Obama’s baseless. The whine and whine some mores.
Just Bad For Business
Terraformed
Another Anonymous American Production of Wheels In The Sky Productions
Monthly Archives: March 2011
Just In The Nick Of Time
Third verse same as the first, Yesterday we had the cable yanked-
Enihcam Eht Tsniaga Egar
The nuclear debate from the other direction,
As the situation at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake’s effects on nuclear power have been significant, but tiny in comparison to all other human activities – the nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there.
I’m still open minded about nuclear power, but I really wish someone would tell me where they plan to put the garbage.
Other than that, I suppose, sunlight seems to be falling freely from the sky, across the plains where the grass grows and the wind blows…
Given the cost of power plants it just seems lazy assed to not develop and use renewable energy like sunlight, and wind.
The More Things Change
The more they remain the same, An Entire Class of Thieves
In The Nick Of Time
Second verse. Yesterday we had the cable yanked-
No Matter How Often People Discover How The Government Works
They are always surprised to find out it still works the same way.
But Please Don’t Mention South Korea
We don’t need no stinkin competition,
Let’s be even clearer about what is at stake in this fight. Muni networks are providing locally based broadband infrastructures that leave cable and telco ISPs in the dust. Nearby Chattanooga, Tennessee’s city owned EPB Fiber Optics service now advertises 1,000Mbps. Wilson, North Carolina is home to the Greenlight Community Network, which offers pay TV, phone service, and as much as 100Mbps Internet to subscribers (the more typical package goes at 20Mbps). Several other North Carolina cities have followed suit, launching their own networks.
In comparison, Time Warner’s Road Runner plan advertises “blazing speeds” of 15Mbps max to Wilson area consumers. When asked why the cable company didn’t offer more competitive throughput rates, its spokesperson told a technology newsletter back in 2009 that TWC didn’t think anyone around there wanted faster service.
When it comes to price per megabyte, GigaOm recently crunched some numbers and found out that North Carolina cities hold an amazing 7 of 10 spots on the “most expensive broadband in the US” list.
The Korea Communications Commission is working on plans that will boost broadband speeds in that country tenfold by the end of 2012. That means Koreans will access 1 Gbps service by 2012. That’s 200 times as fast as your typical 5 Mbps DSL connection sold in the U.S. At present, Koreans can get speeds of up to 100 Mbps from their broadband providers. Availability of such high-speed connections has allowed Korea to emerge as a leader in the MMO and online gaming industries. Even higher broadband speeds are going to unveil many new usage scenarios, which can lead to new company creation.
Representation Without Taxation
The top hedge fund earners — who personally rake in billions (not millions) of dollars per year — can toast to the fact that they’re not living under that great radical president, Dwight David Eisenhower, when the top income tax rate was 91 percent, or under that rascal Dick Nixon when it was 70 percent. Nope, today, it’s a 15 percent maximum for the big boys, and we’re letting it happen.
I don’t have a problem with that per se, until I read this,
WASHINGTON — The United States is out of step with the rest of the world’s richest industrialized nations: Its economy is growing faster than theirs but creating far fewer jobs.
The reason is U.S. workers have become so productive that it’s harder for anyone without a job to get one.
snip
Fewer than 12 percent of American workers belong to unions, which provide some protection against job cuts. That’s the fourth-lowest union participation rate among 31 countries the OECD tracks.
“When there’s pressure to cut costs in the United States, it’s borne by the workers,” says Howard Rosen, visiting fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “In Europe, it’s borne differently.”
The solution is more difficult than the seeing the trajectory of the two policies, which to me indicates a hollowing out of the tree. I don’t know how long this can continue before the tree dies. But the thing that made America the greatest nation on Earth in the past is gone, and without other means putting creative and head strong people to work the work force will eventually be reduced to that of farm animals. By that I mean that people like myself that are as likely as not to tell the boss what we really think instead of kissing their asses are likely to be let go as not in any reduction of force.
Creepy Schools Of Fish
Creepy is a software package for Linux or Windows – with a Mac OS X port in the works – that aims to gather public information on a targeted individual via social networking services in order to pinpoint their location. It’s remarkably efficient at its job, even in its current early form, and certainly lives up to its name when you see it in use for the first time.
via /. Who could have foreseen? That and other news you can abuse.
jensen201102 writes
“A mere 20,000 Twitter users steal almost half of the spotlight on Twitter, which now ropes in a billion tweets every week.
Update: Yes I have my copies now.
Rebels Cede Ras Lanuf
Without coalition air strikes, outgunned rebels fall back through Ras Lanuf and complain about lack of support.
While Wes Clarke said that cloud cover may very well have kept NATO aircraft out of the fray, as was the case in Kosovo, the result does play into the salient part of the argument made here,
But bringing it up is illustrative of where Cole is coming from. He sees the revolt against Gadaffi as a ‘Good thing’, and most in the Left agree. That we should turn ourselves over to the tender mercies of imperial power to fix it for us shows how little Cole has gathered of the Left’s central analysis: that governments, no matter how well intentioned, work for the powerful, and the powerful are those with piles of cash. There need be no “Neoconservative political odor” as Cole calls it, to make this the case. The good intentions of those who urge on military intervention mean exactly nothing to the ends of that intervention.
Along with the remark in the main link,
Arming the rebels raises several controversial issues for the United States. It might necessitate sending in American troops to help train the fighters, and it would mean handing over weapons to forces whose composition is not entirely known.
Both issues have raised concerns among US legislators and are not likely to disappear, especially after NATO’s top commander, US Admiral James Stavridis, testified before the US Senate on Tuesday that he had seen “flickers” of intelligence indicating Hezbollah and al-Qaeda involvement among the rebels.
Are there folks in the ranks of the rebels who sympathize with and support the surreal nightmare that is the vision of Bin Laden? You betcha! Are there similar kind of folks backing Qaddafi? DITTO! Are these sympathizers under the thumb of Bin Laden? Are they being directed by Bin Laden? No and no.
Now I’m not saying that we should not know who we are supporting. If we don’t know we are making a potentially deadly mistake. But let’s not compound our ignorance on one end by being equally ignorant and fearful on the other. I heard one retired CIA officer, Wayne Simmons, spinning the bullshit line that Al Qaeda is trying to oust Qaddafi. He said, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Really? Then who the fuck is our “friend?” Qaddafi is our enemy and Al Qaeda is our enemy. Does that therefore make one of them our “friend?”
Larry follows up with a pretty negative assessment of the covert CIA leak for the terminally optimistic.
I think it would be in the best interests of the Libyan people then, if they truly seek independence and their own freedom and liberty, to take advantage of the shot at it they have been given with the current no fly zone, lest the coin of further involvement be paid for with the chains of a different master.
Terraformed 
