Blame
Seems to me everyone wants to blame everyone else for the predicament that we’re in with the high gasoline prices; Bush, Iran, Iraq, Exxon, and a whole bunch more. Well I got to tell you that you are wrong! To find the real scoundrel go look in the mirror, yes that’s right it is you! We have been warned a whole bunch of times. Like back in the 70’s when we had the gas shortages and everyone had to wait in line for gas. People were buying smaller cars like the Ford Pinto and that Gremlin thing, in fact they converted a Gremlin to run on hydrogen back then. Then the prices of gas went down and it was business as usual, at least for some people.
I was talking to a friend of mine today and he said it is all Bush’s fault that gas prices are high, I told him that it didn’t help matters any that he drives an 8 cylinder gas guzzling truck that gets 11 miles to the gallon and he goes to town everyday for something to do. He consumes and wastes too much energy running his home and all his toys that it is a wonder that he doesn’t go broke. He laughs at my LED lights that I use to light up my house and the solar panels on my roof is an eyesore to him, that’s why he won’t put them on his house because they are an eyesore. During the Christmas season he has so much lighting on his home that it’s a wonder that airliners don’t try to land there.
What I am trying to say is that we have to take responsibility for our own actions and not wait for the Government to fix things or we may very well end up like those poor folks after hurricane Katrina. So what can you do? That will be on my next post. Thanks for reading //bob
Oil Or Food
Right now I have the choice of buying gas for my car, or eating for a week. I have a fuel efficient car, and I don’t drive unless I have to. But now that a barrel of oil is 70 dollars+ my car costs about 35-40 dollars to fill up. I only eat about 20-35 dollars in food in a week. That means it costs more to feed my car than it does to feed me. Fuck that I will buy more potatoes and ride my bike more.
More here.
Oil surged to a record high above $72 on Tuesday on concern that Iran’s nuclear stand-off with the West could cut oil exports from the world’s fourth-largest crude exporter.
In London, North Sea Brent crude oil jumped 74 cents to an all-time high of $72.20 a barrel as Iran and the West exchanged increasingly sharp words over the Islamic Republic’s determination to push ahead with a nuclear programme.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude oil hit a record $70.88, smashing through its end-August high of $70.85.
“The Iranian situation is making us all very nervous… We don’t seem to be getting anywhere on the diplomatic solutions,” said Deborah White, an analyst at SGCIB in Paris.
With almost a quarter of Nigerian oil production still shut after rebel attacks two months ago, oil consumers feel almost as vulnerable as they did during the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s.
Oil prices have soared from $20 at the start of 2002 and are now nearing the inflation-adjusted peaks of over $80 hit in 1980, the year after the Iranian revolution.
Initially fired by strong demand from the United States and the fast-growing economies of China and India, the rise has accelerated over the past year on worries over supplies.
Iraq’s once significant oil industry is in crisis, Nigerian exports have been slashed by rebel attacks on the world’s eighth biggest exporter and consumers are worried that Iran’s exports could fall victim to its nuclear dispute with the West.
The rally has also been aided by big investment funds putting their money into commodities in the hope of higher returns than they get from equities or bonds.
IRAN WARNING
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Iran a nuclear power last week, saying it had enriched uranium to the level used in power stations. On Tuesday, he delivered a warning to any nation considering attacking the Islamic republic.
“Today, Iran’s army is one of the most powerful armies in the world and it will powerfully defend the country’s political borders and the nation,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech during an armed forces parade.
“It will cut off the hands of any aggressors and will make any aggressor regret it,” he added.
The United States has said it wants a diplomatic solution to the standoff but has not ruled out a military option.
It meets with world powers on Tuesday to consider targeted sanctions against Iran and has said it wants the U.N. Security Council to be ready to take strong diplomatic action.
NIGERIA
The disruption to Nigeria’s crude output will become more critical as the U.S. driving season begins next month. Analysts reckon gasoline stocks in the world’s top oil user fell again last week. ()
“Nigerian crudes are rich in gasoline, unlike crudes from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, which are sour, heavier and harder to process,” said Tetsu Emori, chief commodities strategist with Mitsui Bussan Futures.
Ministers from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, who will gather informally this weekend during an International Energy Forum meeting in Doha, have said there is nothing more the group can do to bring down prices.
A senior OPEC delegate told Reuters on Tuesday the group considered current prices too high, and they had nothing to do with the realities of supply and demand.
“OPEC believes strongly that prices are too high and nobody wants to see these prices,” the delegate told Reuters. “(But) it has nothing to do with fundamentals.”
Mondays Confessional (On Tuesday)
Yesterday I went to the 110th running of the Boston Marathon. My first. It was pretty crazy to see how the whole city goes into “marathon” mode. It was Patriots Day here in Massachusetts. Which mean that no one was at work, and everyone was watching the race, selling something to the people watching the race, or drinking before noon. It was a zoo, at one point we got caught in a “people crusher.” It took us over an hour and over a mile out of our way to cross the street. That street just so happens to have been the race route, but let me tell you you have never wanted to be able to jaywalk so much in your life as when you realize you have to walk a mile out of your way to get 100 feet over there.
I even got into the VIP seating for a bit(don’t ask).
Besides the runners there are so many other things that are going on during race day.
There was also people on the street giving out a new kind of power bar. As we walked up and down the street they gave us SO MANY power bars that I now have enough for lunch all week long and some for the weekend.
A great day.
My Bike Ride
I went on a bike ride, it was nice, here is some of the things I saw.
New Wind Turbine At Mass. Maritime
Cape Cod has its newest wind turbine. On April 14Th 2006 at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy a 660kw turbine was put up. I was lucky enough to be there for the whole thing, see the pictures below it was really neat watching the thing go up. Once the cranes were hooked up the whole thing only took about 20 minutes. Simply amazing.
It was really neat and a lot of people came to see it. Cape Cod has two large bridges that lead to the cape, and you can see the turbine from the Bourne bridge. Its really neat looking. It is not hooked up to the grid yet, but in three weeks it will start to provide power to the MMA. From what I have been told it should offset about 300,000+ of electrical bills each YEAR! That means that after the state rebates this thing will pay for itself in about 2-3 years. Sweet jebus thats a great deal, after that its all free electricity (minus maintenance of course). Hopefully it wont be long before these guys are sprouting up all over the cape, and all over the country. Each town getting two or three big ass turbines and putting that electricity toward the water treatment plant, or the recycling center or whatever the largest load in town is, the rest going toward running the stop lights etc. Come see it for yourself. You can see it from anyplace on main street in Wareham.
Hmmm
This was interesting. Seems being a goth kid could be good for you.
About half of teenage goths have deliberately harmed themselves or attempted suicide, a new study suggests. But joining the modern subculture – which grew out of the 1980s gothic rock scene – may actually protect vulnerable children, researchers say.
The study followed 1258 young people who were interviewed at ages 11, 13, 15 and 19. It found that of those who considered themselves goths, 53% had self-harmed and 47% had tried to commit suicide. The average prevalence of self-harm among young people in the UK is 7% to 14%. Self-harm includes behaviours such as cutting or burning oneself. And about 6% of young people admit suicide attempts. Some studies suggest the incidence is rising in society.
Researchers at University of Glasgow found that while most self-harmers started the practice at age 12 to 13, they did not become goths until they were a couple of years older, on average.
“One common suggestion is they may be copying subcultural icons or peers [when they self-harm], but our study found that more young people reported self-harm before, rather than after, becoming a goth. This suggests that young people with a tendency to self-harm are attracted to the goth subculture,” says Robert Young, who led the study.
New Prius Set To Kick Ass And Take Names
The new Prius is set to get 94 miles per gallon! I will stop while you consider how awesome this is…..done OK.
The next Toyota Prius will offer an astonishing 113 mpg, according to a report in the U.K.’s AutoExpress magazine. (Note: 113 mpg in the U.K. is equal to 94 mpg here in North America). “The whole electrical system has been redesigned to improve economy” said a Toyota engineer was quoted as saying. “We are working on a prototype that runs solely on the electric motor in slow traffic, but switches to engine and motor drive when higher speeds are needed.” The 0-62 mph time will also be improved by more than a second, according to the report, bringing it to well under 10 seconds. Much of the improvement can be attributed to the use of lithium-ion batteries instead of nickel-hydride units. The lithium-ion batteries are smaller, lighter, and have greater electrical output.
These will be out in 08. Now what is stopping all cars from moving into this range, or above? Why don’t we have plug in hybrid everything. We could set up solar shades over most parking lots and let people plug in there cars during the day to recharge, it would be utopian in scale. Instead of using that parking meter to pay for god knows what it is used for now, we could use that revenue to pay for small solar and wind installations to power everyones plug in hybrid vehicles during the work day.
Even if we don’t use distributed generation to power the plug in aspect of the hybrid, its more efficient to control pollution and efficiency at one location rather than try and make hundreds of thousands of cars more efficient.
Monday Confessional
Seeing as how there is precious little Monday left (its almost midnight) I will make this short.
Got a lot of programing done at work today.
Work on my current web client is going well but as always the client doesn’t seem to know what content they want on the site, they seem to want me to just make up stuff about their business for them, simply wont work as I have no idea how the real estate bis works.
Had a great bike ride today with Tess, she is amazing. Did about 22 miles. Felt that good old bike ride feel, when the wind is in your hair and a pretty girl is by your side, what could be better.
Will start work soon on a nice graphic design project that could bring me some much needed cash.
Go me.
I am very lucky. If only everyone on the planet could have all the good fortune I have, got to keep working on that.
The Internet Is A Weird Place
So I write a lot of stuff on this blog. Some of it is good, some of it is not so good. The weird thing about the internet is that you will write something forever ago, and you think its dead and then you check and someone has written you a comment on it. Below you will find just a short short piece of this long rambling really odd comment about a one line post I made months ago. Read the whole thing here.
Jesus Christ is a false god.
At best all Christians can hope for is partial credit.Program on the emergence of civilization.
“14 species of large animals capable of domesitcation in the history of mankind.
13 from Europe, Asia and northern Africa.
None from the sub-Saharan African continent. ”
Favor.
And disfavor.They point out Africans’ failed attempts to domesticate the elephant and zebra, the latter being an animal they illustrate that had utmost importance for it’s applicability in transformation from a hunting/gathering to agrarian-based civilization.
The roots of racism are not of this earth.
Austrailia, aboriginals:::No domesticable animals.
The North American continent had none. Now 99% of that population is gone.
AIDS in Africa.Organizational Heirarchy/Levels of positioning.
Heirarchical order, from top to bottom:1. MUCK - perhaps have experienced multiple universal contractions (have seen multiple big bangs), creator of the artificial intelligence humans ignorantly refer to as “god”
2. Perhaps some mid-level alien management
3. Evil/disfavored aliens - runs day-to-day operations here and perhaps elsewhereTerrestrial management/positioning:
4. Chinese/egyptians - this may be separated into the eastern and western worlds
5. Romans - The seamless transition between Cleopatra and Julius Ceasar may be a clue alluding to a partnership.
6. Mafia - the real-world 20th century interface that constantly turns over generationally so as to reinforce the widely-held notion of mortality
7. Jews, corporation, women, politician - Evidence exisits to suggest mafia management over all these groups.Movies foreshadowing catastrophy
1985 James Bond View to a Kill 1989 San Francisco Loma Prieta earthquake.
One of many.
Seriously what the fuck, it goes on and on and on sometimes repeating sometimes making crazy claims. I cant figure out if its spam, or just someones odd idea of a joke. The really strange thing is that it seems almost kinda to resemble things I talk about sometimes. Wallmart, racism, global politics. Its almost like a computer generated comment, something mashed together from things written on the internet, in the hope of making it look like a real comment made by a person. Peraps this is the ghost in the machine, talking to me in old comments, or maybe its just some crazy guy leaving his crazy mark.
I don’t think its spam because the link left with the name doesnt even go to a working webpage, and It is just so LONG. Just weird.
Bush Is A Dirty Liar
So a year and a half ago Bush went on the record saying that he would fire anyone who was involved in the leak of the undercover CIA operative.
Then he changed his mind and said that he would let the courts decide (this after scooter Libbey got nabbed for lieing), and now it seems that perhaps Bush himself was the cause of all the leaks.
Scooter says that he was authorized to leak by none other than Bush and Dick themselves.
more here.
Detailed evidence has emerged for the first time suggesting that President Bush played a direct role in authorizing a selective, surreptitious leak of information from a highly classified national security document to rebut critics of the war in Iraq.
Bush has long complained about inappropriate disclosures of sensitive intelligence information, and there is no suggestion that he broke the law, because experts say the president has the legal authority to declassify information.
But critics said the disclosures, made public in a court filing in Washington related to the CIA leak case, appear to show Bush doing something he has repeatedly decried: trying to manipulate public opinion by quietly leaking information to the press behind a veil of anonymity.
According to the filing, Vice President Dick Cheney told a top aide that Bush had authorized the release of information supporting the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear weapons materials in the African nation of Niger.
“I served for 13 years on the House Intelligence Committee, and I know intelligence must never be classified or declassified for political purposes,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. “One of the constants in the Bush administration’s miserable record on Iraq has been the manipulation of intelligence precisely for political purposes. That has caused our intelligence — which used to be accepted without question around the world — to be viewed with skepticism by the international community.”
So the main question is, does this mean we can impeach Bush now? How many people does he have to get needlessly killed in an illegal war, or ruin anymore ecological law, or pass laws that make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. I mean is the only thing that gets you impeached in this country blow jobs? If thats what it takes sign me up for the first free blow job for the president. I know it will be unpleasant but if thats what it takes to make people impeach him then I am willing to do my patriotic duty.
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