Archive for June, 2009
Two pieces of evidence have emerged that lend new credence to the theory that the Air France jet that crashed more than a week ago broke up in flight.
. . . reports the New York Times today.
And Airbus, the plane’s manufacturer, sent its airline customers a bulletin saying . . . the parts that measure air speed may have failed first.
A faulty air speed indicator could mislead pilots into flying faster than the aircraft could withstand, or faster than it should be flown into turbulence — two circumstances that could lead to the craft coming apart in flight. Full story »
 The New York Yankees earned some well-deserved criticism in the off-season when they spent a bazillion dollars on CC Sabathia, AJ Burnett and Mark Teixeira and then started charging admission at the new Taj Mahal Yankee Stadium that was so exorbitant that Donald Trump couldn’t afford a seat in the lower deck. Such excess, it was felt, was inappropriate during times of extreme financial hardship such as those the nation is enduring right now.
Well, move over Hank Steinbrenner. Just a few days ago Spanish futbol superpower Real Madrid ponied up a £59M transfer fee to pry Brazilian midfielder Kaka loose from AC Milan. If you don’t have your currency calculator handy, that’s roughly $94M US. And to be clear, that figure does not include salary. That’s just Milan’s take on the deal. The good news is that Kaka’s weekly earnings probably won’t come to more than the GDP of a mid-sized European country. Full story »
Maritime shipping is responsible for emitting 3% of global carbon emissions, roughly equal to air travel and more than most nations. Worse than that, however, is the fact that most oceangoing vessels burn heavy fuel oil (aka bunker fuel), the heavy sludge that’s left after every other useful product has been refined from petroleum. Bunker fuel emits a truly massive amount of nitrogen oxide compounds (NOx) and, due to its high sulfur content, a huge amount of sulfur dioxide (SO2). According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, one of the ways to reduce emissions at port was to implement “shore-side electricity” in port. This enables a suitably equipped shipping vessel to operate off of comparably clean electricity instead of extremely dirty bunker fuel.
And according to an article last week in the Long Beach Press-Telegram , the first supertanker with a shore-side electricity retrofit pulled into the Port of Long Beach and plugged in. Full story »
 Two people have been shot at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. The shooter has been identified as James Wenneker von Brunn, a man with ties to various right-wing hate groups. His Web site is here.
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, we should note that since September 11, 2001, more innocent American citizens have been killed by anti-abortion activists and other fringe right terrorists than by al Qaeda. Oddly, we’re hearing no calls from Republican legislators or party leaders like Rush Limbaugh (or their Vichy Democrat allies) demanding that we invade Coeur d’Alene.
So are we serious about terror or not?
UPDATE: Paul Steel has opened up a nice cushion, leading Gogol Bordello by 74%-26%. Plenty of time for you to listen and vote, though – polls close Thursday at midnight.
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In the first quarterfinal match-up, England’s IAMX handily dispatched American Pop Undergrounders The Well Wishers by an 87%-13% margin. Frankly, we expected a closer contest, but the tribe has spoken. Congrats to Jeff Shelton and The Well Wishers for a fine showing, and we’ll be looking forward to the next CD. Chris Corner and IAMX now await a semifinal date with the winner of this week’s match.
Up first, 20 year-old UK Power Pop prodigy Paul Steel, who defeated Adele in round 1. In that contest voters seemed drawn to Steel’s accomplishes sense of tunecraft and upbeat energy. Will that be enough in rd 2? Full story »
I’d like to thank President Obama for giving me a $400 payroll tax cut. I’d sure like to help out with the economic recovery.
But that tax cut, thanks to 41 consecutive days of gasoline price increases, now amounts to only $150. Figuring my local commuting habits and trips to visit family and friends, I’ll pay about $700 to fill up my little Scion for the rest of the year at the current national average of $2.62 a gallon. I’ll be spending about $250 more at this price than I would if gasoline had remained near the December average of $1.62.
If the price of gasoline rises more (wanna bet?) over summer, I’ll be handing even more of my payroll tax cut to Big Oil.
So why the sharp, 62 percent increase? Why did the “experts” who are supposed to understand gasoline and oil markets get it wrong? Journalists have indeed been telling us the “experts” were wrong and what factors have been driving gasoline prices higher — but not why the “experts” erred in missing those factors.
Full story »
Hot links from recent days Full story »
Final part in a series…filed from home….
I say goodbye to China with a ride in a taxicab.
 I’ve been grading papers and need a break, so I leave my hotel room and catch a cab out front. I show the driver the card I have, furnished by the hotel, that has a list of popular tourist spots printed on it in English and Chinese. I point to the line for Tiananmen Square. The driver nods, and off we go.
The “I honk, you move” rules of driving fascinate me. The roads are bedlam, but my driver seems so unperturbed that I can’t help but relax.
I take in the surroundings as we go. Beijing, on the whole, is not a beautiful city, and it doesn’t have the cosmopolitan flair of Shanghai, but in my short time here, I’ve grown to love it nonetheless. As in Washington D.C., there’s always a museum to visit, a park to stroll through, a site to see.
The cabbie drops me near Mao’s Tomb. I pass through the security checkpoint uneventfully. In some closed-off part of the tomb’s grounds, I hear soldiers drilling. Their boots clomp loudly on the pavement.
I take more photos and jot down more notes. After a few minutes of scribbling, a pair of high school students approach to ask what I’m up to. “I’m trying to write down as much as I can so I don’t forget this place,” I tell them. Full story »
Four years of college seems an appropriate time for the leavening of the young. They arrive on campus in various states of glee, fear, confusion, and hope. Four years later, many, perhaps even most, walk confidently across a stage to receive a diploma from the college president. Society is thus assured that these young men and women are capable of wisely voting, serving on a jury, and holding down a job.
College is 120 credits: That’s eight semesters at 15 credits per semester, and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. And it’s pricey: For the academic year just ended, public four-year colleges charged for tuition and fees, on average, $6,585 (up 6.4 percent from last year), and private four-year colleges cost $25,143 (up 5.9 percent from last year) for the same. Now add up to $10,000 for room and board. In a recession, that’s tough for many students and their families to afford.
Hence the recent surge in colleges touting three-year degrees. Save money, they promise. Get a head start on life, they say.
Don’t bet on it. Three-year degrees short-change both the student and society.
Full story »
 The Deproliferator
The 2010 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons review conference is just around the corner. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty awaits ratification by the U.S. Senate. The Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty is being negotiated by the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. What do they have in common?
I mean besides the new age that would be ushered in if all three were implemented. The correct answer is that should that come to pass, it would be the result of men and women from different nations working together and perhaps even bonding over a common cause. Full story »
 The Obama administration has just come up with another way to sweep torture under the rug — allowing detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial. What’s the point of that? The New York Times explains:
The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques.
If you’re thinking that’s as self-serving as it is transparent, never fear — the administration also has the interests of detainees at heart:
It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom.
Expediting martyrdom — never let it be said the United States isn’t a full-service detainer. Full story »
I discovered a wonderful treasure at the beach yesterday – an imaginary shipwreck. I walked around the shipwreck and thought of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.
Full story »
Part fourteen in a fifteen-part series
 “You have never been to China until you’ve climbed the Great Wall,” Chairman Mao once declared.
By that definition, the twelve days we’ve spent in the country thus far don’t qualify.
I can see Mao’s point, though: it would not feel like a trip to China unless we visited the Great Wall. We’ve all been looking forward to the chance to finally see it, and now that we’re nearly done with our trip, the Great Wall feels a bit like the grand finale.
The most visited section of the Great Wall is called the Badaling, about fifty miles northwest of Beijing. We’re going to a slightly less touristy section, about forty miles from the city, called the Juyong Pass (also called the Juyongguan Pass).
“Wait’ll you see this place,” my colleague, Carl Case, says. “You’ll see why it’s a little less touristy.” Full story »
 Today, Memeorandum featured a post by climate disruption denier Michael Andrews and writer for the website DailyTech that claimed, among other things, that “even NASA’s own study acknowledges that solar variation has caused climate change in the past.” Not exactly news, but given that this article has been linked by other prominent denier sites like American Thinker, Newsbusters, and WattsUpWithThat, I figured that it was worth a little more looking.
And I’m glad I did, because I came across a great post at The Phoenix Talking Politics blog that pointed out something I’d missed: Andrews got all hot and bothered by a general interest piece that ran in ScienceDaily in May, 2008.
Oops.
Full story »
Part thirteen in a series
We eat like emperors—literally.
 White’s Grand Courtyard could not get any more yellow: yellow seat covers embroidered with blue and black dragons, yellow tablecloths, yellow picture frames and decorative panels and window valences. A yellow throne sits at the center of the room for the prince. Two golden cranes flank the throne, each holding a yellow-stemmed red rose in its beak.
Red columns entwined by ornamental gold floral patterns rise up from a red marble floor to a ceiling painted with elaborate dragon and phoenix designs. The dominant colors are green, blue, and white, but the dragons and phoenixes and the trim are all gold.
Yellow is the color of the emperor, and once upon a time, no one but the royal family could use it.
The restaurant tries to recreate the atmosphere of the royal dining room from the Qing Dynasty era, from 1644-1912. Petunia and begonia-bedecked gardens fill the courtyards around the dining room. In back, tables sit around a pool teeming with large schools of koi, and a small dining pagoda sits on a land bridge that straddles the pond.
It is, by far, our most lavish dining experience in a country that has been filled with fantastic dining experiences. Full story »
by Anam
Been a long hard week. All around the college where I work as a benefits coordinator, programs are out of funding for the summer. Financial aid is strained to the breaking point by the influx of new students. Students come flooding in for vocational training designed to switch them out of their now-defunct line of work.
Worker retraining can pay for tuition, but not books. What program offers to pay for childcare? Can I qualify for financial aid if I worked most of last year? I have to stay in school to keep my food stamps; who has grant money? I field a dozen phone calls a day from students trying to find a way out of the current economic situation.
Trying to find a program to help each student is taxing at best and on bad days it is heartbreaking. Our state is broke and our social service safety net gets more threadbare each month. Full story »
 By Jennifer Angliss
When I was a kid, I listened to the “Free to Be… You and Me” album incessantly. We had it on vinyl (not 8-track!) and I probably came close to wearing it out. At the time, I didn’t really care for the track “William’s Doll”. The chorus of “A doll! A doll! William wants a doll!” grated on my nerves–actually, it still does. But the song tells a story that I think is really important. William is a 5 year old boy who wants a doll. Unfortunately, everyone seems to think that this is a terrible thing for a little boy to want. His dad gets him all sorts of sports equipment instead, which he also enjoys, but he still craves that doll. Finally, Grandma hears about this and gives him a doll. Full story »
UPDATE: As of Thursday evening IAMX has a wide lead over The Well Wishers. However, due to a technical glitch that we’re still trying to sort out, the poll seems to have closed itself a day or two early, and we just now caught the problem. So we’re going to extend the voting through Saturday. If you haven’t voted yet, please listen and register your opinion below.
Sorry for the confusion. Full story »
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