Backgrounders
So, has everyone (or anyone) read the Backgrounders under Clean Power? They have a nice little section on the basic history, setting, whatever and then a very simplistic explanation of how the technology works with nicely simplified science. I quite liked them and highly recommend them. The author is extremely, um, excited by the workings of clean power.
The Hurricane Season That Just Wont Stop
Say hello to Delta and Epsilon. Woot. What is going to happen when the hurricane season doesn’t end? What is going to happen when a major hurricane hits American soil every three months. Will we have to abandon the coast? With tornados well into November, and the super strong hurricane season, we can only conclude that something is up. I would say this and many other things show rapidly increasing signs of global warming. How long will it take before people start to ride their bike, and take the train. How long will it be before we get our act together and outlaw SUV’s. Will rich people have to have their beach front houses swept away? Will D.C. have to be hit with a CAT 5 hurricane? I am just wondering just how bad it has to be before people pull their head out of their ass and wake up!
The Republicans Make This Too Easy
I don’t want to keep picking on the republicans, really. It makes me sad when the government of this country has its head in its ass. But GOD DAMN IT! they just keep fucking up. The latest little fun fact. Randy “Duke” Cunningham pleads guilty to being a lying cheating bastard.
Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham resigned his office today after pleading guilty to fraud, conspiracy to commit bribery and tax evasion in a political corruption case. U.S. District Judge Larry Burns accepted the pleas from Cunningham, 63, including the congressman’s admission in federal court that he had accepted bribes in exchange for performance of his official duties. “I misled my friends, family and myself. The truth is, I broke the law and disgraced my office and myself,” Cunningham said after his plea, breaking into tears at a news conference
Cunningham admitted to receiving at least $2.4 million in bribes — checks for over $1 million, cash, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees and vacations, according to prosecutors. He agreed to return $1.8 million.
read more here
read the plea agreement here (pdf)
Hunting Civilians In Iraq
A sick as it sounds military contractors may have been “hunting” Iraq civilians. A video of them randomly shooting Iraqi civilians was posted on the internet. Sick, just sick. Read more here.
The video, which first appeared on a website that has been linked unofficially to Aegis Defence Services, contained four separate clips, in which security guards open fire with automatic rifles at civilian cars. All of the shooting incidents apparently took place on “route Irish”, a road that links the airport to Baghdad.
Download This Video (wmv)
Simply fucked up.
Our Friend The Banana
Here is some great facts about our friend the banana.
Banana, Pisang.
Musa acuminata Colla; Musa balbisiana Colla; Musa x paradisiaca L.
Family of Musaceae.
Description & storage
Long thick-skinned edible fruit that is yellow when ripe.
Keep bananas on a fruit dish in the living room at room temperature. If you want the bananas to ripen faster place the bowl in the sun. Like other tropical fruits and tomatoes and bell peppers, never store bananas in the refrigerator. Below 8 degrees Celsius the fruit will decay from the inside. These fruits will not ripen but will turn black in the refrigerator.
Plant
Banana-plants can grow up to 15 m. but most plants vary from 3 to 9 m.
It has very big leafs that can grow to 4 x 1 m.
Short history
Wild forms of the banana plant come originally from the Indo-Malaysian area and are now cultivated all over the tropical and sub-tropical continents.
Use
Bananas are delicious eaten with one’s fingers after peeling off the skin. Depending on the type of banana unripe bananas are also cooked, fried or deep-fried a lot. Bananas are the basic food in many tropical countries.
Types
At this moment there are five different types of bananas common on the market:
Red bananas: have a green/red peel and pink fruit flesh. They taste the same like yellow bananas. The redder a fruit, the more carotene it contains, so maybe they are healthier than their yellow colleagues;
Fruit-bananas: are the normal, yellow bananas, 15-30 cm.
Apple-bananas: are smaller, 8-10 cm., and ripen faster. They are also yellow;
The baby-banana (pisang susa): is yellow as well and measures 6-8 cm. It is the sweetest of the banana family;
Baking bananas: are 30 to 40 cm. large and are green, yellow or red-like. They cannot be eaten raw. They fulfill the role of the potato in the tropical countries.
Peculiar characteristics
Is the most well known and eaten (tropical) fruit;
In Eastern Africa you can buy banana beer. This beer is brewed from bananas;
Tropical fruit is usually picked unripe and has to ripen in the land of arrival. To make this process go faster bananas are treated with ethylene-gas. Normal bananas also ripen through ethylene -gas but exposing it to additional gas accelerates the process;
Is the (only) fruit that for some people can work fatting because they contain a lot of starch (more starch than sugar). Those people shouldn’t eat too many bananas a day;
Eat at least one banana a day, they are said to contain everything a human needs and they contain all the 8 amino-acids our body cannot produce itself. For more see the energy in fruit.
Bananas are a good source of fiber, potassium and vitamin C;
Red bananas are often dried and converted to meal which is used in many ways;
Red bananas contain more vitamin C as yellow bananas (the redder a fruit, the more nutritious elements it contains);
The Domino’s Begin To Fall (Scanlon pleads guilty, Delay goes to court)
So it seems Mike Scanlon is squealing. He has plead guilty and has started to name names.
Promising to cooperate fully in a federal probe, a former partner of lobbyist Jack Abramoff entered a guilty plea Monday to a charge that he and the lobbyist conspired to bribe public officials, including a senior Republican member of Congress, and defrauded Indian tribes of millions of dollars.
He has named Ohio republican Robert Ney, and was also a former aid of Tom Delay. Speaking of Tom Delay his ass is trying to worm out of a trial, he has already claimed that a judge couldn’t see him because he is a democrat, and now because all but one of the judges in Austin is a democrat he is trying to get the trial moved to another city, (namely his home district go figure).
With Dick and Bush trying to froth up the new McCarthyism, and the house republicans unable to rally around a single cause, its only a matter of keeping the pressure on until 2006. Then we vote all these bastards right out of office and say FUCK YOU to G W with an impeachment for war crimes (maybe).
WTF!
Seems our president didnt do much while visiting Asia. But while he was off embarrassing representing us he did manage to snap this little gem. Wtf, is everyone who voted for this guy feeling buyers remorse? I know I am and I voted for the other guy.
U.S. President George W. Bush shakes hands with ‘Albert Hubo,’ a 54-inch-tall, two-legged robot topped with a head modeled after Albert Einstein as leaders of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum toured South Korea’s hi-tech exhibition in Busan, South Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2005.
Something To Think About.
Will it come to this?
Zombies!
OK so its no secret zombies are awesome. That is why you should all be playing Urban Dead, do not work, don’t do your homework, because if you leave this game for more than a few minutes THE ZOMBIES WILL GET YOU! Seriously this game is crazy good. Its simple, has an active player base, lots of fun, you will find yourself waking up dead if you don’t end up in a good building with lots of barricades at the end of the day. Its just you and your trusty fire axe, don’t ever stay outside for long periods of time, you have been warned.
We Are So Fucked (electronic voting makes it easy to rig elections)
As a person who has written many a computer program in my day, i can tell you that electronic voting is a foolishly stupid and dangerous idea. Seems the Government accountability office (GAO) a non-partisan government watch dog group agrees with me. Read the report here (pdf). For more reasons to wake up screaming at night try here, or here, or here.
[C]oncerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.
How easy would it be to just type a couple of lines of code, and blam the person you want always wins. And with no paper trail there is no way to even confirm that the vote was even made! Even Arnold had problems with electronic voting.
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