unqualified and unprepared for The Show, that you were obviously in way, way over your head as VP nom, your cutesy mannerisms and childish winking merely a mask for the fact that you thought the Sunnis and Shiites were some weird European soccer teams and domestic torture meant not eating cupcakes for a solid month and foreign policy was waving to Vladimir Putin from your back deck.

This all was, of course, merely part of your crazy allure, merely what the GOP base still adores about you -- the fact that you are, without doubt, just as uninformed and generally ignorant of global and social complexity as they are. The fact that you had so captivated a nation's imagination had zero to do with your governing abilities or political insights, and everything to do with the fact that no one could quite understand how the hell you made it up on that stage in the first place.

But no one ever imagined you'd just up and quit, just give up like that, the pressure and the scrutiny and the financial woes from all those probes into your various ethics violations and your adorable cartoon family proving to be too much for your quirky, hollow sensibilities.

No one ever imagined you'd step up to the mike and deliver one of the most barely coherent, side-steppin', nonsensical, what-the-hell-is-she-talking-about resignation speeches of all time, leaving your role as the right wing's most unlikely taste sensation to ... well, no one knows exactly who. Michele Bachmann? Trust me, Sarah, that flat-out nutbucket can't hold a candle to your winkin', smirkin', carefully manicured caricature of a smart female. Her ignorance and homophobia are far too literal and obvious. You were so much more fun, largely because no one can really understand a single word you say.

So now, we take it all back. I know, it's a bit humiliating to admit, but the nation needs you, Sarah.

Or, more specifically, liberals and Democrats need you, given the simply spectacular job you've done of helping drag the Republican party, if not further to the extremist nutball right, certainly much further down the ladder of intelligence, respect and viability, than even Bush could've dreamed. As long as you're serving as the GOP's hood ornament, and as long as Rush and O'Reilly and Glenn Beck are behind the wheel, the Republican party has not a single prayer of relevance and capability in the next two decades.

And what of your rumored 2012 presidential ambitions? I know I, for one, was seriously looking forward to your debates with President Obama. I was looking forward to hearing you try to pronounce Ahmadinejad's name, or locate France on a map, or explain what you'd do to fix health care ("free rifles for all schoolchildren" doesn't really count). I was eager to watch Obama struggle not to roll his eyes or chuckle softly or quietly pine for the good old days of his debates with Hillary, a woman of such fiery political intelligence she makes you look like Miley Cyrus trying to read Shakespeare. So cute!

You know, for the longest time, Sarah, I and millions of liberals like me have dreamed that the truth would finally come out about many leading members in the savage, homophobic right-wing party, that we'd finally hear about, say, Rush Limbaugh's massive kiddie porn collection, or Bill O'Reilly's sex tapes with numerous gay prostitutes, or Newt Gingrich's multiple wives. Oh wait.

But then I thought, why? What's the point of that? Just more obvious hypocrisy? More of the same? Nothing ever changes anyway. It's not like another gay sex scandal or drug addiction or adulterous affair by some God-loving hypocrite ever serves to make the Right understand the nature of its own narrow-mindedness, and move to upend its uninformed ways. Hell, Jesus himself could return tomorrow on a firestorm of revelation and point at the megachurches of the nation and shake his head and say, "No no no, you're doing it all wrong."

Do you know what would happen, Sarah? Of course you don't. I lost you eight paragraphs ago when I wrote all those polysyllabic words. It's OK.

Nothing, Sarah. That's what would happen. Nothing at all. The right would simply ignore or even shun Jesus, call him a fraud, claim he must've been brainwashed by Satan somewhere on his big elevator ride down, would lock him up and call him a hippie and pretend they never saw him, then go right on hating gays and demeaning women and calling Obama a commie fascist.

In other words, Sarah, the best the left can hope for is for the right's most extremist, silly or otherwise unhinged figureheads -- that's you, Sarah! -- to keep doing exactly what they're doing, shoving out the moderate voices of their own party in favor of wacky fanaticism and raging on about homosexuals and abortion and God, thus locking in Obama's second term and further guaranteeing their own delightful irrelevance.

Do you see, Sarah? We need you here, to keep doing your fine and upstanding and nonsensical work, keep making the right the adorable laughingstock of the world it has so very become.

Look, here's my Platinum Amex. Go nuts at Bloomingdale's. I won't tell anyone where you got those Gucci riding boots, promise. Come back soon, K?

Find the original here. And the funny stuff here.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

A Supervolcano?

Oh, great. Something else to worry about.

A supervolcano blocking out the sun!

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Meet Wendell Potter

The July 10 episode of The Bill Moyers Journal on PBS included a long interview with ex-CIGNA healthcare exec Wendell Potter.

After many years in the healthcare biz, Potter quit and is coming forward to help change the system. We need many more Wendell Potters, but this is a good start.

The healthcare industry is the elephant in the room. It's killing businesses, it's killing our economy, and it's killing people. The healthcare issue highlights the corrosive effect of big money in politics.

You should watch the program, and lend your voice to the healthcare debate.

from the PBS website...


Last month, testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation by a former health insurance insider named Wendell Potter made news even before it occurred: CBS NEWS headlined: "Cigna Whistleblower to Testify." After Potter's testimony the industry scrambled to do damage control: "Insurers defend rescissions, take heat for lack of transparency."

In his first television interview since leaving the health insurance industry, Wendell Potter tells Bill Moyers why he left his successful career as the head of Public Relations for CIGNA, one of the nation's largest insurers, and decided to speak out against the industry. "I didn't intend to [speak out], until it became really clear to me that the industry is resorting to the same tactics they've used over the years, and particularly back in the early '90s, when they were leading the effort to kill the Clinton plan."

The full transcript is here, and the video of the interview is here.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Top 10 Reasons

Top 10 Reasons that Sarah Palin resigned:

10. She's pregnant again and is having John Edwards' baby

9. She's "hiking the Appalachian Trail" with Mark Sanford

8. She wants to spend more time teaching abstinence to her family

7. She's joining the cast of "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!"

6. She cracked under the strain of watching Russia from her house.

5. She wants to devote herself full-time to making comedians apologize for the new wave of jokes they're about to unleash on her

4. Her daughter Bristol is actually having Alex Rodriguez's baby

3. She's taking up Playboy's offer to pose nude as part of their upcoming "Governors Gone Wild" issue
2. She came to the end of the Bridge to Nowhere that is her political career

1. She didn't resign at all. It was an elaborate hoax pulled off by Tina Fey

More funny stuff here.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Lovelock: It's Too Late

I just reserved James Lovelock's latest two books from the library: "The Vanishing Face of Gaia - A Final Warning" and the previous one, "The Revenge of Gaia - Earth's Climate Crisis & The Fate Of Humanity." Nice "light" reading. He says that some will survive the coming apocalypse, but not many. I may be entering a dark period soon. Collapsitarianism, anyone? Hmmm....maybe I shouldn't bother, and just skip merrily, obliviously along my way.

Scientist Lovelock Believes It’s Too Little, Too Late For the Environment
June 4, 2009
By Andrea Frascione, staff writer

MONTREAL (RPRN) 6/4/2009–In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, English scientist-author, James Lovelock, discusses the very real possibility that there is absolutely nothing we can do to save planet Earth. In a recent interview, he compares our era to the interglacial periods of the past where the Earth has heated up far too much and far to quickly in recent years to be able to reverse its warming effects.

‘‘Until now, Earth has always been a planet that regulates itself,’’ says Lovelock in a press statetement, ‘‘however, based - not on theory - but on observation, it may be too late for it to deal with (these changes), making annihilation inevitable.’’

Lovelock states that as many as seven-eighths of the human race will be ‘wiped out’, save for the U.S. and Canada. His book explains why North America, ironically, is somehow one of the most resistant continents of the globe. He warns that border patrols can expect a rapid influx of immigrants from around the world once the ‘apocalypse’ ensues. While this may all sound a tad dramatic, Lovelock insists that there is very solid historical evidence to predict our impending doomsday, alluding to an era fifty-five million years ago that forever changed the climatic face of Greenland as we know it today.

‘‘We pulled a trigger by accident in the system.’’ says Lovelock, and the effects we witness today, created, for the most part, in the last century, are irreversible.

He especially criticizes politicians who, due to their popularity rather than acquired knowledge, attempt to propagate otherwise. He ensures us that we may, however, slow down the inevitable process minutely, by converting to renewable energy sources such as wind farms, solar panels and by harnessing nuclear energy in overcrowded populaces such as London, England. He explains that regions of the globe utilizing energy sources inherent to their landscape - as Iceland does with its hot rocks - are best off.

A proposed mass conversion to a renewable energy resource in Venice, Italy means that soon, 50% of it will be powered by biofuels, obtained largely by scraping green algae from the underside of boats and canal walls, converted in a laboratory to renewable fuel. This government initiative will serve to reduce carbon emissions released into the atmosphere by its motorboats and water-transport vehicles and also beautify the mucky waters for gondola-riders and tourists strolling the banks of this ancient European city.

Earthships are another effective way to begin living green. Any abode whose structure is composed of recycled material, with south-facing windows for maximum sunlight absorption, thickly insulated walls, and uses off-the-grid resources can be considered an earthship. Using greenhouses for food, collecting rainwater, generating power through the use of windmills and solar panels, these complete green homes resemble sci-fi huts of Star Wars colonies but are, in fact, the way of the very real future.

And, of course, let’s not forget the recent grocery-chain giants’ initiative of charging a whopping five-cents for plastic bags, in favor of their green cloth ones instead. One small step for over-consuming mankind; One giant leap for ridding our dumps of non-biodegradable waste seldom used more than once. Although, with all the handy carryall options available to shoppers out there nowadays, one wonders if it really is necessary to continue selling the plastic ones at all, much less at a price that hardly puts a dent in the average American’s wallet…or change-purse, in this case.

Many on-line promotional distributors are making the move to greener product lines as well. Barry Sokol of P.L. Marketing is making recycled and eco-friendly products affordable to all his customers, toting a brand new E-catalog boasting mouse pads made from recycled tires, recycled USB keys, bags made from recycled plastic bottles and even recycled drink ware - all at price points comparable to their less Eco-friendly counterparts! Tote bags can even be made out of recycled billboard material, making small sections of large-scale advertisements visually interesting, close-up.

Lovelock admits that environmentalists don’t like him very much because he paints a very bleak portrait of our dying planet and the ultimate fate of mankind, despite its overall enthusiasm and sincere attempts at going green as of late. But, he reluctantly concludes his interview by saying, ‘‘Even scientists can never really be 100% certain about anything.’’ Let’s hope this statement rings true.

This story can be found here.

Lately, it really does feel like things are just falling apart, and no one has the political will to really do much about it: healthcare, energy, food contamination, water scarcity, poverty, torture, war, excessive military spending, financial fraud, you name it, we're just coasting along, perhaps waiting for some divine intervention. I wonder if every generation has felt this way? Anyway, have a nice day!!

Monday, July 6, 2009

More Ethics Charges

Sarah Palin hinted that there might be more charges against her in her "resignation" speech last weekend. A pre-emptive strike?

Palin said there'd been 15 ethics complaints against her as Governor, and that she'd "won" them all. 15-0. You betcha!!

So, anything else will just be more "politics as usual" I presume, and similarly groundless, I'm sure. Poor thing. Everyone's just pickin' on 'er. Just pickin' n' pickin'.


Maybe. Maybe not....Is this some concerted effort to ruin a "rising star" in the Republican Party? Is she just one violation away from doin' time?

Whether any of these charges turn out to be true and stick or not, there is just something about this woman that makes my skin crawl. It's similar to the way Mitt Romney makes me feel too. I could take John McCain, however, for awhile.

Oh, yeah, here come the new charges....
In the wake of Governor Palin stepping down from her job, new allegations have surfaced today in Alaska charging Palin with additional violations of the Alaska Executive Ethics Act.

Zane Henning -- a conservative government watchdog from the governor's hometown of Wasilla and an oilfield worker on Alaska's North Slope -- asserts in a letter to Alaska Attorney General Daniel S. Sullivan that Palin has "been charging and pocketing per diem to live in her home and has used the process for a personal gain since being elected."

In a detailed press release accompanying the charges, Henning declared that:

Palin's use of the per diem is in direct conflict with Section 39.52.120. (a) of the Alaska Executive Ethics Act....More than a thousand state employees commute from the Mat-Su Valley daily and none of them get to pocket free money.
In February, Palin was required to pay back income taxes on thousands of dollars in expense money she received while living at her home overlooking Lake Lucille in Wasilla. Little more than two weeks ago she was forced to pay back the State of Alaska more than $8,100.00 for nine trips taken by her children that she had improperly charged as being part of official state business.

The rest of that mean 'ol article (most of it) can be found here.

I remember hearing about Palin collecting that per diem awhile ago and it didn't seem right to me then. It still doesn't. Is it practicing the "politics of personal destruction" if she gets nailed on a real violation?