April 28, 2009
This ray of sunshine is already obsolete...As to its significance, your milage may vary.
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......which, due to the fact that I can now relate to her utterly brings to mind this....
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April 23, 2009
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UPDATE: Avatar has thoughts on this and several other recent shows. He seems upbeat overall.
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Over at Information Dissemination, Galrahn has much to say on this. Read the whole thing.
Greyhawk ( no pinko by any means) weighs in here and notes another E-mail purporting to have the straight dope here. Again read both posts, they are thoughtful and informed.
My above my paygrade take is that criticizing the president for his handling of the pirate situation is stupid, wrong or both.
The President does not seem to have micromanaged this ala' Kennedy or Johnson. This is to be commended. Particularly given his basically statist worldview, it is a welcome development.
Much of the desperate, grasping at straws criticism seems to be aimed at the ROE, but given the nature of the problem (a hostage situation) they seem to have been pretty reasonable: ie negotiate and dont fire unless the hostage is in imminent danger....note that the results of this were 3 dead pirates, 1 captured pirate and a freed healthy hostage so if it is the RESULTS one is quibbling with...then one is an idiot.
As to the means to that end, a pitching enclosed lifeboat does not make for an easy shot and the likelyhood of the pirates simply killing the hostage if the boat was attacked was very real.
Prudence is not a vice (though timidity is).
We need to give presidents some bennefit of the doubt in these matters. The fact that the left was dreadfully unfair in their demonization of Bush, who had far worse hands dealt him than this, does not give us a liscence to lower ourselves to their level. We are at war and our president has some very awful things about to come to a head on his watch....things that have no easy solution. Like Bush, he is going to be presented with a selection of choices...all of which are going to be bad. He needs good faith from the loyal oposition.
Rather than act like the repugnant myrmidons of MSNBC-DNC, and try to spin an unalloyed good into a defeat.I would suggest focussing on genuinely problematic descisions that have very worrisome implications, but then I'm silly that way.
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April 22, 2009
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April 19, 2009
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April 15, 2009
more...
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April 13, 2009
And nicer still to see them get the rewards they richly deserve.
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Friday, when seeing a doctor for an unrelated matter (chest pains) she had an ultrasound done. The heart doctor immediately sent her to get an MRI.
It seems that Mom has a rather rare form of cancer that does not show up on X-Rays...and it has been steadily growing these last three years...to the point that it is causing her pain now.
There is not much information other than the fact that there is a LOT of it and her recent symptoms (extreme fatigue, dizzyness and nausea) are not at all encouraging.
I've moved back into the sewing room at my parents house as I will undoubtedly be needed shortly and we await further word. But this does not look good.
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Damn, man, you have my sympathy. April 05, 2009
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March 31, 2009
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March 30, 2009
2 It's never too late to back out of a bad decision ...until it is.
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A group of Somali Pirates attacked a tanker off the horn of Africa several hours ago. This would be sad but not remarkable as the piracy in the area has been bad for years and exploded in the last few months. However the tanker they attempted to board was the FGS Spessart, a German Navy supply ship.
...and so...
The German sailors returned fire and pursued the skiff while also calling in for support. Several naval ships — including a Greek and a Dutch frigate, a Spanish warship and the USS Boxer — sped to the area while a Spanish marine aircraft and two U.S. Marine Cobra helicopters joined the pursuit.
Five hours later, Greek sailors reached the pirate skiff, boarded it and seized the seven suspects and their weapons, including assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, the Greek navy said. The suspects were disarmed and transferred for questioning to the German frigate Rheinland-Pfalz where they remain Monday, pending a decision on whether they will be legally prosecuted, Christensen said.
Wasp, meet sledgehammer.
(Hat Tip: Information Dissemination)
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March 28, 2009
For the first time In my experience, the festival was held on a day that was warm and rain free.
I must say that the attendance was surprisingly large. (These pics were taken as the festival was disbanding). Despite the mud (It's rained here for 5 days straight) the enthusiasm was high and many people decided to dress up for the festival in culturally appropriate attire...
...of various flavors.
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March 27, 2009
First comes this story concerning a much improved refining process. What is described as a "continuously flowing fixed-bed" process allows a vast increase in efficiency and reportedly can be managed to produce no waste water. A big advantage of this method is that it uses a reusable catalyst rather than expendable reactants. Finally, as its name implies the process is...continuously flowing, which removes the "filling/emptying reaction tanks" stage and massively improves flow output. One of the developers This comes on the heels of the sucsessful testing of a seawater algal oil farm in Florida. This produced a thousand gallons of refined ATSM certified biodiesel on an eight of an acre...though the time interval is not mentioned. There is more on this here.
This is particularly big news as they not only were using seawater..but open ponds.
Getting this performance from a SEAWATER species in open ponds vastly increases the potential locations and at a stroke reduces the fresh water demands of such an industry.
Finally, a recent breakthrough in biodiesel from discarded coffe grounds may at first blush seem to be of limited utility (one would want to use already used coffee grounds to avoid displacing excessive amounts of forests or cropland for coffee beans) but it could possibly have a non trivial benefit.
You see, the Coffee diesel is reportedly much more stable than some other biodiesels so there exists the chance that it may have some utility as an organic additive. This last is speculation of course, but it bears investigation.
Hydrocarbons are very hard to replace for many mobile power applications (vehicles...especially aircraft) because they are so good as energy carriers. With that in mind, Brickmuppet Blog has been touting the advantages and potential of algal oil for some time as the potential energy density advantages over other oil crops are stupendous (300 percent or more). Unlike other oil crops it need not necessarily displace food acreage. It is very renewable, should not impose a severe environmental impact if properly managed and such farms can (in theory) do double duty in waste water treatment. With Nuclear power providing the refining and distribution energy we have the potential to have a clean, sustainable and damned robust energy network both electrical and liquid.
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March 26, 2009
Ugh! 2 politix posts in a row....
.... and this one has to stay above the fold due to the need to stamp out a bit of asshattery.
OK Kids, this will come as a shock to some of you but the President of the United States did not read the Irish PM's speech...in its entirety...thanking himself in the process.
The story seems to have begun with a rather muddled AP report.
More on this here. (Via The Instapundit)
Sad that we need the UK's Telegraph to put this to rest.
The Science Babes observe that it is sadder still that so many of us have to play cleanup for our own 2-didgits over this and stuff like the idiot birth certificate story.
I mean it's not like there are not real things to get upset about.
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March 24, 2009
Has been moved where it belongs...below the fold.
more...
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March 22, 2009
Update: All is explained.
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