"Crisis" and Congress

Wall Street is panicking over stock price losses connected to the sub-prime mess. Congress has been asked by Bush's administration to rush a $700 billion bailout plan into action to help. (For comparison, annual federal spending is about $3 trillion. More to the point, income taxes provide only $1.2 trillion a year. Take whatever you pay in income tax in a year and add another 50%. That's what this bailout would cost you if it went bad.)

 

Newt Gingrich says, essentially, "Let's not be so hasty to throw money at the problem. What is the real problem and what is the real solution?" It is a cogent article IMHO.

 

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGE5MmE0YmRiODA3YTRiNzFlN2FmNDU5N2I0ZDc3YTE=

 

Any Republican who doesn't stand up to this bill in favor of real solutions deserves to be fired.

 

-Max

 

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

Ebooks

Wow! Demo:

 

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid980795693?bctid=1778578839

 

Article.

 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13512_3-10038979-23.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

McCain's dishonest ad?

It turns out that the McCain ad attacking Obama's support for sex-ed for kindergartners is actually basically true. The bill (which didn't pass, IIRC) actually did mandate teaching kindergartners about HIV and pregnancy prevention.
 
http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/fulltext.asp?DocName=&SessionId=3&GA=93&DocTypeId=SB&DocNum=99&GAID=3&LegID=734&SpecSess=&Session
 
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NzI3ZDUzOTE0ZThlMTU3MTY0MDI4ZTY0MTZhY2I2MGY=
 
-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Extinct or evolving?

A tiny frog species thought by many experts to be extinct has been rediscovered alive and well in a remote area of Australia's tropical north, researchers said Thursday. The 1.5 inch-long Armoured Mistfrog had not been seen since 1991, and many experts assumed it had been wiped out by a devastating fungus that struck northern Queensland state. [snip]

Most of the Armoured Mistfrogs that Alford's group has found are infected with the fungus, but the disease does not appear to be making them sick, he said.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

The Bridge To Nowhere (Sarah Palin)

On "Thanks, but no thanks":

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=13236

Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin has been criticized for lying in connection with terminating Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” project. This charge, however, reflects widespread misunderstanding as to the nature of the infrastructure budgeting process.

[snip] Palin could have deferred the project to future years, possibly changing the funding allocation. In the end, she chose the radical option of removing the project from the capital budget, precluding any future funding allocations or construction. Her claim to have “stopped the bridge” is entirely truthful.

[snip] Palin has offered a bit of misleading rhetoric, however, in discussing the bridge episode. She has stated that terminating the project amounted to telling Congress “thanks, but no thanks.” This suggests that Congress was attempting to force the project on Alaska, when in fact it had given the state discretion. Her decision should instead be viewed as conveying the message “thanks, but no thanks” to Alaska’s Republican Congressional delegation.

My takeaway: I don't understand government.

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Gun control

When old ladies need guns:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008172211_pitbulls11m.html

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Sarah Palin

More on Palin and earmarks: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122100927525717663.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

 

-Max

 

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

Sarah Palin

Some thoughts on Sarah Palin that echo my own pretty well: http://selenianboondocks.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-thoughts-on-sarah-palin.html

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

George W. Bush

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090802839.html?hpid=topnews

 
Here's an interesting report. Back in September 2007, Petraeus was struggling with an unsupportive chain of command (Fallon and company). Jack Keane makes a back-channel report to the vice-president and then to the president.

Keane repeated what he had just told Cheney: The JCS and Adm. William J. Fallon, Petraeus's boss at Central Command, were insisting on studies and reports to justify even the smallest request for more resources for Iraq. Their persistent pressure, pushing Petraeus for a faster drawdown, was taking its toll.

"There is very little preparation," Keane said, "for somebody who grows up in a military culture to have an unsupportive chain of command above you and still be succeeding. You normally get fired." The result, he said, is that Petraeus "starts to look for ways to get rid of this pressure, which means some kind of accommodation."

Bush said he wanted Keane to deliver a personal message to Petraeus from his commander-in-chief. After Bush laid out his thoughts, Keane went to the large West Wing lobby, sat among the couches and chairs and wrote out the president's words....

"I respect the chain of command. I know that the Joint Chiefs and the Pentagon have some concerns. One is about the Army and Marine Corps and the impact of the war on them. And the second is about other contingencies and the lack of strategic response to those contingencies.

"I want Dave to know that I want him to win. That's the mission. He will have as much force as he needs for as long as he needs it.

"When he feels he wants to make further reductions, he should only make those reductions based on the conditions in Iraq that he believes justify those reductions. These two concerns that we are discussing back here in Washington -- about contingency operations and the needs of the Army and the Marine Corps -- they are not your concerns. They are my concerns.

"I do not want to change the strategy until the strategy has succeeded. I waited over three years for a successful strategy. And I'm not giving up on it prematurely. I am not reducing further unless you are convinced that we should reduce further."

I respect that. As Commander In Chief, Bush did the right thing here.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

Technology: Distilling without boiling

Solving the looming freshwater shortage problem requires a way of turning saltwater into freshwater efficiently: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/09/gallery_caltech_nano_still

I can't find any numbers on how much more efficient it is, so I don't know if this is a big deal or not. It's just interesting. I actually suspect that in the long run distillation will be more limited by capital costs more than energy costs (you can always build more nuclear power plants) so this probably won't even get used on an industrial scale, but maybe I'm wrong.

Also, there's this note on slide 12:

Professor Boyd, the lead researcher on the project, reveals that this process was largely discovered by accident. "We had this problem with [an] air bubble, so we started hitting it with a laser. Instead of getting rid of it, we saw that we were actually causing the distillation process to occur, which was completely unexpected," Boyd explains.

This is an application of the "Eureka" vs. "That's funny" process in science.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

"Natural" Eastern U.S. Terrain

But now, Robert Walter and Dorothy Merritts of Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania say those studies got it wrong, and the meandering streams are actually the result of early forms of land management imposed by the European settlers of the 17th century. The New World, they say, was a wetland.

The new study suggests that rather than rivers being confined to single, winding channels before 20th century industrialisation, they were collections of many small channels spreading across broad wetlands before European settlers dammed them in.

This may be relevant to understanding the Book of Mormon. I have a growing suspicion that the general consensus among lay members and FARMS researchers that the Book of Mormon story took place in Central America is wrong. I have this suspicion for a number of reasons--the political history of the United States, the position of the First Presidency on the location of the hill Cumorah, the methodology of the FARMS researchers, the fact that no one seems to question the assumption that in the geographical description in Alma 22, "sea east" and "sea west" actually mean "ocean east" and "ocean west" and that "land" means "continent"--but it's certainly interesting to note that the Eastern U.S. before the 17th century was a land of "many waters", per Mosiah 8:8 and Mormon 6:4.

-Max

--
"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.

McCain's speech

I'm starting to really like Jay Cost. Excellent analysis.

 

-M.

 

--

"The presentation or 'gift' of the Holy Ghost simply confers upon a man the right to receive at any time, when he is worthy of it and desires it, the power and light of truth of the Holy Ghost, although he may often be left to his own spirit and judgment." --Joseph F. Smith (manual, p. 69)

 

Be pretty if you are,

Be witty if you can,

But be cheerful if it kills you.

Biden says Obama may press charges against Bush

Subject: Biden says Obama may press charges against Bush

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/03/uselections2008.joebiden

"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued," Biden said during a campaign event in Deerfield Beach, Florida, according to ABC.

"[N]ot out of vengeance, not out of retribution," he added, "out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law." End quote.

Sounds sensible in theory (who isn't in favor of the rule of law?), likely to be a horribly messy mistake in practice.

-Max