31 Mar 2009
No News Is Good News

Blogging may be light for the next few days - the wife and I are on a news break. That means no news - world, national or local. For a week. Because we just can't take the constant drumbeats of doom in our heads anymore.

This may give me a chance to finish off some essays I've been working on half-heartedly for a while, and just to blog about springtime on the farm in Indiana. Because news good or bad notwithstanding, it's still a pretty cool thing to be alive, to be in love and to be in tune with the natural rhythms of the world.

Especially in the spring.

18:55 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

30 Mar 2009
IBM Tries To Patent Offshoring

I wonder if I could get a patent on scum-sucking bottom feeders and then sue Big Blue?

IBM has filed a patent application that covers offshoring employees. Application 20090083107, dated March 26, 2009, is a 'method and system for strategic global resource sourcing.' Figure 2 gives a pretty good idea of what's involved — it shows boxes labelled 'Engineer,' 'HR,' and 'Programmer' with crossing arrows pointing to cylinders labelled 'India,' 'China,' and 'Hungary.' The article speculates that IBM may apply the methodology to its own staff — it reportedly plans to lay off thousands of employees and has even started a program to have IBM workers transfer to other countries at local wages.

(link) [Slashdot]

20:55 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Irish boffins tackle cow-fart ecopocalypse with fish oil

I want a job as a headline writer for these guys ...

Irish boffins believe they may be able to save us all from the scourge of cowfart-induced ecological catastrophe, according to reports. It seems that adding fish oil to the parping bovine planet-wreckers' diet can reduce their methane emissions.

(link) [The Register]

20:48 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Man fires at McDonald's window over breakfast menu

I wonder if he was Falling Down?

AP - Police said a customer fired one or two shots into a Salt Lake City McDonald's after the driver of the car he was in was told the restaurant was not serving lunch yet. Police said the female driver of a white Dodge Intrepid pulled up to the drive-thru and ordered from the lunch menu early Sunday but was told only breakfast was available.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

18:37 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Mar 2009
Film composer Maurice Jarre dies

As far as I'm concerned, Jarre was the dean of film composers. He will be missed. RIP

Maurice Jarre, who composed scores for dozens of Hollywood films, including Laurence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, dies at 84.

(link) [BBC News]

19:33 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Urban coyote attacks on rise, alarming residents

I have a surefire cure for my coyote problems...

AP - A coyote ambling into a Chicago sandwich shop or taking up residence in New York's Central Park understandably creates a stir. But even here on the high plains of Colorado, where the animals are part of the landscape and figure prominently in Western lore, people are being taken aback by rising coyote encounters.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

18:57 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

28 Mar 2009
Memo to Wall Street : America Hates You

Consider this a follow up to last evening's tale of bankers and class war. It's an incredible, insiders description of the echo chamber that the financial world has become, and the disconnect from reality suffered by those ensnared in it.

Methinks reality will soon be asserting it's primacy.

The New York Times' publication of the resignation letter of American International Group executive Jake DeSantis has garnered a great deal of attention. What I find even more interesting than the letter are the angry responses to it.

(link) [MarketWatch]

20:59 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Mar 2009
Bankers told keep low profile as public anger rises

Emma GoldmanWith most peoples 401K plans now generously called 201K's, one can understand the anger. However, most folks have no sense of history, and no idea that this sort of class war has bubbled dangerously close to the surface before, right here in the US, and not that long ago.

In fact, the more one reads history, the more one understands that it really does seem to repeat itself.

Reuters - Leave the flash car at home, spend the night in a hotel, hire a bodyguard. This is the kind of advice security experts are giving bank executives who fear attacks from people angered by the financial crisis.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

21:23 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

26 Mar 2009
Hungry Crustaceans Eat Climate Change Experiment

Stop! No more!

Earlier this month, an expedition fertilized 300 square kilometers of the Atlantic Ocean with six metric tons of dissolved iron. This triggered a bloom of phytoplankton, which doubled their biomass within two weeks by taking in carbon dioxide from the seawater. The dead phytoplankton were then expected to sink to the ocean bed, dragging carbon along with them. Instead they experiment turned into an example of how the food chain works as the bloom was eaten by a swarm of hungry copepods. The huge swarm of copepods were in turn eaten by larger crustaceans called amphipods, which are often eaten by squid and whales. "I think we are seeing the last gasps of ocean iron fertilization as a carbon storage strategy," says Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University. While the experiment failed to show ocean fertilization as a viable carbon storage strategy, it has pushed the old "My dog ate my homework" excuse to an unprecedented level.

(link) [Slashdot]

17:20 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link

Toilet sausage chef causes prison unit evacuation

I can't take any more of these today ...

AP - An inmate's attempt to heat up sausages in his toilet went up in smoke when the cooking fire forced a unit evacuation at a Washington prison. Clallam Bay Corrections Center spokeswoman Denise Larson says 130 inmates were evacuated to a dining hall when smoke was spotted coming from a sewer vent pipe Wednesday evening.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

17:13 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Legalize pot? Not a change Obama can believe in

And there you have it, in, dare I say it? black and white. Apparently it's fine for our leadership to have blown coke or not inhaled, but for the rest of us, well, it's hard time with a hard fine.

But thanks for clearing that up, Mr. President: I have now lost all hope for liberty in my lifetime. But I have gained some hope that some scales will be dropping off some eyeballs, as more of the enemies of freedom are revealed.

Reuters - Legalizing marijuana is not the kind of change President Barack Obama can believe in -- -- at least not as a remedy for the ailing U.S. economy.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

16:57 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

Michigan man jailed for humping car wash vacuum

What can I possibly add to this?

A Michigan man who was caught red-handed having sex with a car wash vacuum hose has been jailed for 90 days, the Saginaw News reports.

(link) [The Register]

13:58 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link

States consider drug tests for welfare recipients

Gosh, I wonder if they'll require us to sing Horst-Wessel-Lied next?

AP - Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

06:56 /Politics | 1 comment | permanent link

25 Mar 2009
Study: Morbidly obese sedentary for more than 99 percent of day

Another for my Studies in Stupidity series - and this one takes the cake. In fact, it's so stupid that I can't even bring myself to put it in the Humor container where it really belongs.

The findings show that the tested population was sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day and, on average, walked less than 2,500 steps per day...

OK, less than 2,500 steps per day is the average. Until the next paragraph:

On average, subjects took 3,763 ± 2,223 steps.

So which is it? And how can the average be plus or minus a number that's nearly 60% of it's own value? But wait, there's more:

The highest level of activity attained by any single individual during one 24-hour period was 28 minutes of moderate activity. No length of time was spent at a high level of activity for any of the individuals while under observation. Two individuals in this study spent the entire monitoring period in sedentary activity.

I can only only assume that none of the study participants worked: just getting into a car or bus and driving/riding to work, walking to and from the parking lot, etc., would take more than 28 minutes. Did they stand up to fix dinner for themselves? or did someone else prepare their dinner? And the two folks who didn't move for 24 hours: there had to be other physical ailments present (perhaps caused by obesity) because no one who's not being taken care of completely by another human could fail to move for 24 hours. And you're generally only taken care of when you're sick.

So how can this study even remotely be considered valid? You have dodgy math and reported findings that make no sense. Were they studying sedentary people who became obese, or obese people who became sedentary? Considering the source, is it possible that some of these folks had heart problems that made them slow down so much? What's the real story.

If I'd gotten results like this from a study based off electronic sensors, I'd be questioning the sensor output or usage. But I suppose if I did that, I might lose my place in line at the grant trough, and not get funding for next years Study in Stupidity.

A new study appearing in Clinical Cardiology examines the average fitness level of the morbidly obese (body mass indexes between 40.0 and 49.9). The findings show that the tested population was sedentary for more than 99 percent of the day and, on average, walked less than 2,500 steps per day -- far below healthy living guidelines of 10,000 steps per day.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

20:54 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

24 Mar 2009
Renter who paid on time 'left out with nothing'

Where are our Republican friends moaning about the sanctity of contracts for Ms. Brown? And who're the real socialist when contracts are sacred only when they redistribute the wealth upward.

When Lisa Brown moved into her rental house on Long Island, New York, last summer with her three daughters, she says, it felt like a new beginning. Instead, Brown and her family are being evicted because her landlord defaulted on the mortgage. The house was recently sold at auction. "It took everything I had to move in," Brown says, "to give my kids a better environment." And now, "I'm left out with nothing."

(link) [CNN.com]

20:30 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link