Jim's BLOG
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Feds Probe Deadly Chopper Collision
Why does this headline lead with "Feds" as if they are the only ones interested?
The reason is two fold. One, federal agencies are well funded to give good news releases to reporters to file without effort. Second, it makes the reporter sound as if reporting on a national scale. This reduces to laziness on the part of reporters and of headline writers who just copy the templet from earlier stories. It also carries the risk of seeming as if the feds and only the feds can address any issue of interest to the people -- an attitude directly supportive of the big brother concept of government. Most reporters think this is all right, so laziness leading to big governement is the winner. Feds probe . . . (anything that happens).
Resident in 30 days
Idaho Supreme Court ruled that local tax payers must pay when an illegal resident incurred more than $187,000 in medical bills.
The solution to the Idaho 30 days and you are a resident rule -- raids every 28 days. Include the entire family.
Government Funny
The Federal Emergency Radio station has not allowed a full nights sleep lately with alarms announcementing severe thunderstorms, high wind, tornado Watches and warnings, flash Floods. After a good night's sleep, turned on the emergency radio to static. It seems the emergency radio station has been shut down due to flooding.
An example of great planning.
Really Renewable Energy
Alcohol is considered renewable because corn can be grown every year. But what about really renewable? Look at toys as a way to provide motion without burning fuel -- rubber bands, springs, flywheel, backing soda and vinegar, and sails come immediately to mind. A company in India has created compressed air powered cars, it takes a couple bucks to fill the air tanks for
125 miles of travel that would cost $20 for gasoline. The idea of energy storage is now limited to batteries. We have to broaden our imagination. The price of oil may continue to rise, whereas technology generally reduces future costs.
Malthus is right.
The world is entering a period of food shortage. Malthus once predicted that because population grow exponentially and food production grew linearly, that demand and supply would diverge creating famine. This prediction did not come to pass for many decades because the Green Revolution increased crop yields, technology provided water, China heeded his advice, and urbanization reduced population growth. Meanwhile public health has increased survival of births, reduced disease to extend the life expectancy of age, and deaths have been reduced from plagues and wars such that world population is increasing ever faster, and unfortunately, among the least productive populations. Ground water has been depleted thereby expanding deserts from feet per year to miles. Increasing population with reduced resources call for something to happen, else the rules of arithmetic suggest dire things.
No Candidates.
That means no good candidates for president. An unAmerican man of no qualifications except skin color, an amoral woman, and a rebel without a cause except to continue on. And it the last selects the preacher rather than the businessman as running mate, then we will have to scan the third, fourth and fifth parties of somebody to vote for. You can't complain if you have not voted, and I intend to complain.
How much is a job worth?
Monsanto awarded $7.5 million to provide 47 jobs and offer 700 seasonal jobs.
We can assume that the seasonal jobs are a few weeks at minimum wage to detassle corn for students and immigrants that pay minimum taxes. Lets go wild and pretend they are ten-week summer jobs, equivalent to 200 real jobs, then the gift is $37,500 per job. Corporations expect a two to four year payback life from any spending. This makes the gift equal to $12,500 per job. There is more going on here than meets the eye. We wonder if any of it is of benefit to the tax payer.
Giant Coal Fired Power Plant.
I was neutral on this until an electric rate increase was announced to pay for it. It the project won't pay for itself, then don't do it. The townspeople are going to suffer the congestion and collateral costs of construction and live with a dirtier environment. I was willing to accept that, it has to go somewhere, but to suffer the inconvenience, the health risks, but then to pay for it, too. Count me out.
Gasoline or Food?
Unintended consequences of grain alcohol replacing oil/gasoline -- World Bank reports food prices up 75% since turn of the century. With prices of corn ski rocketing, up 40% in the last four months; wheat to 3 times in the last 18 months as demand eliminated stocks; now, international rice is being priced out of
3rd world affordability, three times the price five years ago. "When the price of rice rises, governments fall." Several Asian exporters have weather/production problems and Asian and African countries are (further) in trouble with their people.
Discovery of America
John Real and Didrik Pining discovered the new world twenty years before Columbus. Why don't we know much about it?
The king of Portugal sponsored, and the king of Denmark provided, three ships and crew for two voyages to the North Atlantic. The first, 1471, went to see Greenland whose colony had died out forty years before. The second, 1472 ran into ice (Little ice age, 1315-1850) and was blown south to Newfoundland. The voyage was not succeeded in finding the sought passage to Asia and the trips were kept secret from their rival, Spain. Portugal proceeded south to find a path round Africa, while Spain sailed west to the find the Caribbean which resulted in a land rush to the new world. After Portugal had made great wealth from Indian Ocean trade, a new king sent the sons of Joćo Vaz Corte-Real on three annual voyages, starting 1500, to again seek a shorter route to Asia. They discovered both Labrador and Newfound and brought back 50 natives. But the ice had not melted and there was nothing to draw attention to the discovery by the father, with a Danish fleet captained by Pining, almost thirty years earlier.
Okinawa
US will be moving 17,000 Marines and family members from Okinawa, Japan, to Guam about 2014, spending over $10 Billion on infrastructure. I take exception to issues related to Okinawa. The press likes to say we retain 17,000 troops in occupied Japan. In fact they
are not in Japan but on a island 400 miles from Japan. The signing
on the USS Missouri acknowledged Japan as four main islands and such
adjacent islands as the US determines. Okinawa was once a US coaling
station after the Civil War. Then Japan invaded that kingdom over a
hundred years ago, like they did Korea. Okinawa was site of a major WW2 battle
and became a large US Marine base. Later, the US made a GIFT of Okinawa
to Japan for support in the Korean War
with acknowledgement of the US base. Historic revisionists say
the US has occupation troops in Japan -- how wrong. But, it worked,
the US is now "forced" to "remove" these troops to a smaller, more remote, and more
vulnerable island.
Summer Time
Snow is deep in March and we are changing the clock to summer time.
We will "spring forward" into the dark to get up an hour earlier, turning the furnace on earlier, and get home in time to enjoy an extra hour of evening. But we will have to go to bed earlier to get the same 8 hours sleep. Where is the extra hour?
Daylight Saving Time now covers 2/3s of our calendar, we have essentially moved one time zone west. In November we will move the clock back to our official time zone. If moving west is a good idea, should we move two time zones? Or just change one time zone and stay there all year? Or call
the months between November and March, "winter reduction time". Getting up an hour earlier in March does not lead to an outdoor BarBQ dinner. The idea, according to our Congress, is
to save electricity by getting up in the dark and spending our evenings with sunlight. However, the idea and data is old, from pre-air conditioning. The biggest energy cost today is heating and cooling, not lighting, and the effect is to spend the "extra" hour with the air conditioning in summer and heat in winter using up more energy that is saved in lighting.
Majority of Muslims
Gallup World Poll made survey to show Muslims are peaceful; found about 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates. That is, only seven percent are politically radical. ONLY!!! That makes 91 million fanatics who want us dead.
Drudge Breaks News Blackout
Editors have been sworn to secrecy over Prince Harry being sent to fight in Afghanistan three months ago. Drudge has blown their cover. One wonders whether readers will ever want to trust Drudge is a human again. It is disgusting to raise the risk of lives for gossip points.
Financial Stimulus
Our elected leaders seek to borrow billions of dollars from China, give it away so that people can buy Japanese electronics, and thereby further indebt our government to two foreign powers. The future ? These IOUs will be used to buy up American businesses and send the profits back home. Add to this the ongoing interest payments we must pay on our debt to them, long after the stimulus items are gone, and those countries can come back to buy ever more of our country. Does this epitomizes a flaw in government?
Solution to new disease
A new, highly drug-resistant strain of Staphylococcus (MRSA), is now spreading among gay men; "this is a national problem, and San Francisco is at the epicenter," researchers report. In the case of Mad Cow disease, the control is to dispose of the infected individuals and all associated with those infected. Well?
U.K. Passes U.S. in Standard of Living
The former sick state in Europe has passed that of France, Germany, and the United States.
Good work by the Brits who have more freedom in their economy than most of Europe. Passing the US is in part by the fall of the dollar, but also by the influx of lower classes into the US lowering the per capita numbers and absorbing wealth created by an industrious society. As Willy Sutton says, go where the money is.
Religion in Politics
As suspected in this blog several months ago, Iowa let religion
influence politics ; a vote for Hucklebee is an affirmation of belief. Muslim fundamentalists
feel the same way about ayatollahs.
Next suspicion -- death of the Iowa Caucus. Reasons include : predominance of special interest groups (corn, religion), abuse by favor sons (Harkin, Vilsack), competitive dates. This is a shame as Iowa had been an example of all-American values.
Presidency
I used to wonder in history class how we elected so many weak candidates to the highest office. Having lived thought many elections since, I find that voting is mostly selection of the least objectionable. Mediocre men, who do little, have fewest enemies.
Unknown men have no failure on their record. Politicians are in the business of spending public money ; these small men squander our tax money promising free services so that people will vote for them.
Intelligence Agencies
Why do we have to have so many intelligence agencies?
There are sixteen spread among the government and military. Probably for the same reasons we have so many types of teachers -- history and
math, special and exceptional, academics and technical, librarians and councilors, elementary and university, public and private.
Iowa Caucus
There is an opportunity for special interests to concentrate their efforts in the Iowa Caucus to influence choice of national candidates. Unfortunately, candidates must stress their support or opposition to this limited number of lobbyists, forcing the candidate to prostitute their avowed positions. Some of these are
foolish -- ethanol, welfare, abortion, Israel, homosexuals, hunting, separation come to mind.
Ethanol costs as much as it saves; welfare creates welfare collectors; abortion is a private affair; all Israel all the time is not all to US interest; homosexuals want benefits for roommates; guns are to keep the government under control, not animals; the constitution says not to impose religion, not exclude; send criminals to jail, but sending home is cheaper.
Jim
Prior Blog - 2007
Prior Blog - 2006